Tactical Leadership Quotes

Your behavior reflects your actual purposes.

What people resist is not change per se, but loss.

Worry not that your child listens to you; worry most that they watch you.

Gentlemen, we must know exactly how many enemy soldiers are facing us.

I have had the joy of seeing him constantly putting himself and his companions through countless drills and possible tactical situations, which will result in instant action by the warriors without the necessity of giving them orders because every man in his units will know what he must do and when he must do it.

Yesterday's adaptations are today's routines.

If you find what you do each day seems to have no link to any higher purpose, you probably want to rethink what you're doing.

So how can a leader become great if they lack the natural characteristics necessary to lead? The answer is simple: a good leader builds a great team that counterbalances their weaknesses.

7 keys to getting more things done: 1 start 2 dont make excuses 3 celebrate small steps 4 ignore critics 5 be consistent 6 be open 7 stay positive

Seven Ways To Get Ahead in Business: 1. Be forward thinking 2. Be inventive, and daring 3. Do the right thing 4. Be honest and straight forward 5. Be willing to change, to learn, to grow 6. Work hard and be yourself 7. Lead by example

Your silence creates a vacuum for others to fill The key is to stay present and keep listening. The silence of holding steady is different from the silence of holding back.

We need serious strategic and tactical thinking about how to create new models of leadership and forge the kind of persons to actualize these models.

The activity of interpreting might be understood as listening for the 'song beneath the words.

Knowing how the environment is pulling your strings and playing you is critical to making responsive rather than reactive moves.

The improvisational ability to lead adaptively relies on responding to the present situation rather than importing the past into the present and laying it on the current situation like an imperfect template.

For me the starting point for everything - before strategy, tactics, theories, managing, organizing, philosophy, methodology, talent, or experience - is work ethic.

Strategy is something that emerges from reality, while tactics might be chosen.

Stay diagnostic even as you take action.

Every organisation, not just business, needs 1 core competence: Tactical execution

Our best-laid plans are often our worst-made decisions.

Restructuring is a favorite tactic of antisocials who have reached a senior position in an organization. The chaos that results is an ideal smokescreen for dysfunctional leadership. Failure at the top goes unnoticed, while the process of restructuring creates the illusion of a strong, creative hand on the helm.

Exercising adaptive leadership is about giving meaning to your life beyond your own ambition.

Instability is the repetition of tactics without a strategy.

The Sun Tzu School (which wrote the Art of War) surely never imagined that their antiwar, pro-empire treatise would become known and accepted after the fall of the first empire as a text on military tactics. Likewise, they would have been surprised to see the Ping-fa military metaphor—an inspired teaching device—come to be seen as the message and not the medium.

[The wives of powerful noblemen] must be highly knowledgeable about government, and wise – in fact, far wiser than most other such women in power. The knowledge of a baroness must be so comprehensive that she can understand everything. Of her a philosopher might have said: "No one is wise who does not know some part of everything." Moreover, she must have the courage of a man. This means that she should not be brought up overmuch among women nor should she be indulged in extensive and feminine pampering. Why do I say that? If barons wish to be honoured as they deserve, they spend very little time in their manors and on their own lands. Going to war, attending their prince's court, and traveling are the three primary duties of such a lord. So the lady, his companion, must represent him at home during his absences. Although her husband is served by bailiffs, provosts, rent collectors, and land governors, she must govern them all. To do this according to her right she must conduct herself with such wisdom that she will be both feared and loved. As we have said before, the best possible fear comes from love. When wronged, her men must be able to turn to her for refuge. She must be so skilled and flexible that in each case she can respond suitably. Therefore, she must be knowledgeable in the mores of her locality and instructed in its usages, rights, and customs. She must be a good speaker, proud when pride is needed; circumspect with the scornful, surly, or rebellious; and charitably gentle and humble toward her good, obedient subjects. With the counsellors of her lord and with the advice of elder wise men, she ought to work directly with her people. No one should ever be able to say of her that she acts merely to have her own way. Again, she should have a man's heart. She must know the laws of arms and all things pertaining to warfare, ever prepared to command her men if there is need of it. She has to know both assault and defence tactics to insure that her fortresses are well defended, if she has any expectation of attack or believes she must initiate military action. Testing her men, she will discover their qualities of courage and determination before overly trusting them. She must know the number and strength of her men to gauge accurately her resources, so that she never will have to trust vain or feeble promises. Calculating what force she is capable of providing before her lord arrives with reinforcements, she also must know the financial resources she could call upon to sustain military action. She should avoid oppressing her men, since this is the surest way to incur their hatred. She can best cultivate their loyalty by speaking boldly and consistently to them, according to her council, not giving one reason today and another tomorrow. Speaking words of good courage to her men-at-arms as well as to her other retainers, she will urge them to loyalty and their best efforts.

Your inspiration taps hidden reserves of promise that sustain people through times that induce despair. You enable people to envision a future that sustains the best from their past while also holding out new possibilities.

You know the adage “People resist change.” It is not really true. People are not stupid. People love change when they know it is a good thing. No one gives back a winning lottery ticket. What people resist is not change per se, but loss. When change involves real or potential loss, people hold on to what they have and resist the change.

The goal of leadership seems simple: to get people to do what they need to do to support the mission and the team.

By nature, blogs feature longer-form content, which offers deeper thought leadership.

The most common leadership failure stems from trying to apply technical solutions to adaptive challenges.

You know best who you really are by watching what you do rather than listening to what you say.

The enemies agenda is destruction, his strategy is division and his tactics is on little differences. Mind you he is not going to be happy until he sees you divided.

Solid relationships up and down the chain of command are the basis of all good leadership.

It is relatively easy to point fingers at political figures whose leadership tactics resulted in diminished optimism and increased despair during a time when millions of souls were starving for the exact opposite. It is not so easy to ask how one may have contributed to the creation and maintenance of the culture of disregard and discord which helped spawn the tragedy in the first place.

Under Scheer’s leadership, the Germans had maintained the initiative in the North Sea throughout the year of Jutland, but his six sorties had resulted in just one battle, a tactical victory that had not altered the strategic situation.

With each of those problems, I am the solution. With each problem I solve, the level of trust the boss has in me goes up. And I will continue on that path. I won’t complain or try to shift bad jobs onto someone else or even look for some kind of praise.

Conspiracy theories have long been used to maintain power: the Soviet leadership saw capitalist and counter-revolutionary conspiracies everywhere; the Nazis, Jewish ones. But those conspiracies were ultimately there to buttress an ideology, whether class warfare for Communists or race for Nazis. With today’s regimes, which struggle to formulate a single ideology – indeed, which can’t if they want to maintain power by sending different messages to different people – the idea that one lives in a world full of conspiracies becomes the world view itself. Conspiracy does not support the ideology; it replaces it. In Russia this is captured in the catchphrase of the country’s most important current affairs presenter: ‘A coincidence? I don’t think so!’ says Dmitry Kiselev as he twirls between tall tales that dip into history, literature, oil prices and colour revolutions, which all return to the theme of how the world has it in for Russia. And as a world view it grants those who subscribe to it certain pleasures: if all the world is a conspiracy, then your own failures are no longer all your fault. The fact that you achieved less than you hoped for, that your life is a mess – it’s all the fault of the conspiracy. More importantly, conspiracy is a way to maintain control. In a world where even the most authoritarian regimes struggle to impose censorship, one has to surround audiences with so much cynicism about anybody’s motives, persuade them that behind every seemingly benign motivation is a nefarious, if impossible-to-prove, plot, that they lose faith in the possibility of an alternative, a tactic a renowned Russian media analyst called Vasily Gatov calls ‘white jamming’. And the end effect of this endless pile-up of conspiracies is that you, the little guy, can never change anything. For if you are living in a world where shadowy forces control everything, then what possible chance do you have of turning it around? In this murk it becomes best to rely on a strong hand to guide you. ‘Trump is our last chance to save America,’ is the message of his media hounds. Only Putin can ‘raise Russia from its knees’. ‘The problem we are facing today is less oppression, more lack of identity, apathy, division, no trust,’ sighs Srdja. ‘There are more tools to change things than before, but there’s less will to do so.

Mo had been the one Iraqi commander who stood head and shoulders above his peers. He excelled in both the planning and tactical execution of direct-action missions, spoke English almost fluently, and had the trust of both his men and the senior leadership of the MOI.

Your goal should be to keep the temperature within what we call the productive zone of disequilibrium (PZD): enough heat generated by your intervention to gain attention, engagement, and forward motion, but not so much that the organization (or your part of it) explodes.

Nobody back then had ever heard of the counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO) set up by the FBI. Nobody could possibly have known that the FBI had sent a phony letter to Eldridge Cleaver in Algiers, “signed” by the Panther 21, criticizing Huey Newton’s leadership. No one could have known that the FBI had sent a letter to Huey’s brother saying the New York Panthers were plotting to kill him. No one could have known that the FBI’s COINTELPRO was attempting to destroy the Black Panther Party in particular and the Black Liberation Movement in general, using divide-and-conquer tactics.

To diagnose a system or yourself while in the midst of action requires the ability to achieve some distance from those on-the-ground events. We use the metaphor of “getting on the balcony” above the “dance floor” to depict what it means to gain the distanced perspective you need to see what is really happening.

reaching back to the words of another desert warrior, Lawrence of Arabia. In Seven Pillars of Wisdom, T. E. Lawrence described the elusive essence of military leadership: “Nine-tenths of tactics are certain, and taught in books: but the irrational tenth is like the kingfisher flashing across the pool, and that is the test of generals.

Nobody could have possibly known that the FBI had sent a phony letter to Eldridge Cleaver in Algiers, 'signed' by the Panther 21, criticizing Huey Newton's leadership... no one could have known that the FBI's cointelpro was attempting to destroy the Black Panther Party in particular, and the Black Liberation movement in general, using divide-and-conquer tactics.

Maneuver warfare tactics are trust tactics. That is their single most important characteristic. And that’s the biggest difference from what we do now.” It is certainly the biggest change from the current command and control system. Trust and a shared way of thinking, leadership and monitoring, not fancy new C2 equipment, are what you need to be able to fight using maneuver warfare.

