Kruse's Keys: Read "Call Sign Chaos" for a Leadership Primer

Yes, Call Sign Chaos is a biography of one of the Marine Corps’ more storied and legendary generals, but it’s also a primer on leadership, and a first person account of the wars America fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. In it we see the rise and development of a man who became both a student of history and of those who followed him. A voracious reader with legendary (and prized) reading lists, he acknowledges that only an aide earlier in his career had read more than him (then 1st Lieutenant Warren Cook--now LtCol Cook). He notes that the importance of reading history is that it gives a leader some margin: “Living in history builds your own shock absorber, because you’ll learn that there are lots of old solutions to new problems.” With this shock absorber a leader realizes they don’t need to come up with every solution on their own. Mattis is more direct in some of his closing reflections: “If you haven’t read hundreds of books, learning from others who went before you, you are functionally illiterate--you can’t coach and you can’t lead.” And for Mattis, everything boils down to developing leaders because that is how one accomplishes the mission of defeating the enemy and doing everything you can to keep your Marines alive. So here I'll offer you (spoiler alert) Mattis’ leadership philosophy distilled to its essence.

Have a bias for action. Set the tempo for that action and reward those who meet that tempo or exceed it. Speed is king because time can’t be recovered once it’s lost. Reward the initiative of those under you--even when they fail.

I’d encourage you to read through my key quotes and takeaways below for many more lessons. But I’ll close here by discussion one of the great Mattis quotes:

“Powerpoint is the scourge of critical thinking.” 

He notes that powerpoint is only good for displaying data and I'd argue most military service members would agree. The very first admiral I ever worked for was also one of the best leaders that I worked for (as a reservist airline pilot, he also had the best hair and mustache in the Pentagon--can one have a "grooming mentor") and he demonstrated the truth of Mattis' assertion whenever he would speak to audiences. His powerpoint’s rarely ever had more than a few words. Instead, his powerpoints would contain pictures or a few maps. He’d use those illustrations to tell a story and lay out his argument or point. This method would force the listeners to stay engaged, take some notes, and not just mentally check out (knowing that they could just refer to the powerpoint slides later). We need leaders to embrace this truth and use their presentations to create narratives that tell a story that cogently lays out the problem at hand so that solutions can be discovered and developed. 

See our 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 and 2014 Reading Lists. 

Key Quotes

88 “Note to all executives over the age of thirty: always keep close to you youngsters who are smarter than you.

92 “Any general who isn’t spiritually connected to his troops is not a combat leader.”

96 “To expect success every time is wishful thinking, but we should default to supporting commanders who move boldly against the enemy...initiative and audacity must be supported, whether or not successful.”

102 “Never think you’re impotent. Choose how you respond.” Mattis when faced with adversity or impossible situations.

124 “Great nations don’t get angry; military action should be undertaken only to achieve strategic effects.” Mattis’ considerations prior to orders to attack into Fallujah.

132 “I come in peace. I didn’t bring artillery. But I’m pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you fuck with me, I’ll kill you all.” Mattis during continuations with sheikhs.

141 “If there’s something you don’t want people to see, you ought to reconsider what you’re doing. The most compelling story for us should be the naked truth about the reality of our operations.” Mattis on openness with media.

144 “Be polite, be professional--but have a plan to kill everyone you meet.” Mattis’ direction to his grunts as he charges them to thread the line and act ethically while being prepared to act lethally when shot at.

150 “Intuition is nothing more and nothing less than recognition.” Mattis picked this up from chess matches and then wanted to teach his squad leaders how to pick up subtle cues in the same way in combat situations. So he started to use tactical simulators and a dedicated training program to go along with it. Despite aviation using simulators to great effect, this had never been done for infantry which shoulders the buk of the fatalities.

156 “Without credible military force, our diplomacy is toothless.”

156 “Operations occur at the speed of trust.” “Make your intent clear, and then encourage your subordinates to employ a bias for action.”

159 “Attitudes are caught, not taught.” An important tenet of successful leadership is maintaining morale amidst adversity.

177 “There is only one thing worse than fighting with allies, and that is fighting without them.” attributed to Winston Churchill but Mattis uses it in discussing the value of NATO.

182 “Powerpoint is the scourge of critical thinking.” It’s only good use is for displaying data.

212 “If a democracy does not trust its troops, then it shouldn’t go to war.” Mattis in pushing for better rules of engagement which would be “reflexive, not reflective, so that troops can react swiftly and legitimately when time is of the essence.”

