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Welcome to Partnering Leadership, a top global leadership podcast for purpose-driven leaders with a growth mindset, seeking to learn from the leadership journey of change makers and business insights from leading global thinkers.
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For additional leadership insights and bonus content, visit us at partneringleadership.com.
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Now here's your host, Mahan Tavakouli.
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Matt Kavanaugh, welcome to Partnering Leadership.
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I am thrilled to have you in this conversation with me.
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I'm thrilled to be here.
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I've listened to a bunch of the episodes and I'm excited to participate.
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I love your book, Who Wins Wars: Lessons in Leadership, Power, and Supreme Command from Washington, Grant, and Eisenhower.
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So much brilliance in that history, Matt, and so much relevance to strategic leadership.
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But before we get to that, would love to know a little bit more about you, Matt, whereabouts you grew up and how your upbringing impacted who you've become.
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I'm from St.
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Paul, Minnesota.
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So for those of you that are international, I'm from the northern central part of the United States.
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A lot of people think of it as a cold place, and they would be right to think that my fondest memories of growing up were playing outdoor pond hockey all winter long, all over the winter break.
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And the reason that's relevant is that I grew up idolizing the 1980 U.S.
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Olympic hockey team.
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And it's not hard to figure out why 12 of the 20 players on that team were from Minnesota like me.
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The head coach Herb Brooks was from St.
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Paul like me, and they gave me something to look up to, something to want to be someday.
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And it's not surprising that I would decide to join the Army and fill a full career in the Army, in part because I wanted to wear an American flag patch on my shoulder.
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But a lot of your listeners will know that was a team of college kids that beat a Soviet hockey machine that had won several Olympic Games in a row, that had recently beaten the NHL All-Star team before that 1980 US Olympic, that U.S.
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Olympic game.
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And I watched growing up and idolize that team.
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And it I really stepped away from them with this message that miracles happen when we make them happen, when we have the strength to try something different, to do something different.
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And it became something for me to want to live up to.
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What an outstanding story in terms of your pride and also the underdog element to that story as well, Matt.
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Now, one of the things I was really struck by is your McMaster story.
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I want to understand what you learned from him and that experience, and then how that transfers to organizations as well.
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Yeah.
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So when I served in the Iraq War, and I served in the Iraq War at the very, very beginning, at the end of the ground war, I spent a little over a year in Iraq and then came home and then went right back.
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And the second time that I was in the desert, I served under then Colonel H.R.
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McMaster, who many people would know, went on to become Lieutenant General McMaster and the national security advisor of the United States during the first Trump administration.
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And I will tell you that you could see what a difference a general makes.
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You could see what a difference a strategic leader makes.
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General McMaster, then Colonel McMaster, saw the war in its largest context, and he saw our particular part in the war in its own context as well.
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And I'll tell you, we were serving in a community of about 250,000 people in the northwestern part of Iraq.
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And we arrived, and there was an element that was undermining the local government in that particular community.
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It's called Talafer.
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It's to the west of Mosul.
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And Colonel McMaster over the course very patiently over the course of many months built this giant earthen berm, this earthen wall around the entire city in order to later control who would enter and leave the community, and then very methodically work our way through the city to clear it of terrorists or folks that were anti-the local government.
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And it later became known as the clear hold and build strategy in Iraq.
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And it took an awful lot of resource, it took a lot of patience, but it worked.
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And it was this opportunity to see between the two years in Iraq what the different strategic leadership can make in a particular military problem, right?
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And I know many of the listeners are obsessed with business problems.
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And I also know that most business strategy is derived from military strategy.
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To me, I see clear translations here, right?
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Sometimes the stakes in business aren't as high as they are on a battlefield.
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But the stakes are still high.
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You can still see what a difference a strategic leader can make.
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That was the starter's pistol for this book.
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What makes a great general great?
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And why?
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How does it work?
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And so for me, launched this longer than a decade period of very serious and sustained study of strategic leadership.
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You spent about 10 years studying these generals as well as the wars.
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Before we get to that, I'd want to go a little deeper into General McMaster.
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He eventually became General McMaster, but he was very candid with people around him.
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And as a result of that, even though he was as strategic as you mentioned, he wasn't promoted.
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So here you have someone who is strategic who does what many leaders uh say they want others to do, which is speak up and voice their opinions, but then that worked against them.
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Yeah.
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When you get down to it, strategy means choice and choices hurt feelings.
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And he made decisions that ruffled feathers.
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Matt, I have to stop you just to underline, I love that.
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Strategy means choice, and choices hurt feelings.
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Yes.
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You are not going to be strategic, whether it's in Iraq or for your organization, without the willingness to hurt some feelings, you're not going to get consensus on the best strategy.
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That's right.
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We're going to get into this when we talk about what my model of strategic leadership looks like, but it very much looks like a funnel.
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A strategic leader is like a funnel.
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All these different options and ideas and choices and different interpretations come in through the top, and one choice needs to come out the bottom.
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What we want from our strategic leaders is superior judgment, better decisions, not good, bad, superior or inferior.
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And the best of us that are the best at that process have this sense of two things.
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And one is like a sense of grit to make a decision and stick to it, even when it hurts.
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And then the other part of it is a sense of empathy, right?
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Understanding that we live in a world of human beings, and those human beings have feelings and we need to navigate that.
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And that sense of emotional intelligence isn't just good for keeping our side together.
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It's good for understanding your adversary and understanding the environment that you're trying to navigate.
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And so I think a guy like General McMaster saw the bigger picture, saw all these different options and ideas.
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He picked one.
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He had the guts, iron gut to stick to the right decision, even though he stepped on some toes and was passed over for promotion.
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And it took extreme intervention for him to earn his ascension to his first general star.
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And he earned that.
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He really did very much.
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And the preface to the book is titled, Not All Generals Are Created Alike.
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And it's also true, not all strategic leaders are created alike, right?
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Strategic leaders are like human beings.
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Most of them are average, some of them are terrible or borderline insane.
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And then there's a small class of them that are the peak that we want to grow up to be someday.
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And those are the ones that I'm writing about in this book.
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I love that.
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And I also love the fact that you emphasize the importance of superior judgment.
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So one of the elements, Matt, we go on a slight tangent a little bit, is that one of the people who started me in understanding AI's implications on society and organizations was AJ Agriwall, about eight years ago, wrote prediction machines.
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And AJ talks about how AI reduces the cost of prediction to near zero, that increases the value of human judgment drastically.
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So the fact that judgment will play a bigger role in our future than we expect.
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So now you have mentioned a few times the importance of superior judgment.
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Based on your study, is this something that can be developed, or did these generals have superior judgments?
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Not from birth.
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Not from birth.
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The three supreme commanders and strategic leaders that I'm taking a look at are George Washington, Ulysses S.
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Grant, and Dwight David Eisenhower.
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And what I'm doing is I am balancing them against their principal opponents.
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So I'm not just looking at them in isolation.
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I'm looking at them in the competition they found themselves in.
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And what you find is all three of them, earlier in their lives, they're like the rest of us.
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They made bad decisions.
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They did.
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And they went through a process of learning.
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George Washington had stumbles.
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And in a lot of ways, George Washington might be the losingest tactical general the United States has ever had, but he won the war that mattered most.
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Let me just emphasize that for a moment.
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In June and July of 1776, George Washington had about 16,000 troops spread out over the New York City area.
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Well, we know is New York City today.
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The British invasion force that arrived off New York Harbor was over 42,000 troops, over 400 ships.
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And in today's population figures, that would be like an invasion force of 6 million arriving off the coast of New York.
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And it what basically happens in that summer in through the fall is Washington gets beaten and beaten and beaten until he pushed all the way out into New Jersey and then famously counterattacks at Trenton and Princeton on Christmas Day and in the new year of 1777.
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And the American Revolution survives.
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Truly, if America was ever an infant in a crib, this was the moment.
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This was when Thomas Paine wrote the line, these are the times that try men's souls.
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He was with Washington's army.
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And Washington's superior judgment is what kept the American idea alive.
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Grant was, as a junior officer, average, maybe even you could say below average, but he really comes into his own during the Civil War, commanding these large formations.
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And General Eisenhower was a lieutenant colonel when the war began.
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And within three and a half years, he went from lieutenant colonel to brigadier general to major general all the way to his fifth star.
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And he's commanding the largest invasion force that humanity has ever put together.
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What you find is that it's almost unfair to try to figure out who is going to be able to handle these kinds of circumstances, the heights of strategic leadership.
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But there are some little breadcrumbs we can follow, right?
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Like I mentioned earlier in our conversation.
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How it try to dig into someone's strategic decision process, understand how they take information in that funnel and they come, they arrive at a particular judgment.
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Another one is how well, what is their emotional intelligence like?
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How well do they relate to other people?
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Because strategic leadership at its core is seeing the world one way and attempting to leverage a whole organization to try to change it in some way of your making.
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That takes lots of people, right?
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It's really difficult to do.
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And if you don't understand people and connect with people at a gut level, you're not going to succeed at it.
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And then when you have to make a hard call, do you make the hard call?
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And some of these commanders, some of these gentlemen, they made the hardest calls you can possibly imagine.
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And it was gut-wrenching for them, truly gut-wrenching.
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So I would love to understand them a little bit better, Matt.
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One of the things I was wondering as I was reading about them, and I wonder all the time when I read about success, whether business success or in this case military success of these generals, I go back to Annie Duke, the champion poker player.
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And resulting.
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Is it that these are three generals that won for a bunch of different reasons?
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Yep.
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And therefore we go back and study them and say, aha, this is what contributed to success.
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You're asking a wonderful question.
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Is it that they actually contributed to that success?
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That's right.
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The way that I describe it in the book, imagine a poker game and you have two players with equal amounts of chips at the start of the game, at the end of the game, one player has all the chips, the other player has none of the chips.
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You can rewind the clock or rewind the tape on their match, and you can see the moment at which we were at a FET accomplished.
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We know that this particular player is going to win.
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This straw is the one that broke the camel's back.
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We obviously can't run experiments when it comes to military wars like this.
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But what we can do is we can zoom in on a moment where the outcome was still in doubt, right?
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A moment where the war or competition could have gone either way.
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And what we're doing in this book in particular is I'm taking about a one-year period of time.
