Three lessons from a week with the Australian Army.
Holly Ransom
Speaker, Moderator & EmCee | Leadership Development Specialist | Fulbright Scholar, Harvard Kennedy School Class of '21 |
In 2012 I felt paralysed, as the world’s youngest President of a Rotary Club I found myself leading a transformation designed to attract young people to Rotary and reverse the increasingly “pale, male and stale” membership base. But the organisation was incredibly hierarchical, conservative and political and I was struggling to make change stick.
I went searching for people who could help me understand how I could be a more effective leader in these sorts of contexts and stumbled upon the phenomenal success the Australian Army Chief, Lieutenant-General Morrison, was having in transforming the army’s culture and driving diversity. I reached out to him to see if he’d be willing to share his insights with me and, such is the nature of the man, he invited me for lunch and was just as eager to learn from me as I was from him.
Over the years since, the conversations I’ve had with Lt-General Morrison have provided me with leadership, decision-making and life lessons that I continually find myself reflecting on and drawing upon, and my respect and admiration for this exceptional leader has only deepened.
I’ve been fortunate that our conversations have expanded in to opportunities for me to work with the Army in support of their leadership development and diversity objectives. Key to being able to do this effectively is having an appreciation for the operating environment in which our service men and women work, so this June I was invited to pack my backpack for a week and join the 7th Brigade in remote North Queensland during one of their largest combat exercises.
I’ve always been fascinated by the military as a microcosm in which to consider leadership, decision-making, strategy and alongside all of the organisational learnings I took from my time with the army I wanted to share the 3 major lessons from the battle field that we can all learn from.
1. Prepare so you can adapt
“The plan only lasts as far as the start of the battle”, one of the captains informed me as he talked me through the extensive, multi-week planning process that proceeds an operational drill, “we are rigorous in our preparation, and in our anticipation of the enemy’s tactics, so that we can be adaptive moment-to-moment”.
There’s something about extensive preparation and planning that doesn’t seem to go hand-in-hand with the way that we naturally think about adaptiveness; the idea of innovating in the moment is more likely to conjure an image of someone thinking quickly on their feet or following an instinctive gut reaction. That, according to the military leaders I met with, is laziness, not adaptiveness, and when lives are on the line there’s no room for laziness.
Weeks before the first tent peg is put in the battlefield HQ they’re prepping by asking themselves the key questions: what do we need to do? What have I got to do it with? What are my enemy trying to do? What are they trying to do with it? From there there’s a sliding scale of optionality you can begin to generate that ranges from your enemies most likely strategy to their most deadly- and you begin to understand what the tell-tale signs will look like of any particular course of action.
When the first artillery fire begins you’re forging ahead with your approved strategy but as circumstances change (have you ever had a project that’s actually gone to script?!) you’re able to make informed assessments of what’s happening and respond accordingly.
Doing the prep work means you’re responsive, not reactive. It makes me think of an old NIKE poster I have on my wall that’s got a 100m sprint winner crossing the line triumphantly and has written underneath “All men are created equal, some work harder in pre-season”.
So have you put in the pre-season to mean you come out on top, no matter what the circumstances?
2. Don’t throw good resources after bad
One of the first questions I remember asking Lieutenant-General Morrison about was what the most difficult element of leading on the battlefield was. He went on to describe for me battle situations where the way events had transpired meant that significant time, resources, and (in some instances) lives had been sacrificed in pursuit of an objective. “The hardest thing as a leader in these situations is ensuring you don’t throw good resources after bad”.
I’ve thought about and leant on this lesson a lot. What the Chief was talking about is our propensity to get too close to a situation or to become emotionally invested in a situation, to the point where it clouds our judgment as to the best course of action. “Maintaining objectivity is paramount”, he said.
I’ve watched good resources be thrown after bad a lot in corporate life- leaders relentlessly pursue a strategy because x number of millions, and scores of hours, have already been invested and they’re not leaving without a win. Don’t get me wrong, I love the passion and commitment, but (as Morrison’s advice suggests) beware blinkered thinking… sometimes you’ve got to sink a strategy (or write some deadweight off the balance sheet) or pivot in a new direction to deliver on your desired objective.
Catch yourself as you face a situation for the third or fourth time, or approaching yet another month of chasing down a result and just consider ‘is this objectively the right approach?’
3. Readying, Ready, Reset
Combat forces rotate through one of three 12-month phases: readying, ready and reset. The army rotates our three infantry brigades through these phases so that any one time we have a brigade whose readying for battle, one that’s ready for immediate deployment and another that’s resting off the back of their operational duties. The three phases have very different rhythms, expectations and roles and the theory is steeped in the theory of high performance. The key insight: no one can sustain peak performance indefinitely and in order to ensure we achieve the results we’re after we need to manage our energy, work load and duties according. Our bodies and minds require the opportunity to rest and recharge just as much as they need to be stretched and challenged to reach the limits of their capabilities.
One of the big lessons for me was that understanding that if you were to be ‘ready’ you couldn’t be training like you were ‘readying’. When I thought about the way I approach both my sporting training and my work schedule I realised that quite often I am pushing myself to hit new levels of performance during phases where what I’m trying to achieve would actually be better served by structuring my time and energy to sustain high performance. For example, the reason you taper in preparation for a marathon or ironman event is because if you continue to push your body as you did at the 2 month out mark on the eve of the race, you’ll find when push comes to shove your body doesn’t have the energy in the tank to achieve the goal you’re focused on. The 3Rs have prompted me to think differently about time and energy management.
Are you structuring your life to unlock and sustain high performance?
** Many thanks to Lieutenant-General Morrison, Bridgadier Daniel and to so many of our servicemen and women for providing me with such open access to your training drills and insights in to how you work and lead. It has been a privilege to learn from you.
Host of Resilience Rocks Sales Podcast | Author of How to be Resilient | Founder at Academy of Resilience | Resilience Keynote Speaker
9 年Fantastic insights Holly! Always gain so much from you sharing your experiences in these posts.
Chief Awakening Officer at Awake Academy | 7x World Champion Surfer | Champion of Mental Health | Keynote Speaker | Awakening people to live a life by design
9 年My Goodness Holly. I feel like you have just accurately summarised the last 20 years of my surfing, charity and professional life in one blog. Amazing life lessons, superbly shared and tangible tips that we can all adhere to. Thanks for sharing!
Director of Software Engineering
9 年It's interesting that work demands 100% peak performance at all times, when the military, and elite athletes train to peak, and then rest. <3 it
Strategic communications, culture & reputation consultant | Board Chair | Mentor & coach
9 年Good, down-to-earth observations, Holly Ransom. Maybe we all need to get out of the corporate trenches (and into the real ones?) to remember some perennial truths. Looking forward to hosting Lt Gen Morrison at Women in Multinationals this year.
CEO Committee for Perth I Connector I Influencer I Stakeholder Manager I Board Director
9 年Such energy!!