Strategic Military Leaders

Think Like a General…Lead Like an Executive “At their center, great organizations such as America's armed forces are the product of great leaders. This fantastic book reveals the keys to success within the military culture, as well as relevant and practical application tools for creating strong leaders today.” —Stephen R. Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness What distinguishes strategic leadership? According to top U.S. Army generals, the difference lies in the discipline of thinking. Because the problems strategic leaders face are often multi-faceted and can involve ethical dilemmas, these leaders must move beyond thinking tactically and take a longer term, broader approach to finding solutions. Through the U.S. Army War College and other senior-service colleges, the Army teaches strategic thinking to its officers, developing some of the most esteemed leaders of our time. Strategic Leadership: The General's Art provides aspiring leaders with an understanding of the behavior and competencies that make a good strategic leader. In line with the curriculum followed by senior officers attending the U.S. Army War College, this book teaches leaders how to think strategically in a volatile, uncertain environment and thereby to provide transformational leadership and shape outcomes. With contributions from senior military leaders as well as experts in the fields of strategic leadership, systems and critical thinking, and corporate culture, this invaluable reference shows readers how to move from mid-level manager to strategic-thinking senior executive. Strategic Leadership: The General's Art provides aspiring leaders with an understanding of the behavior and competencies that make a good strategic leader. In line with the curriculum followed by senior officers attending the U.S. Army War College, this book teaches leaders how to think strategically in a volatile, uncertain environment and thereby to provide transformational leadership and shape outcomes. With contributions from senior military leaders as well as experts in the fields of strategic leadership, systems and critical thinking, and corporate culture, this invaluable reference shows readers how to move from mid-level manager to strategic-thinking senior executive.

The sixth edition of this classic text continues its popular interdisciplinary approach to the topic of leadership by examining fundamental elements of military leadership: the 'process' of leadership, the dynamic personal interactions between leader and followers, and the individual and organizational values that foster effective military leadership. Military Leadership provides a thoroughly reconsidered and greatly expanded mix of classic and contemporary articles as well as original essays, with authors representing all of the services. Incisive introductory essays to each section highlight themes and connections. Eric B. Rosenbach joins the editorial team for this edition, helping infuse the text with fresh perspectives. The essays of the sixth edition confront the kudos and criticisms that surround military leadership today, offer international viewpoints, and relate military leadership to contemporary leadership theory and approaches.

The global environment is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. In the military, where leaders have to deal with the unforeseen and where men are demanded to die if necessary to fulfill their tasks, strategic military leadership remains the most baffling of the arts. Four key leadership competencies stand out. We need strategic leaders who are good at doing the right things and doing things right -- leaders who have the mental agility to choose the correct goals to achieve, the social intelligence to inspire his team towards those goals, the robustness/mental toughness to stay the course and to conduct their business within the bounds of ethics. This paper strives to define the four strategic leadership competencies and offers developmental modalities to grow and develop the heartware of the military.

