 So, Monday the provost stood up here and said some really scary stuff that is keeping some of you awake at night, and well it should. And that was followed up by PW Singer who made the case that you don't know nearly as much as you think you know about a lot of stuff that is going on right now and about a lot of the reality that you face in this world. And General Petraeus stood up here and talked about the need to think strategically and deal with strategic problems and that this is part of your problem now to do these things. If your conclusion from those things is that you are here to learn a bunch of stuff so that you will become a more knowledgeable military professional you have not grasped the entire point of the exercise. And if your conclusion from so far this week is that we want you to gain a much greater appreciation for art deco architecture you are totally missing the point. But the real point is that what we are doing here is not just challenging you about the things you need to learn but about the person that you need to become. And that's what I want to talk about. Now Dean Klein says that I am the College of Leadership and Ethics voice of doom. So for what that's word I will not get to the provost level on that. However I will aim a little closer to home for you and I want to start with this point. The thing that you do the thing that you are really good at the thing that you are an expert at the thing that has made you successful to this point in your career the thing that you like doing the thing that brings you to work and get you up in the morning is not the key to your effectiveness or your success going forward. If you are in the senior course that thing is increasingly irrelevant in your professional life. I said I was going to be a buzz kill there it is. But that is just true. If you come out of the last three days and you think okay I got to learn all this stuff I got to learn all this cyber stuff I got to learn all this space stuff I got to learn all this strategy stuff if that's what you are thinking in the next ton of months I'm going to fill up my brain with all this stuff and it's all going to be well. Yeah it's not going to work that way that's not the way that life works. Now I don't think I'm the voice of doom I think I'm sort of the keeper of reality okay. So for what it's worth let me let me throw that at you but but the reality is that you your success your effectiveness going forward after you get done with your ten months here is not going to be based primarily upon your technical tactical expertise that thing that you do the thing that you love to do the thing that you are the very best at because your job is no longer going to be about that your job is going to be about how to get people of expertise in a wide variety of particular areas that you're going to hear about this year to work together effectively as a team that is your job and to do so in an environment of increasing complexity and your job is to navigate the complexity and to get the team to work together that is what you're here to think about this is what you're here to ponder for ten months that is the thing that you need to get away get out of this experience of the college one of the things that you have to come face to face with by the way you know the dean pointed out this thing you want to point parts of the magic of the naval war college and I know you've all been on Facebook the last week you know writing about all your friends about how I'm going to a place that's a third better than Harvard you know we get a master's degree accredited by the same people from here that you could get from Harvard except we do it in ten months instead of fifteen months you know my school rocks right okay I know you've all been posting that on Facebook and talking about that to all your friends and you know this has been one of your consistent things is that you know this place is so much better than Harvard because look we do the same thing we're accredited by the New England Association of schools and colleges just like Harvard is to give a master's degree just like they are but we do it a lot faster okay so we meet the same standard but a lot quicker in this of course you're thinking oh this is because the faculty of the naval war college is so much better than Harvard's faculty yeah you're not thinking that okay and if if you are thinking that I mean that's very kind of you but it's not true okay so maybe you're thinking that this is because you know the curriculum here is so much better than Harvard's yeah that's not true either so how do we do it where's our magic our magic is you right Harvard has the problem that they're delivering a master's degree mostly to 22 year olds and what did they know nothing would be in a reasonable approximation right that would not be unfair okay their life experience adds up to very little their professional experience is nil that's not true about you you bring a wealth of professional experience to this educational experience this 10 months we get done in 10 months because of what you bring to the table now that's because you have giant professional experience if you think great I'm almost done okay that's not the point here's a deeper issue about your your professional experience you haven't learned very much from it proportionally to what you could and the reason you haven't learned very much from it is you've been busy your email box keeps filling up the phone keeps ringing you need to get a ship underway you've got to get aircraft launch you've got to get troops in the field you've got to get something done you got to meet these things tomorrow you got to pass this inspection next week you do not have time in your regular job to sit and reflect on your experience and learn from it that is baked in the