Everything I Need to know, I Learned in the Airborne!

The purpose of my blogging, more than anything else, is to help guide my daughter Mariana.  I want her to know my thoughts on leadership.  I hope she will use these ideas as needed in her life.  The blog is also for friends, and perhaps some of their children.  It is kind of a rolling collection of my ideas and vignettes that have impacted me over the years, experiences that have formed who I am.  No greater experience impacted me more than my time in the US Army Airborne.  It defined who I am as an officer and leader.  It formed the basis of how I look at my professional life and to some degree my personal life.
 

Once a paratrooper always a paratrooper!  Paratroopers are tough and aggressive, they exemplify the warrior ethos...  They don't relent until the enemy is destroyed.and the mission is accomplished!  Paratroopers don't need to be pushed, they need to be held back.  As I write this blog, I celebrate my own selection to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.  I was recognized with an early promotion because, I believe, I have stayed true to the fundamentals taught by the Skysoldier officers who mentored me. Most continue to serve today as Brigade Commanders and General Officers.  I consider them among the finest Americans I have known.  I can't think of any place in the US military that offers a more challenging and opportunistic place for leaders to grow than the Airborne.  Indeed, today's paratrooper is worthy of the sterling legacy inherited from our fathers and grandfathers.  I think they would be proud of us...

I spent my formative Lieutenant years in the famous 173rd Airborne Brigade, the "Sky Soldiers" headquartered in northern Italy.  This video was made to commemorate the brigade's reactivation in 2000.  I am proud to have been in the ceremony and on the commemorative jump and training in the video.  SKYSOLDIERS!

Some lessons:

Lead from the front:  Paratroopers are smart and can smell an impostor so know in your heart you are there for the right reasons!  They are adapt at measuring leaders by actions more so than rhetoric, this quickly renders the amature impotent.  Credibility is everything to the leader.  Leading from the front means taking the initiative and being decisive.  A leader must constantly be thinking of creative and innovative ways to deal a death blow to the enemy (whoever that enemy is - very relevant in all aspects of life) and how to quickly exploit that success with follow up with another strike.  Leaders are not necessarily front line soldiers but they must go wherever needed and do whatever is required to bring decisive results.  Battlefield leaders can not be impeded by indecisive superiors or good hearted NCOs who, "don't want the old man getting killed".  Where is a leader suppose to be during the battle?  Answer: Wherever he/she can most effectively lead, and that will most assuredly not be in the rear.  To be effective, a leader should demonstrate grace under pressure.  Subordinates need to see their leaders sharing risk while actively engaged at his/her level of the operation.  This approach enables the leader to, as Sun Tzu recommends, "know himself, and know the enemy", this knowledge empowers the leader, enabling him/her to carry the day.  Further, this approach buys capital to assume the risk needed in future battles.  The leader shrewdly spends this capital analying what is to be gained by what it will cost. 

Leaders make hard choices: To be capable of making the hard choice a leader must have a strong appraisal of the capabilities of his/her subordinates, know just how to motivate and push them, and the credibility to inspire follower-ship.  An officer can give an order (make the hard choice) and if it is not illegal or immoral it must be obeyed.  But that will not automatically render greatness.  Achieving greatness requires the hard choice (to pursue when others (to include trusted advisors) say pursuit is not possible).  The real deal leader will use every ounce of his ability - motivation, trust, credibility, and determination to influence his/her superiors/subordinates to achieve.    

The importance of Integrity:  There is no worldly price worth your personal integrity, keep it, guard it, and cherish it forever.  Once your integrity is compromised it can never be fully recovered.  The airborne and to some degree, "the big army" taught me to, "do the right thing, even when no one's looking".  That's the way to live; both professionally and personally.  Your word is your bond!

Work hard; play hard:  Paratroopers work until the job is done!  There is no room for slackers, everyone must pull their own weight and then some.  Missions require careful planning that often takes the best minds several hours and days to complete.  In many cases several missions are being planned at the same time.  At the end of each planning session is an order that will require soldiers to put their lives on the line to accomplish.  As a Lieutenant, most of us became pretty tuckered out after about 30 hours of work.  We were amazed at the staying power of the Majors who would work with no sleep for as long as 42 hours before going down for an 4 hour power nap, then they were back for another suckfest... They definitely set the standard.  In my 20+ year career I have never seen any organization better at planning than the Airborne.  Planning was called, "the wheel of pain" as it never stopped and we Lieutenants were ground up in it pretty good.  But in the end we produced well developed missions that achieved decisive results.  There were some casualties on the staff as the, "Sweitzenator" sacked incompetent officers and threw uncooperative computers out the window.  The work was hard but we could always blow off a little steam at the "Red Devil Cantina" during the lulls in the storms and the command was generous about letting us take leave in between training and deployments.  The point is that hard work is essential to any endeavor but to achieve balance one should be able to play hard also.  This can be done through sports.. or other means.  Certainly I used to enjoy drinking a few beers in the cantina where once everyone had relaxed enough we would sing old airborne songs like, "Blood on the Risers" or listen to one of our NCOs who hailed from Scotland play his bagpipes...  At the end of each rotation COL Kearney (Now GEN Kearney) would gather all officers at a German restaurant and we Lieutenants would perform skits, drink beer, and the group would sing more airborne songs..  It was a great environment... work hard; play hard!



1-508 Airborne Combat Team (ABCT), "Red Devils"

Never take counsel of your fears: It takes personal courage to be a paratrooper.  I am not talking about being a, "5 jump chump".  I am talking about doing it for a living.  Jumping out of a perfectly good airplane provides each soldier with the unique opportunity to immediately overcome personal fear,  in fact it facilitates the opportunity to do so often and under difficult circumstances - this builds character and courage.  I believe young leaders must learn to overcome these fears to be effective Army leaders.  You really can't lead and be worried about anything other than your mission and soldiers.  So you just have to learn to tune personal fears out and focus on the task at hand. 

Come in hard, you can always lighten up In the officer basic course we were always told to come in quietly and see how things ran for a couple of months before making changes.  We were told we needed to have finesse.  This was not my experience in the airborne and would not be my experience in subsequent assignments.  I have learned the best approach is to come in business first and if anything a little aggressive.  Some organizations have functioning systems that just need to be tweaked and then taken to the next level.  On the other hand many organizations are broken from incompetent and uncaring leadership.  These organizations are like a sick patient.  The sickness needs to be diagnosed, isolated, and treated.  Then the organization needs to be rebuilt with strong systems.  Broken organizations are the most work and the most rewarding.  They typically suffer from a cancerous culture of laziness, lack of care, incompetence, and leadership built on the cult of personality rather than a sustainable systems.  I learned in the Airborne to come in hard because there is no time to lose.  I learned to quickly assess the situation, and to immediately implement change (stop the bleeding).  It takes months to destroy an organization and years to rebuild it.  In fact some organizations implode so badly they destroy brand names and it becomes easier to build another from scratch.  Organizations are cultural in nature and a healthy, results oriented, culture is they objective. 

When to fight  Choose your battles carefully and win the ones you choose.  When committed to battle, fight with everything you have, but mostly your wits.  Don't be afraid to bend the rules to suit you.  As they say in the army, "if you ain't cheatin you ain't trying".  The savvy leader seeks to manipulate every circumstance that surrounds his situation into his favor (stack the deck).  In my 20+ year career I have seen one man removed from command for "bending" the rules too far and he is now retired and serving in the US House of Representatives.  Message:  Nothing is off the table!

AIRBORNE! ALL THE WAY!