Real-Time Agenda Once the lightning round and progress review are complete (usually no more than fifteen minutes into the meeting), now it is time to talk about the agenda. That’s right. Counter to conventional wisdom about meetings, the agenda for a weekly tactical should not be set before the meeting, but only after the lightning round and regular reporting activities have taken place.

That image of a chessboard — an epic contest between two giant players, carefully nudging their pieces around the globe as part of a grand strategy — has indeed become a familiar metaphor for the Cold War. But it is misleading. Many decisions remembered today for their farsighted, tactical brilliance were denounced in their day as weak-willed. And big, public gestures often made less difference than the small, hidden ones.

Under the leadership of Henry Kissinger, first as Richard Nixon’s national security adviser and later as secretary of state, the United States sent an unequivocal signal to the most extreme rightist forces that democracy could be sacrificed in the cause of ideological warfare. Criminal operational tactics, including assassination, were not only acceptable but supported with weapons and money. A CIA internal memo laid it out in unsparing terms:        On September 16, 1970 [CIA] Director [Richard] Helms informed a group of senior agency officers that on September 15, President Nixon had decided that an Allende regime was not acceptable to the United States. The President asked the Agency to prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him and authorized up to $10 million for this purpose. . . . A special task force was established to carry out this mandate, and preliminary plans were discussed with Dr. Kissinger on 18 September 1970.

Starting with Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia, by 1760, there had been eighteen uprisings aimed at overthrowing colonial governments. There had also been six black rebellions, from South Carolina to New York, and forty riots of various origins. By this time also, there emerged, according to Jack Greene, “stable, coherent, effective and acknowledged local political and social elites.” And by the 1760s, this local leadership saw the possibility of directing much of the rebellious energy against England and her local officials. It was not a conscious conspiracy, but an accumulation of tactical responses.

When Pence refused to participate in the plan—likely knowing that if the coup failed, he’d be the one left holding the bag—Trump fell back on the old tactic of spreading a false narrative through an investigation. He plotted to name Jeffrey Clark, a lawyer for the environmental division of the Justice Department, as attorney general. Clark planned to announce to the battleground state legislatures that the Department of Justice was “investigating various irregularities” in the election—this was a lie—and that they should choose a new set of electors. Only the threat that the entire leadership of the Department of Justice would resign made Trump back down.

1. Did you conduct one-to-one meetings with each salesperson on your team? 2. Did you ask each of them how they like to be managed? Are they coachable? 3. Did you inquire about their prior experience with their past manager? Was it positive or negative? 4. Did you set the expectations of your relationship with them? Did you ask them what they needed and expected from their manager? What changes do they want to see? 5. Did you inform them about how you like to manage and your style of management? This would open up the space for a discussion regarding how you may manage differently from your predecessor. 6. Did you let them know you just completed a coaching course that would enable you to support them even further and maximize their talents? 7. Did you explain to them the difference between coaching and traditional management? 8. Did you enroll them in the benefits of coaching? That is, what would be in it for them? 9. Did you let them know about your intentions, goals, expectations, and aspirations for each of them and for the team as a whole? 10. How have you gone about learning the ins and outs of the company?Are you familiar with the internal workings, culture, leadership team, and subtleties that make the company unique? Have you considered that your team may be the best source of knowledge and intelligence for this? Did you communicate your willingness and desire to learn from them as well, so that the learning and development process can be mutually reciprocated?

People start to realize that nothing and no one is safe. In response, some instinctually behave as if they were switched to self-preservation mode. They may hoard information, hide mistakes and operate in a more cautious, risk-averse way. To protect themselves, they trust no one. Others double down on an only-the-fittest-survive mentality. Their tactics can become overly aggressive. Their egos become unchecked. They learn to manage up the hierarchy to garner favor with senior leadership while, in some cases, sabotaging their own colleagues. To protect themselves, they trust no one. Regardless of whether they are in self-preservation or self-promotion mode, the sum of all of these behaviors contributes to a general decline in cooperation across the company, which also leads to stagnation of any truly new or innovative ideas.

If Fascism concerns itself less with specific policies than with finding a pathway to power, what about the tactics of leadership? My students remarked that the Fascist chiefs we remember best were charismatic. Through one method or another, each established an emotional link to the crowd and, like the central figure in a cult, brought deep and often ugly feelings to the surface. This is how the tentacles of Fascism spread inside a democracy. Unlike a monarchy or a military dictatorship imposed on society from above, Fascism draws energy from men and women who are upset because of a lost war, a lost job, a memory of humiliation, or a sense that their country is in steep decline. The more painful the grounds for resentment, the easier it is for a Fascist leader to gain followers by dangling the prospect of renewal or by vowing to take back what has been stolen.

COINTELPRO strategy designed to cripple radical organizations by misusing the courts. First, arrests of targeted activists on serious charges carrying potentially long sentences. It was of little importance to the government whether or not they had a legitimate case strong enough to secure a conviction. The point was to silence and immobilize leadership while forcing groups to redirect energy and resources into raising funds, organizing legal defenses, and publicizing these cases. It was a government subversion of the American justice system resulting in drawn-out Soviet-style political show trials that became commonplace in the America of the 1970s: the Chicago Seven, the Panther Twenty-One, etc., etc. Although the overwhelming majority of these cases did not result in convictions,3 government documents show that they were considered great tactical successes. They kept the movements off the streets and in the courts.

The united front was a development of a new tactical line by the Communist International in 1935. This new tactical line was developed at the seventh world congress of the Communist International in Moscow in 1935. Georgi Dimitrov, general secretary of the Communist International, presented this new tactical line to the seventh world congress. Now, the essence of it was to infiltrate churches, trade unions and all other organizations through the process of involving them into a so-called united front on the basis of a program presented to them by the Communist Party. Now, the united front was a coalition or an alliance of the church, trade unions, farm and youth and women’s organizations of the Communist Party, under Communist Party leadership and for the promulgation of the Communist Party program. It was a step in the formation of a people’s front government, which of course is a form of transition to proletarian revolution and the seizure of power in a given country. As Dimitrov said, the united front is useful, but the final salvation is in a socialist revolution. The united front is used for revolutionary training of the masses.

Imagine the following. Three groups of ten individuals are in a park at lunchtime with a rainstorm threatening. In the first group, someone says: “Get up and follow me.” When he starts walking and only a few others join in, he yells to those still seated: “Up, I said, and now!” In the second group, someone says: “We’re going to have to move. Here’s the plan. Each of us stands up and marches in the direction of the apple tree. Please stay at least two feet away from other group members and do not run. Do not leave any personal belongings on the ground here and be sure to stop at the base of the tree. When we are all there . . .” In the third group, someone tells the others: “It’s going to rain in a few minutes. Why don’t we go over there and sit under that huge apple tree. We’ll stay dry, and we can have fresh apples for lunch.” I am sometimes amazed at how many people try to transform organizations using methods that look like the first two scenarios: authoritarian decree and micromanagement. Both approaches have been applied widely in enterprises over the last century, but mostly for maintaining existing systems, not transforming those systems into something better. When the goal is behavior change, unless the boss is extremely powerful, authoritarian decree often works poorly even in simple situations, like the apple tree case. Increasingly, in complex organizations, this approach doesn’t work at all. Without the power of kings and queens behind it, authoritarianism is unlikely to break through all the forces of resistance. People will ignore you or pretend to cooperate while doing everything possible to undermine your efforts. Micromanagement tries to get around this problem by specifying what employees should do in detail and then monitoring compliance. This tactic can break through some of the barriers to change, but in an increasingly unacceptable amount of time. Because the creation and communication of detailed plans is deadly slow, the change produced this way tends to be highly incremental. Only the approach used in the third scenario above has the potential to break through all the forces that support the status quo and to encourage the kind of dramatic shifts found in successful transformations. (See figure 5–1.) This approach is based on vision—a central component of all great leadership.

It is rather like arguing with an Irishman,” wrote Michael Hadow of his many conversations with Dayan. “He enjoys knocking down ideas just for the sake of argument and one will find him arguing in completely opposite directions on consecutive days.” Indeed, Dayan was a classic man of contradictions: famed as a warrior, he professed deep respect for the Arabs, including those who attacked his village, Nahalal, in the early 1930s, and who once beat him and left him for dead. A poet, a writer of children’s stories, he admitted publicly that he regretted having children, and was a renowned philanderer as well. A lover of the land who made a hobby of plundering it, he had amassed a huge personal collection of antiquities. A stickler for military discipline, he was prone to show contempt for the law. As one former classmate remembered, “He was a liar, a braggart, a schemer, and a prima donna—and in spite of that, the object of deep admiration.” Equally contrasting were the opinions about him. Devotees such as Meir Amit found him “original, daring, substantive, focused,” a commander who “radiated authority and leadership [with] … outstanding instincts that always hit the mark.” But many others, among them Gideon Rafael, saw another side of him: “Rocking the boat is his favorite tactic, not to overturn it, but to sway it sufficiently for the helmsman to lose his grip or for some of its unwanted passengers to fall overboard.” In private, Eshkol referred to Dayan as Abu Jildi, a scurrilous one-eyed Arab bandit.