cake for whatever it is that you do therefore you are coming here for 10 months to reflect on your professional experience and see what you can learn from it because you need to learn a lot more from it than you have to this point your experience is an untapped wealth of knowledge and you need to think about how do you how do you make some serious value out of it hoping that my clicker will click there we go okay so whether you can read this or not the point is your education at the middle of your career should help you illuminate your experience and the people who are most effective or the people who are learning the most from their experience now if all you are learning from your experience is the ability to do the thing that you just did but better you're not learning very much from your experience because the thing that you just did you're not going to have to do very much again you got to learn things from your experience that you can apply to other contexts to other jobs to other kinds of tasks and that requires you to understand something about what's the underlying truth from these experiences that requires you to not think about being more efficient in doing these things it requires you to think about what are the underlying issues that I saw here and the things that I can take away from that that I can apply in other contexts to other kinds of problems that will make me effective in other kinds of places that's one of the things that we're going to try to help you think about during your time here is how do you become better at leveraging your own experience and putting that to use because you haven't gotten enough value out of your experience to this point and you need to get more you also need to leverage this education by sharing your experience with their people we're going to consistently put you in seminars where you're with people that have experience that is not like yours with the expectation that you're going to share experience with one another and you're going to get value from that if you think that the workhouse faculty is up to speed on all the latest stuff that's going on in the world in all the places that you go and all the things that you do yeah that's not true it can't be true but you're up to speed and a whole lot of that stuff and you need to share that with one another and that's a big part of what you are doing in the thing that we're doing here so that's a little bit about the sausage making secondly I want to point out to you that people are the point we always say that this is cheap and easy to say that people are the point and they are they are but you know what the deeper issue about this is you're going to jobs where you make this decision you're going to jobs where you pulled the trigger you're going to jobs where you send people into harm's way and this is potentially one of the outcomes and you better not just be technically competent when you are making those decisions you better have a moral foundation to decide this is worth it this matters there is value here because you better be able to defend that not you know before court law necessarily hopefully not but but you got to tell parents I sent them there for a reason and it was the right thing to do and that's not just because somebody might come back in a body bag that's because somebody might come back morally scarred from the thing that you told them to do the place that you put them the context that you made them operate in the challenges that you made them go grapple with and you better have some serious moral foundation that allows you to explain why because it's not enough to just say well the boss asked for it that doesn't get it so as you think about your time here you better be thinking about the deeper issue of why what merits what what what gives value to my sending people into harm's way what justifies that that's a big question that definitely should be on your mind here so there's also the issue that a lot of senior leaders fail which is a bad thing in the Navy we fire a lot of people we put it on the cover of Navy times now some of you are in the Air Force and you're thinking hey traditionally in the Air Force you know when somebody gets fired at a senior level they just disappear in the dark of night no one knows what happened to them you know they just go away and somebody else shows up in the office and that's it that's a traditional Air Force way of dealing with these kinds of issues okay but in the Navy when we fire somebody senior we issue a press release okay we deliberately put it on the cover of Navy times okay and if you're in the US Navy you ought to have pondered why is that what is our point in the US Navy our point is that command is the ultimate filter that we send you to command we send you to hard jobs and if you measure up in those hard jobs you will be rewarded and promoted and we will find a harder job for you and we send you to a hard job and you fail we will shoot you in the head and that is it so if you're reading Navy times you're thinking man there's all these fired people on the cover all the time that's not a bug in our system that's a feature okay then there's not merely that the others will be well motivated okay it is so that we would filter out the people who cannot do this job cannot take command cannot work under this level of pressure cannot achieve the things that we need to achieve that being true why do senior leaders fail well in the corporate world senior leaders fail because of team stuff the failure to build and maintain a team okay well it's a corporate world we're not them mostly but why do we fire people in the Navy how many people do we fire in the Navy how many senior leaders do we fire in the Navy because they're incompetent because they can't get the ship underway because they