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PART ONE
The Eight Universal Laws of Heroic Leadership
In combat, life is hard: terrible hazards, lousy working conditions, great uncertainty. Nonetheless, battle leaders achieve amazing results by following these eight principles:
⢠Maintain absolute integrity.
⢠Know your stuff.
⢠Declare your expectations.
⢠Show uncommon commitment.
⢠Expect positive results.
⢠Take care of your people.
⢠Put duty before self.
⢠Get out in front.
These principles work in civilian life as well as in combat. Whether you are the CEO of a major corporation or the coach of a kidsâ ball team, they are the foundation of Heroic Leadership.
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CHAPTER 1
Maintain Absolute Integrity
What quality is most universally prized among those who lead others under demanding circumstances in combat, or in business? In simple terms, itâs integrity: adherence to a set of values that incorporate honesty and freedom from deception. But integrity is more than honesty. It means doing the right thing regardless of circumstances or inconvenience to the leader or the organization. Our leaders and teachers sometimes waver, as General Colin Powell (who fought there) says of Vietnam: âOur senior officers knew the war was going badly. Yet they bowed to groupthink pressure and kept up pretenses, the phony measure of body counts, the comforting illusion of secure hamlets, the inflated progress reports. As a corporate entity, the military failed to talk straight to its political superiors or to itself.â1
Far better that they and we listen to men of integrity such as Thomas Jefferson, who gave the following warning: âHe who permits himself to tell a lie often finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions.â2
Major Clay McCutchan was an air commando and pilot of an AC-130 gunship in the Air Force Reserve. Extensively modified with side-firing guns and the latest acquisition electronics, the AC-130 was a formidable aircraft. It could loiter for long periods of time until needed. When called upon, it could provide unparalleled firepower to destroy most targets in areas where the ground defenses were not too heavy.
In December 1989, McCutchan and his crew were one of two Air Force Reserve crews who volunteered to relieve an active duty AC-130 crew assigned to Panama during the Christmas holidays. They had done this three times before. What McCutchan and others didnât know was that the decision to invade Panama and capture dictator Manuel Noriega had been made a few days earlier by President Ronald Reagan. The invasion, called Operation Just Cause, was set to begin the night of December 19, 1989, only two days after McCutchanâs arrival.
The objectives of Operation Just Cause were to capture Noriega and return him to the United States to stand trial on drug charges. The Air Commandosâor Air Force Special Operations, as it was now calledâwere to spearhead the invasion. Active-duty gunship crews had practiced for months at firing at and destroying mock-ups of certain predesignated targets. Since McCutchanâs crew had not participated in this training, they were given a different mission. His crew was put on standby alert to guard Howard Air Force Base in the Canal Zone and the Panama Canal itself, in case it came under attack.
When no attack against the base came, they were ordered into the air to respond, if called upon, to help friendly troops fighting on the ground. For some time they flew around without a specific assignment. At length they were sent to another airfield to aid a group of civilians who had been immobilized by a sniper. A few rounds from their 40mm guns took care of that problem. Again they flew around, waiting for a new job. Finally, McCutchan and his crew were ordered to attack three enemy armored cars along the Fort Amador Causeway. They made radio contact with the Forward Air Controller (FAC) on the ground right away. (The FACâs job is to control all friendly air strikes in his assigned area.) After they had located the armored cars, the controller told them, âYouâre cleared to take them out.â
As McCutchan prepared to fire, his sensor operator and fire-control officer (FCO) spotted thirty to forty troops coming out of the jungle. The FCO called the controller on the ground and told him about the arrival of these new forces. âTake them out too; theyâre not ours,â said the controller. In the AC-130A that McCutchan flew, the pilot fired the guns using a thumb trigger. As his thumb began to itch in readiness, his crew studied the situation closely using special sensors.3 The more they looked, the more convinced they became that these new troops were Americans. McCutchan had just positioned his airplane for the attack, when one of his crew stopped him: âDonât fire, they may be friendly!â
McCutchan took his thumb off the trigger. After talking it over with his crew, he called the FAC on the ground again and told him that they had identified the troops with the vehicles as possibly American.