Situation awareness means possessing an explorer mentality A general never knows anything with certainty, never sees his enemy clearly, and never knows positively where he is. When armies are face to face, the least accident in the ground, the smallest wood, may conceal part of the enemy army. The most experienced eye cannot be sure whether it sees the whole of the enemy’s army or only three-fourths. It is by the mind’s eye, by the integration of all reasoning, by a kind of inspiration that the general sees, knows, and judges. ~Napoleon 5   In order to effectively gather the appropriate information as it’s unfolding we must possess the explorer mentality.  We must be able to recognize patterns of behavior. Then we must recognize that which is outside that normal pattern. Then, you take the initiative so we maintain control. Every call, every incident we respond to possesses novelty. Car stops, domestic violence calls, robberies, suspicious persons etc.  These individual types of incidents show similar patterns in many ways. For example, a car stopped normally pulls over to the side of the road when signaled to do so.  The officer when ready, approaches the operator, a conversation ensues, paperwork exchanges, and the pulled over car drives away. A domestic violence call has its own normal patterns; police arrive, separate involved parties, take statements and arrest aggressor and advise the victim of abuse prevention rights. We could go on like this for all the types of calls we handle as each type of incident on its own merits, does possess very similar patterns. Yet they always, and I mean always possess something different be it the location, the time of day, the person you are dealing with. Even if it’s the same person, location, time and day, the person you’re dealing who may now be in a different emotional state and his/her motives and intent may be very different. This breaks that normal expected pattern.  Hence, there is a need to always be open-minded, alert and aware, exploring for the signs and signals of positive or negative change in conditions. In his Small Wars journal article “Thinking and Acting like an Early Explorer” Brigadier General Huba Wass de Czege (US Army Ret.) describes the explorer mentality:   While tactical and strategic thinking are fundamentally different, both kinds of thinking must take place in the explorer’s brain, but in separate compartments. To appreciate this, think of the metaphor of an early American explorer trying to cross a large expanse of unknown terrain long before the days of the modern conveniences. The explorer knows that somewhere to the west lies an ocean he wants to reach. He has only a sketch-map of a narrow corridor drawn by a previously unsuccessful explorer. He also knows that highly variable weather and frequent geologic activity can block mountain passes, flood rivers, and dry up desert water sources. He also knows that some native tribes are hostile to all strangers, some are friendly and others are fickle, but that warring and peace-making among them makes estimating their whereabouts and attitudes difficult.6

Patronising women is another manoeuvre, an infamous example being then British prime minister David Cameron’s ‘Calm down, dear’ to Labour MP Angela Eagle in 2011.48 In the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s (IPU) 2016 global study on sexism, violence and harassment against female politicians, one MP from a European parliament said ‘if a woman speaks loudly in parliament she is “shushed” with a finger to the lips, as one does with children. That never happens when a man speaks loudly’.49 Another noted that she is ‘constantly asked – even by male colleagues in my own party – if what I want to say is very important, if I could refrain from taking the floor.’ Some tactics are more brazen. Afghan MP Fawzia Koofi told the Guardian that male colleagues use intimidation to frighten female MPs into silence – and when that fails, ‘The leadership cuts our microphones off’.50 Highlighting the hidden gender angle of having a single person (most often a man) in charge of speaking time in parliament, one MP from a country in sub-Saharan Africa (the report only specified regions so the women could remain anonymous) told the IPU that the Speaker had pressured one of her female colleagues for sex. Following her refusal, ‘he had never again given her the floor in parliament’. It doesn’t necessarily even take a sexual snub for a Speaker to refuse women the floor: ‘During my first term in parliament, parliamentary authorities always referred to statements by men and gave priority to men when giving the floor to speakers,’ explained one MP from a country in Asia. The IPU report concluded that sexism, harassment and violence against female politicians was a ‘phenomenon that knew no boundaries and exists to different degrees in every country’. The report found that 66% of female parliamentarians were regularly subjected to misogynistic remarks from their male colleagues, ranging from the degrading (‘you would be even better in a porn movie’) to the threatening (‘she needs to be raped so that she knows what foreigners do’).

The information in this topic of decision making and how to create and nurture it, is beneficial to every cop in their quest to mastering tactics and tactical decision making and are a must read for every cop wanting to be more effective and safe on the street. My purpose is to get cops thinking about this critical question: In mastering tactics shouldn’t we be blending policy and procedure with people and ideas? It should be understandable that teaching people, procedures helps them perform tasks more skillfully doesn’t always apply. Procedures are most useful in well-ordered situations when they can substitute for skill, not augment it. In complex situations, in the shadows of the unknown, uncertain and unpredictable and complex world of law enforcement conflict, procedures are less likely to substitute for expertise and may even stifle its development. Here is a different way of putting it as Klein explains: In complex situations, people will need judgment skills to follow procedures effectively and to go beyond them when necessary.3 For stable and well-structured tasks i.e. evidence collection and handling, follow-up investigations, booking procedures and report writing, we should be able to construct comprehensive procedure guides. Even for complex tasks we might try to identify the procedures because that is one road to progress. But we also have to discover the kinds of expertise that comes into play for difficult jobs such as, robbery response, active shooter and armed gunman situations, hostage and barricade situations, domestic disputes, drug and alcohol related calls and pretty much any other call that deals with emotionally charged people in conflict. Klein states, “to be successful we need both analysis (policy and procedure) and intuition (people and ideas).”4 Either one alone can get us into trouble. Experts certainly aren’t perfect, but analysis can fail. Intuition isn’t magic either. Klein defines intuition as, “ways we use our experience without consciously thinking things out”. Intuition includes tacit knowledge that we can’t describe. It includes our ability to recognize patterns stored in memory. We have been building these patterns up all our lives from birth to present, and we can rapidly match a situation to a pattern or notice that something is off, that some sort of anomaly is warning us to be careful.5

You don’t like feeling powerless? Then change your definition of power. Do not fix unfixable problems. Do not devote yourself to things you cannot control. You cannot make this world respect you. You cannot make it dignify you. It will never bend to you. This world does not belong to door. She tied her long hair away from her face, meticulously turning on specific track lights and not others, perhaps to highlight the beauty of her Scandinavian-style furniture choices or the incomparable city view. Then she poured herself a glass of wine from a previously opened bottle, joining Reina on the sofa with an air of hospitably withheld dread. “I was born here in Tokyo,” Reina commented. “Not far from here, actually. There was a fire the day I was born. People died. My grandmother always thought it meant something that I was—” She broke off. “What I was.” “People often search for meaning where there is none,” said Aiya placidly. Perhaps in a tone of sympathy, though Reina wasn’t sure what to think anymore. “Just because you can see two points does not mean anything exists between them.” “In other words, fate is a lie we tell ourselves?” asked Reina drolly. Aiya shrugged. Despite the careful curation of her lighting, she looked tired. “We tell ourselves many stories. But I don’t think you came here just to tell me yours.” No. Reina did not know why she was there, not really. She had simply wanted to go home, and when she realized home was an English manor house, she had railed against the idea so hard it brought her here, to the place she’d once done everything in her power to escape. “I want,” Reina began slowly, “to do good. Not because I love the world, but because I hate it. And not because I can,” she added. “But because everyone else won’t.” Aiya sighed, perhaps with amusement. “The Society doesn’t promise you a better world, Reina. It doesn’t because it can’t.” “Why not? I was promised everything I could ever dream of. I was offered power, and yet I have never felt so powerless.” The words left her like a kick to the chest, a hard stomp. She hadn’t realized that was the problem until now, sitting with a woman who so clearly lived alone. Who had everything, and yet at the same time, Reina did not see anything in Aiya Sato’s museum of a life that she would covet for her own. Aiya sipped her wine quietly, in a way that made Reina feel sure that Aiya saw her as a child, a lost little lamb. She was too polite to ask her to leave, of course. That wasn’t the way of things and Reina ought to know it. Until then, Aiya would simply hold the thought in her head. “So,” Aiya said with an air of teacherly patience. “You are disappointed in the world. Why should the Society be any better? It is part of the same world.” “But I should be able to fix things. Change things.” “Why?” “Because I should.” Reina felt restless. “Because if the world cannot be fixed by me, then how can it be fixed at all?” “These sound like questions for the Forum,” Aiya said with a shrug. “If you want to spend your life banging down doors that will never open, try their tactics instead, see how it goes. See if the mob can learn to love you, Reina Mori, without consuming or destroying you first.” Another reflective sip. “The Society is no democracy. In fact, it chose you because you are selfish.” She looked demurely at Reina. “It promised you glory, not salvation. They never said you could save others. Only yourself.” “And that is power to you?” Aiya’s smile was so polite that Reina felt it like the edge of a weapon. “You don’t like feeling powerless? Then change your definition of power. Do not fix unfixable problems. Do not devote yourself to things you cannot control. You cannot make this world respect you. You cannot make it dignify you. It will never bend to you. This world does not belong to you, Reina Mori, you belong to it, and perhaps when it is ready for a revolution it will look to you for leadership.

Companies should utilize the CSIPP™ framework whenever they face crises. The 12 elements of CSIPP™, or Crisis Solution Internal Philosophy and Practice, include: 1. Immunity (Immune Systems): Organizations, akin to living organisms, possess inherent vulnerabilities. The CSIPP™ framework advocates for the establishment of proactive and self-regulating systems within an organization which autonomously identify, respond to, and mitigate threats, thereby enhancing the organization's resilience and adaptability. 2. Surveillance: Organizations need to cultivate a culture of informed awareness. This entails the implementation of judicious surveillance mechanisms to gather both internal and external intelligence. Such insights empower organizations to preemptively identify potential risks and opportunities, enabling more agile and effective decision-making. Data serves as the lifeblood of CSIPP™. It is imperative that organizations prioritize the collection, analysis, and interpretation of relevant data. This data-driven approach facilitates evidence-based decision-making, informed risk assessments, and the optimization of crisis response strategies. 3. Decisiveness: Decisiveness is particularly important during times of crisis. Leaders must be able to gather and synthesize the data, and make quick and definite decisions to move the organization forward. 4. Capital Reserves/Liquidity: Financial preparedness is a cornerstone of crisis management. Organizations must maintain adequate reserves of liquid capital to navigate unforeseen challenges. Moreover, they should proactively identify internal assets, both tangible and intangible, that can be readily redeployed in times of crisis. 5. Communication: Effective communication is pivotal during a crisis. Organizations should establish a comprehensive communication plan encompassing all stakeholders - employees, customers, investors, and the community at large. This plan should ensure timely, transparent, and accurate information dissemination, fostering trust and mitigating the spread of misinformation. 6. Response: The ability to respond swiftly and decisively is critical in crisis situations. Organizations must develop well-defined response protocols that outline roles, responsibilities, and escalation procedures. Regular drills and simulations can enhance preparedness and ensure a coordinated response. 7. Risk Evaluation: A continuous process of risk evaluation and assessment is essential. Organizations need to proactively identify, analyze, and prioritize potential risks based on their likelihood and potential impact. This enables the development of targeted mitigation strategies and contingency plans. 8. Leadership: Strong and decisive leadership is indispensable during a crisis. Leaders must be able to make difficult decisions under pressure, communicate effectively, and inspire confidence in their teams. A clear chain of command and delegation of authority are vital for effective crisis management. 9. Readiness (Drills/Training): All individuals likely to be involved in crisis response should receive comprehensive training and participate in regular drills. This ensures that they are familiar with their roles, responsibilities, and the organization's crisis management protocols. 10. Post-Crisis Analysis: Following a crisis, it is crucial to conduct a thorough post-mortem analysis. This involves evaluating the organization's response, identifying lessons learned, and implementing corrective actions to improve future crisis management efforts. 11. Nuanced Adjustment: Crisis management is not a one-size-fits-all endeavor. Organizations need to be adaptable and flexible, adjusting their strategies and tactics as the situation evolves. 12. Protocol: Clear and well-defined protocols are the backbone of effective crisis management. Organizations should establish a set of standard operating procedures (SOPs) that outline the steps to be taken in various crisis scenarios.