can't launch these aircraft because they don't know what they're doing almost none we fire people in the Navy from senior leader positions for two big reasons right yeah we have two secret code words code phrases that we use when we we fire people right one of them is command climate what does that mean it means nobody wants to work for you and you know what that's a people thing that's a leadership thing that has nothing to do with your technical competence but if nobody wants to work for you you're failing and you'll be out of here that's what we mean when we say command climate we also say we also say this issue of loss of confidence in your ability to command which is code for what that's code for I don't trust you anymore I don't trust you to lead people I don't trust you as my subordinate I won't let you play with the toys anymore that's also a people failing that's a leadership failing that is not a technical failure we fire people from senior jobs in the military because they can't build and maintain the team just like in the corporate world we just use different terms but that's what bad command climate is you're not doing the right thing with your team so your ability to build and maintain the team is the key this was the big thing that you're taking away from the last three days is I got to build and maintain a team that can cope with the technological challenges that we've just talked about in this future warfare symposium that's your job that is how you will be assessed and graded you will either succeed at that and that will be success or you will fail at that and that will be failure so yes build your technical expertise but know that it's not actually the point it's a foundation and the point is your ability to build and maintain the team so that being the case you got to think about what do you really want out of your team so Winston Churchill just starred in a hit movie last year and was awarded an Oscar which is pretty cool so always good to use the Churchill quote back during at the beginning of World War one he was first Lord of the Admiralty he was the civilian head of the Royal Navy in Britain and after the war of course he wrote a history of the war and to support his lifestyle but and also because he had many many opinions about this but this is comment about the Royal Navy's problem at the beginning of the war and this is the challenge that you're here to confront are you a captain of a ship that is are you a master of a technical trade are you a captain of war that is are you a member of a profession of arms who understands the larger reason why we do what we do and understands how to take the things that we do and apply them to achieve larger strategic objectives in a morally acceptable way in a complex world and that means if you're great at getting the ship underway that's a fine thing it's a necessary thing and it is hopefully hopelessly inadequate by itself you have to be able to understand why we're getting the ship underway and what we're going to do with the ship and how that's going to achieve some larger objective and why it's worth doing and why it's worth risking these people to do it if you're in the senior course that is pretty much your whole job going forward is to understand that and communicate that so back in 2011 Admiral Mullen was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and he gave speech at the National Defense University in which he said this in the most difficult times we had in the last 10 years there have been leadership gaps where leaders weren't ready now this is chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff normally the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff does not say anything as bald as that about we have senior leaders who are not getting it so that's a pretty serious thing now I really say I put this up like four years ago in front of a group of students and there was a student in the back who said I don't think he's talking about leadership okay but leadership gaps seems to me to be about leadership okay but but we have the issue here and this is a this is a particular challenge for the US Navy in the US Navy we believe that leaders are primarily made by experience go to see take the hard job do the hard thing go to the Pentagon go do something hard go do something challenging you'll figure it out as you go solve the problems and move forward okay we tend to believe that education is a cost not an investment and it's too much time with you not sitting in the seat and actually doing something that matters that you need to be doing a real job in not sitting in school okay that's very much built into our culture very much built into what we do because of that we tend to believe that Navy officers can solve any problem when we can send them to basically any job okay we we actually I have a slide from back in 2003 when the Navy was building it's initial plan to send sailors overseas as individual augmentees in you know ground war kinds of situations and it's a slide from the Chief of Naval Personnel and has a line about what training are we going to provide to these sailors when they go to work with the Army or the Air Force overseas in a land war and that line says their sailors they'll figure it out when they get there as the official position of the Chief of Naval Personnel about the development that we needed to provide to sailors going on IA kind of assignments in Iraq and Afghanistan and we really believe that they'll figure it out now in surveys flag level leaders in the joint world say that it takes between 10 and 12 months for them to get up to speed in the job now based on the tour length as a taxpayer are you good with that okay a survey of back in 2007 of officers serving in joint jobs at the 04 and 05 level found that they said that