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And the reason that I take that long period of time is that it eliminates luck from the equation.
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Luck can turn a particular moment or a day, but it can't explain a campaign or a career, right?
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And so when we zoom out to that sort of one-year period, we can identify major strategic judgments that the two commanders are making that bounce off of one another.
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So I'll give you an example.
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Most folks are familiar with the American invasion of Normandy, D-Day, so to speak.
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And actually, there's a movie out right now called Pressure that's about that decision to launch the invasion on that particular day, right?
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What most people miss is that Eisenhower didn't just make one decision and say, yes, let's go today.
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There were a number of decisions surrounding the entirety of the invasion.
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So, for example, many people know that the United States and the Allies made airborne drops on D-Day.
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So there were two American airborne divisions and then a combined Allied division that dropped right behind the German defenders on D-Day.
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The idea being that you basically try to get the defenders to turn around instead of facing the beach, right?
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So they're worried about two different sides.
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A little over a week before the invasion, Eisenhower's air component commander comes to him and says, Sir, we cannot make the airborne drops because I estimate and assess that 70 to 80% of them will be combat ineffective.
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They'll either be killed or wounded.
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So if we do it, we'll just be dropping these guys to slaughter.
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Another option out there was General George Marshall back in Washington, D.C., told Eisenhower, I want you to make the airborne drops two-thirds of the way to Paris.
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Because what we're going to do is we're going to leapfrog ahead.
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We're going to do a deep envelopment of the enemy.
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And then Eisenhower's ground invasion commander said, I need those drops right behind the beach because they're going to have the maximum impact there.
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Those are three different options coming into that funnel, right?
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And Eisenhower, he goes into his own like little command room by himself and he writes down, this is the most soul-wracking decision you could imagine.
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Because if I'm wrong and I drop these three airborne divisions behind the Germans, and 70 to 80% of them are killed or wounded, that's on me, right?
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Everybody's looking to me to make this decision.
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Of course, he made the decision.
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They did make the drops.
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Only about 8% were killed or wounded, and it worked, right?
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And actually, his air component commander wrote to him, Sir, I'm so sorry to have added to your list of concerns.
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I genuinely believe that's the way things would turn out.
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On the other side of the field, Adolf Hitler is deciding how to defend the beach.
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And he has 10 divisions to spend for reserve.
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Erwin Rommel wants all 10 of those divisions placed right on the beach.
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Because by his experience, that's the best place to put his mobile reserve.
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Another German general wants to put the 10 divisions a little bit further back so that they can respond to anywhere on the beach, on northern France, further south, wherever.
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Hitler decides to split the baby into three.
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He takes three divisions and places them far forward, right on the beach.
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Three divisions puts them in the middle, and then hold four divisions in reserve for only his release authority.
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I'm this is just one case that I'm trying to draw out.
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But we can see in hindsight, through looking at dispatches and decisions and memoranda, those two strategic judgments that those competing commanders are making, one is objectively better than the other.
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And we can see in part, not all the way, but in part, why strategic leadership makes a big difference.
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What a beautiful example of it.
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And what a powerful way to describe it, Matt.
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I was mesmerized, just listening to you go through the example.
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Again, the one thing I do wonder as I listen to this, I am in awe of Eisenhower being able to do this, is that we spend$50 plus billion dollars a year on leadership developments.
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And now let's say focusing on judgment as well.
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I still wonder in what ways can that be developed?
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Are there patterns you saw in these experiences that tells you this can be worked on and developed?
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I know they developed it.
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Can we develop it?
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100%.
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So I think there's a cycle in strategic leadership.
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There's like a challenge that emerges, right?
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So you have a challenge that emerges.
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There's a choice that has to be made.
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There's some clash.
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And strategy doesn't matter if you're the New York Yankees and you're facing A little league team.
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It's not a big deal, right?
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Your natural imbalance in talent is going to make all the difference.
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But the reality is when the state, when the two sides are relatively closely matched and the stakes are high, strategic leadership makes a big difference.
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So there's a clash and then there's consequences that result from that.
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And I really feel like while we can't crawl inside the brains of these particular individuals, we can see what their decisions were made.
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We can see the artifacts of their thinking.
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And then we can go back and we can take a look at some of the characteristics that followed along with some of those particular things.
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And one of those is all of them had political instincts, emotional intelligence.
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They really did connect well with others.
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They had the skills to persuade others.
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If you look at their writing, which I think is a direct translation of clarity and thought, Washington, Grant, and Eisenhower were exceptional communicators, and they were very good at that.
00:23:14.319 --> 00:23:23.279
Another one was we focus on degrees and we focus on things that you hang on the wall.
00:23:23.599 --> 00:23:28.079
But all of these were lifelong learners of the first order.
00:23:28.319 --> 00:23:35.920
Washington had this massive library that he kept at Mount Vernon, and he was interested in everything.
00:23:36.079 --> 00:23:38.559
You name it, plants, animals.
00:23:38.960 --> 00:23:41.519
He had books about military strategy.
00:23:41.680 --> 00:23:43.440
He had books about religion.
00:23:43.759 --> 00:23:45.599
He had lots of fiction.
00:23:45.920 --> 00:23:52.559
Grant, the saint, was a lifelong learner and reader, and the same for Eisenhower.
00:23:52.640 --> 00:24:03.599
In fact, actually, mid-career Eisenhower was offered an opportunity to leave the military and to become a journalist because he was such a quality writer.
00:24:03.839 --> 00:24:06.400
They all had childhood challenges.
00:24:06.559 --> 00:24:14.720
They came, all three of them came from what you would describe as not terribly wonderful home environments from when they were growing up.
00:24:14.880 --> 00:24:18.079
And then lastly, they were pretty young.
00:24:18.319 --> 00:24:20.960
They were all in their 40s or early 50s.
00:24:21.359 --> 00:24:28.880
I think that these sort of lists of characteristics, while they don't apply to everybody, I think there are some of those breadcrumbs we can follow.
00:24:29.119 --> 00:24:39.440
Now, looking at all of them, particularly in Washington's case as well, there is an element of politics that they had to maneuver around as well.
00:24:39.680 --> 00:24:45.519
It's one of those things that sometimes people don't really reflect on and recognize with respect to military.
00:24:45.680 --> 00:24:55.519
So when I deal with CEOs, they're talking about the stakeholders, they deal with the board members, all the different ways they're being pulled in different directions.
00:24:55.759 --> 00:25:14.960
One of the things that comes across is how in every one of these instances, these individuals didn't only have to command the military, they had to be involved in a very complex political environment and manage all of those relationships as well.
00:25:15.279 --> 00:25:23.519
So if I'm translating it to business, it's a CEO that's operating with a chairman or a board, and you are doing two things simultaneously.
00:25:23.599 --> 00:25:33.039
It's almost like in nature, an eagle or many hawks that fly have this visual ability to have almost picture in picture.
00:25:33.200 --> 00:25:41.519
So they have both a very focused view of their target on the ground, but they also have this wide angle lens at the very same moment.
00:25:41.759 --> 00:25:52.799
I think what you find in strategic leadership, when it's at its peak, when it's at its best, you have someone who's maximizing for a particular focused objective.
00:25:52.960 --> 00:26:02.480
And for these Supreme Commanders, it's battlefield results and strategic awareness of how they stand in relation to their competitor.
00:26:02.720 --> 00:26:20.559
But in the very same moment, they're also operating in democracies where that emotional intelligence is kicking in and they know that they also have to keep their political partner onside and on board.
00:26:20.720 --> 00:26:24.559
And there's really striking examples of that.
00:26:24.640 --> 00:26:27.279
So I mentioned Washington in New York, right?
00:26:27.519 --> 00:26:31.279
He's completely overwhelmed by this British onslaught.
00:26:31.440 --> 00:26:37.759
That invasion force that the British sent was the largest invasion force the British Empire had ever sent anywhere.
00:26:38.000 --> 00:26:54.880
When they were abandoning the city, the Continental Army, amongst the general officers that Washington is with, most of them want to burn the city of New York, to deny it as a winter haven for the British.
00:26:55.119 --> 00:27:01.440
But the Continental Congress had expressed to Washington that they wanted him to hold New York, right?
00:27:01.680 --> 00:27:10.160
So he's got this tension between military necessity and what politics is driving him to need to do.
00:27:10.880 --> 00:27:24.160
He navigates that tension very, very methodically, but he does eventually leave the city without burning it because he knew how important the political side of the effort was.
00:27:24.400 --> 00:27:37.279
Because the moment that the American public started to see that the Continental Army was not, it might send a chill into Philadelphians that the Continental Army might be burning their city next, for example.
00:27:37.680 --> 00:27:49.599
Like another example is that General Grant is fighting while his political partner, President Abraham Lincoln, his boss, is campaigning for the presidency.
00:27:49.839 --> 00:27:53.759
And he knows that if Lincoln loses the election, the war is over.
00:27:54.799 --> 00:27:57.839
Maybe not in a military sense, but in a political sense.
00:27:58.079 --> 00:28:01.359
So he's also got to navigate those tensions as well.
00:28:01.519 --> 00:28:15.279
So those tensions that exist in every boardroom in America or around the world exist in battlefields and with amongst democracies as well.
00:28:15.519 --> 00:28:29.119
And I feel like that's a very healthy tension in the sense that you could easily imagine a situation where a military leader is exercising judgment without any oversight.
00:28:29.680 --> 00:28:31.359
And that's a dangerous thing.
00:28:31.519 --> 00:28:34.559
That's a dangerous thing because there is no feedback loop.
00:28:34.799 --> 00:28:36.240
There is no feedback loop.
00:28:36.319 --> 00:28:40.400
And the feedback loop on a battlefield is a really painful one.
00:28:40.799 --> 00:28:40.960
Yeah.
00:28:41.119 --> 00:28:53.920
And I wonder whether it was with Hitler's case or Putin's of the world, whether that ends up costing them in the long term because they don't have that feedback loop.
00:28:54.240 --> 00:28:55.039
I definitely agree.
00:28:55.119 --> 00:29:14.720
And you should know, by the way, that's part of the case with Hitler was that he was overruling his military leadership so much and so often that you can easily see that the German high command was just non-existent and was very detrimental to their strategic performance.