There is, as well, a tactical side to the new emphasis on self-defense and the suggestion that nonviolence be abandoned. The reasoning here is that turning the other cheek is not the way to win respect, and that only if the Negro succeeds in frightening the white man will the white man begin taking him seriously. The trouble with this reasoning is that it fails to recognize that fear is more likely to bring hostility to the surface than respect. Far from prodding the "white power structure" into action, the new militant leadership, by raising the slogan of black power and lowering the banner of nonviolence, has obscured the moral issue facing this nation, and permitted the President and Vice-President to lecture us about "racism in reverse" instead of proposing more meaningful programs for dealing with the problems of unemployment, housing, and education.

Whether a pastor bullies with intimidating leadership tactics or manipulates through sexual grooming and assault, abuse is abuse.

good leader builds a great team that counterbalances their weaknesses.

And an Executive Business Review? An executive business review (EBR) should present information at a much higher level, with a focus on executive leadership. It is one of the most influential meetings you will have with your customer all year, yet it’s the one most organizations tend to forget. QBRs happen frequently, across the industry, but EBRs? Not so much. Less tactical and less operational than a QBR, an EBR is typically reserved for your customer’s executive leadership team because it’s a high-level review of the value your product is providing the customer. When you draft an EBR, you should be thinking along the lines of, Who is my stakeholder’s boss? How do I co-present to my stakeholder and their boss the value my product has offered and will continue to offer them? An EBR is a way to move up the value chain, promote your stakeholder’s brand inside their own company, and share wins with the executive leader. It’s a strategic meeting that should focus on reinforcing the value in your customer ROI. It should also validate the goals of the organization, because like you did with your QBRs, you’re building a partnership through open dialogue. The only difference is now you’re doing it at an executive level. EBRs should be scheduled twice a year. I typically recommend scheduling one at least three months before the customer’s renewal because if the meeting goes well, it may help move the renewal along faster. I have seen executives stop pushing on price when they’re negotiating terms, and I’ve even seen some CSMs contact a stakeholder’s executive directly to ask for their help. “We’re having trouble with this renewal. Can you step in and assist?” More often than not, the executive will call whoever they need to call and say, “Just get it done.” Plus, when you reach out and ask for help, you’re engaging executive-level advocates, which is always a good thing.

I often tell leaders that what makes leadership so hard is dealing with people, and people are crazy. And the craziest person a leader has to deal with is themselves.

the tactics of divide and rule were fairly successful until the mid-1930s, the six-month general strike of 1936 constituted a popular and spontaneous explosion from the bottom up that took the British, the Zionists, and the elite Palestinian leadership by surprise, and that obliged the latter to put aside its divisions, at least nominally. The result was the creation of the Arab Higher Committee, which was set up to lead and represent the entire Arab majority, although the British never recognized the AHC as representative

The fact is, people aren’t going to give their all unless their leaders drop fear-based tactics and display caring behaviors: being transparent and fair, listening, admitting their own mistakes, and acting in the team’s best interests.

When I reported to SEAL Team One after completing Basic Underwater Demolition / SEAL Training (BUD/S), there was no leadership course. New SEALs were issued no books or materials of any kind on the subject. We were expected to learn to lead the way SEALs had learned for our entire existence—through OJT, or on-the-job training.

of the simplest ways is obvious, but it often gets overlooked—that is performance. Your boss expects you to complete certain tasks. So complete them. Do them on time, on budget, and with as little drama as possible. Get the mission done.

I got up earlier, worked longer, went out on more tactical operations, studied the battlefield incessantly, and slept a lot less, and then, when the next opportunity presented itself, I was ready. Hard work creates opportunities. It’s that simple. And if you have stumbled along the way, then doubling your efforts invariably exposes new opportunities to succeed.

Procurement, though, cannot move to a high achieving team acting alone, but if the will, desire, drive and commitment are there, it will succeed. It will require passionate and committed leadership. What this book describes and provides readers is how to progress to this aspiration and subscribe to the following value proposition, “Procurement is the key and respected organisation resource that secures goods, services and materials to the organisation aligned with key business performance metrics, strategic objectives, priorities and values. It is the primary commercial team in the business.

Cincinnatus. He was an emperor in the Roman Empire. Cincinnati, the city, by the way, is named after him because he was a big idol of George Washington’s. He is a great example of success because he was asked to reluctantly step into power and become the emperor and to help, because Rome was about to get annihilated by all the wars and battles. He was a farmer. Powerful guy. He went and took on the challenge, took over Rome, took over the army, and won the war. After they won the war, he felt he’d done his mission and was asked to go and be the emperor, and he gave the ring back and went back to farming. He didn’t only do this once. He did it twice. When they tried to overthrow the empire from within, they asked him back and he came back. He cleaned up the mess through great, great leadership. He had tremendous leadership quality in bringing people together. And again, he gave the ring back and went back to farming.

One day, meandering through the bookcases, I had picked up his diaries and begun to read the account of his famous meeting with Hitler prior to Munich, at the house in Berchtesgaden high up in the Bavarian mountains. Chamberlain described how, after greeting him, Hitler took him up to the top of the chalet. There was a room, bare except for three plain wooden chairs, one for each of them and the interpreter. He recounts how Hitler alternated between reason – complaining of the Versailles Treaty and its injustice – and angry ranting, almost screaming about the Czechs, the Poles, the Jews, the enemies of Germany. Chamberlain came away convinced that he had met a madman, someone who had real capacity to do evil. This is what intrigued me. We are taught that Chamberlain was a dupe; a fool, taken in by Hitler’s charm. He wasn’t. He was entirely alive to his badness. I tried to imagine being him, thinking like him. He knows this man is wicked; but he cannot know how far it might extend. Provoked, think of the damage he will do. So, instead of provoking him, contain him. Germany will come to its senses, time will move on and, with luck, so will Herr Hitler. Seen in this way, Munich was not the product of a leader gulled, but of a leader looking for a tactic to postpone, to push back in time, in hope of circumstances changing. Above all, it was the product of a leader with a paramount and overwhelming desire to avoid the blood, mourning and misery of war. Probably after Munich, the relief was too great, and hubristically, he allowed it to be a moment that seemed strategic not tactical. But easy to do. As Chamberlain wound his way back from the airport after signing the Munich Agreement – the fateful paper brandished and (little did he realise) his place in history with it – crowds lined the street to welcome him as a hero. That night in Downing Street, in the era long before the security gates arrived and people could still go up and down as they pleased, the crowds thronged outside the window of Number 10, shouting his name, cheering him, until he was forced in the early hours of the morning to go out and speak to them in order that they disperse. Chamberlain was a good man, driven by good motives. So what was the error? The mistake was in not recognising the fundamental question. And here is the difficulty of leadership: first you have to be able to identify that fundamental question. That sounds daft – surely it is obvious; but analyse the situation for a moment and it isn’t. You might think the question was: can Hitler be contained? That’s what Chamberlain thought. And, on balance, he thought he could. And rationally, Chamberlain should have been right. Hitler had annexed Austria and Czechoslovakia. He was supreme in Germany. Why not be satisfied? How crazy to step over the line and make war inevitable.

One day, meandering through the bookcases, I had picked up his diaries and begun to read the account of his famous meeting with Hitler prior to Munich, at the house in Berchtesgaden high up in the Bavarian mountains. Chamberlain described how, after greeting him, Hitler took him up to the top of the chalet. There was a room, bare except for three plain wooden chairs, one for each of them and the interpreter. He recounts how Hitler alternated between reason – complaining of the Versailles Treaty and its injustice – and angry ranting, almost screaming about the Czechs, the Poles, the Jews, the enemies of Germany. Chamberlain came away convinced that he had met a madman, someone who had real capacity to do evil. This is what intrigued me. We are taught that Chamberlain was a dupe; a fool, taken in by Hitler’s charm. He wasn’t. He was entirely alive to his badness. I tried to imagine being him, thinking like him. He knows this man is wicked; but he cannot know how far it might extend. Provoked, think of the damage he will do. So, instead of provoking him, contain him. Germany will come to its senses, time will move on and, with luck, so will Herr Hitler. Seen in this way, Munich was not the product of a leader gulled, but of a leader looking for a tactic to postpone, to push back in time, in hope of circumstances changing. Above all, it was the product of a leader with a paramount and overwhelming desire to avoid the blood, mourning and misery of war. Probably after Munich, the relief was too great, and hubristically, he allowed it to be a moment that seemed strategic not tactical. But easy to do. As Chamberlain wound his way back from the airport after signing the Munich Agreement – the fateful paper brandished and (little did he realise) his place in history with it – crowds lined the street to welcome him as a hero. That night in Downing Street, in the era long before the security gates arrived and people could still go up and down as they pleased, the crowds thronged outside the window of Number 10, shouting his name, cheering him, until he was forced in the early hours of the morning to go out and speak to them in order that they disperse. Chamberlain was a good man, driven by good motives. So what was the error? The mistake was in not recognising the fundamental question. And here is the difficulty of leadership: first you have to be able to identify that fundamental question. That sounds daft – surely it is obvious; but analyse the situation for a moment and it isn’t. You might think the question was: can Hitler be contained? That’s what Chamberlain thought. And, on balance, he thought he could. And rationally, Chamberlain should have been right. Hitler had annexed Austria and Czechoslovakia. He was supreme in Germany. Why not be satisfied? How crazy to step over the line and make war inevitable. But that wasn’t the fundamental question. The fundamental question was: does fascism represent a force that is so strong and rooted that it has to be uprooted and destroyed? Put like that, the confrontation was indeed inevitable. The only consequential question was when and how. In other words, Chamberlain took a narrow and segmented view – Hitler was a leader, Germany a country, 1938 a moment in time: could he be contained? Actually, Hitler was the product

It’s also worth noting that getting more resources will be perceived as recognition or a reward. Leadership should publicly celebrate managers who are actively improving their operational efficiency, for example by coming in under budget at the end of the fiscal year or “giving back” headcount allocation.