As the nature of warfare evolves, the Army must produce leaders who comfortably interact with diverse populations and embrace complexity. This emerging truth dictates a need for change in how Army officers are trained and selected to lead at the highest levels in order to regain the initiative in managing today's fluid operational environment. The concept of strategic leadership, therefore, must be examined closely in Army doctrine. Social, cultural, and complex problem-solving skills are becoming a priority and must be developed in young officers to provide enough knowledge for senior leaders to leverage later in their careers. Rarely does the typical Army career prepare someone to succeed in the strategic arena where the non-military elements of national power carry greater effects than large numbers of troops and equipment. The basic question addressed in this study is “how effective is the U.S. Army at developing strategic thinkers capable of leading decisively in complex and adaptive environments?” To answer this question, three distinct areas are analyzed: (1) the ability of the Officer Education System (OES) to distinguish critical abilities deemed necessary to succeed in the modern security environment, (2) the ability of the Officer Evaluation Reporting System (OERS) to measure an individual's dedication to self study and lifelong education, and (3) the ability of the same OERS to measure individual skills acquired through operational experience. The Army's current OES pushes the most complex topics to the final stages of an officer's educational career. As a result, few officers get a chance to expand their intellectual boundaries through critical and creative thinking prior to their field grade experience. Doing business this way denies the opportunity for junior level officers to develop the requisite skills needed to excel in the strategic arena. The Army must promote advanced educational opportunities as healthy and necessary to a young officer's career. As the key process for reporting a leader's abilities and potential for advancement, the OERS focuses primarily on current performance and provides little incentive to highlight an officer's dedication to career-long professional development. The over-valuing of short-term success negates the potential benefits of continuous learning, a long-term endeavor. The result of such short-sightedness stifles innovation while entrenching a “business as usual” approach to leadership development ignoring the changing operational environment. The personnel management system continues to emphasize combat deployments, regardless of skills acquired, over an officer's need for professional development. The current version of the OER fails to utilize the leader development aspects it was designed to accomplish. The Army must look into traits and attributes particular to leaders at the senior levels in order to develop context-based evaluation systems. Junior and senior level leaders should not be evaluated on the same scale. A way to accomplish this is to establish qualitative standards for branch qualification based on operational experiences, not just on the number of months assigned. To force a change in the culture and career progression of leaders prepared for 21st century warfare, the officer education and evaluation methodologies must adapt to reflect the complexities of the contemporary operating environment. To accomplish this, the Army must adjust its leader development systems to recognize and promote strategic thinking much earlier than in past generations.

ADP 6-22 describes enduring concepts of leadership through the core competencies and attributes required of leaders of all cohorts and all organizations, regardless of mission or setting. These principles reflect decades of experience and validated scientific knowledge.An ideal Army leader serves as a role model through strong intellect, physical presence, professional competence, and moral character. An Army leader is able and willing to act decisively, within superior leaders' intent and purpose, and in the organization's best interests. Army leaders recognize that organizations, built on mutual trust and confidence, accomplish missions. Every member of the Army, military or civilian, is part of a team and functions in the role of leader and subordinate. Being a good subordinate is part of being an effective leader. Leaders do not just lead subordinates-they also lead other leaders. Leaders are not limited to just those designated by position, rank, or authority.

This book provides an eclectic and meta-analytic study on the factors affecting military leadership and its components, taking into account both current and future security paradigms. The contemporary security environment is characterized by an increase in the number of wars, and more human-induced problems than ever before. The first duty of armies today is generally the establishment of security. Today’s battles are carried out in a vague and flexible warfare environment, which can be transformed rapidly. For this reason, military leaders need to be more versatile, with rapid decision-making capacities. In order to realize their duties, they have to focus more on the quality of their military leadership, which is critical to the establishment of secure and peaceful environments. Today, high-level army commanders have to behave more like diplomats, intellectuals and academics than ever before.

To be successful, a strategic leader must exhibit a wide spectrum of competencies based on training, experience and education. Recently, multiple strategic leaders have not "survived" their strategic leadership tours. In the past three years, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has accepted the resignation of three four star generals and one four star flag officer, three of which were assigned to Central Command (CENTCOM) when they resigned; a testament to the inherently diverse campaigns being waged in CENTCOM's area of responsibility. It is not enough to blame these resignations of very successful tactical and operational leaders on the complex nature of strategic positions or on the persistent state of war being waged by our nation. This paper looks at the biographies of the four generals/flag officers that resigned, and compares their civilian education, their joint staff experience, their combatant command staff experience, and their intermediate and senior professional military education to the careers of over 40 other four star generals/flag officers that are currently, or who have recently served in strategic leadership positions across the Department of Defense (DoD).

