Belfer Center · Transcript · · Updated
David Petraeus: Four Tasks of a Strategic Leader – Transcript
Video by Belfer Center · Watch the original on YouTube
Summary
AI-generated from the transcript. Verify details against the source video.
- Strategic leadership involves four core tasks: getting the big ideas right through collaboration and research, communicating them effectively, overseeing implementation, and refining or changing them over time.
- David Petraeus states that communicating big ideas takes place using every possible medium and opportunity, from initial change-of-command remarks and written letters to daily actions and personal battle rhythms.
- Command philosophies in the US Army are typically short memos that can sometimes be somewhat meaningless, whereas focusing on specific detailed priorities and competition drives people to achieve true excellence.
Use this video with Pro
Reading, copying and transcript downloads are free. Create saved AI results for this video with a signed-in Pro account ($9/month).
Transcript
Search ignores accents. All transcript text stays visible.
first of all strategic leadership is that which is exercised at a level of an organization where the individual is truly determining the azimuth for the organization is actually charting the path and you have one person like that it's certainly in a military organization and typically it's the commander and when you look at a combat theater the overall commander of that
combat theater multinational force Iraq International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan is the strategic leader who within the confines of the policy that is approved by the President of the United States and/or the NATO authorities he's the one again that is developing the direction that the
organization is going to go and again in essence there are four tasks the first is to get the big ideas right the second is to communicate them effectively throughout the breadth and depth of the organization the third is to oversee the implementation of the big ideas and the fourth is to determine how the big ideas need to be refined changed augmented and
then repeating the process over again and again and again now in my experience getting the big ideas right isn't something that happens when you sit under the right tree and get hit on the head by Newton's apple a big idea fully formed or big ideas fully fleshed out my experience is that big ideas result from
collaboration from study research analysis having a large tent in which lots of people are engaged no one of us as smarter than all of us together certainly the leader at the end of the day does have to make decisions does have to identify again refine settle on the big ideas but again it's a very iterative process or at least it has been
for me over the years and that's the way it needs to be approached communicating the big ideas is is an effort a process that takes place using every possible medium and opportunity it starts with the very first day speech if you will the change-of-command remarks after
having taken command of the unit in the case of Iraq it continued with the issuance of a literate letter that I'd written already to all of our soldiers sailors airmen Marines and civilians indeed of the multinational force in Iraq it then went on with a meeting through a meeting with the commanders of the multinational force who were all there for the change of command in
subsequent days I changed the mission statement then over time we changed the entire campaign plan and indeed you continue to communicate on a daily basis through everything that you do including how you even spend your time which gets now into the oversee and the implementation of the Big Ideas task which is one that involves a battle
rhythm if you will of how is it that you're going to spend your time how are you going to each day what will you do the battlefield update an analysis or Bua that we went through and which is another opportunity to communicate throughout the organization because there are a lot of people that are video teleconferencing into this particular event it's a full hour my comments were all transcribed and sent out via the
military internet all the way down to brigade commander level beyond that again what are the metrics that you use and we spent a great deal of time trying to develop those refine them and make sure that they were absolutely rigorous in in application how many days a week do you fence to go out and see for yourself to go on a patrol to meet with Iraqi leaders in their areas to meet
with our leaders all the way down to the company and platoon level to get a sense of what they're experiencing what their concerns are whether they have been able to understand your big ideas your intent and then how they're operationalizing it at their level and then finally of course the process of identifying changes that are needed to the Big Ideas some perhaps literally as we say
shooting by the and leaving by the side of the road others that we refine and then perhaps adoption of some additional new big ideas as well so it's a continuous cycle that is always ongoing there are actions in each of those four areas in each of the four tasks but one has to be very conscious of them this is something that does have to be done
systematically it is something that has to have a rhythm to it you need to return to examine the big ideas formally from time to time you need to determine your communications process and again it's not just down it's also out and up you have to communicate it to those above you you have to communicate it to your coalition partners and your host