Leadership requires clarity and self-ownership. That’s it. Not strategy, not tactics, not the skillful management of personalities. Self-leadership. That’s it. It’s all it ever is. It’s truly all it’s ever about.

Leadership requires clarity and self-ownership. That’s it. Not strategy, not tactics, not the skillful management of personalities. Self-leadership. That’s it. It’s all it ever is. It’s truly all it’s ever about.

So the largely homosexual Nazi leadership now could eliminate its opponents by charging them with the crime of homosexuality, which also served as a way of defaming their character as well. If any actual homosexuals ended up in concentration camps, it was simply because they happened to be at the wrong end of the political equation, and not because of their homosexuality, a tactic which the contemporary homosexual movement evidently learned as well, recently “outing” a congressman who voted against recognizing homosexual marriages.

Long periods of inaction for regrouping are justified only by sheer necessity. Veteran troops realize that by continuing the advance and attack against a shaken enemy the greatest possible gains are made at minimum cost. Speed requires training, fitness, confidence, morale, suitable transport, and skillful leadership. Patton employed these tactics relentlessly, and thus not only minimized casualties but shook the whole Italian Government so forcibly that Mussolini toppled from his position of power in late July.[6

the prior chapters have led to this one. If spiritual abuse is a real problem in the church today (and it is), if this abuse is contrary to Scripture and disqualifying for ministry (and it is), if abusive leaders and churches often retaliate against the victims with cruel and aggressive tactics (and they do), and if these tactics are devastating to the lives of the victims (and they are), then there is only one conclusion: churches must do something to protect their sheep. It’s not enough to be aware. It’s not enough to care. Churches must act. And this chapter has laid out three critical categories in which churches can take action. Prevention: Churches must do their best to weed out abusive candidates from the start by creating a vision for ministry that is radically biblical and therefore unattractive to leaders with abusive tendencies. Accountability: Too many churches have a culture of secrecy, self-protection, and image management—factors that create an ideal environment for spiritual abuse. In contrast, churches must create a culture that is open, transparent, and provides genuine accountability for its senior leadership. And finally, Protection: Churches must have a clear, well-organized plan for how to handle abuse claims and care for and protect the victims during the process.

By this time, around 0745, unknown others were doing the same, whether NCOs or junior officers or, in some cases, privates. Staying on the beach meant certain death; retreat was not possible; someone had to lead; men took the burden on themselves and did. Bingham put it this way: “The individual and small-unit initiative carried the day. Very little, if any, credit can be accorded company, battalion, or regimental commanders for their tactical prowess and/or their coordination of the action.

Even if they do all the ‘right’ things interpersonally — even if they apply all the latest skills and techniques to their communications and tasks—it won’t matter. People ultimately resent them and their tactics. And so they end up failing as leaders — failing because they provoke people to resist them.

Patton pulls his ivory-handled pistol from its holster with his right hand. With his left, he backhands Bennett across the face with such force that nearby doctors rush to intervene. The medical staff is disturbed by Patton’s actions and file a report. Word of the incidents soon reaches Eisenhower. “I must so seriously question,” Ike writes to Patton on August 16, “your good judgment and your self-discipline as to raise serious doubts in my mind as to your future usefulness.” But that is to be the end of it. Eisenhower needs Patton’s tactical genius. As Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy will later remind Ike, Abraham Lincoln was faced with similar concerns about the leadership of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. “I can’t spare this man,” Lincoln had responded to those calling for Grant’s dismissal. “He fights.” Patton fights. *

The tough choice facing CIOs is not about only picking one identity as either being strategic or tactical, but about - when acting as a strategic leader, when playing as a tactical manager.

Strategies, tactics, skills, and practices are empty without an understanding of the fundamental human aspirations that connect leaders and their constituents. Model

Future battlefields require a more liberally educated, mentally adaptable leadership to coexist in a culture with high standards of cohesion and discipline. An adaptive Army will require very high standards of entry training for commissioned members, to acculturate tactical knowledge in the force at a very early stage.”144 Col. Robert B. Killebrew, U.S. Army, (Ret.)

What is the book (or books) you’ve given most as a gift, and why? Or what are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life? The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership by Jim Dethmer and Diana Chapman. Though most people will typically blame other people or circumstances in their life when they are unhappy, Buddhists believe that we are the cause of our own suffering. We can’t control the fact that bad things are going to happen, but it’s how we react to them that really matters, and that we can learn to control. Even if you don’t accept that this is true in all cases, giving it consideration in moments of unhappiness or anxiety will often give you a new perspective and allow you to relax your grip on a negative story. This book is an approachable manual for how to do that tactically, and the lessons it teaches have transformed the way I engage with difficult situations and thus reduced the suffering I experience in big and small ways. Though it is written with leaders in mind, I find myself recommending it to everyone, and we give it to every new employee at Asana.

What is the book (or books) you’ve given most as a gift, and why? Or what are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life? At some point about halfway through my 20-year career in the SEAL Teams, I read About Face by Colonel David H. Hackworth. I haven’t stopped reading it since. Hackworth came up through the ranks and served as an infantry officer in the Korean and Vietnam wars. He was revered by his men and respected by all who worked with him. While the stories of combat are incredible and there is much to be learned about battlefield tactics in the book, the real lessons for me are about leadership. I adapted many of his leadership principles over the years and still continue to learn from his experiences. Thanks for everything, Colonel Hackworth.

Over time, the structures, culture, and defaults that make up an organizational system become deeply ingrained, self-reinforcing, and very difficult to reshape. That makes sense when things are going well. But when something important changes—as with the economic and financial crises that began in 2008, or in more normal times when a new competitor enters the industry, the organization’s founder leaves, customers’ preferences shift, or new laws are passed—the system’s tenacity can prevent it from adapting, from learning to thrive in the new context.

the book is organized into five parts: an introductory part and four content parts, displayed in the matrix in figure 1-1, which captures the four essential practices of adaptive leadership. While the four practice parts of the book come after one another in linear sequence, the matrix is meant to highlight that you need not read or use the book that way.

difficult situation, the Iraqi civilian trying to care for a family amid chaos and violence. They are the people who pay every day with blood and tears for the failures of high officials and powerful institutions. The run-up to the war is particularly significant because it also laid the shaky foundation for the derelict occupation that followed, and that constitutes the major subject of this book. While the Bush administration—and especially Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and L. Paul Bremer III—bear much of the responsibility for the mishandling of the occupation in 2003 and early 2004, blame also must rest with the leadership of the U.S. military, who didn’t prepare the U.S. Army for the challenge it faced, and then wasted a year by using counterproductive tactics that were employed in unprofessional ignorance of the basic tenets of counter-insurgency warfare. The undefeated Saddam Hussein of 1991 The 2003 U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq can’t be viewed in isolation. The chain of events began more than a decade earlier with the botched close of the 1991 Gulf War and then it continued in the U.S. effort to contain Saddam Hussein in the years that followed.

FIGURE 5.20 The Sales Force’s DNA However, it wasn’t yet a full set of operating instructions. To make the code practically useful, we would need to understand how the framework should be applied to the task of managing any particular sales force. We had the “superset” of things leadership could measure and manage, but we needed clear guidelines to help cull from it the handful of activities and metrics that would enable leadership to focus on its own organizational goals. We needed to know how to apply these insights in a targeted and tactical way. Fortunately, we were on the verge of doing just that.

Win-win solutions are ideal but not common with strategic choices. When we hear someone talk "win-wins," we wonder if anything really lasting is going to change.

If one has never personally experienced war, one cannot understand in what the difficulties constantly mentioned really consist, nor why a commander should need any brilliance and exceptional ability. Everything looks simple; the knowledge required does not look remarkable, the strategic options are so obvious that by comparison the simplest problem of higher mathematics has an impressive scientific dignity. Once war has actually been seen the difficulties become clear; but it is extremely hard to describe the unseen, all-pervading element that brings about this change of perspective. ~Carl von Clausewitz 1   -          Why did you make that decision officer? -          Why did you go in the front door, instead of the back or side? -          Why did you not have the subject come outside to you? -          Why instead did you not set up a perimeter, containing the adversary and attempt to negotiate? -          Why did you do a face to face negotiation, with the subject armed with a knife, you know that is dangerous, don’t you? -          Did you have to take him down with force? -          Why didn’t you talk him out, use OC spray or taser him instead? -          Why didn’t you take a passenger side approach on that car stop? -          Why did you walk up on the vehicle to engage instead of having the subject walk back to you? -          Why didn’t you see the gun, weren’t you watching deadly hands? -          Couldn’t you have chosen another option? -          What in the hell were you thinking? -          The bad guy had a gun why didn’t you shoot? -          Why didn’t you wait for back-up? -          You knew something bad was happening there, why, did you wait, for back-up? -          Why didn’t you do this or do that?   These are all questions anyone who has been in law enforcement for any amount of time and has experienced a violent encounter has been asked or has even asked himself.  We law enforcement professionals what/if, if/then, or when/then ourselves so much in an effort to prepare and become more effective on the streets you cannot help but question the decisions we make. This questioning and reviewing of our decisions is, in the aftermath of an encounter helpful to us. This process of review known as an AAR or decision making critique teaches us valuable lessons helping us to adapt more effective methods and tactics to apply on the street.  BUT when in the heat of the moment, face to face with an adversary second guessing ourselves can be dangerous and risk lives, our own, and to those we are there to assist.

We take too many “tactically troubled” short cuts in this profession and pay with the loss of life. Give yourself the advantages and set yourself up to respond. Let’s stop mistaking good luck for good tactics and harness every possible way to adapt, learn and evolve in our abilities to make better decisions and hence more tactically savvy techniques that give us the edge we need.