237 “Living in history builds your own shock absorber, because you’ll learn that there are lots of old solutions to new problems.”

237 “If you haven’t read hundreds of books, learning from others who went before you, you are functionally illiterate--you can’t coach and you can’t lead.”

Key Takeaways

46 Origin of Mattis’ call sign came from then LtCol John Toolan, who wrote CHAOS on the chalkboard and asked Mattis when he came in the room: “Does the Colonel Have Another Outstanding Solution.”

84 He acknowledges that he comes up with very few new ideas but that he takes the opportunity to integrate and learn from the lessons of others.

87-8 Without the creation and stoking of “vicious harmony” on the battlefield, one’s leadership is outdated and incomplete. This type of harmony requires coordination and most importantly TRUST across all sectors (military, diplomacy, service etc.)

88 Aide 1st LT Warren Cook comes up with the idea for the “mother of all sand tables” to rehearse the invasion of Iraq with the different combat leaders wearing colored and unit-labeled jersey to walk through the invasion of Iraq. Important here is that Mattis created an environment where his aide felt comfortable interrupting to offer a solution and that Mattis didn’t just blow him off. https://www.hoover.org/news/nsaf-profile-us-marine-corps-lt-colonel-warren-cook

90 his success in initial Iraq invasion was getting “inside the enemy’s OODA loop”--that is “not giving the enemy time to react and repeating the loop faster than they could.

101 Digital technology and instant communication don’t necessarily clear the fog of war--if the information is incorrect or incomplete to start with, then its instantaneous communication can make matters infinitely worse.

132 When faced with subpar guidance from headquarters or higher, you must suppress your frustration and deal with the situation at hand.

133 Mattis division lost 18 marines because the theater and national command’s couldn’t get their act together and tell them what to do...only what not to do.

143 Crazy story about this meeting he had with Junabi, head of the “moderate” Mujahideen Council. This was a man who had tried to kill him months earlier. If it had gone the wrong way, he was ready to kill Junabi.

146 Mattis takes issue with the notion of the mission being to “bring all my men home safely.” Instead he said it must be to “defeat the enemy” and do everything to keep your marines alive.

156 Military’s Achilles’ heel is overconfidence in uninterrupted communications. We need to consider and learn how to continue the fight when our networks fail. This hearkened back to the idea of commander’s intent which Admiral Nelson encapsulated perfectly before the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805: “In case signals can neither be seen nor perfectly understood, no captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy.”

173 NATO transformation was stymied by a process-driven culture that lacked energy and which didn’t value initiative.

182 Powerpoint can only display data--it does nothing to enhance critical thinking. Instead we need our leaders to create a narrative that tells a story that cogently lays out the problem at hand so that solutions can be discovered and developed.

202 Sought to emulate George Washington’s brand of leadership which prompted him to

235 I’ll caveat my observations here by noting that the below wasn’t the point of Mattis’ section on “Lethality as the Metric”...it was only a glancing comment he made--but it still bothered me. The only fault that I found came in his reflections chapter where he asserts that our military is all about teamwork. That assertion would actually make a good question to pose to service members periodically: Is the military all about teamwork? I guess the first step would be to come up with the military’s accepted definition of teamwork. I hung up on this assertion because I believe it’s one of those broad statements that is too often unchallenged and simply accepted--as in, the military is a hierarchical organization with strong leaders therefore it’s a teamwork-based organization. There may be communities or units that are teamwork-centric, or teamwork-obsessed but certainly not the entire military. The second fault that I find comes in his next sentence: “Everyone enters the military at junior rank and rises according to merit.” Certainly, the first phrase is accurate as that is the current baseline--we all start at the bottom (although there are, of course, varying degrees of bottom) but does everyone rise according to merit? I mean, that is the general idea with our promotion system and that is generally how it happens but I think it’s worthwhile to return to the basic definitions. Word matter. So what does “merit” mean within the military promotion system? Because in reality, servicemembers rise according to a multitude of factors: merit, timing, time-in-rank, class rank, lineal number, personality conflicts with commanding officers, good commanding officers, horrible commanding officers. Purely anecdotally, given how quickly veterans rise within civilian organizations after their military service, it would seem that those organizations are more merit-based than the U.S. military.

238 Mattis’ leadership philosophy distilled to its essence is this: Have a bias for action. Set the tempo for that action and reward those who meet that tempo or exceed it. Speed is king because time can’t be recovered once it’s lost. Reward the initiative of those under you--even when they fail.