nation partners Araki or or Afghan so it's a 360-degree effort in that regard and then of course you in the oversight of these again something you're constantly assessing how is it going and again where do we need to make the changes that force tasks but that fourth task has again systems processes procedures there was a Center for Army
lessons learned Team United States Marine Corps lessons learned team adjoint lessons learned team the asymmetric warfare group the counterinsurgency center on and on and on and all of that formerly had to be brought together presented to me and then recommendations made for how we actually operationalize because the lesson is not learned until it has actually resulted in a change
back in the big idea phase again which can include very essentially the overall campaign plan for an operation well I was very fortunate as a young officer than a field grade and even in the early general officer assignments to have some wonderful vantage points and some wonderful experiences I had all the
usual kinds of command and staff opportunities as a bit - leader company commander battalion commander and so forth and repetitive assignments as an Operations Officer at battalion level in two different tours Brigade level division level UN Force NATO element in Bosnia and so on but I was also very very fortunate to be aid to the chief of
staff of the army in fact during the operation Panama and then in Desert Shield and Desert Storm executive assistant or chef de cabinet if you will of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for two years during which we went after Saddam Hussein in in terms of bombing Iraq at that point in time did strikes against Osama bin Laden
initiated the the Kosovo operation with the air campaign and continued the operation in Bosnia as well these were fantastic experiences frankly these were extraordinary learning opportunities to be at the right hand of individuals who were in the Joint Chiefs of Staff when for the chairman in the Situation Room and then in an
international sense I was privileged to be the military assistant to the supreme Allied commander Europe General Jack Galvin somewhat I'd served work twice previously including as his aide as a division when he was a division commander and to see it in an international context during a very significant period that included the intermediate nuclear force agreement at that time between the US and NATO
countries and Soviet and Warsaw Pact so these were again very very keenly interesting to see the tasks that I've described perhaps not quite as explicitly identified but nonetheless to see them carried out to see very senior leaders grappling their way toward the big ideas that would inform a particular campaign
or a particular operation and to see the process that resulted in these big ideas to see very senior leaders all at the 4 star level communicating their big ideas I remember the chief of staff of the Army General Carl von Oh tremendous two years as his aide the final two years he had in uniform during some very key
operations who developed what he called the six imperatives for our trained and ready army and I can still recite those six imperatives in my sleep in fact because they were in every single speech he ever made it didn't matter what the occasion was he would weave the six imperatives into that speech because he was completely committed to them and felt that every time he literally opened his mouth those who were listening
should hear these played back to them and he'd obviously adapt them for the audience but that's how he communicated them relentlessly and something that I took a great deal from in fact when we developed the big ideas say in the US Army when I was at the combined arms Center or Indian Command in Iraq or in Afghanistan I saw also how they
developed their personal battle rhythm how they kept tabs on operations what metrics they focused on what processes they they installed created and then implemented how they got out to see the troops on the ground if you will how they walked patrols or the equivalent of that for their respective positions all
of this very very instructive and then I watched as they went through the various processes the most deliberate being that carried out again by General von au who had served also as the combined arms Center commander at Fort Leavenworth it had his hands on what we called the engine of change for our army and knew the processes very well that went with the
the identification of lessons again on an operation say Panama or Desert shield/desert storm brought those lessons back and then determine how to actually quote learn them so they became lessons learned not just lessons identified and looked at the doctrinal aspects the organizational aspects the training piece of that leader
development material personnel policies facilities and so forth and it was a very very formal process and he had enormous rigor and how he went about this and that's something I took and then tried to employ myself when I was in a position of responsibility later on
well the command philosophy that's employed at least in the US Army is a one or at most two page memo from a commander an incoming commander typically to the members of his or her unit battalion brigade division and candidly they all tend to be somewhat similar they typically our mission first troops always kinds of memos some are
more articulate more inspirational than others but frankly again they're all basically the same and even more frankly they're generally somewhat meaningless the troops have seen these there's one a new one every two years about the command tour length if you will and again we've seen one you've generated