Tactical use of the media can be equated to power behind your skill or special ability. It is in the power of the media to help market your brand. You just need to look at Hollywood, European football, Bollywood, Nollywood, Global fashion & modeling, showbiz and even humanitarian efforts, to appreciate that the making and destroying of stars, initiatives and legends is to a greater extent influenced by the role played by the media.

In the law enforcement and security professions most of the little training conducted surrounds physical skills training. Training focuses on firearm proficiency, how to swing and block with an impact weapon, use oleoresin capsicum (Pepper Spray), defensive tactics and handcuffing techniques. A small portion of time is spent talking about use of force decisions and filing appropriate reports as to the action taken by officers. Although there have been great strides in bringing new training techniques such as Redman suits, Sim-munitions and range 3000 simulators to combine the physical and mental realms of conflict. While this training is excellent, it is just a small part of the overall conditioning that must take place in the preparation of our profession.  This type of response training is called conditioned response.  It is a specific training for a specific reaction, and while it is important, does not fully prepare people for complex situations.

Shift Debriefing System A debrief includes a careful examination of the tactics, techniques and procedures, decision and actions that took place on shift; and is focused on improving performance. While there are no rules for conducting debriefings, the focus of a shift debriefing is on fact-finding, not fault-finding.

As cops we often cry loudly about the lack of training in our profession (I am guilty of it myself). However while we complain and whine about the seemingly lack of interest in ongoing training we also miss the opportunities to train and learn from the everyday lessons available to us. Those lessons that come from every call we respond to and every shift we work. The uses of training tools such as; tactical decision games and after action reviews still are rare occurrences in our profession and seemingly only used when some catastrophic or unconventional crisis has occurred i.e. a cop killed in the line of duty or a deadly force scenario that leaves the public calling for an explanation. We should be doing more to harness the wisdom of the street cop and what he learns from each and every day on each and every shift. The shift debriefing is a training tool we can and should utilize to develop full spectrum cops capable of making sound decisions and employing sound tactics to resolve crisis situations and record and report them accurately in the aftermath.

The ability to solve emerging problems, both those day to day issues that we encounter in normal work, and those complex emergencies that hit us without warning, are pivotal to our personal and organizational survival in difficult economic times. Tactical Decision Games are short, pointed exercises to increase the speed and maturity of problem solving. Used regularly and thoughtfully, tactical Decision Games will train individuals and teams to shorten the time needed to recognize and successfully overcome emergent problems of any type.

On the job training and experience is often stated as “the way” to learn the job of policing. What does this mean to us cops? Does it mean with time on the job we’ll get better at what we do, automatically, or magically from working shift after shift and handling call after call? Every time we race to the scene and charge towards the sounds of danger and come out safe with suspect in custody, mean that we have somehow gotten better just by being there and participating in the dangerous encounter? Or is there something more to this concept of “on the job training” we should be doing to leverage every experience no matter how small or big to improve our performance? When I think of on the job training I do not envision an environment where you show up for work and fly by the seat of your pants and hope things work out as you think they should. No, what I envision by on the job training is that you learn from every experience and focus on leveraging the lessons learned to make you better at the job. Law enforcement officers are members of a profession that does not routinely practice its tactical skills. Only constant violent conflict and violent crime, a condition to objectionable, to even contemplate, would allow such practice. Thus the honing and developing of law enforcement peacekeeping skills must be achieved in other ways.

The Boyd Cycle; a clear understanding of the observation, orientation, decision and action "OODA Loop" is a key first step. In the training we conduct through LESC or Adaptive-Leader when we conduct it with law enforcement and security professionals, this tactical decision making and threat assessment tool is a prerequisite that gives us the clear initiative in detecting crime and danger. The Boyd Cycle is a mental tool that helps us first understand how conflict unfolds, as well as, allows us to observe keenly through "all our senses" including intuition.

The difference between how we currently train and prepare versus the philosophy I am advocating is similar to the difference between techniques and tactics. Techniques require inflexibility and repetition, while tactics require flexibility, good judgment and creativity. Officers can only gain the ability to execute this new philosophy with experience and education, stressing free play force on force training brought to a conclusion with clear winners and losers. Keep in mind no tactical concept is an end in itself and that there is more than one solution to a tactical dilemma.   

Efficiency is an important aspect to policing. We must ensure things that need to be done such as information and evidence gathering, dissemination and documentation in reports, etc., is indeed getting done. However it is important for leaders not to get lost in the efficiency of processes as it breeds a zero defects environment that creates a frontline that waits to be told what to think and slowing down considerably the effectiveness of timely decision making and tactical problem solving.

African Americans (as well as other subaltern groups) are not essential Democrats, although in recent history many have tactically aligned themselves with this party. Critical theorists and others on the educational left should recognize that African American articulation to the Democratic Party and other powerful, liberal, progressive, and centrist groups has almost always been tactical. To theorize African Americans as “intelligent” when they show unquestioning loyalty to the Democratic Party and other liberal causes, even when these take their support for granted as they drift to the Right on significant issues, and “foolish” when they tactically participate in other, sometimes more conservative, alliances (such as that around vouchers) grossly misrepresents African American agency, and betrays what I feel is a racist essentialization of Black intelligence. Subaltern groups have always needed to tactically associate in seemingly contradictory ways with powerful groups and individuals, such as the Heritage Foundation, the Bradley Foundation, and the Democratic Leadership Council, in order to seek to protect their interests.

True leadership is not defined by notoriety, power, prestige, status, or job title.

What I am talking about here is that positive leadership offers s true decentralized control throughout the organization. This decentralized (BOTTOMS/ UP) approach allows freedom to decide at the strategic, operational and tactical levels of a law enforcement mission. The intuitive decisions are made at the tactical and operational levels while the slower strategic decisions are made at the top. Decision makers working cohesively at all levels enhance successful operations.

Strength of character or courage helps us gain control over ourselves and to influence others in a positive way. Character is part of leading and leadership within a community, organization or unit.  Without character you cannot function accordingly in the field dealing with the complexity of conflict and violence.  Strength of Character is an attribute that’s critical in implementing strategy and tactics, it’s necessary to connect the ends with the means and the moral, mental and physical aspects of conflict and violence. Without it we falter and are perceived by those we serve as just another bully pushing folks around, just another Goliath picking on and bullying David, and we all know how that ended. Strength of Character influences our decision making because it’s the crux of our ability to make decisions fluidly. Strength of Character affects the physiological and psychological responses to conflict, as well.

The battle plans and tactics of the Fifth Panzer Army, more than those of any other German army that took part in the Ardennes counteroffensive, bore the very strong personal imprint of its commander, General Manteuffel. As a junior officer in the prewar panzer troops, Manteuffel had made a mark as an armored specialist. His record in North Africa and Russia, where he achieved a reputation for energetic leadership and personal bravery, brought him to Hitler's attention and promotion directly from a division to an army command. Despite the failure of his Fifth Panzer Army in the Lorraine campaign against Patton's Third Army, Manteuffel was listed by Hitler for command in the Ardennes. His staff, carefully selected and personally devoted to the little general, was probably the best German staff on the Western Front.

You must always keep in mind that it is impossible to control exactly how the adversary(s) will respond to your actions. So the goal is to control the adversary’s mindset with both direct and/or indirect action which takes decision making and adaptability. Interaction, Insight and imagination are needed to adapt tactics and apply them in an initiative driven way to the particular problem at hand.

Learning the art of operations and develop the fingertip feel for applying tactics during interplay between adversaries, you can see is crucial to our success. This interplay teaches us that interaction leads to maneuver and maneuver opens up opportunities to exploit weaknesses. Then through superior situational awareness and insights you develop innovative ideas as you accord with an adversary. This leads to well thought out and/or intuitive decisions and actions to meet our strategic goals, whatever those goals may be.

From this basis, Boyd sets out to develop a normative view on a design for command and control. As in Patterns of Conflict, he starts with some ‘samples from historical environment’, offering nine citations from nine practitioners, including from himself (see Box 6.1):6 Sun Tzu (around 400 BC) Probe enemy strength to unmask his strengths, weaknesses, patterns of movement and intentions. Shape enemy’s perception of world to manipulate/undermine his plans and actions. Employ Cheng/Ch’I maneuvers to quickly and unexpectedly hurl strength against weaknesses. Bourcet (1764–71) A plan ought to have several branches . . . One should . . . mislead the enemy and make him imagine that the main effort is coming at some other part. And . . . one must be ready to profit by a second or third branch of the plan without giving one’s enemy time to consider it. Napoleon (early 1800s) Strategy is the art of making use of time and space. I am less chary of the latter than the former. Space we can recover, time never. I may lose a battle, but I shall never lose a minute. The whole art of war consists in a well-reasoned and circumspect defensive, followed by rapid and audacious attack. Clausewitz (1832) Friction (which includes the interaction of many factors, such as uncertainty, psychological/moral forces and effects, etc.) impedes activity. Friction is the only concept that more or less corresponds to the factors that distinguish real war from war on paper. In this sense, friction represents the climate or atmosphere of war. Jomini (1836) By free and rapid movements carry bulk of the forces (successively) against fractions of the enemy. N.B. Forrest (1860s) Git thar the fustest with the mostest. Blumentritt (1947) The entire operational and tactical leadership method hinged upon . . . rapid concise assessment of situations, . . . and quick decision and quick execution, on the principle: each minute ahead of the enemy is an advantage. Balck (1980) Emphasis upon creation of implicit connections or bonds based upon trust, not mistrust, that permit wide freedom for subordinates to exercise imagination and initiative – yet harmonize within intent of superior commanders. Benefit: internal simplicity that permits rapid adaptability. Yours truly Operate inside adversary’s observation-orientation-decision-action loops to enmesh adversary in a world of uncertainty, doubt, mistrust, confusion, disorder, fear, panic, chaos . . . and/or fold adversary back inside himself so that he cannot cope with events/efforts as they unfold.

Tactics is the art (understanding the strengths and weaknesses of your people and of your opponents and applying this differently to every situation) and the science (the technical aspect of understanding your equipment and its abilities) of winning engagements and conflicts. Tactics refers to the concepts and methods we use to accomplish a particular objective.