242 You want those under your leadership to think the following at all times: “What do I know? Who needs to know? Have I told them?”

How to Create a Successful Operational Commander--JPME Operational Art Essay

IMPORTANT NOTE: DON'T CHEAT. DON'T PLAGIARIZE. Notes and Papers are shared here for reference and for studying. Footnote as appropriate.
Link to all my grad school notes and papers here.

What traits or skills do you think an operational commander should have to succeed? How does a nation find and develop superb operational commanders? Is there a template for creating an operational commander?

Introduction

“It is by no means enough that an officer of the Navy be a capable mariner. He must be that, of course, but also a great deal more.”

These are the opening lines from the “Qualifications of a Naval Officer”—a verbose exhortation commonly attributed to John Paul Jones that all incoming plebes at the United States Naval Academy are required to memorize. Failure to instantly recall the qualifications in their entirety (at any point during the initial year) will not only invoke the ire and wrath of the upper class midshipman but will often yield a requirement for the deficient plebe to write out the qualifications as many as 100 times. While this sophomoric anecdote may be amusing on the surface, the importance attributed to John Paul Jones’ advice proves a useful starting point by which to examine the core requirements for a successful operational commander since the bulwark of success rests upon not just on tactical proficiency—but also a “great deal more.” The ability to evolve and progress beyond tactical prowess into excellence at the operational-strategic level is the single greatest skill required for a superior operational commander. The Joint Professional Military Education (JPME) syllabus was a byproduct of the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reform Act of 1987 and serves as a partial template for creating future competent operational commanders. A complete standardized template, however, will likely never exist since the development of a superior operational commander requires significant initiative, professional curiosity and dedication by the officers themselves. A complete solution would involve using the JPME syllabus to equip tactical commanders with the necessary tools to evolve but would also demand some codification of the nearly intangible “superior understanding” needed to excel at the operational level.

In analyzing Dr. Milan Vego’s framework, mentorship, global situational awareness and an exceptional staff emerge as the baseline template to prepare an officer for success at the operational level. This preparation, however, is for naught if officers fail to plan and prepare for the personal challenges and familial sacrifices associated with operational command.

Mentorship

Dr. Vego offers three categories that provide a framework for analyzing the characteristics of a superior operational commander: personality traits, professional knowledge and command style. Central to his thesis is an emphasis on a requirement for officers to study, think and write about superb historical military commanders. While such study is important, young officers would be well-served to expand beyond Vego’s emphasis on 19th and 20th century leaders of large-scale armies to include contemporary operational leaders as well as those commanders in their immediate proximity. This expansion reframes the future leader’s focus from searching and recounting a laundry list of desired adjective personality traits (an overwhelming distractor in much of Vego’s writing) derived from leaders 100-200 years ago to evaluating those leaders that he or she would want as a mentor. The idea of mentorship should be central to developing successful operational leaders; developing officers must seek out those above them and leaders must be proactive in guiding, shepherding and developing those same officers. Because much of operational leadership cannot be taught in a classroom but is instead learned on the battlefield (or command center), it is imperative that this experience does not disappear into a vacuum but is instead captured and passed on. Finally, seeking out a mentor requires substantial humility (in embracing that help is needed for future success)—a trait sorely missing in many leaders—whose counterpart, pride, has proven to be the hamartia of countless leaders in the 21st century.

Global Situational Awareness

Much of the knowledge required for operational leaders today is institutionalized in the JPME system. The recalcitrance of the majority of the military leadership at the highest levels to reform during the battle to pass the Goldwater-Nichols Act, however, serves as both a reminder of the difficulty in reforming institutions as well as the periodic importance of it. This defense reform ultimately called for the subjugation (at times) of service interests for the greater good of the defense at large. The ability to acknowledge and manage this hierarchy and tension is at the heart of operational leadership. While JPME provides a starting point for an aspiring leader, this quest must expand further at the personal level to include not only one’s theater of operations but also to its adjacent peripheries (i.e. from the Area of Responsibility to the Area of Interest). Practically this means studying the history, culture, literature, language and politics within one’s theater. Over the course of a career this type of intellectual curiosity serves to ultimately enable situational awareness at the global level—a necessary attribute for a successful operational leader. While tactical leaders today may not know which theater may contain future operational leadership opportunities, they do can and should study national policy. Thus when the president emphasizes a “pivot to the Pacific” (where the Navy has already long been focused) young officers should take heed and begin studying potential adversaries or partners (i.e. China) early on in their career. Enabling what Napoleon called a knowledge of “the map” (i.e. the enemies limitations and possibilities) can only be the fruits of a decade -long holistic pursuit.

