PARALLEL EQUATIONS
I BELIEVE THAT THE FIELD OF OPERATIONS MATTERS. TOO OFTEN COMPANIES, GOVERNMENTS AND OTHER ENTITIES BUILD GREAT PROGRAMS AND PRODUCTS, ONLY TO HAVE THEM FALL SHORT OF THEIR POTENTIAL IMPACT BECAUSE THE UNDERLYING OPERATIONS JUST DON’T SCALE.
So I’ll tell people, when you’re not sure and your boss asks you to do something for us to move forward, the right thing to do is to say, “I don’t agree with that, but I’m not exactly sure, so I will commit to the plan of record, and I won’t complain about it. We’ll just move forward.”
Q. Obviously the chain of command in the military means so much in terms of order and discipline and just getting things done. Once a course of action’s been decided on, you get less of that open dissent. But the principle you’re talking about is definitely a value to the military. What about the other leadership princi- ples you mentioned?
A. Tey start with customer obsession. Everything we do, we start with a cus- tomer, and we work backward from there. Te second principle is ownership. We want leaders to behave like owners, and mostly that means that they think long- term, that they don’t sacrifice long-term results or long-term value for short-term results. We want people who never say,
“I’m not doing that ’cause that’s not my job.” We want people to do whatever the mission requires. Te next one is “invent and simplify.” We require our leaders to be innovative even when others don’t under- stand what they’re doing, and sometimes they won’t understand for a long time. Te next one is “are right a lot,” and that basi- cally means we want to hire smart people. We think leaders need to have a level of intelligence that makes them capable to do their work of leadership well.
We want to hire and develop the best first. Tat’s completely consistent with the military. We talked about “insist on high
standards.” We want our leaders to think big. Very simply, we think that thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy. So we ask people to envision bolder directions because they’ll lead to bold results, and it also inspires the team to think differently.
Frugality is the next one, and that’s about not spending money on things that don’t matter to customers. We want our leaders to be vocally self-critical, and actually this is my favorite line in all of our leadership text. We say leaders do not believe that their or their team’s body odor smells of perfume. I love that one because we’re all human, and if we can’t say, “I was wrong, I don’t know” and are just full of ourselves, our teams especially will see right through it. And I’m sure that it’s that way in the military. When an officer has screwed up and doesn’t admit it, I guarantee you that they lose some respect from the mem- bers of their team.
“Earn trust of others”—we want leaders to be able to show respect and to gain trust. We expect leaders to dive deep, really deep, because we think no task is beneath leaders, although they can’t, of course, do everything all the time.
Tere are two more. Te second-to-last is “have backbone.” Tat’s the idea of dis- agree and commit. And we want leaders to respectfully challenge decisions when they disagree. Finally, we expect leaders to “deliver results.”
Q. Given that a lot of materiel that will be brought home from Afghanistan will be obsolete before long, what would your pri- orities be, in broad strokes, to position the
Army for the future when the retrograde effort is over?
A. First of all, sunk costs are sunk. If we’ve spent money on something that is now worthless, its value is $0, not what- ever we paid for it. I would make sure we have programs to maintain the materiel that has ongoing value first. Some items provide “option value,” in case we do need to spin up again. I would plan to hold on to additional materiel beyond peacetime minimum,
especially where
the lead times for replacement are very long. Finally, I would dispose of what we cannot expect
to use, hopefully salvag-
ing value by selling to the private sector or using the assets in other branches of the government.
Post-retrograde, I would make sure the Army’s processes and logistics informa- tion systems are ready for the future. I’d use our recent experiences to build sophisticated simulations to help keep our people fresh while they wait for the next crunch.
Q. How would you characterize the cor- porate culture at Amazon? What are the top three defining characteristics that you want Amazon employees to appreci- ate fully, and why?
A. Our culture is customer-obsessed,
fast-paced, and truth-seeking. We try to hire people who are smart, possess high standards and know how to get things done. Importantly, we find that we have the best match with people who would say they feel “fortunate.” Such people are most likely to say “yes” instead of “no” and to foster an innovative,
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Army AL&T Magazine
October–December 2013
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