When the fight starts you do not have time to stop and think about the fundamentals.” ~Chet Richards, Certain to Win 1   Chet Richards wrote an interesting piece “Developing the Touch”, in which he asks the question, if Fingerspitzengefühl (fingertip feel) can be taught, why do so few people have it? He goes on to make two key points: First, Fingerspitzengefühl is a skill, so although most people can get better at it, some are going to get a lot better. Second, it’s a strange kind of skill, not for performing complicated or even dangerous tasks mystically well, but for sensing what is going on among groups of people in conflict and then influencing what happens.2 Chet’s points got me to thinking about, why is it we in law enforcement often times have difficulty applying what we know to a given situation? How do we get better at it? The answer lies in creating and nurturing our abilities in “Operational Art” taking what you know and being able to apply it to a given set of circumstances to affect your strategy and to bring an end to a potentially violent occurrence using appropriate tactics. To do this takes awareness, discipline, adaptability, skill development and strength of character to focus our efforts on the task at hand to meet our overall intent. You cannot learn this by sitting in some training class listening to an instructor give you a checklist formula on how to solve a particular set of problems. As Chet states: The first problem in learning Fingerspitzengefühl is that you can’t learn it by yourself. You have to have at least two groups of people to practice with — your team and some opponents.2 Our training must involve interaction with an adversary, red teaming comes to mind. Red Teaming is an approach to understanding our adversary and the methods they use. To develop a fingertip feel and maneuver we must possess numerous skills and be able to apply those skills individually and collectively if we are to be as effective as we need to be, to win

For a law enforcement organization to run smoothly it needs positive leadership. Positive leadership is when a leader interacts with the frontline. Interaction is not just getting to know those a leader works with and serves, although knowing your people is an important component to leading. Interaction is as well to continually develop and train and develop not only ourselves but those the leader serves in an effort to build a common outlook. In the end positive leader understands that a strong common outlook between the top and frontline establishes trust, or even better mutual trust. The leader's true work: Be worthy of his or her constituents' trust. Positive leaders know the side with the stronger group feeling has a great advantage.2 Strong trust encourages delegation and reduces the amount of information and tactical direction needed at the top or strategic level. With less information to process and a greater focus on strategic issues, the decision making cycle at the top accelerates and the need for policies and procedures diminishes, creating a more fluid and agile organization. Mutual trust, unity and cohesion underlie everything.

Sun Tzu's definition of speed is often misconstrued and shown through quick responses such as; doors being immediately kicked in upon arrival. You see knee jerk reactions to the report of a single gunshot and immediate entry made without knowing anymore than the fact that a gun went off. You see it in tactical responses and approaches to various calls for service where the possibility of danger exists.

Tactical decision games are situational exercises on paper representing a snap shot in time. A scenario is handed out that describes a problem related to your profession (law enforcement, security, military, business, etc). The facilitator sets a short time limit for you to come up with a solution to the problem presented. The TDGs can be conducted individually or in a group setting. As soon as time is up, with the facilitator using “time hacks”, an individual or group is told to present their course of action to the rest of the group. What you did and why? Justifying your actions to everyone else! It is important that individuals or groups working together are candid and honest in their responses. You’re only fooling yourself to do otherwise. The lesson learned from the TDGs can make you more effective and safe in the performance of your job. The time to develop the strength of character and the courage to make decisions comes here, in the training environment. Mistakes can be made here that do not cost a life and valuable lessons are learned.

While technical problems may be very complex and critically important (like replacing a faulty heart valve during cardiac surgery), they have known solutions that can be implemented by current know-how. They can be resolved through the application of authoritative expertise and through the organization’s current structures, procedures, and ways of doing things. Adaptive challenges can only be addressed through changes in people’s priorities, beliefs, habits, and loyalties. Making progress requires going beyond any authoritative expertise to mobilize discovery, shedding certain entrenched ways, tolerating losses, and generating the new capacity to thrive anew.

if there really is no way you can win, you never say it out loud. You assess why, change strategy, adjust tactics, and keep fighting and pushing till either you’ve gotten a better outcome or you’ve died. Either way, you never quit when your country needs you to succeed. As Team 5 was shutting down the workup and loading up its gear, our task unit’s leadership flew to Ramadi to do what we call a predeployment site survey. Lieutenant Commander Thomas went, and so did both of our platoon officers in charge. It was quite an adventure. They were shot at every day. They were hit by IEDs. When they came home, Lieutenant Commander Thomas got us together in the briefing room and laid out the details. The general reaction from the team was, “Get ready, kids. This is gonna be one hell of a ride.” I remember sitting around the team room talking about it. Morgan had a big smile on his face. Elliott Miller, too, all 240 pounds of him, looked happy. Even Mr. Fantastic seemed at peace and relaxed, in that sober, senior chief way. We turned over in our minds the hard realities of the city. Only a couple weeks from now we would be calling Ramadi home. For six or seven months we’d be living in a hornet’s nest, picking up where Team 3 had left off. It was time for us to roll. In late September, Al Qaeda’s barbaric way of dealing with the local population was stirring some of Iraq’s Sunni tribal leaders to come over to our side. (Stuff like punishing cigarette smokers by cutting off their fingers—can you blame locals for wanting those crazies gone?) Standing up for their own people posed a serious risk, but it was easier to justify when you had five thousand American military personnel backing you up. That’ll boost your courage, for sure. We were putting that vise grip on that city, infiltrating it, and setting up shop, block by block, house by house, inch by inch. On September 29, a Team 3 platoon set out on foot from a combat outpost named Eagle’s Nest on the final operation of their six-month deployment. Located in the dangerous Ma’laab district, it wasn’t much more than a perimeter of concrete walls and concertina wire bundling up a block of residential homes. COP Eagle’s

leader

The following ad is also a Director of IT position dressed up as a CIO.  The position reports to the CFO creating a natural conflict between the requirements of the role to be strategic but being overruled all the time by the tactical view of the CFO. The CIO salary will also be depressed due to the lower rank and the person will not have proper access to the Provost and other VP level people who will be the CIO’s primary clients. Chances are very high the focus will be on the network infrastructure and maintenance – note the highlighting of the wired and wireless networks.

Leadership beyond the NCO level was brittle, sluggish, and marked by a rigid adherence to the same primitive tactics over and over again, no matter what the actual situation.

Weekly Tactical meeting should last between forty-five and ninety minutes, depending on its frequency, and should include a few critical elements, including the following:

Progress Review The next key ingredient for the Weekly Tactical meeting is the routine reporting of critical information or metrics: revenue, expenses, customer satisfaction, inventory, and the like. What is reported depends on the particular industry and organizational situation, of course. The point here is to get into the habit of reviewing progress relating to key metrics for success, but not every metric available.

While these are both important problems to be aware of, by far the most common and dangerous challenge in making Weekly Tacticals work is the temptation to get into discussions about long-term strategic issues. Why is this such an important problem to avoid? First , there isn’t enough time during a Weekly Tactical to properly discuss major issues. Important, complex topics deserve enough time for brainstorming, analysis, even preparation.

Meeting #3:The Monthly Strategic This is the most interesting and in many ways the most important type of meeting any team has. It is also the most fun. It is where executives wrestle with, analyze, debate, and decide upon critical issues (but only a few) that will affect the business in fundamental ways. Monthly Strategic meetings allow executives to dive into a given topic or two without the distractions of deadlines and tactical concerns.

Ad Hoc Strategic Meetings In some cases, a strategic or critical issue that gets raised in a Weekly Tactical meeting cannot wait for the next Monthly Strategic meeting on the schedule. Still, that doesn’t mean it should be taken up during that Weekly Tactical.

Meetings are ineffective because they lack contextual structure. Too many organizations have only one kind of regular meeting, often called a staff meeting. Either once a week or twice a month, people get together for two or three hours of randomly focused discussion about everything from strategy to tactics, from administrivia to culture. Because there is no clarity around what topics are appropriate, there is no clear context for the various discussions that take place.

if the planning process gets bogged down or different members of the team can’t agree on a course of action, it might be necessary for the leader to step in and provide guidance or even make a decision on which course of action to use. But it is almost always preferred for the leader to lead from the rear, to allow the troops to take the lead on the plan and to take ownership of it. The best ideas often come from the people on the team who are closest to the problem; those are the folks on the front line. Don’t inhibit them; instead, allow them the freedom and authority to create and execute new plans and ideas. They have the knowledge. Give them the power. Don’t feel the need to always

What will the next 100 days look like?

In most cases, the kaizen bursts should describe the improvement generally (what), not specifically (how). Remember, value stream mapping is a strategic leadership activity that is part of a macro PDSA cycle. Designing and making specific improvements requires a series of micro PDSA cycles and heavy involvement from the front lines. You want those closest to the work designing tactical-level improvements rather than leaders who are too far from the work to determine exactly what should be done to reach a target condition.

When a nation cannot pay its spies well enough, such a country is far from sustaining its army on the battlefield - and far from winning a war. Great tactics are sketched in peace times not during the war, for such is an emergency.

Strategy is in the head. Tactics are in the hand.

In negotiations, everyone goes home with a slice of tactful compromise but nobody gets to binge on the whole cake and leave selfish, greedy and unrealistic crumbs for the rest.

The "divide and rule" strategy remains one of the most manipulative and effective methods colonial powers used to maintain control. This tactic involved intentionally creating tension and conflict among different ethnic, religious, or cultural groups within colonized societies. By doing so, colonial rulers disrupted collective unity, leaving resistance movements fragmented and less effective. The strategy often thrived in regions with intricate social systems, where diverse communities coexisted, providing an ideal environment for fostering divisions. A well-known example of this can be seen in British-occupied India. The British exploited the age-old caste system, a deeply rooted societal structure, to widen existing divides and tighten their grip on power. By intensifying caste-based divisions, they ensured that authority remained firmly in their hands. Additionally, the British instituted a system of favoritism, selectively elevating certain groups or individuals over others. This bred rivalry and mistrust, further hindering efforts for collective action. The colonial administration strategically aligned with select elite groups and specific caste factions, offering privileges in exchange for loyalty. This approach helped the British maintain control over India’s vast and diverse population while undermining solidarity among its people.