00:29:14.960 --> 00:29:26.720
Pound for pound, there have been studies that have shown that in terms of killed, inflicting casualties on the opponent, and then receiving casualties from the adversary.
00:29:26.960 --> 00:29:35.920
The German army in the First World War and the Second World War was the most tactically effective in both wars, and they lost both of them.
00:29:36.160 --> 00:29:42.079
This is the difference between tactics and strategy, very much that lesson to me is really important.
00:29:42.720 --> 00:29:54.079
Another thing that struck me with respect to strategy, and I think they all have this in common, most specifically Washington and Grant, it's almost as if they changed the game.
00:29:54.319 --> 00:30:05.680
The same way organizational strategy, a lot of times, the most effective organizations that break through, they change the game rather than trying to play the old game.
00:30:05.839 --> 00:30:08.480
We'd love to get your thoughts on that as well, Matt.
00:30:08.720 --> 00:30:13.279
This is the thing that Sun Tzu was getting at attack the enemy's strategy.
00:30:13.440 --> 00:30:22.880
I taught for many years at West Point, and Sun Tzu is tough to teach because it's kind of like the buy low, sell high approach to strategy out of course.
00:30:23.200 --> 00:30:38.400
But when you are able to change the contours of the competition in a way that alters the competition in your favor, it's always like to me, it's the one strategy that really does always work.
00:30:38.799 --> 00:30:45.440
And with Washington, he was looking to exhaust an adversary.
00:30:59.440 --> 00:31:00.960
They had more of them.
00:31:01.200 --> 00:31:05.039
On some level, they had so many advantages.
00:31:05.279 --> 00:31:24.000
And there's a moment in time in late 1776 where General Howe is pursuing the Continental Army and makes the decision to suspend his campaign for the winter, just to stop fighting, just to put the brakes on the campaign.
00:31:24.319 --> 00:31:37.279
And Washington's great, to his great credit, he saw this moment in time as an opportunity to counterattack against a force that in almost every way was superior to him.
00:31:37.440 --> 00:31:40.400
Like I said, he had lost battle after battle after battle.
00:31:40.559 --> 00:31:55.279
And with Grant, the way of the civil war was often that you would fight this big battle, and both sides would go to their corners and lick their wounds and recover for a month or two until they assembled on another battlefield.
00:31:55.359 --> 00:32:02.160
And Grant made the decision to say, no, we will make this a continuous fight all the way till the end.
00:32:02.400 --> 00:32:06.880
And Grant didn't do that with great happiness in his heart.
00:32:07.119 --> 00:32:17.839
There are several recorded instances in the historical record where during this campaign that I describe in the book, Grant is he's crying.
00:32:18.000 --> 00:32:21.200
He's not doing it in front of his high command.
00:32:21.279 --> 00:32:22.880
He's not doing it in a public way.
00:32:22.960 --> 00:32:38.079
He's going to his own quarters because he knows that the number of killed and wounded that are being produced by this decision is literally filling Arlington National Cemetery.
00:32:38.319 --> 00:32:46.640
The beginning of Arlington National Cemetery comes from the Union casualties during this particular bloody stretch of the Civil War.
00:32:46.799 --> 00:32:53.680
It's the highest rate of casualties we've ever had as a country, if you include the Confederate casualties, which I do.
00:32:54.000 --> 00:32:59.359
So this is also the sort of the burden of Supreme Command and strategic leadership.
00:32:59.519 --> 00:33:03.920
Like I said, strategy means choices, choices hurt feelings.
00:33:04.000 --> 00:33:04.880
They hurt people.
00:33:05.039 --> 00:33:08.559
And when we're talking about Supreme Command, it literally hurts people.
00:33:08.720 --> 00:33:12.960
And so you can see exactly why this was so difficult.
00:33:13.279 --> 00:33:19.200
It is horribly difficult in any strategic choice, including and most especially what you mentioned.
00:33:19.359 --> 00:33:31.359
One of the things I wonder, Matt, is there's a need for conviction at a certain point when you go through that funnel, the strategic leader owns the decision.
00:33:32.880 --> 00:33:41.119
However, there has to be involvement and input of others in a way that contributes to that.
00:33:41.759 --> 00:33:47.519
How did you see these three generals balancing that?
00:33:48.319 --> 00:33:53.039
No human being exercises strategic leadership in isolation.
00:33:53.200 --> 00:33:58.160
There is no such thing as the solo genius operating independently.
00:33:58.319 --> 00:34:08.559
Even a guy like Elon Musk, who is running six companies simultaneously, everybody understands he's not really running those companies on a daily basis.
00:34:08.800 --> 00:34:11.119
He's got some really talented subordinates.
00:34:11.280 --> 00:34:14.159
So it's the same way with all of these individuals.
00:34:14.400 --> 00:34:17.440
I like to think of the difference between war and warfare.
00:34:17.599 --> 00:34:25.760
There are some parts to war and strategic leadership that are ever present, that are timeless, no matter what period of time you're in.
00:34:25.920 --> 00:34:31.840
Kind of like every conflict that humans have had since one ape hit another ape, slapped another ape.
00:34:31.920 --> 00:34:32.880
We've put helmets on.
00:34:32.960 --> 00:34:39.119
We've worn helmets since for thousands of years because we know that it's important to protect our thinking machine.
00:34:39.360 --> 00:34:41.519
At the same time, it's always changing.
00:34:41.599 --> 00:34:43.360
And that's the warfare part of it.
00:34:43.599 --> 00:34:47.599
Warfare, the impediments of strategic leadership are always changing.
00:34:47.760 --> 00:34:52.079
So General Washington would host councils of war.
00:34:52.320 --> 00:34:55.440
And we have records of these informal gatherings.
00:34:55.679 --> 00:35:02.719
He would bring together his senior leadership for big decisions and then voice, listen to the opinions that they voiced.
00:35:02.960 --> 00:35:04.400
A guy like Ulysses S.
00:35:04.480 --> 00:35:06.239
Grant was even more informal.
00:35:06.639 --> 00:35:11.840
He would write dispatches to trusted friends and advisors like General William T.
00:35:12.000 --> 00:35:14.159
Sherman, William Tecumseh Sherman.
00:35:14.320 --> 00:35:24.320
And then General Eisenhower had a staff that would actually look a lot like what major corporations look still even echo and mimic today.
00:35:24.480 --> 00:35:32.480
Again, most of modern business is built on this military foundation, how it is that we're going to win in a competitive endeavor.
00:35:32.800 --> 00:35:38.719
And they took information in and they bounced ideas out in different ways.
00:35:39.039 --> 00:35:57.119
But again, it comes back to this balance, like this humble confidence that they all had to be able to listen to all these different ideas, to be open to them for a period of time, and then to choose a course of action and stick with it, right?
00:35:57.280 --> 00:35:59.199
To make a decision and stick with it.
00:35:59.280 --> 00:36:02.880
And that's even against withering criticisms.
00:36:03.039 --> 00:36:14.239
General Eisenhower had nuclear disagreements with Winston Churchill about the way the end of the war should be fought.
00:36:14.480 --> 00:36:20.719
And I document a few of those cases when I'm telling the story towards the last third of the book.
00:36:20.960 --> 00:36:28.079
So much so that Eisenhower, a couple of months before D-Day, said, I have made this decision.
00:36:28.239 --> 00:36:31.039
If it does not go my way, I resign.
00:36:31.280 --> 00:36:34.239
And Franklin Delano Roosevelt backed him up.
00:36:34.400 --> 00:36:40.239
The combined chiefs backed him up, and Prime Minister Churchill, the British High Command backed off.
00:36:40.559 --> 00:36:43.360
I do see those same echoes today.
00:36:43.679 --> 00:36:59.760
When a CEO makes a particular decision for a particular course of action, sometimes there's going to be investors, sometimes there's going to be outside opinions that just don't agree, but that's why someone has earned that title.
00:37:00.639 --> 00:37:06.000
That's where the value of judgment that you keep referencing comes into play.
00:37:06.159 --> 00:37:14.559
Now, the other thing that I saw, Matt, they have in common that you also highlight is their deep understanding of people.
00:37:15.039 --> 00:37:22.159
And I wonder in what way did their understanding of people impact their strategic decision making?
00:37:22.719 --> 00:37:45.199
Yeah, I think that with a guy like Eisenhower, for example, when you look at the sum total of his high command, the staff that he was working with, this was in a day and an age where it still took quite a bit of time to travel and they didn't have push-button instant communication like we do.
00:37:45.519 --> 00:37:54.639
And he had to work on a staff and with allies from all across the English-speaking world and beyond.
00:37:54.880 --> 00:38:09.519
They also had to, for example, incorporate the ideas and the sentiments from the free French forces that had fled France after the fall and the Vichy government took over.
00:38:09.840 --> 00:38:17.039
With a guy like George Washington took command of an ad hoc pickup fighting force.
00:38:17.280 --> 00:38:23.840
And he literally would have to go to different state governors to ask them for troops.
00:38:24.079 --> 00:38:40.800
And so he would have to bank, borrow, and steal, just like sometimes I can imagine strategic leaders be they in education or the clergy, the business community, or in politics, you don't always get the resources that you want from the get-go.
00:38:40.960 --> 00:38:50.880
So you have to work with, with and through a system of other people and get their buy-in, get their endorsement, get their support, win it, persuade them.
00:38:51.119 --> 00:39:00.400
There's this sort of simple notion about wearing a uniform and stars that says that people just snap to and do whatever you want when you want.
00:39:00.559 --> 00:39:03.519
And that's not definitely not always the case.
00:39:03.840 --> 00:39:06.639
One of the things that General Ulysses S.
00:39:06.800 --> 00:39:09.760
Grant was proudest of during the U.S.
00:39:09.840 --> 00:39:15.760
Civil War was that he never went back to Lincoln and asked for more troops.
00:39:16.079 --> 00:39:23.519
He recognized that the resources he had, the war effort was stretched thin as it could be.
00:39:23.760 --> 00:39:26.320
And he said, I will fight with what I have.
00:39:26.559 --> 00:39:31.840
I think there's something to working within the system of constraints that you have.
00:39:32.000 --> 00:39:40.559
I think there's a book out right now, David Epstein, Inside the Box, that the constraints you live with can actually be freeing in many different ways.
00:39:40.719 --> 00:39:43.679
So I think really highly of strategic leaders that do that.