As the nature of warfare evolves, the Army must produce leaders who comfortably interact with diverse populations and embrace complexity. This emerging truth dictates a need for change in how Army officers are trained and selected to lead at the highest levels in order to regain the initiative in managing today's fluid operational environment. The concept of strategic leadership, therefore, must be examined closely in Army doctrine. Social, cultural, and complex problem-solving skills are becoming a priority and must be developed in young officers to provide enough knowledge for senior leaders to leverage later in their careers. Rarely does the typical Army career prepare someone to succeed in the strategic arena where the non-military elements of national power carry greater effects than large numbers of troops and equipment. The basic question addressed in this study is "how effective is the U.S. Army at developing strategic thinkers capable of leading decisively in complex and adaptive environments?" To answer this question, three distinct areas are analyzed: (1) the ability of the Officer Education System (OES) to distinguish critical abilities deemed necessary to succeed in the modern security environment, (2) the ability of the Officer Evaluation Reporting System (OERS) to measure an individual's dedication to self study and lifelong education, and (3) the ability of the same OERS to measure individual skills acquired through operational experience.

When faced with complex problems, military leaders frequently fail to reach desired strategic outcomes. A leader with years of personal experience and a track record of success often runs headlong into a highly complex operational environment and achieves poor results. These leaders often consider the situation from only a military perspective and, as a consequence, arrive at a simplistic understanding of the environment. This poor understanding frequently pairs well with biased solutions favored by military institutions. Even if they generate an innovative approach, few leaders possess the capability to achieve buy-in from superiors and subordinates to see it through. A leader who possesses a gift for strategic understanding paired with a capacity to realize new approaches would be the elusive strategic genius. What traits make a strategic genius? Though several military theorists such as Lawrence Freedman and Colin Gray warn that such rare genius may not exist, Carl von Clausewitz contends that such a leader is possible but would require a "harmonious combination" of several traits. While the Prussian provides some vague suggestions, his description of genius fails to offer tangible characteristics that are relevant to today's operational environment. Several modern theorists examine how such an individual might think and some offer how this person might lead but few combine these traits to develop the concept of strategic genius as a whole. Looking at both strategic thinking and strategic leadership through an interdisciplinary lens of complexity science, design theory, and history, this monograph examines how a leader's perspective on problems and style of communication can generate strategic genius. Rather than prescribing a set of characteristics, this work suggests that strategic genius requires a unique combination of diverse perspectives on complex and adaptive environments matched with the compelling courage to recognize and resist personal biases and gain institutional buy-in to achieve innovative results. Rather than searching for how to attain or how to practice strategic genius, this monograph simply asks what is strategic genius? To this end, instead of describing the development of strategic genius, this monograph attempts to describe its characteristics. In short, this work offers the what of strategic genius and only implies how such an ability develops. Rather than separating concepts of strategic thinking and strategic leadership, this monograph attempts to understand the effective combination of both within the same leader. This work uses abductive reasoning (synthesizing contemporary theories) to develop a working hypothesis and then tests this combined theory against two historical case studies.

No one man can win a battle by himself, but battles have been won and lost because of the strength or failings of one individual: the leader. What went on in the minds and hearts of a select group of military leaders at critical moments in battle is the theme of this book. In Leaders and Battles, W. J. Wood re-creates ten battles from history, depicting the action in vivid detail—the brilliant formations, charging horses, clanking bayonets. The point of view is always that of the commanding officer. The particular quality of leadership that won—or lost—the encounter is very clear. For Mad Anthony Wayne at Stony Point, it was courage that won the day. For Scipio Africanus at Ilipa, it was imagination. Custer’s judgment at the Little Big Horn was definitely in question. When the French stormed Ratisbon, it was the inspiration of Lannes that broke the impasse. At the battle of Bushy Run, Bouquet could never have outwitted Pontiac had he lacked flexibility. The dynamics of battle as well as the strategy and tactics involved are equally well demonstrated. Though the means of fighting varied as much as the time and the civilizations involved, the lessons learned are just as applicable today. Men no longer fight with drawn swords, make barricades out of mealie bags, or use a swarm of bees as a weapon. But that is part of this book’s fascination. Leaders and Battles is a remarkable retelling of fighting engagements for the armchair strategist, the leader in training, the history buff, and the general reader. It will take time before the major wars and low-intensity skirmishes of this century can be written about with the historical detachment and understanding that the author displays here. In the meantime, we can all profit from these lessons of history.