it took them an average of seven months to get up to speed in the job our spool up times are unacceptable okay we have way too much time before people get up to speed so because of the thing that I do part of what I do in my job I have spoken face to face for two and a half hours of peace with 52 Navy flag officers this calendar year and most of those people said that they were not that well prepared when they got to the job and that they've had to learn an awful lot of stuff once they got there so challenge to you what are you doing so that you will be as well prepared as you can possibly be for the jobs that you're going to when you don't even know what those are okay the army is a thing that says look officer development for junior officers is like training people for an Olympics that's 10 years from now when you don't know what the events will be and you don't know what the events will be but you know they're going to be difficult and you know you better be ready and so you better be thinking about how do you get ready in really useful ways so I would like another slide please so this who look at that so here's the secretary of defense talking about some things that are on his mind we have and I have the data to prove it people in the Navy in particular who are great action officers and this applies to many of you that is they are detail oriented data driven people who get a lot of stuff done they are action oriented they push the process they get things they answer the mail they achieve things today they get today's work done today okay that is characteristic of so many of the people that we have in this organization and we love that you love that you want those people to work for you you exactly want people like that to work for you the problem of course that we have I really want to go back one now back to matters so the problem that we have is that is that we have people all the way up the chain with people at the three-star level that that's that's their profile and that's what they're doing they're churning they're answering the mail they're getting a lot of stuff done they're being productive today but they're not thinking big because they don't have time for that they're churning they're doing action officer stuff and that's what the sec deaf is complaining about here he's complaining that we have too many people in the top levels of the organization that are not asking enough questions they're just answering the mail they're answering the question that they were asked instead of asking whether that was even the right question they're answering the question that was asked instead of saying you know in addition to the answer that I'm providing you I would like to provide you this other perspective because there's a different way of thinking about this problem and you should really be thinking about that instead you are coming here for ten months to try to think differently so that you don't just answer the mail but so that you can actually think about problems in a different more useful way so that you can be more useful to the organization and so that you can achieve operational and strategic success instead of just tactical success so that's a big piece of what you need to be thinking about in terms of what are you doing I want to talk a couple just for a moment about the CNO so Professor Meyer put the the Navy leader development framework up here I want to make a couple of points about this first of all I want to make a point that that this was not drafted by people here at the college or people down at the naval education and training command or the guys in the NWOZ special projects office at op-nav this this was created drafted written by John Richardson as the chief of naval operations thank you so so this is a brain dump from him okay this was edited by anybody else there's nobody else participated in the writing of this nobody on his staff saw this until it was final form so if you want to know what the CNO thinks it's here okay the two documents from the chief of naval operations that tell you how he's think are the Navy leader development framework and the design for maintaining maritime superiority that should tell you something about the CNO we have those two words framework and design are different and they tell you something about the way he thinks and the way he wants you to think in particular this is a framework what is a framework it means you fill in the gaps right you fill in the details okay by design he's not telling you all the answers he's telling you you fill in the pieces you figure it out right so so this says every community in the Navy however many you think they are 17 18 however you're counting that but every committee in the Navy is going to do something different that is going to achieve the same larger outcomes because every community in the Navy is different and we do not do the same development for medical core officers as we do for CVs as we do for SEALs as we do for Submariners as we do for F 18 pilots because those are all really different people and they do really different jobs when you start thinking about the Navy you have to realize that not only those people all do different jobs and speak different languages they all wear different uniforms in the Navy the word uniform is kind of you know a joke almost it's only in the dress uniform that we all wear the same thing right so so that's an important thing to keep in mind about a couple of important things to keep in mind about this one when the CNO wrote the first version of this we had had a chance to actually with on our team sit down and talk to him about leadership for two hours and you know he walked in and said I don't want to see your slides tell me the three big things that you want to tell me and then he went off and talked for