00:39:43.760 --> 00:39:46.559
And I think we have three examples of folks that did that in this book.
00:39:46.880 --> 00:40:12.079
Now, one of the things I wonder, Matt, is as we go into this world of AI, where I'm sure you've played around with different AIs, character AI, where you can, in essence, have your board of advisors, you can have George Washington and Ulysses Grant and Eisenhower give you their best judgment on what you should do or shouldn't do.
00:40:12.400 --> 00:40:27.119
I wonder how you see that impacting the kind of judgment it takes for strategic leadership moving forward when we have access to quote unquote the judgment and insights of any of these characters.
00:40:27.599 --> 00:40:38.239
I think that AI is an exceptional tool for thinking, for bouncing ideas off of, and it can expand, it can amplify intelligence.
00:40:38.400 --> 00:40:42.960
That, like to me, that's the way that it can and should and must be used.
00:40:43.280 --> 00:40:46.719
Where I think that it has a limitation is that it doesn't come with a heartbeat.
00:40:46.800 --> 00:40:47.920
It doesn't come with a gut.
00:40:48.000 --> 00:40:58.639
And I think that when we're talking about strategic leadership, again, we need strategic leadership when the competition is close run.
00:40:59.199 --> 00:41:03.199
It's not the Yankees and the Little League, and the stakes are high.
00:41:03.360 --> 00:41:06.480
So what happens, the outcome matters, right?
00:41:06.960 --> 00:41:15.679
And I think when we have those kinds of high consequence judgments that need to be made, they need to become attached to a heartbeat.
00:41:15.920 --> 00:41:21.280
Like I know that strategic leadership extends far beyond a battlefield.
00:41:21.440 --> 00:41:33.119
We need it in our boardrooms, we need it in our dugouts, we need it on sports fields, we need it in our principals and our teachers that are guiding the future of our education.
00:41:33.360 --> 00:41:51.599
When the consequence, or in medicine, for example, I don't think when the consequences are so high, we can give this all the way over to the machines, even if the machines provide us with a really powerful amplification and an ability to see around corners that I don't think we've had before.
00:41:52.159 --> 00:42:00.880
So it is important for us to wrestle with these ideas, to understand them, to own them, and to then develop our own judgment as a result.
00:42:01.199 --> 00:42:03.039
Yeah, I can't emphasize enough.
00:42:03.280 --> 00:42:06.639
General Brant said this: no two wars are alike.
00:42:06.800 --> 00:42:08.400
No two competitions are alike.
00:42:08.559 --> 00:42:11.360
Every competition that we step our foot, it's like a river.
00:42:11.440 --> 00:42:14.320
You can never step into the same river twice, right?
00:42:14.480 --> 00:42:17.840
You can never step into two competitions that are the exact same.
00:42:18.000 --> 00:42:23.920
And so that's where I think human creativity and adaptability really matter.
00:42:24.159 --> 00:42:28.239
I really believe firmly there is no strategic silver bullet.
00:42:28.400 --> 00:42:38.079
But I think if we look hard enough, and I think we find it in the traces of these Supreme Commanders thinking, there is some strategic buckshot.
00:42:38.159 --> 00:42:42.159
And we can learn to pick that up and use it, put it in and fire it for ourselves.
00:42:42.400 --> 00:42:42.719
100%.
00:42:43.199 --> 00:42:49.039
I do find that just thinking through some of these things can be of great value.
00:42:49.360 --> 00:43:02.159
Any kind of strategic leader, I think, is going to benefit from, I called it in the book, getting under Napoleon's hat, crawling into Napoleon's brain for a moment, and trying to see the world the way that he did.
00:43:02.480 --> 00:43:06.960
And I think we're the better for it the more that we do things like that.
00:43:07.360 --> 00:43:11.440
And with beautiful storytelling, it becomes more pleasant doing that as well.
00:43:11.599 --> 00:43:13.840
And you do that with the book, Matt.
00:43:14.000 --> 00:43:19.199
So for the audience, both to follow your work and your book, where would you send them to?
00:43:19.519 --> 00:43:22.800
It's as simple as go to who winswars.com.
00:43:23.039 --> 00:43:24.639
Who winswars.com.
00:43:24.800 --> 00:43:28.960
The book is distributed by Simon and Schuster and it's published by Matt Holt Books.
00:43:29.280 --> 00:43:35.599
And then if you go to whowinswars.com, you'll also get to my author website, that kind of thing.
00:43:35.760 --> 00:43:39.840
And I'd very much look forward to bumping into people and hearing feedback on the book.
00:43:40.320 --> 00:43:46.239
Appreciate the conversation, the magnificent storytelling in the book and in the episode as well.
00:43:46.559 --> 00:43:53.519
Who wins Wars Lessons in Leadership, Power, and Supreme Command from Washington, Grant, and Eisenhower.
00:43:53.679 --> 00:43:55.599
Thank you so much, Matt Kavanaugh.
00:43:56.239 --> 00:43:57.119
This is fantastic.
00:43:57.280 --> 00:43:58.159
Thank you so much.
00:43:58.320 --> 00:44:01.119
I really appreciate the time and I look forward to listening some more.
00:44:02.639 --> 00:44:06.800
You have been listening to Partnering Leadership with your host, Mahan Tavakoli.
00:44:07.440 --> 00:44:23.039
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00:44:23.280 --> 00:44:29.360
For additional leadership insights and bonus content, visit us at partneringleadership.com.
00:00:01.760 --> 00:00:15.039
Welcome to Partnering Leadership, a top global leadership podcast for purpose-driven leaders with a growth mindset, seeking to learn from the leadership journey of change makers and business insights from leading global thinkers.
00:00:15.279 --> 00:00:21.359
For additional leadership insights and bonus content, visit us at partneringleadership.com.
00:00:21.679 --> 00:00:24.320
Now here's your host, Mahan Tavakouli.
00:00:29.039 --> 00:00:31.519
Matt Kavanaugh, welcome to Partnering Leadership.
00:00:31.600 --> 00:00:33.840
I am thrilled to have you in this conversation with me.
00:00:34.159 --> 00:00:35.119
I'm thrilled to be here.
00:00:35.280 --> 00:00:38.640
I've listened to a bunch of the episodes and I'm excited to participate.
00:00:38.960 --> 00:00:49.520
I love your book, Who Wins Wars: Lessons in Leadership, Power, and Supreme Command from Washington, Grant, and Eisenhower.
00:00:49.759 --> 00:00:56.159
So much brilliance in that history, Matt, and so much relevance to strategic leadership.
00:00:56.320 --> 00:01:03.759
But before we get to that, would love to know a little bit more about you, Matt, whereabouts you grew up and how your upbringing impacted who you've become.
00:01:04.159 --> 00:01:04.640
I'm from St.
00:01:04.799 --> 00:01:05.760
Paul, Minnesota.
00:01:05.840 --> 00:01:11.280
So for those of you that are international, I'm from the northern central part of the United States.
00:01:11.519 --> 00:01:22.159
A lot of people think of it as a cold place, and they would be right to think that my fondest memories of growing up were playing outdoor pond hockey all winter long, all over the winter break.
00:01:22.239 --> 00:01:28.079
And the reason that's relevant is that I grew up idolizing the 1980 U.S.
00:01:28.239 --> 00:01:29.680
Olympic hockey team.
00:01:29.840 --> 00:01:36.239
And it's not hard to figure out why 12 of the 20 players on that team were from Minnesota like me.
00:01:36.400 --> 00:01:38.799
The head coach Herb Brooks was from St.
00:01:38.959 --> 00:01:45.359
Paul like me, and they gave me something to look up to, something to want to be someday.
00:01:45.519 --> 00:01:55.359
And it's not surprising that I would decide to join the Army and fill a full career in the Army, in part because I wanted to wear an American flag patch on my shoulder.
00:01:55.599 --> 00:02:13.439
But a lot of your listeners will know that was a team of college kids that beat a Soviet hockey machine that had won several Olympic Games in a row, that had recently beaten the NHL All-Star team before that 1980 US Olympic, that U.S.
00:02:13.520 --> 00:02:14.800
Olympic game.
00:02:15.039 --> 00:02:18.960
And I watched growing up and idolize that team.
00:02:19.039 --> 00:02:29.759
And it I really stepped away from them with this message that miracles happen when we make them happen, when we have the strength to try something different, to do something different.
00:02:29.840 --> 00:02:32.560
And it became something for me to want to live up to.
00:02:33.120 --> 00:02:42.800
What an outstanding story in terms of your pride and also the underdog element to that story as well, Matt.
00:02:42.960 --> 00:02:48.719
Now, one of the things I was really struck by is your McMaster story.
00:02:49.039 --> 00:02:57.360
I want to understand what you learned from him and that experience, and then how that transfers to organizations as well.
00:02:57.759 --> 00:02:58.000
Yeah.
00:02:58.080 --> 00:03:08.240
So when I served in the Iraq War, and I served in the Iraq War at the very, very beginning, at the end of the ground war, I spent a little over a year in Iraq and then came home and then went right back.
00:03:08.400 --> 00:03:13.360
And the second time that I was in the desert, I served under then Colonel H.R.
00:03:13.520 --> 00:03:23.360
McMaster, who many people would know, went on to become Lieutenant General McMaster and the national security advisor of the United States during the first Trump administration.
00:03:23.680 --> 00:03:29.439
And I will tell you that you could see what a difference a general makes.
00:03:29.599 --> 00:03:32.639
You could see what a difference a strategic leader makes.
00:03:32.800 --> 00:03:44.319
General McMaster, then Colonel McMaster, saw the war in its largest context, and he saw our particular part in the war in its own context as well.
00:03:44.560 --> 00:03:54.879
And I'll tell you, we were serving in a community of about 250,000 people in the northwestern part of Iraq.
00:03:55.439 --> 00:04:06.319
And we arrived, and there was an element that was undermining the local government in that particular community.
00:04:06.400 --> 00:04:07.520
It's called Talafer.
00:04:07.840 --> 00:04:09.599
It's to the west of Mosul.
00:04:10.080 --> 00:04:42.000
And Colonel McMaster over the course very patiently over the course of many months built this giant earthen berm, this earthen wall around the entire city in order to later control who would enter and leave the community, and then very methodically work our way through the city to clear it of terrorists or folks that were anti-the local government.
