Sublime

Adopting a leadership style that prizes direction over instruction is more important than ever in an era when the only certainty is volatility.

“The number one thing that was taught was that we (our teams) didn’t need to see the senior people speaking on our forums. We wanted these liaisons to take on this level of accountability and leadership. They were playing a meaningful role in the firm that ultimately would be some sort of legacy planning.”

Your challenge is to create an enterprise that is comfortable constantly adapting to the complexity around it, while avoiding constant disruption to the parts of the organization that should remain stable.

That is why deterrence by denial—that is, convincing adversaries that they cannot accomplish their objectives through a cyber attack—is essential.

In time I witnessed several such discussions between McChrystal and various senior leaders from partner agencies. These paraphrases of our organization’s core narrative would often go as follows: We clearly share a determined adversary—one that, unlike our organizations, is networked and thus moves with incredible speed. In the Task Force, we are n

All of us are human and we like to be favorably noticed by those above us and even by the public. An Allied Commander-in-Chief, among all others practicing the art of war, must more sternly than any other individual repress such notions. He must be self-effacing, quick to give credit, ready to meet the other fellow more than half way, must seek and

Ike learned to be tougher with subordinates such as Fredendall.

We were one extended unit with one culture—whose actions were influenced not by the identity or narrative of a single unit but by the aligning narrative that was constantly recommunicated and transcended our previously festering cultural divisions.

Both Napoleon and George W. Bush fell victim to the alignment problem. Their short-term military goals were misaligned with their countries’ long-term geopolitical goals. We can understand the whole of Clausewitz’s On War as a warning that “maximizing victory” is as shortsighted a goal as “maximizing user engagement.” According to the Clausewitzian