the rest of the time one of the things he wrote up on the board was this who there we go this not quite that big but almost and in red so this is what he thinks the Navy leader development framework is about so let me let me hit you with a hypothesis hypothetical idea here and this is an in-class forum so I'm going to pick something entirely at random okay but say you're in the South China Sea just randomly okay and say a fight breaks out do you think that the people that are with you are going to outnumber the people that are on the other side do you believe that that's true you better not okay but that's okay just because the other guys outnumber you you are going to have better technology than them right you believe that you better not because they still are technology and they got the same stuff right true okay so your task when when the other guys got more and you don't have any technological advantage how you're going to do that okay the CNO has an answer to this the CNO's answer is speed the CNO believes that speed is the answer here that we will be faster than the other guys will be which might be because we're smarter maybe maybe okay maybe probably not okay so how do we get faster we'd faster because we build an organization that is fueled by trust we have confidence in our people and therefore we empower people and we delegate authority to take action and we move quickly as a result that's the only way we win that means leadership is about instilling trust in people and understanding how to empower people in such a way that they can make decisions that will work so that we win so I want to talk briefly about self-awareness this is my thing this is my wicket this is what justifies the fact that I get a paycheck and I want to say this right up front self-awareness is not your ability to see yourself more clearly let me double down on that the person that you see in the mirror is a person who is of no interest to anyone but you and that is absolutely true you can test drive that I realize that Mother's Day is not for a long time but on Mother's Day give this a try on Mother's Day spend the whole day thinking nice thoughts about mom think about how wonderful mom is and all the things that are great about mom spend you spend the whole day marinating in how mom is a wonderful person and then a week or so later call mom and say hey mom on Mother's Day I spent the whole day thinking good thoughts about you and see what mom says because you know what mom is going to say mom is going to say fail you failed it was Mother's Day I didn't hear from you there was no card there was no there was no call there was no candy there was no flowers fail that's what your mother is going to say because your mother doesn't care about your good intentions and all the nice things that you were thinking in the back of your head your mother doesn't care about that your mother cares what did you say and what did you do and if your mother treats you that way guess what so does the rest of the world so I get students that come to me all the time and say no no really down deep inside I'm really a warm compassionate human being it's just that no one sees that guess what if nobody sees it it ain't true so deal with it figure out what you're going to do come up with a response that is better than just complaining you guys just don't get me that that's not going to get it you lead people not through your perceptions not through your frame of reference but through their perceptions and their frame of reference and if you're spending a lot of time thinking that they had the wrong perceptions and they have the wrong frame of reference unless you have some plan to change that you're wasting your time you need to think about how do people see you you lead through that and your ability to influence people is the core of what you do you also have this challenge general Dempsey gave a really interesting speech right before he retired where he pointed out that up through about the 05 level he was effective because he was effective at leading and motivating the people who were underneath him in the organization he was effective at leading down and that was powerful and that made the difference and at the 05 level that was no longer where effectiveness came from at the 0506 level his effectiveness was almost entirely based on his ability to lead laterally in the organization and influence his peers people that didn't work for him and people who are across organizational boundaries and outside the organization and that that's where he was effective and then a flag officer he was primarily effective because of his ability to lead up and lead his bosses there's truth in that if all you have done to this point is get the team below you to work together and go in a direction that is useful you are not broad enough as a leader because the tasks that are ahead of you are primarily about operating across organizational boundaries and getting people that you can't tell what to do to do stuff you cannot solve a humanitarian thing by going and telling the guys from world vision what to do you give it a try but it won't work doesn't work that way you cannot operate in a truly joint environment by just telling other people what to do doesn't work that way you cannot operate with allies and some kind of coalition environment by just telling people what to do even if you have the best plan you cannot just tell people what to do you have to influence people and get people aligned in some way you have to achieve unity of effort without having unity of command and that means you have to understand how do people see you and not just how do people see you when they're right around you but how does people see you when they don't know you very well how do people see you when they're looking at you