00:04:42.319 --> 00:04:50.399
And it later became known as the clear hold and build strategy in Iraq.
00:04:50.560 --> 00:04:56.079
And it took an awful lot of resource, it took a lot of patience, but it worked.
00:04:56.240 --> 00:05:09.759
And it was this opportunity to see between the two years in Iraq what the different strategic leadership can make in a particular military problem, right?
00:05:10.000 --> 00:05:13.920
And I know many of the listeners are obsessed with business problems.
00:05:14.160 --> 00:05:19.519
And I also know that most business strategy is derived from military strategy.
00:05:19.920 --> 00:05:24.560
To me, I see clear translations here, right?
00:05:24.959 --> 00:05:30.399
Sometimes the stakes in business aren't as high as they are on a battlefield.
00:05:31.120 --> 00:05:33.040
But the stakes are still high.
00:05:33.279 --> 00:05:36.800
You can still see what a difference a strategic leader can make.
00:05:36.959 --> 00:05:39.360
That was the starter's pistol for this book.
00:05:39.600 --> 00:05:41.920
What makes a great general great?
00:05:42.160 --> 00:05:43.120
And why?
00:05:43.600 --> 00:05:44.800
How does it work?
00:05:45.040 --> 00:05:53.120
And so for me, launched this longer than a decade period of very serious and sustained study of strategic leadership.
00:05:53.600 --> 00:06:00.480
You spent about 10 years studying these generals as well as the wars.
00:06:00.639 --> 00:06:05.199
Before we get to that, I'd want to go a little deeper into General McMaster.
00:06:05.600 --> 00:06:12.560
He eventually became General McMaster, but he was very candid with people around him.
00:06:12.879 --> 00:06:19.920
And as a result of that, even though he was as strategic as you mentioned, he wasn't promoted.
00:06:20.720 --> 00:06:35.439
So here you have someone who is strategic who does what many leaders uh say they want others to do, which is speak up and voice their opinions, but then that worked against them.
00:06:35.920 --> 00:06:36.319
Yeah.
00:06:37.040 --> 00:06:43.759
When you get down to it, strategy means choice and choices hurt feelings.
00:06:44.079 --> 00:06:46.800
And he made decisions that ruffled feathers.
00:06:47.199 --> 00:06:50.959
Matt, I have to stop you just to underline, I love that.
00:06:51.680 --> 00:06:56.240
Strategy means choice, and choices hurt feelings.
00:06:56.399 --> 00:06:56.879
Yes.
00:06:57.120 --> 00:07:10.240
You are not going to be strategic, whether it's in Iraq or for your organization, without the willingness to hurt some feelings, you're not going to get consensus on the best strategy.
00:07:10.720 --> 00:07:11.120
That's right.
00:07:11.279 --> 00:07:18.160
We're going to get into this when we talk about what my model of strategic leadership looks like, but it very much looks like a funnel.
00:07:18.399 --> 00:07:21.759
A strategic leader is like a funnel.
00:07:21.920 --> 00:07:31.040
All these different options and ideas and choices and different interpretations come in through the top, and one choice needs to come out the bottom.
00:07:32.319 --> 00:07:42.800
What we want from our strategic leaders is superior judgment, better decisions, not good, bad, superior or inferior.
00:07:43.199 --> 00:07:50.639
And the best of us that are the best at that process have this sense of two things.
00:07:50.800 --> 00:07:58.240
And one is like a sense of grit to make a decision and stick to it, even when it hurts.
00:07:58.480 --> 00:08:01.360
And then the other part of it is a sense of empathy, right?
00:08:01.519 --> 00:08:08.079
Understanding that we live in a world of human beings, and those human beings have feelings and we need to navigate that.
00:08:08.160 --> 00:08:14.720
And that sense of emotional intelligence isn't just good for keeping our side together.
00:08:14.879 --> 00:08:20.879
It's good for understanding your adversary and understanding the environment that you're trying to navigate.
00:08:21.040 --> 00:08:29.120
And so I think a guy like General McMaster saw the bigger picture, saw all these different options and ideas.
00:08:29.600 --> 00:08:30.639
He picked one.
00:08:30.879 --> 00:08:41.840
He had the guts, iron gut to stick to the right decision, even though he stepped on some toes and was passed over for promotion.
00:08:41.919 --> 00:08:47.919
And it took extreme intervention for him to earn his ascension to his first general star.
00:08:48.000 --> 00:08:48.879
And he earned that.
00:08:49.440 --> 00:08:50.799
He really did very much.
00:08:51.120 --> 00:08:55.840
And the preface to the book is titled, Not All Generals Are Created Alike.
00:08:56.000 --> 00:08:59.440
And it's also true, not all strategic leaders are created alike, right?
00:08:59.679 --> 00:09:02.159
Strategic leaders are like human beings.
00:09:02.639 --> 00:09:09.200
Most of them are average, some of them are terrible or borderline insane.
00:09:09.360 --> 00:09:15.759
And then there's a small class of them that are the peak that we want to grow up to be someday.
00:09:15.919 --> 00:09:18.320
And those are the ones that I'm writing about in this book.
00:09:18.559 --> 00:09:19.360
I love that.
00:09:19.440 --> 00:09:24.879
And I also love the fact that you emphasize the importance of superior judgment.
00:09:25.120 --> 00:09:43.360
So one of the elements, Matt, we go on a slight tangent a little bit, is that one of the people who started me in understanding AI's implications on society and organizations was AJ Agriwall, about eight years ago, wrote prediction machines.
00:09:43.519 --> 00:09:56.639
And AJ talks about how AI reduces the cost of prediction to near zero, that increases the value of human judgment drastically.
00:09:57.039 --> 00:10:02.559
So the fact that judgment will play a bigger role in our future than we expect.
00:10:02.720 --> 00:10:08.320
So now you have mentioned a few times the importance of superior judgment.
00:10:08.639 --> 00:10:20.320
Based on your study, is this something that can be developed, or did these generals have superior judgments?
00:10:20.639 --> 00:10:21.600
Not from birth.
00:10:21.840 --> 00:10:22.559
Not from birth.
00:10:22.720 --> 00:10:30.240
The three supreme commanders and strategic leaders that I'm taking a look at are George Washington, Ulysses S.
00:10:30.480 --> 00:10:33.360
Grant, and Dwight David Eisenhower.
00:10:33.600 --> 00:10:39.600
And what I'm doing is I am balancing them against their principal opponents.
00:10:39.919 --> 00:10:43.279
So I'm not just looking at them in isolation.
00:10:43.440 --> 00:10:48.399
I'm looking at them in the competition they found themselves in.
00:10:48.799 --> 00:10:54.320
And what you find is all three of them, earlier in their lives, they're like the rest of us.
00:10:54.480 --> 00:10:55.840
They made bad decisions.
00:10:56.000 --> 00:10:56.720
They did.
00:10:57.120 --> 00:11:00.240
And they went through a process of learning.
00:11:00.480 --> 00:11:02.240
George Washington had stumbles.
00:11:02.480 --> 00:11:12.080
And in a lot of ways, George Washington might be the losingest tactical general the United States has ever had, but he won the war that mattered most.
00:11:12.399 --> 00:11:14.879
Let me just emphasize that for a moment.
00:11:15.200 --> 00:11:24.480
In June and July of 1776, George Washington had about 16,000 troops spread out over the New York City area.
00:11:24.639 --> 00:11:26.879
Well, we know is New York City today.
00:11:27.360 --> 00:11:38.879
The British invasion force that arrived off New York Harbor was over 42,000 troops, over 400 ships.
00:11:39.120 --> 00:11:47.519
And in today's population figures, that would be like an invasion force of 6 million arriving off the coast of New York.
00:11:47.919 --> 00:12:07.600
And it what basically happens in that summer in through the fall is Washington gets beaten and beaten and beaten until he pushed all the way out into New Jersey and then famously counterattacks at Trenton and Princeton on Christmas Day and in the new year of 1777.
00:12:07.840 --> 00:12:11.200
And the American Revolution survives.
00:12:11.360 --> 00:12:15.279
Truly, if America was ever an infant in a crib, this was the moment.
00:12:15.440 --> 00:12:19.519
This was when Thomas Paine wrote the line, these are the times that try men's souls.
00:12:19.600 --> 00:12:21.200
He was with Washington's army.
00:12:21.440 --> 00:12:26.720
And Washington's superior judgment is what kept the American idea alive.
00:12:27.200 --> 00:12:42.080
Grant was, as a junior officer, average, maybe even you could say below average, but he really comes into his own during the Civil War, commanding these large formations.
00:12:42.480 --> 00:12:48.559
And General Eisenhower was a lieutenant colonel when the war began.
00:12:48.799 --> 00:12:56.960
And within three and a half years, he went from lieutenant colonel to brigadier general to major general all the way to his fifth star.
00:12:57.279 --> 00:13:02.559
And he's commanding the largest invasion force that humanity has ever put together.
00:13:03.840 --> 00:13:23.200
What you find is that it's almost unfair to try to figure out who is going to be able to handle these kinds of circumstances, the heights of strategic leadership.
00:13:23.440 --> 00:13:28.720
But there are some little breadcrumbs we can follow, right?
00:13:28.960 --> 00:13:31.759
Like I mentioned earlier in our conversation.
00:13:33.200 --> 00:13:44.320
How it try to dig into someone's strategic decision process, understand how they take information in that funnel and they come, they arrive at a particular judgment.
00:13:44.559 --> 00:13:49.039
Another one is how well, what is their emotional intelligence like?
00:13:49.200 --> 00:13:51.519
How well do they relate to other people?
00:13:52.000 --> 00:14:05.679
Because strategic leadership at its core is seeing the world one way and attempting to leverage a whole organization to try to change it in some way of your making.
00:14:05.919 --> 00:14:08.399
That takes lots of people, right?
00:14:08.559 --> 00:14:10.080
It's really difficult to do.
00:14:10.240 --> 00:14:18.159
And if you don't understand people and connect with people at a gut level, you're not going to succeed at it.
00:14:18.399 --> 00:14:22.480
And then when you have to make a hard call, do you make the hard call?
00:14:22.720 --> 00:14:27.840
And some of these commanders, some of these gentlemen, they made the hardest calls you can possibly imagine.