âNegative, negative, they are not friendlies. They are enemy, and you are cleared to fire,â the controller responded, the frustration clear in his voice. By now the FAC was excited. âShoot, shoot, shoot,â he intoned.
McCutchan called his command post back at Howard Air Force Base and briefed them on the situation. He asked for positive confirmation before firing. After several minutes the command post duty officer came back with a decision. âThese are confirmed enemy. You are ordered to fire.â
Now McCutchanâs actions were no longer discretionary. He had been given a direct order. He had also been given the supreme test of integrity. He and his crew believed that the troops near the enemy vehicles were friendly. Usually the FAC on the ground had a much better picture of what was going on. But with the AC-130âs sophisticated equipment, the crew might be in a better position to judge whether the troops were friendlies or enemies. âOur forces were not being fired on by these vehicles or these troops, and they were not an immediate threat to anyone,â reasoned McCutchan. âIf they were enemy and they lived, it would make little difference to the war. But if they were friendly and we killed them, we could never bring them back to life.â
Clay McCutchan told the controller he was leaving the area to return to base. He was not going to fire. âI was convinced I was going to get court-martialed because three times I disobeyed a direct order to fire,â he told me. The commander met them as they landed at dawn. âYouâre either a hero or in a lot of trouble,â he told McCutchan.
McCutchan spent a sleepless morning despite his fatigue. He had been up all night and in the air almost six hours. By noon the whole story came down from higher headquarters. Contact had been made with the troops surrounding the vehicles. McCutchan and his crew had been right: the troops were American Special Operations troops who had captured the enemy armored vehicles. They had been unsuccessful in contacting anyone by radio to identify themselves. McCutchan and the others on his crew were awarded medals for having the moral courageâthe integrityânot to fire, even when ordered to do so.
Typical of an outstanding leader of integrity, McCutchan gave full credit to those he led. âMy crew was very experienced. I was only an average pilot, but my copilot had 1,500 hours of combat in Vietnam. All of my officers and noncommissioned officers were very experienced and absolutely top-notch. It was my sole responsibility to make this decision, but I could not have made the decision I did if I did not trust them completely.â4
McCutchan may or may not have been an average pilot. But the Air Force recognized that he was a far-above-average leaderâa leader of integrity. Some years later Clay McCutchan became a major general.
Lose Your Integrity, Lose Your Career
The Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, North Carolina, conducted a groundbreaking study to identify traits or behaviors associated with eventual success or failure of top executives. 5 The researchers surveyed top managers and senior human resource executives. They gathered descriptions of twenty-one junior managers who had advanced into the ranks of middle or top management but had failed to perform successfully. These executives had been on the fast track, but they had all derailed. They were fired, opted for early retirement, or simply were never promoted again.
The researchers also obtained descriptions of twenty managers who had made it all the way to the top, and analyzed the two sets of descriptions to identify the similarities and differences between the failed and successful managers. Then they analyzed the extent to which various flaws were likely to derail a promising career. One major difference they uncovered was that those managers who were extremely successful were much more likely to have demonstrated strong integrity. Derailed managers were far more likely to have advanced their own careers at the expense of others. They were more likely to have betrayed a trust or broken a promise. An example given in the study was that of an executive who didnât implement a decision as promised. This caused conflicts and affected four levels of frustrated executives below him. These managersâ failure didnât require major lapses in integrity of the sort that emerged at Enron or that contributed to the financial crisis of 2008 or that involved out-and-out fraud. Their slips were very basic. Yet they terminated many successful careers. Integrity is a fundamental law of Heroic Leadership in and out of the military.
No Cut-Off Date, No Limit Price
If you say something, make certain it is the exact truth. If you later realize you have misspoken, correct yourself. If you say you will do something, make certain you do it, no matter what.
Leonard Roberts became CEO of Arbyâs at a time when the business was doing very poorly. He turned the corporation around when sales had been falling 10 to 15 percent a year. He did this by promising service and support to Arbyâs franchisees with help and money. He delivered, and the franchisees supported him in turn. Sales soared.
