Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead By Bing West & Jim Mattis

Read this post on my blog here.

I recently finished reading Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead by Jim Mattis and Bing West. You may recognize Mattis as a former Secretary of Defense who developed notoriety during the Iraq war and subsequent dealings with the military.

 To be clear, this decidedly not a political book. In Call Sign Chaos, you won’t find more than a veiled sentence or two about our current government. Instead, what you will find is a practical treatise on leadership and life philosophy (one of Mattis’ nicknames is Warrior Monk, after all).

With so many lessons available in this book, I decided it would be more useful to highlight my favorite quotes and teachings given to us by Mattis and West. These quotes are not just applicable in the context of war; they can help any Firm Partner, CEO, or small project leader at work.

Now back to studying for the bar exam….

“…conviction. This is harder and deeper than physical courage. Your peers are the first to know what you will stand for and, more important, what you won’t stand for. Your troops catch on fast. State your flat-ass rules and stick to them. They shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. At the same time, leaven your professional passion with personal humility and compassion for your troops. Remember: As an officer, you need to win only one battle—for the hearts of your troops. Win their hearts and they will win the fights. Competence, caring, and conviction combine to form a fundamental element—shaping the fighting spirit of your troops. Leadership means reaching the souls of your troops, instilling a sense of commitment and purpose in the face of challenges so severe that they cannot be put into words.”

“Partial commitment changes everything—it reduces the sense that the mission comes first. From my first days, I had been taught that the Marines were satisfied only with 100 percent commitment from us and were completely dissatisfied with 99 percent. You can’t have an elite organization if you look the other way when someone craps out on you.”

“[Aim for] brilliance in the basics”

“General Ulysses S. Grant, who knew a thing or two about war, had criteria for leaders, which boiled down to humility; toughness of character, so one is able to take shocks in stride; and the single-mindedness to remain unyielding when all is flying apart but enough mental agility to adapt when their approach is not working.”

“Reading is an honor and a gift from a warrior or historian who—a decade or a thousand decades ago—set aside time to write. He distilled a lifetime of campaigning in order to have a “conversation” with you.”

“Reading sheds light on the dark path ahead. By traveling into the past, I enhance my grasp of the present.”

“If a commander expects subordinates to seize fleeting opportunities under stress, his organization must reward this behavior in all facets of training, promoting, and commending. More important, he must be tolerant of mistakes. If the risk takers are punished, then you will retain in your ranks only the risk averse.”

”If it was an easy decision with good options, that decision had already been made.”

“When you are in command, there is always the next decision waiting to be made. You don’t have time to pace back and forth like Hamlet, zigzagging one way and the other. You do your best and live with the consequences. A commander has to compartmentalize his emotions and remain focused on the mission. You must decide, act, and move on.”

“Attitudes are caught, not taught.”

“I took him aside—praise in public, criticize in private—before ripping into him.”

“Regardless of rank or occupation, I believe that all leaders should be coaches at heart. For me, “player-coach” aptly describes the role of a combat leader, or any real leader.”

“If you don’t like problems, stay out of leadership. Smooth sailing teaches nothing…”

“Dynamite in the hands of a child,” Winston Churchill wrote, “is not more dangerous than a strong policy weakly carried out.”

“You must unleash initiative rather than suffocate it.”

“Allowing bad processes to stump good people is intolerable.”