00:14:28.080 --> 00:14:31.600
And it was gut-wrenching for them, truly gut-wrenching.
00:14:32.159 --> 00:14:35.759
So I would love to understand them a little bit better, Matt.
00:14:35.919 --> 00:14:53.440
One of the things I was wondering as I was reading about them, and I wonder all the time when I read about success, whether business success or in this case military success of these generals, I go back to Annie Duke, the champion poker player.
00:14:54.399 --> 00:14:55.679
And resulting.
00:14:56.159 --> 00:15:03.919
Is it that these are three generals that won for a bunch of different reasons?
00:15:04.000 --> 00:15:04.320
Yep.
00:15:04.480 --> 00:15:10.000
And therefore we go back and study them and say, aha, this is what contributed to success.
00:15:10.320 --> 00:15:11.759
You're asking a wonderful question.
00:15:12.080 --> 00:15:15.840
Is it that they actually contributed to that success?
00:15:16.240 --> 00:15:16.639
That's right.
00:15:16.799 --> 00:15:26.799
The way that I describe it in the book, imagine a poker game and you have two players with equal amounts of chips at the start of the game, at the end of the game, one player has all the chips, the other player has none of the chips.
00:15:27.039 --> 00:15:39.200
You can rewind the clock or rewind the tape on their match, and you can see the moment at which we were at a FET accomplished.
00:15:39.279 --> 00:15:42.080
We know that this particular player is going to win.
00:15:42.399 --> 00:15:44.879
This straw is the one that broke the camel's back.
00:15:45.120 --> 00:15:51.759
We obviously can't run experiments when it comes to military wars like this.
00:15:52.000 --> 00:16:00.080
But what we can do is we can zoom in on a moment where the outcome was still in doubt, right?
00:16:00.399 --> 00:16:05.519
A moment where the war or competition could have gone either way.
00:16:05.759 --> 00:16:13.360
And what we're doing in this book in particular is I'm taking about a one-year period of time.
00:16:13.759 --> 00:16:19.360
And the reason that I take that long period of time is that it eliminates luck from the equation.
00:16:19.679 --> 00:16:28.399
Luck can turn a particular moment or a day, but it can't explain a campaign or a career, right?
00:16:28.879 --> 00:16:44.320
And so when we zoom out to that sort of one-year period, we can identify major strategic judgments that the two commanders are making that bounce off of one another.
00:16:44.480 --> 00:16:46.399
So I'll give you an example.
00:16:46.720 --> 00:16:54.320
Most folks are familiar with the American invasion of Normandy, D-Day, so to speak.
00:16:54.480 --> 00:17:05.119
And actually, there's a movie out right now called Pressure that's about that decision to launch the invasion on that particular day, right?
00:17:06.480 --> 00:17:15.039
What most people miss is that Eisenhower didn't just make one decision and say, yes, let's go today.
00:17:15.839 --> 00:17:21.119
There were a number of decisions surrounding the entirety of the invasion.
00:17:21.359 --> 00:17:29.920
So, for example, many people know that the United States and the Allies made airborne drops on D-Day.
00:17:30.240 --> 00:17:39.039
So there were two American airborne divisions and then a combined Allied division that dropped right behind the German defenders on D-Day.
00:17:39.279 --> 00:17:45.359
The idea being that you basically try to get the defenders to turn around instead of facing the beach, right?
00:17:45.519 --> 00:17:48.000
So they're worried about two different sides.
00:17:48.559 --> 00:18:06.720
A little over a week before the invasion, Eisenhower's air component commander comes to him and says, Sir, we cannot make the airborne drops because I estimate and assess that 70 to 80% of them will be combat ineffective.
00:18:06.799 --> 00:18:08.400
They'll either be killed or wounded.
00:18:08.640 --> 00:18:12.160
So if we do it, we'll just be dropping these guys to slaughter.
00:18:12.799 --> 00:18:24.799
Another option out there was General George Marshall back in Washington, D.C., told Eisenhower, I want you to make the airborne drops two-thirds of the way to Paris.
00:18:25.279 --> 00:18:28.240
Because what we're going to do is we're going to leapfrog ahead.
00:18:28.319 --> 00:18:31.519
We're going to do a deep envelopment of the enemy.
00:18:32.720 --> 00:18:41.519
And then Eisenhower's ground invasion commander said, I need those drops right behind the beach because they're going to have the maximum impact there.
00:18:41.680 --> 00:18:45.599
Those are three different options coming into that funnel, right?
00:18:45.920 --> 00:18:56.960
And Eisenhower, he goes into his own like little command room by himself and he writes down, this is the most soul-wracking decision you could imagine.
00:18:57.119 --> 00:19:07.519
Because if I'm wrong and I drop these three airborne divisions behind the Germans, and 70 to 80% of them are killed or wounded, that's on me, right?
00:19:07.680 --> 00:19:10.079
Everybody's looking to me to make this decision.
00:19:10.319 --> 00:19:12.960
Of course, he made the decision.
00:19:13.279 --> 00:19:14.960
They did make the drops.
00:19:15.200 --> 00:19:19.440
Only about 8% were killed or wounded, and it worked, right?
00:19:20.640 --> 00:19:29.279
And actually, his air component commander wrote to him, Sir, I'm so sorry to have added to your list of concerns.
00:19:29.440 --> 00:19:32.480
I genuinely believe that's the way things would turn out.
00:19:32.799 --> 00:19:39.920
On the other side of the field, Adolf Hitler is deciding how to defend the beach.
00:19:40.720 --> 00:19:45.119
And he has 10 divisions to spend for reserve.
00:19:45.920 --> 00:19:51.440
Erwin Rommel wants all 10 of those divisions placed right on the beach.
00:19:51.920 --> 00:19:57.920
Because by his experience, that's the best place to put his mobile reserve.
00:19:58.079 --> 00:20:08.240
Another German general wants to put the 10 divisions a little bit further back so that they can respond to anywhere on the beach, on northern France, further south, wherever.
00:20:08.960 --> 00:20:12.240
Hitler decides to split the baby into three.
00:20:12.559 --> 00:20:16.160
He takes three divisions and places them far forward, right on the beach.
00:20:16.319 --> 00:20:23.519
Three divisions puts them in the middle, and then hold four divisions in reserve for only his release authority.
00:20:24.079 --> 00:20:27.440
I'm this is just one case that I'm trying to draw out.
00:20:27.759 --> 00:20:41.839
But we can see in hindsight, through looking at dispatches and decisions and memoranda, those two strategic judgments that those competing commanders are making, one is objectively better than the other.
00:20:42.319 --> 00:20:49.759
And we can see in part, not all the way, but in part, why strategic leadership makes a big difference.
00:20:50.400 --> 00:20:53.440
What a beautiful example of it.
00:20:53.599 --> 00:20:56.240
And what a powerful way to describe it, Matt.
00:20:56.400 --> 00:21:00.799
I was mesmerized, just listening to you go through the example.
00:21:00.960 --> 00:21:16.400
Again, the one thing I do wonder as I listen to this, I am in awe of Eisenhower being able to do this, is that we spend$50 plus billion dollars a year on leadership developments.
00:21:16.480 --> 00:21:20.319
And now let's say focusing on judgment as well.
00:21:20.720 --> 00:21:27.519
I still wonder in what ways can that be developed?
00:21:28.000 --> 00:21:36.079
Are there patterns you saw in these experiences that tells you this can be worked on and developed?
00:21:36.240 --> 00:21:37.519
I know they developed it.
00:21:37.759 --> 00:21:38.960
Can we develop it?
00:21:39.279 --> 00:21:39.759
100%.
00:21:40.160 --> 00:21:43.680
So I think there's a cycle in strategic leadership.
00:21:43.920 --> 00:21:46.880
There's like a challenge that emerges, right?
00:21:47.039 --> 00:21:49.440
So you have a challenge that emerges.
00:21:49.680 --> 00:21:52.720
There's a choice that has to be made.
00:21:53.200 --> 00:21:54.799
There's some clash.
00:21:54.960 --> 00:22:01.519
And strategy doesn't matter if you're the New York Yankees and you're facing A little league team.
00:22:01.599 --> 00:22:03.279
It's not a big deal, right?
00:22:03.599 --> 00:22:10.079
Your natural imbalance in talent is going to make all the difference.
00:22:10.319 --> 00:22:20.400
But the reality is when the state, when the two sides are relatively closely matched and the stakes are high, strategic leadership makes a big difference.
00:22:20.640 --> 00:22:24.799
So there's a clash and then there's consequences that result from that.
00:22:25.039 --> 00:22:36.079
And I really feel like while we can't crawl inside the brains of these particular individuals, we can see what their decisions were made.
00:22:36.240 --> 00:22:39.119
We can see the artifacts of their thinking.
00:22:39.279 --> 00:22:48.160
And then we can go back and we can take a look at some of the characteristics that followed along with some of those particular things.
00:22:48.319 --> 00:22:53.599
And one of those is all of them had political instincts, emotional intelligence.
00:22:53.759 --> 00:22:56.400
They really did connect well with others.
00:22:56.640 --> 00:22:59.519
They had the skills to persuade others.
00:22:59.759 --> 00:23:14.079
If you look at their writing, which I think is a direct translation of clarity and thought, Washington, Grant, and Eisenhower were exceptional communicators, and they were very good at that.
00:23:14.319 --> 00:23:23.279
Another one was we focus on degrees and we focus on things that you hang on the wall.
00:23:23.599 --> 00:23:28.079
But all of these were lifelong learners of the first order.
00:23:28.319 --> 00:23:35.920
Washington had this massive library that he kept at Mount Vernon, and he was interested in everything.
00:23:36.079 --> 00:23:38.559
You name it, plants, animals.
00:23:38.960 --> 00:23:41.519
He had books about military strategy.
00:23:41.680 --> 00:23:43.440
He had books about religion.
00:23:43.759 --> 00:23:45.599
He had lots of fiction.
00:23:45.920 --> 00:23:52.559
Grant, the saint, was a lifelong learner and reader, and the same for Eisenhower.
00:23:52.640 --> 00:24:03.599
In fact, actually, mid-career Eisenhower was offered an opportunity to leave the military and to become a journalist because he was such a quality writer.