No Commander is an Island

While education, experience and mentorship play pivotal roles in preparing officers for operational leadership, no single factor has a greater influence on their success than their staff. It is through this relationship that a leader’s operational command style emerges. This style is markedly different from command at the tactical level as it requires the leader to educate and encourage subordinates to make their own decisions. Such delegation is paramount as it gives the operational leader time and space to focus on the wider campaign/theater operations. Such a relationship is impossible, however, without open and clear two-way communication. Former Defense Secretary Gates’ assertion is apt that the leaders of the 21st century must reflect candor, credibility and dissent. For the operational commander this means creating a climate in which staff members’ opinions are not cloaked in political platitudes but instead embody earnestness and truth. The commanders themselves must be forthright in leveraging their own tactical credibility to disagree with the civilians above them (privately) but also be loyal in carrying out their ultimate decision. The staff members themselves play a crucial role in the success or failure of an operational commander. While a good officer may spend his career dutifully studying China and the Pacific, he could find himself as an operational leader in Africa. In these scenarios the military is well-poised to advise the operational leaders with their Foreign Area Officer Corps. A long-time branch within the Army, these officers begin their careers at the tactical level before transitioning to the FAO community (in the Army and Navy). As a senior staff member, a FAO provides decades of regional theater experience and knowledge to the operational leader. The leader must ensure that he or she is familiar with the experience and background of his staff, however, to full realize its potential.

“In one word, every commander should keep constantly before him the great truth, that to be well obeyed, he must be perfectly esteemed.”

These final words from Jones’ “Qualifications” serve as sage advice for the operational commander. Such perfect estimation, however, is difficult given the path and requirements to attain such command. This challenge is amplified given the contemporary media environment in which the operational commander must not only maintain the esteem of his military subordinates and counterparts but also that of the public. The work ethic necessary for placement and promotion to operational command requires the officer to subjugate his personal life (i.e. his spouse and children) to a secondary or even tertiary tier. The effects of this choice may be evident in the proportion of commanders relieved for sexual offenses in the past eight years (30% of all firings). While true causation would be difficult (and largely fruitless) to prove, it is a monumental task to be successful as both an operational commander and as a spouse and parent. While often sensationalized, recent news headlines should still serve to reinforce that operational commanders must be on guard at even the appearance of impropriety. When an operational commander is relieved, the military loses decades of investment and the public’s good faith. The majority of lurid news headlines could have been prevented had the commander followed something as simple as ensuring they were never alone with a member of the opposite sex—a maxim that should be widely distributed amongst an operational commander’s staff. The personal challenges for an operational commander are myriad and to be successful it is imperative that the commander’s actions and words are beyond reproach.

Conclusion

Ultimately the mark of a successful operation commander is the ability to plan and connect major operations and campaigns to operational and strategic objectives. Operational vision encompasses not only this ability to plan and execute but also to apply this acquired wisdom to emerging and still unforeseen challenges. Successful operational commanders of the future must build this vision through two-way mentorship, a global intellectual curiosity, strategic staff selection—all while proactively balancing the personal and professional in an exemplary manner.

Combining these groomed traits and skills with a baseline of joint professional knowledge (i.e. JPME) during peacetime exercises and wartime campaigns will create officers prepared to transition from the tactical to the operational level of command.

One must acknowledge, however, that as the nature of warfare changes, so must the professional military education. The “map” that a future operational commander must master will include dimensions far more complex and dynamic than that of commanders from even two decades ago. His or her success will hinge on an ability to predict and prepare for these dimensions.

Bibliography

Reef Points: Naval Academy Customs and Traditions. Annapolis, Md.: United States Naval Academy, 2012.

"Sex is Major Reason Commanders are Fired." Associated Press, accessed January 20, 2013, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=169830619.

Gates, Robert. "Reflections on Leadership." Parameters no. Summer (2008): 5-13.

Jones, John P. "Qualifications of a Naval Officer." United States Naval Academy, accessed January 20, 2013, http://www.usna.edu/StrategicPlan/naval_officer_quals.php.

Salmoni, Barak A., Jessica Hart, Renny Mchperson, and Aidan Kirby Winn. "Growing Strategic Leaders for Future Conflict." Parameters Summer, (2010): 72-88.

Vego, Milan N. Joint Operational Warfare: Theory and Practice. Newport, RI: Naval War College, 2007.