Leadership Runs Deep
Bob Lutz, the larger-than-life automobile executive and business leader, shared an interesting story to close the chapter titled "Of Management Styles" in his new book Car Guys vs. Bean Counters
While Lutz was in graduate school of business at UC Berkeley, he was a Douglas A-4 pilot in Marine Attack Squadron 133, a reserve unit flying out of Naval Air Station Alameda.
His narrative starts here:
Rumor had it that our new commanding officer was a modest man. He was already older and had received his commission in World War II, on the battlefield.
He had no higher education. And to top it off, his "civilian" occupation was "Hoseman Number 2" at the San Francisco Fire Department. He had almost no jet time!
The lieutenants and captains in the squadron, all ambitious graduate students at Cal and Stanford, were shocked: the Marine Corps was giving us an uneducated, elderly fireman as a leader.
At the change-of-command ceremony we discovered that our new CO, Art Bauer, was also of modest stature. Truly, an uninspiring sight.
After the formal ceremony, Lt. Col. Art Bauer called the twenty-odd junior officers together and gave the following talk, as I remember it:
Gentlemen, I don't know why the Corps chose me to lead this unit, but chose me they did, and we are all going to make the most of it.
I know my education is far below yours, and my civilian profession, although I'm proud of what I do, is humble.
All of you have recent active-duty experience, and all of you are more skilled pilots and know more about today's Marine Corps than I'll ever know.
So, I'm not going to run this squadron. You each have your squadron roles, be it Intelligence Officer, Operations Officer, Safety Officer, Maintenance Officer or Administration.
I want and expect you to each do your jobs; talk to each other, be a team, and help each other. I'm going to stay out of your way, because you're all more capable than this old officer.
I don't expect you to respect me for my flying ability, because it's not at your level. But I do want and demand your support and respect, not for me, but for the uniform I wear and the rank that's on it.
You, gentlemen, not I, are going to run this squadron, and I don't want you to let me down.
The doubts and secret snickering soon stopped.
Within eighteen months, VMA-133, under command of Art Bauer, was rated number one reserve squadron in the Marine Corps Reserve, with the highest operational readiness, the highest scores in Inspector General inspections, and the highest scores in ordinance delivery.
Those responsible for senior officer selection in the Marine Corps must have been as surprised as we were that this modest, self-effacing man, of limited skills but the right leadership touch, had attained such a level of success.
Maybe they knew that a leader like Art Bauer was exactly what this squadron of self-assured and cocky aspiring doctors, lawyers, and business leaders needed.
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This message carries value to some of our fire service leaders: Micromanagement is not an effective technique
Mike "FossilMedic" Ward
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Sameness
Comments OffWhat's Past is Prologue
In last week’s post (HERE) I compared firefighting and the tactics and casualties of the First World War as a means of discussing firefighter fatalities which drew the ire of at least one reader who responded that it was "pretentious", a choice of words that got me thinking, which is always a dangerous thing.
What was interesting was not that he found the comparison wrong or inappropriate (the similarities between firefighting and combat are so numerous as to speak for themselves) but rather that the idea of making a comparison would be controversial in the first place. We may like to define ourselves by our perceived differences, both personal and professional, but the truth is that our lives are defined by our sameness.
Humans are a species, and, as such, we have only cosmetic variations that in the context of real differences leave us virtually identical. Other differences are cultural or tribal and are patterns of behavior that can be altered, changed, learned or forgotten. Various religions are also a form of cultural behavior that are themselves hotly debated for their differences but that are often very similar as they mostly lay claim to a higher power to guide mortal life or give promise of an afterlife, or both. Our tribes, cultures and religions may give us meaning and a sense of belonging in life but even in that they accomplish a purpose that is essentially identical. It turns out that we all need the same things.
Human motivation is also the same—it is about the challenge of the scarcity of resources. For all of human time we have made decisions simple and complex, large and small, mundane and earth-shattering over the allocation of resources. The earliest peoples moved from place to place in search of life sustaining resources and adapted to various climates because of food, water and shelter. Expanding populations forced people into new areas and the "stronger" tribe forced the weaker tribes to move on to other places. All conflicts stem from, in one way or another, the belief in the need to control resources.
Pick any period and any place and the subtext for all activity is the complex challenge of people gaining control over the resources that are relevant in their time. Food, water, land, precious metals, and energy are the universal motivators for human behavior because they support life and represent power and wealth.
Our sense of modernity makes us view our predecessors as fundamentally different and also smugly translates into an undue sense of wisdom. Surely we must be smarter and better because of our mastery of electricity, gravity and incipient artificial intelligence. We shouldn’t feel guilty about that, though, as they thought the same about their first fire, the wheel, and the steam engine. Even in our smugness we are the same as our ancient ancestors though we can "tweet" to one another about our (false) feelings of superiority.
Viewed in the context of human motivation and similarity over all of history, the complexity of modern life and our uniqueness is a myth. Each and every generation fights the same battles and has the same inflated notion of importance and the sense that "now" is the special time. It isn’t. It’s just happens to be our time to make of it what we will. Which is a very long-winded way of saying that it’s not pretentious to make a comparison—it’s pretentious not to make one because in the words of the Bard, "What’s past is prologue."
………. Eric Lamar
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