00:24:03.839 --> 00:24:06.400
They all had childhood challenges.
00:24:06.559 --> 00:24:14.720
They came, all three of them came from what you would describe as not terribly wonderful home environments from when they were growing up.
00:24:14.880 --> 00:24:18.079
And then lastly, they were pretty young.
00:24:18.319 --> 00:24:20.960
They were all in their 40s or early 50s.
00:24:21.359 --> 00:24:28.880
I think that these sort of lists of characteristics, while they don't apply to everybody, I think there are some of those breadcrumbs we can follow.
00:24:29.119 --> 00:24:39.440
Now, looking at all of them, particularly in Washington's case as well, there is an element of politics that they had to maneuver around as well.
00:24:39.680 --> 00:24:45.519
It's one of those things that sometimes people don't really reflect on and recognize with respect to military.
00:24:45.680 --> 00:24:55.519
So when I deal with CEOs, they're talking about the stakeholders, they deal with the board members, all the different ways they're being pulled in different directions.
00:24:55.759 --> 00:25:14.960
One of the things that comes across is how in every one of these instances, these individuals didn't only have to command the military, they had to be involved in a very complex political environment and manage all of those relationships as well.
00:25:15.279 --> 00:25:23.519
So if I'm translating it to business, it's a CEO that's operating with a chairman or a board, and you are doing two things simultaneously.
00:25:23.599 --> 00:25:33.039
It's almost like in nature, an eagle or many hawks that fly have this visual ability to have almost picture in picture.
00:25:33.200 --> 00:25:41.519
So they have both a very focused view of their target on the ground, but they also have this wide angle lens at the very same moment.
00:25:41.759 --> 00:25:52.799
I think what you find in strategic leadership, when it's at its peak, when it's at its best, you have someone who's maximizing for a particular focused objective.
00:25:52.960 --> 00:26:02.480
And for these Supreme Commanders, it's battlefield results and strategic awareness of how they stand in relation to their competitor.
00:26:02.720 --> 00:26:20.559
But in the very same moment, they're also operating in democracies where that emotional intelligence is kicking in and they know that they also have to keep their political partner onside and on board.
00:26:20.720 --> 00:26:24.559
And there's really striking examples of that.
00:26:24.640 --> 00:26:27.279
So I mentioned Washington in New York, right?
00:26:27.519 --> 00:26:31.279
He's completely overwhelmed by this British onslaught.
00:26:31.440 --> 00:26:37.759
That invasion force that the British sent was the largest invasion force the British Empire had ever sent anywhere.
00:26:38.000 --> 00:26:54.880
When they were abandoning the city, the Continental Army, amongst the general officers that Washington is with, most of them want to burn the city of New York, to deny it as a winter haven for the British.
00:26:55.119 --> 00:27:01.440
But the Continental Congress had expressed to Washington that they wanted him to hold New York, right?
00:27:01.680 --> 00:27:10.160
So he's got this tension between military necessity and what politics is driving him to need to do.
00:27:10.880 --> 00:27:24.160
He navigates that tension very, very methodically, but he does eventually leave the city without burning it because he knew how important the political side of the effort was.
00:27:24.400 --> 00:27:37.279
Because the moment that the American public started to see that the Continental Army was not, it might send a chill into Philadelphians that the Continental Army might be burning their city next, for example.
00:27:37.680 --> 00:27:49.599
Like another example is that General Grant is fighting while his political partner, President Abraham Lincoln, his boss, is campaigning for the presidency.
00:27:49.839 --> 00:27:53.759
And he knows that if Lincoln loses the election, the war is over.
00:27:54.799 --> 00:27:57.839
Maybe not in a military sense, but in a political sense.
00:27:58.079 --> 00:28:01.359
So he's also got to navigate those tensions as well.
00:28:01.519 --> 00:28:15.279
So those tensions that exist in every boardroom in America or around the world exist in battlefields and with amongst democracies as well.
00:28:15.519 --> 00:28:29.119
And I feel like that's a very healthy tension in the sense that you could easily imagine a situation where a military leader is exercising judgment without any oversight.
00:28:29.680 --> 00:28:31.359
And that's a dangerous thing.
00:28:31.519 --> 00:28:34.559
That's a dangerous thing because there is no feedback loop.
00:28:34.799 --> 00:28:36.240
There is no feedback loop.
00:28:36.319 --> 00:28:40.400
And the feedback loop on a battlefield is a really painful one.
00:28:40.799 --> 00:28:40.960
Yeah.
00:28:41.119 --> 00:28:53.920
And I wonder whether it was with Hitler's case or Putin's of the world, whether that ends up costing them in the long term because they don't have that feedback loop.
00:28:54.240 --> 00:28:55.039
I definitely agree.
00:28:55.119 --> 00:29:14.720
And you should know, by the way, that's part of the case with Hitler was that he was overruling his military leadership so much and so often that you can easily see that the German high command was just non-existent and was very detrimental to their strategic performance.
00:29:14.960 --> 00:29:26.720
Pound for pound, there have been studies that have shown that in terms of killed, inflicting casualties on the opponent, and then receiving casualties from the adversary.
00:29:26.960 --> 00:29:35.920
The German army in the First World War and the Second World War was the most tactically effective in both wars, and they lost both of them.
00:29:36.160 --> 00:29:42.079
This is the difference between tactics and strategy, very much that lesson to me is really important.
00:29:42.720 --> 00:29:54.079
Another thing that struck me with respect to strategy, and I think they all have this in common, most specifically Washington and Grant, it's almost as if they changed the game.
00:29:54.319 --> 00:30:05.680
The same way organizational strategy, a lot of times, the most effective organizations that break through, they change the game rather than trying to play the old game.
00:30:05.839 --> 00:30:08.480
We'd love to get your thoughts on that as well, Matt.
00:30:08.720 --> 00:30:13.279
This is the thing that Sun Tzu was getting at attack the enemy's strategy.
00:30:13.440 --> 00:30:22.880
I taught for many years at West Point, and Sun Tzu is tough to teach because it's kind of like the buy low, sell high approach to strategy out of course.
00:30:23.200 --> 00:30:38.400
But when you are able to change the contours of the competition in a way that alters the competition in your favor, it's always like to me, it's the one strategy that really does always work.
00:30:38.799 --> 00:30:45.440
And with Washington, he was looking to exhaust an adversary.
00:30:59.440 --> 00:31:00.960
They had more of them.
00:31:01.200 --> 00:31:05.039
On some level, they had so many advantages.
00:31:05.279 --> 00:31:24.000
And there's a moment in time in late 1776 where General Howe is pursuing the Continental Army and makes the decision to suspend his campaign for the winter, just to stop fighting, just to put the brakes on the campaign.
00:31:24.319 --> 00:31:37.279
And Washington's great, to his great credit, he saw this moment in time as an opportunity to counterattack against a force that in almost every way was superior to him.
00:31:37.440 --> 00:31:40.400
Like I said, he had lost battle after battle after battle.
00:31:40.559 --> 00:31:55.279
And with Grant, the way of the civil war was often that you would fight this big battle, and both sides would go to their corners and lick their wounds and recover for a month or two until they assembled on another battlefield.
00:31:55.359 --> 00:32:02.160
And Grant made the decision to say, no, we will make this a continuous fight all the way till the end.
00:32:02.400 --> 00:32:06.880
And Grant didn't do that with great happiness in his heart.
00:32:07.119 --> 00:32:17.839
There are several recorded instances in the historical record where during this campaign that I describe in the book, Grant is he's crying.
00:32:18.000 --> 00:32:21.200
He's not doing it in front of his high command.
00:32:21.279 --> 00:32:22.880
He's not doing it in a public way.
00:32:22.960 --> 00:32:38.079
He's going to his own quarters because he knows that the number of killed and wounded that are being produced by this decision is literally filling Arlington National Cemetery.
00:32:38.319 --> 00:32:46.640
The beginning of Arlington National Cemetery comes from the Union casualties during this particular bloody stretch of the Civil War.
00:32:46.799 --> 00:32:53.680
It's the highest rate of casualties we've ever had as a country, if you include the Confederate casualties, which I do.
00:32:54.000 --> 00:32:59.359
So this is also the sort of the burden of Supreme Command and strategic leadership.
00:32:59.519 --> 00:33:03.920
Like I said, strategy means choices, choices hurt feelings.
00:33:04.000 --> 00:33:04.880
They hurt people.
00:33:05.039 --> 00:33:08.559
And when we're talking about Supreme Command, it literally hurts people.
00:33:08.720 --> 00:33:12.960
And so you can see exactly why this was so difficult.
00:33:13.279 --> 00:33:19.200
It is horribly difficult in any strategic choice, including and most especially what you mentioned.
00:33:19.359 --> 00:33:31.359
One of the things I wonder, Matt, is there's a need for conviction at a certain point when you go through that funnel, the strategic leader owns the decision.
00:33:32.880 --> 00:33:41.119
However, there has to be involvement and input of others in a way that contributes to that.
00:33:41.759 --> 00:33:47.519
How did you see these three generals balancing that?
00:33:48.319 --> 00:33:53.039
No human being exercises strategic leadership in isolation.
00:33:53.200 --> 00:33:58.160
There is no such thing as the solo genius operating independently.
00:33:58.319 --> 00:34:08.559
Even a guy like Elon Musk, who is running six companies simultaneously, everybody understands he's not really running those companies on a daily basis.
00:34:08.800 --> 00:34:11.119
He's got some really talented subordinates.
00:34:11.280 --> 00:34:14.159
So it's the same way with all of these individuals.
00:34:14.400 --> 00:34:17.440
I like to think of the difference between war and warfare.
00:34:17.599 --> 00:34:25.760
There are some parts to war and strategic leadership that are ever present, that are timeless, no matter what period of time you're in.
00:34:25.920 --> 00:34:31.840
Kind of like every conflict that humans have had since one ape hit another ape, slapped another ape.
00:34:31.920 --> 00:34:32.880
We've put helmets on.
00:34:32.960 --> 00:34:39.119
We've worn helmets since for thousands of years because we know that it's important to protect our thinking machine.
00:34:39.360 --> 00:34:41.519
At the same time, it's always changing.
00:34:41.599 --> 00:34:43.360
And that's the warfare part of it.