across cultural barriers and that is where your effectiveness comes from so self-awareness is fundamental to what you're doing let me also point this out to you so this is the work college I should tell you historical story so here's the Halsey's ruin story from 1942 so so background to this story first six months of the Pacific War Bill Halsey is the only commander in the US Pacific fleet that has any significant tactical success any significant combat success he launches do little's raid he does some bombs the Gilbert Islands you know he actually does some stuff it's not big stuff but it's something okay and so he builds a pretty big reputation in the front part of the war as the guy who gets stuff done and the guy who actually puts in bombs on target and he gets sent down to the Coral Sea for the Battle of the Coral Sea and he gets there a couple of days late misses it so he's tooling around down there by the Solomon's and I will Nimitz calls him and says get back here quick the Japanese are coming to Midway so Halsey takes his task force his two carriers which is the primary strike force of the US Pacific fleet at the time it comes steaming back across the Pacific to get back to Hawaii on the way back he comes down with the skin disease which is probably driven by stress but he gets the itch that won't quit such that he stops sleeping eventually he stops eating he stops sitting he itches so bad that he almost can't do anything he gets so desperate that there's a young sailor on the on the flagship that says you know my Grammy taught me that when you got the itch they won't quit you should take a bath in a big vat of oatmeal and Halsey tried it he was that desperate it didn't work Grammy was wrong so so Halsey shows up back in Pearl Harbor and he walks in the door to Nimitz office Nimitz looks at him for 10 seconds and says you're fired I'm having you directly escorted to the hospital and as Halsey is being pushed out the door he says by the way who should replace you and Bill Halsey says you should get race Bruins now this is a curious choice because there's not a flying officer in the US Pacific fleet who is less like Bill Halsey than race Bruins these two guys are almost opposite on almost everything even the way they drink coffee now we would be delighted to spend a lot of time with you here debating the merits of Halsey versus Bruins as leaders which would be a totally a waste of time it really would both these guys were hugely successful later on in the war these guys alternated in command of the largest naval force ever assembled but these guys are really different guys point there's a right answer here there's not some leader you should be modeling after there's not one right way to do things there's not one right way to be to steal something from the army you need to figure out how to be the best leader you can be by being the best you do you can be and you need to figure out how to maximize your effectiveness based on the things that you do well the ways that you think the way that you deal with problems the way that you engage the world because one of these guys isn't right and the other guys wrong that's not the deal in fact some of these things are true about you some of these things are not true about you some of these things you're agnostic about doesn't really matter what does matter is that your list is different than the list of the person sitting next to you and it's not that their list is wrong okay other people are actually different than you okay now I had a student four years ago post-command Navy commander coming from command of a ship high tactical high technical excellence guy who actually said look I've always thought that other people are just like me it's just that most of them are not very good at it okay that's not self-awareness but but that is also human behavior you have down deep inside of you some sense that you are the baseline and that everybody else is a deviation that you are the standard and everybody else is not quite right because they're not like the standard and the more you cling to that idea the less effective you will be because you're not the baseline you're not the standard okay and other people are not different than you just to irritate you sometimes that's the bonus but that is not their purpose okay other people are different than you because they are different than you and you either see value in that difference and find ways to put that difference to work or you drive those people out of the organization or try to make them minimes which significantly reduces their value to the organization and significantly reduces our effectiveness so what preferences you have how you would like to do business if it works if it doesn't work then you got to think about it you got to think about how you were just so as long as I'm doing buzzkill duty here's another one the things that have made you effective to this point in your career if you continue to do those same things they will eventually undermine your success and cause you to fail that is the things that made you successful as a department head as a junior officer if you keep playing those cards you will eventually fail because you will undermine yourself because you will be doing department head stuff in a job that is not department head some of you spent some time thinking why do we have so many micromanaging oh sixes in this organization do we have a school for that or something and what's up with that now we don't have school for that I checked but here's what we do have and this is true for almost all of you I haven't looked in your record but I know most of you have a fitness report or an OER that says this officer is detailed meticulous nothing gets past them their fingers on every part of what's going on I trust them implicitly because