Roberts was appointed to the board of directors. The first meeting he attended lasted fifteen minutes. The board was simply a rubber stamp for the owner. Eager for more profits, Arbyâs owner threatened to withdraw the help Roberts had given the franchisees. Moreover, bonuses earned by Robertsâs staff would not be paid. Roberts immediately resigned from the board. The owner retaliated by firing Roberts for supporting the franchisees. But Robertsâs sacrifice was not in vain. The integrity that he showed benefited the organization he left behind.6
Roberts went right into another situation calling for absolute integrity and Heroic Leadership. He was offered the position of chairman and CEO of Shoneyâs, a chain of two thousand restaurants headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee. The situation looked right, so Roberts accepted the offer. Only afterward did he learn that Shoneyâs was the subject of the largest racial discrimination lawsuit in history. Questioned by the Wall Street Journal, Roberts promised that the suit would be settled without long-term impact on the company. Unfortunately, this was more easily said than done. The case was not some kind of misunderstanding: the policy of the chairman was not to hire African-Americans. Moreover, he fired any restaurant manager who did! âThe settlement of that suit was the thing I am most proud of in my life,â says Len Roberts. âThe former chairman agreed to pay up and settle. This saved the company. But I had to agree to resign after he did so. This was my second time out of work in almost as many years. My stand on integrity was getting kind of hard on my wife and kids. However, I knew it had to be done. There was no other way.â
Roberts became the CEO of RadioShack after leaving Shoneyâs. A year after that he took on the additional job as CEO of the entire Tandy Corporation. This began a ten-year career of success with many honors. Brandweek magazine even named him Retail Marketer of the Year. Roberts says, âYou cannot fake itâyou must stand up for what is right regardless. You cannot maintain your integrity until it hurts your pocketbook or risks your job. You cannot maintain your integrity 90 percent and be a successful leaderâitâs got to be 100 percent.â7
Pursue the âHarder Rightâ
As a young Air Force lieutenant in 1960 I was a new navigator on a B-52 crew. Among my responsibilities were two air-to-ground âcruiseâ missiles nicknamed âHound Dogs.â The missiles were also new and still had many problems that hadnât yet been solved; during simulated launch and impact they frequently didnât hit the target. We couldnât actually launch these highly sophisticated missiles. That would have cost tens of millions of dollars each in todayâs money. Instead, on practice runs I spent several hours programming the missiles and updating them with my navigational data so that their computers knew where they were within feet.
When we were about fifteen minutes from the target, I put the missile into a simulated launch mode. The pilots followed a special needle indicator on their consoles. If the needle turned right, the pilots turned the aircraft right; if the needle turned left, they turned the aircraft left. When they did this, the aircraft followed a course to the target according to information in the missileâs inertial guidance system. A few seconds from the target the radar navigator turned on a tone signal. On the ground, a Ground Control Intercept (GCI) site tracked the aircraft on radar. At the point where the missile would have dived into its target, the missile automatically interrupted the tone signal. The course the missile would have taken to the ground once it started its final dive was based on predetermined factors. So when the tone signal stopped, the GCI site, plotting the aircraftâs radar track and knowing the missileâs ballistics, could easily calculate where the missile would have hit if it had actually been launched. The missileâs accuracy generally depended on the accuracy of the information the navigator gave its computer during programming. These practice runs had a major impact on the crewsâ careers. Crews that got good scores, got promoted. Those that did not were held back.
My crewmates were all far more experienced than I was. My aircraft commander was a lieutenant colonel. All the other officers were senior. All were veterans of World War II or Korea; some, of both wars. We had never flown with missiles. One day, while we were on seven-day alert, the aircraft commander called the crew together. âWe have missiles for the first time,â he said. âI donât want to discuss it. Weâre going to cheat to make sure we get good scores. All I want to know is how weâre going to do it.â
I was shocked speechless. This went against everything I had been taught at West Point or in my limited time in the Air Force. The radar navigator spoke up. â...