00:34:43.599 --> 00:34:47.599
Warfare, the impediments of strategic leadership are always changing.
00:34:47.760 --> 00:34:52.079
So General Washington would host councils of war.
00:34:52.320 --> 00:34:55.440
And we have records of these informal gatherings.
00:34:55.679 --> 00:35:02.719
He would bring together his senior leadership for big decisions and then voice, listen to the opinions that they voiced.
00:35:02.960 --> 00:35:04.400
A guy like Ulysses S.
00:35:04.480 --> 00:35:06.239
Grant was even more informal.
00:35:06.639 --> 00:35:11.840
He would write dispatches to trusted friends and advisors like General William T.
00:35:12.000 --> 00:35:14.159
Sherman, William Tecumseh Sherman.
00:35:14.320 --> 00:35:24.320
And then General Eisenhower had a staff that would actually look a lot like what major corporations look still even echo and mimic today.
00:35:24.480 --> 00:35:32.480
Again, most of modern business is built on this military foundation, how it is that we're going to win in a competitive endeavor.
00:35:32.800 --> 00:35:38.719
And they took information in and they bounced ideas out in different ways.
00:35:39.039 --> 00:35:57.119
But again, it comes back to this balance, like this humble confidence that they all had to be able to listen to all these different ideas, to be open to them for a period of time, and then to choose a course of action and stick with it, right?
00:35:57.280 --> 00:35:59.199
To make a decision and stick with it.
00:35:59.280 --> 00:36:02.880
And that's even against withering criticisms.
00:36:03.039 --> 00:36:14.239
General Eisenhower had nuclear disagreements with Winston Churchill about the way the end of the war should be fought.
00:36:14.480 --> 00:36:20.719
And I document a few of those cases when I'm telling the story towards the last third of the book.
00:36:20.960 --> 00:36:28.079
So much so that Eisenhower, a couple of months before D-Day, said, I have made this decision.
00:36:28.239 --> 00:36:31.039
If it does not go my way, I resign.
00:36:31.280 --> 00:36:34.239
And Franklin Delano Roosevelt backed him up.
00:36:34.400 --> 00:36:40.239
The combined chiefs backed him up, and Prime Minister Churchill, the British High Command backed off.
00:36:40.559 --> 00:36:43.360
I do see those same echoes today.
00:36:43.679 --> 00:36:59.760
When a CEO makes a particular decision for a particular course of action, sometimes there's going to be investors, sometimes there's going to be outside opinions that just don't agree, but that's why someone has earned that title.
00:37:00.639 --> 00:37:06.000
That's where the value of judgment that you keep referencing comes into play.
00:37:06.159 --> 00:37:14.559
Now, the other thing that I saw, Matt, they have in common that you also highlight is their deep understanding of people.
00:37:15.039 --> 00:37:22.159
And I wonder in what way did their understanding of people impact their strategic decision making?
00:37:22.719 --> 00:37:45.199
Yeah, I think that with a guy like Eisenhower, for example, when you look at the sum total of his high command, the staff that he was working with, this was in a day and an age where it still took quite a bit of time to travel and they didn't have push-button instant communication like we do.
00:37:45.519 --> 00:37:54.639
And he had to work on a staff and with allies from all across the English-speaking world and beyond.
00:37:54.880 --> 00:38:09.519
They also had to, for example, incorporate the ideas and the sentiments from the free French forces that had fled France after the fall and the Vichy government took over.
00:38:09.840 --> 00:38:17.039
With a guy like George Washington took command of an ad hoc pickup fighting force.
00:38:17.280 --> 00:38:23.840
And he literally would have to go to different state governors to ask them for troops.
00:38:24.079 --> 00:38:40.800
And so he would have to bank, borrow, and steal, just like sometimes I can imagine strategic leaders be they in education or the clergy, the business community, or in politics, you don't always get the resources that you want from the get-go.
00:38:40.960 --> 00:38:50.880
So you have to work with, with and through a system of other people and get their buy-in, get their endorsement, get their support, win it, persuade them.
00:38:51.119 --> 00:39:00.400
There's this sort of simple notion about wearing a uniform and stars that says that people just snap to and do whatever you want when you want.
00:39:00.559 --> 00:39:03.519
And that's not definitely not always the case.
00:39:03.840 --> 00:39:06.639
One of the things that General Ulysses S.
00:39:06.800 --> 00:39:09.760
Grant was proudest of during the U.S.
00:39:09.840 --> 00:39:15.760
Civil War was that he never went back to Lincoln and asked for more troops.
00:39:16.079 --> 00:39:23.519
He recognized that the resources he had, the war effort was stretched thin as it could be.
00:39:23.760 --> 00:39:26.320
And he said, I will fight with what I have.
00:39:26.559 --> 00:39:31.840
I think there's something to working within the system of constraints that you have.
00:39:32.000 --> 00:39:40.559
I think there's a book out right now, David Epstein, Inside the Box, that the constraints you live with can actually be freeing in many different ways.
00:39:40.719 --> 00:39:43.679
So I think really highly of strategic leaders that do that.
00:39:43.760 --> 00:39:46.559
And I think we have three examples of folks that did that in this book.
00:39:46.880 --> 00:40:12.079
Now, one of the things I wonder, Matt, is as we go into this world of AI, where I'm sure you've played around with different AIs, character AI, where you can, in essence, have your board of advisors, you can have George Washington and Ulysses Grant and Eisenhower give you their best judgment on what you should do or shouldn't do.
00:40:12.400 --> 00:40:27.119
I wonder how you see that impacting the kind of judgment it takes for strategic leadership moving forward when we have access to quote unquote the judgment and insights of any of these characters.
00:40:27.599 --> 00:40:38.239
I think that AI is an exceptional tool for thinking, for bouncing ideas off of, and it can expand, it can amplify intelligence.
00:40:38.400 --> 00:40:42.960
That, like to me, that's the way that it can and should and must be used.
00:40:43.280 --> 00:40:46.719
Where I think that it has a limitation is that it doesn't come with a heartbeat.
00:40:46.800 --> 00:40:47.920
It doesn't come with a gut.
00:40:48.000 --> 00:40:58.639
And I think that when we're talking about strategic leadership, again, we need strategic leadership when the competition is close run.
00:40:59.199 --> 00:41:03.199
It's not the Yankees and the Little League, and the stakes are high.
00:41:03.360 --> 00:41:06.480
So what happens, the outcome matters, right?
00:41:06.960 --> 00:41:15.679
And I think when we have those kinds of high consequence judgments that need to be made, they need to become attached to a heartbeat.
00:41:15.920 --> 00:41:21.280
Like I know that strategic leadership extends far beyond a battlefield.
00:41:21.440 --> 00:41:33.119
We need it in our boardrooms, we need it in our dugouts, we need it on sports fields, we need it in our principals and our teachers that are guiding the future of our education.
00:41:33.360 --> 00:41:51.599
When the consequence, or in medicine, for example, I don't think when the consequences are so high, we can give this all the way over to the machines, even if the machines provide us with a really powerful amplification and an ability to see around corners that I don't think we've had before.
00:41:52.159 --> 00:42:00.880
So it is important for us to wrestle with these ideas, to understand them, to own them, and to then develop our own judgment as a result.
00:42:01.199 --> 00:42:03.039
Yeah, I can't emphasize enough.
00:42:03.280 --> 00:42:06.639
General Brant said this: no two wars are alike.
00:42:06.800 --> 00:42:08.400
No two competitions are alike.
00:42:08.559 --> 00:42:11.360
Every competition that we step our foot, it's like a river.
00:42:11.440 --> 00:42:14.320
You can never step into the same river twice, right?
00:42:14.480 --> 00:42:17.840
You can never step into two competitions that are the exact same.
00:42:18.000 --> 00:42:23.920
And so that's where I think human creativity and adaptability really matter.
00:42:24.159 --> 00:42:28.239
I really believe firmly there is no strategic silver bullet.
00:42:28.400 --> 00:42:38.079
But I think if we look hard enough, and I think we find it in the traces of these Supreme Commanders thinking, there is some strategic buckshot.
00:42:38.159 --> 00:42:42.159
And we can learn to pick that up and use it, put it in and fire it for ourselves.
00:42:42.400 --> 00:42:42.719
100%.
00:42:43.199 --> 00:42:49.039
I do find that just thinking through some of these things can be of great value.
00:42:49.360 --> 00:43:02.159
Any kind of strategic leader, I think, is going to benefit from, I called it in the book, getting under Napoleon's hat, crawling into Napoleon's brain for a moment, and trying to see the world the way that he did.
00:43:02.480 --> 00:43:06.960
And I think we're the better for it the more that we do things like that.
00:43:07.360 --> 00:43:11.440
And with beautiful storytelling, it becomes more pleasant doing that as well.
00:43:11.599 --> 00:43:13.840
And you do that with the book, Matt.
00:43:14.000 --> 00:43:19.199
So for the audience, both to follow your work and your book, where would you send them to?
00:43:19.519 --> 00:43:22.800
It's as simple as go to who winswars.com.
00:43:23.039 --> 00:43:24.639
Who winswars.com.
00:43:24.800 --> 00:43:28.960
The book is distributed by Simon and Schuster and it's published by Matt Holt Books.
00:43:29.280 --> 00:43:35.599
And then if you go to whowinswars.com, you'll also get to my author website, that kind of thing.
00:43:35.760 --> 00:43:39.840
And I'd very much look forward to bumping into people and hearing feedback on the book.
00:43:40.320 --> 00:43:46.239
Appreciate the conversation, the magnificent storytelling in the book and in the episode as well.
00:43:46.559 --> 00:43:53.519
Who wins Wars Lessons in Leadership, Power, and Supreme Command from Washington, Grant, and Eisenhower.
00:43:53.679 --> 00:43:55.599
Thank you so much, Matt Kavanaugh.
00:43:56.239 --> 00:43:57.119
This is fantastic.
00:43:57.280 --> 00:43:58.159
Thank you so much.
00:43:58.320 --> 00:44:01.119
I really appreciate the time and I look forward to listening some more.
00:44:02.639 --> 00:44:06.800
You have been listening to Partnering Leadership with your host, Mahan Tavakoli.
00:44:07.440 --> 00:44:23.039
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00:44:23.280 --> 00:44:29.360
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