nothing gets past them I love this person I want this officer to work for me forever they're my number one and if you promote 06 and you're still doing that stuff what will people say about you that's why we have micromanaging oh sixes they have a whole lot of 06s are still doing the things that made them successful as a department and haven't really thought that this job is different if you're in the intermediate course and you're thinking hey I'm getting ready for command and command is basically like department head it's just bigger okay you're wrong you are wrong it is not it's a different job and it requires you to think a different way and lead a different way and you better walk in the door knowing that if you're in the senior course and you're thinking yeah 06 05 basically all the same thing you know same jobs whatever doesn't make any difference put on the Eagles all you still pay raise so nice you know nice to have you around that's not true either your organization your community has some expectations when you put on those Eagles that you are going to be different that you're going to achieve something different that you're going to do something different for this community that you now own something about this community that is important and you are going to carry that out and before you put those Eagles on you better know what that is and you better have thought about what are you going to do the things that you have done to this point in your career will undermine your success if you keep doing you need to adjust you need to deal with the fact that the next job is different and I need to adapt that doesn't mean you become a different person you will not okay it's not like that but it does mean that you need to think about how am I adapting to this context if you if you're still thinking I don't know if that's true think about this if you're a parent of children who are this tall and you are like the best parent ever of children this tall because of course you would be right you know and you're thinking yeah being parent of this children this tall I got this thing and suddenly they're this tall and you're still doing the same stuff do you think you're succeeding okay same rule applies okay if you were doing the same stuff but the context has changed radically you were failing and you need to be thinking about how do I adapt how it would be effective based on that so I put this up last week at in doc when I was wearing the orange shirt and maybe you couldn't see this because I was wearing the orange shirt but but I do want to point out to you that these are documented gaps that we've identified at the flag level in the U.S. Navy these are things that U.S. Navy leaders consistently at the two and three star set level say I didn't get enough of this stuff a lot of those people are graduates of war colleges not very many of them this war college they're Navy officers but anyway that's a different topic but but these are things that the process will probably not give you enough up now if you're looking at this listen you're thinking oh I'm really strong on all those things I got it yeah probably not actually it probably means you don't actually understand these things but but I want to I want to suggest a couple of things to you about this this is your broadened perspectives those of you in the senior course are going to take strategy policy in the spring those of you in the intermediate course will be taking strategy more in the winter if you think that course is a history course and it's about names and dates and places that you got to learn you know who did what to whom on what date and where and why kind of stuff you are missing the point it's a strategy course not a history course we really don't care about the names and dates and places we will actually not test you on that okay we will actually never give you an objective test that will never be a you know multiple choice kind of a thing where we say you know in what year did this happen we never do that we don't care we care about strategy we care about the storyline we care about what's the big idea if you're studying the wars of German unification and you're trying to memorize the names and dates and places you're missing the point you need to be thinking about how does a country manage a series of limited wars and keep them limited to achieve some larger strategic objective and what do you do when you get involved in a limited war and it turns out to not be limited that's what strategy and policies about that's broadening perspective okay one of the things that we surveyed the flag officers in two and three stars in command positions in the Navy in 2010 and again in 2017 and they consistently said my aperture was way too narrow when I got this job and flags that I've talked to this this year are most all struggling to broaden their aperture think more broadly take in more ideas consider more different things you have ten months here to engage and think about problems in a different way if you find yourself doing the same thing over and over again you're doing it wrong talk to somebody about what's their perspective start thinking about what's a different way to think about this stuff but it is about getting unity of effort without having unity of command okay and at any any command that you might have above the 05 level and many of them at the 05 level you're gonna have to achieve objectives where you cannot tell all the people they are involved what to do we do not engage in any significant operation anymore that has unity of command we are by definition we are always about getting unity of effort by influence and not by telling people what to do so how do you do that these are things I put these alphabetically which broke my heart because self-awareness is almost at the bottom but but self-awareness is a key thing to your getting to a point where you can figure out how do you get the most value that you can get out of this experience one of the things that should be very clear to you particularly if you're in the senior course is that if this is a one size fits all experience for you over the next 10 months you will have not gotten the value that you need out of this experience you have to turn it into one size fits one that is you have to understand what are the things that you need what are the places that you need to be stretched what are the things that you need to really be discussing in seminar what are the challenges that you really need to face what are the kinds of people that you need to spend time talking to because you need to hear those different perspectives you need to maximize this development by thinking about where are your gaps what do you need everybody talks about diversity my diversity guys George Patton because part of your problem with that list of stuff is that you are not going to become all things to all people so your team is going to have to help you out you're going to have to assemble a team of people that will achieve the things that you need to achieve but general Patton makes a point about diversity that it needs to be in the forefront of your mind if you are thinking in diversity merely in a bureaucratic sense of we need a bunch of people to look different we need people from all 50 states okay that is necessary but not sufficient okay that's work college talk okay we say it is a necessary but not sufficient condition for success okay you got to have that but it's not enough because it's not enough just to have people look different you got to have people that actually think different so back to Admiral Mullen when he was briefly chief of naval operations before as the chairman and joint chiefs of staff he stood up here on the stage over there in sprints auditorium across the way and spoke to all the students and one of the things that he did was he went off script and he says you know I don't have anybody around me that can think strategically I need all of you to become strategic thinkers right now okay great thanks you know boom done right okay but but it was the first part of that did cut my interest I don't have anyone around me who could think strategically wait a minute the CNO staff doesn't have any strategic thinkers I mean figure the odds but wait a minute how did they get on the CNO's personal staff what's the last step in that process they didn't interview with the CNL by the time you get to the interview with the CNL he's already read your bio okay he already knows that you're from Oklahoma and where you went to school so it's not about that what's the interview about interviews about do we connect are we aligned I want you to be on my team what kind of people did he pick to be on his team following the ancient rule of ducks pick ducks what kind of people that he's picked to be on his team you pick people that he was comfortable with and those people were people that thought the same way that he did which means that he picked people who were detail oriented process driven high structure people and then he wondered why aren't they more strategic because they're detail oriented process driven high structure people that's why they're not more strategic because you pick people that were like you because you were comfortable with people like you and it meant that you didn't get people that were different than you which was what you were hoping for if your team doesn't everybody that's different than you you're failing and you know how you measure that if there's nobody on your team that irritates you there's nobody in your team that asks uncomfortable questions you have a problem you do if you got a whole team of people that looks like America you know you're thinking oh how diverse we are and everybody's nodding every time you say stuff you're failing and you do not have a diverse team general Patton says so and I agree you need as a point of leadership to make it safe for people to think differently you need as a point of leadership to make it safe for people to bring a different perspective to the table that's what you do as a leader that's your contribution to diversity unless you're recruiting okay and that means that you need to be an inclusive person that is you need to drop people into the conversation because they bring something useful something different and if every time somebody brings up something that's really different you just smack them well guess what you're not going to get that anymore and you're failing you are going to be efficient without being effective so lastly I just want to point out to you that as you think about leadership as you think about developing as a leader and growing at a leader this is an ongoing process so I picked this because you know here's a model of leader development and I would submit to you it's a pretty awfully good model of leader development I would submit to you that this is a model of leader development that you could use this is a way to think about the process of growing your team and growing yourself I put this up here because it's more than 3500 years old and it's still true so we're gonna ask you to lead read some old stuff here at the college but it's still true this by the way comes from a guy named Moses you may have heard of him but we're gonna spend time here trying to think about what are some big ideas that have value for you as you try to understand yourself so that you can be more effective at leading a team in a complex environment this is your call this is your challenge and this is why you're here so welcome to Newport thanks for your time and we will see you at 1300 after you've had lunch