Leadership is a difficult practice personally because it almost always requires you to make a challenging adaptation yourself. What makes adaptation complicated is that it involves deciding what is so essential that it must be preserved going forward and what of all that you value can be left behind. Those are hard choices because they involve both protecting what is most important to you and bidding adieu to something you previously held dear: a relationship, a value, an idea, an image of yourself.

As business consultants with many years’ experience working with CEOs and senior executives, we were convinced that character shapes leadership decisions, tactics, and workplace behavior—all of which play a direct role in business results. To map the connections between all of those factors, we structured a research project aimed at bringing crystalline clarity to our understanding of what constitutes character, how it’s formed, the role it plays in our self-concept, and how it shapes our interactions with the world. (See appendix A for a detailed description of the research design.) We may have been venturing into explosive territory, but we knew that beyond it lay the answer to the big question: Is the strength of a leader’s character an important driver of business success?

During the Weekly Tactical, there are two overriding goals: resolution of issues and reinforcement of clarity. Obstacles need to be identified and removed, and everyone needs to be on the same page.

In the years that followed the Harrison campaign, many candidates—from Colonel James 'Young Hickory' Polk in 1844 to Lieutenant John Kerry in 2004—had their 'humble origins' and/or 'war leadership' highlighted in political material. Often coupled with these tactics was a corollary, to create an image of the opposition candidate that was highly negative—from John Adams as a 'monarchist' to John Kerry as a 'flip-flopping, windsurfing elitist.

If our initial response brings a semblance of control to chaos and helps us realize, get a better picture of what’s going on, then a viable response can be initiated quickly based on a sound strategy and effective methods and tactics to mitigate the situation. If we respond out of emotion and take reckless action, then we lose control of the situation and it becomes more chaotic and only leads to more

Hitler and Mussolini, by contrast, not only felt destined to rule but shared none of the purists’ qualms about competing in bourgeois elections. Both set out—with impressive tactical skill and by rather different routes, which they discovered by trial and error—to make themselves indispensable participants in the competition for political power within their nations. Becoming a successful political player inevitably involved losing followers as well as gaining them. Even the simple step of becoming a party could seem a betrayal to some purists of the first hour. When Mussolini decided to change his movement into a party late in 1921, some of his idealistic early followers saw this as a descent into the soiled arena of bourgeois parliamentarism. Being a party ranked talk above action, deals above principle, and competing interests above a united nation. Idealistic early fascists saw themselves as offering a new form of public life—an “antiparty”—capable of gathering the entire nation, in opposition to both parliamentary liberalism, with its encouragement of faction, and socialism, with its class struggle. José Antonio described the Falange Española as “a movement and not a party—indeed you could almost call it an anti-party . . . neither of the Right nor of the Left." Hitler’s NSDAP, to be sure, had called itself a party from the beginning, but its members, who knew it was not like the other parties, called it “the movement” (die Bewegung). Mostly fascists called their organizations movements or camps or bands or rassemblements or fasci: brotherhoods that did not pit one interest against others, but claimed to unite and energize the nation. Conflicts over what fascist movements should call themselves were relatively trivial. Far graver compromises and transformations were involved in the process of becoming a significant actor in a political arena. For that process involved teaming up with some of the very capitalist speculators and bourgeois party leaders whose rejection had been part of the early movements’ appeal. How the fascists managed to retain some of their antibourgeois rhetoric and a measure of “revolutionary” aura while forming practical political alliances with parts of the establishment constitutes one of the mysteries of their success. Becoming a successful contender in the political arena required more than clarifying priorities and knitting alliances. It meant offering a new political style that would attract voters who had concluded that “politics” had become dirty and futile. Posing as an “antipolitics” was often effective with people whose main political motivation was scorn for politics. In situations where existing parties were confined within class or confessional boundaries, like Marxist, smallholders’, or Christian parties, the fascists could appeal by promising to unite a people rather than divide it. Where existing parties were run by parliamentarians who thought mainly of their own careers, fascist parties could appeal to idealists by being “parties of engagement,” in which committed militants rather than careerist politicians set the tone. In situations where a single political clan had monopolized power for years, fascism could pose as the only nonsocialist path to renewal and fresh leadership. In such ways, fascists pioneered in the 1920s by creating the first European “catch-all” parties of “engagement,”17 readily distinguished from their tired, narrow rivals as much by the breadth of their social base as by the intense activism of their militants. Comparison acquires some bite at this point: only some societies experienced so severe a breakdown of existing systems that citizens began to look to outsiders for salvation. In many cases fascist establishment failed; in others it was never really attempted.

Howard knew that a strong enemy makes an opposing commander look good, and a great opposing general makes the victorious general look even better. Every time he had been called into the Plateau country, it had somehow involved an issue with Joseph. He had heard the man’s eloquence and seen the way that the other nontreaty chiefs had deferred to him on matters concerning the Wallowa. So he erroneously assumed that this imposing, charismatic, formidable chief was also the energetic, charismatic, formidable military leader of all the nontreaty bands. As a result, in his reports and in the dispatches from his friend, Sutherland, his military campaign was depicted as a struggle with the masterful war chief, Joseph, whose brilliant leadership and field strategies and tactics only served to make Howard’s victory seem even greater. Taking Howard’s lead, Sutherland referred to the Nez Perce as “Joseph’s people” and soon adopted the military shorthand of making observations such as “Joseph is in full retreat.” In the public’s mind, the Nez Perce were rapidly becoming “Joseph’s people,” and every military action was becoming an engagement between the Civil War general, Howard, and Joseph, the Nez Perce general and leader of the Nez Perce people. Meanwhile, the Nez Perce were anything but Joseph’s people. They were not even united among themselves. It had been all the chiefs could do to get everyone moving in a single direction. Even questions of allegiance still had not been sorted out. Many families included members who lived among the treaty factions as well as among the nontreaty bands. This had never presented a problem because all knew that a person or family could cross back and forth between sides if they decided that the Christian way or the traditional way was better. But now, with bullets flying, lines were hardening. In fact, in the Clearwater skirmish, one of the treaty Nez Perce fighting for the soldiers and even wearing a blue soldier’s jacket learned that his father had been killed while fighting on the nontreaty side, so he raced across the ground between the two factions, enduring fire from both camps, threw off his coat, and led a charge of the nontreaties against the soldiers he had just abandoned.

have a high percentage of fighter pilots, but there was no telling about the new crop of retreads. It was tough for them, with very little time in the airplane and the responsibilities of rank and leadership thrust upon them. The delicate balance between flying skill and tactical judgment was difficult to learn. Learning to subordinate your own fear was even more problematic. I knew now that everyone faced it in some degree. How you dealt with it determined whether you were a fighter pilot or simply someone flying fighters. The flow of retrainees from the short courses had begun to affect our losses. Filling the squadrons throughout Southeast Asia took a lot of manpower. We were getting the bodies, but we were no longer getting the skill levels. You couldn’t prove it, of course, but things were happening that didn’t bode well for the future.

True Management lies in tying a knot amid the known statistics and the unknown tactics; True Administration lies in untying a knot amid the unknown statistics and the known tactics

You want those closet to the work designing tactical-level improvements rather than leaders who are too far from the work to determine exactly what should be done to reach a target condition.

He said the strategy of the VC was the same as International Christian Leadership’s,” gushed Robinson, “except applied physically and militarily.” Robinson’s vision of Worldwide Spiritual Offensive could not yet accommodate Ho Chi Minh’s tactics, but Sullivan convinced him their enemy was a worthy one. “They spend hours, days, weeks, whatever time is necessary setting up for the LEADERS and then either by ambush, assassination, or other intrigue, they do away with them—not the people, the leaders. He said to kill 32 top level people”—as the Vietcong had done the previous month—“was tantamount to immobilizing thousands.

The inherent tensions between the White House and the press should not worry a president who is disciplined about observing certain elementary tactics of survival. Take responsibility, admit mistakes, put out bad news quickly, and acknowledge inconsistencies before others point them out.

Personnel in the tactical arena should be thick skinned and ready for direct and frank feedback.

Paul, in leading change in the Corinthian church, utilizes this very tactic. After careful teaching on the proper use (and laying down of) freedoms in Christ, Paul offers himself as the model: “Imitate me, as I also imitate Christ” (1 Cor. 11:1). Our friend Tony Merida says it this way, “Let them see themselves in light of your struggle and show them the same grace that you have discovered. . . . You are not on display; the Living God is. And your goal is for others to love Him and be satisfied in Him.”10 The leader has more tools than just modeling to help solidify new cultural narratives. One of the most powerful tools for illustration is the use of heroes and villains. In the local church we do it through testimony and appreciation of faithful volunteers. We acknowledge when someone is embracing truth and obeying Christ, and we put them on display for others to imitate. There is a danger in any hero other than Jesus. We want to spend the sweeping majority of our time and energy making much of Jesus and pointing others to Him as the ultimate Hero for all righteous living. But a church can benefit from lesser heroes who show people what repentance looks like, how developing others can happen in the midst of a regular workweek, and how one can approach work with a holy sense of mission. If the local church is to become a force for developing new leaders, then our congregations will need to see the stories of these new leaders. If a church sees regular examples of people they know used by God as leaders, the Spirit will surely begin to stir many more to action. So many lies that lead to apathy can be struck down through the right use of story in the local church. God’s people are encouraged, strengthened, and stretched when the tide of God’s movement seems to be swelling around them. Far too many churches fail to tell the story of God’s great power, and in doing so, fail to use testimony for its intended purpose.

manipulation through the tactic of mass assignation. Silvia, a CIO for a logistics agency, described the tactic in the following manner. “Behind closed doors I assemble the team and we plan how to best maneuver the multitude of stakeholders we have to influence to get large-scale change done. We create a highly detailed power map that includes their priorities, relationships, likes, dislikes — even their hobbies and favorite foods. This power map file is encrypted and kept only on my personal laptop, which no one may access but me.” Then she explains, “We continuously analyze their communication styles and who they relate to both on and off the team to determine the best person, channel and information to sway them. If they need to meet with Paul on a project, but they dislike Paul but like Mary, for example, we have Mary set up the meeting and Paul just shows up with her. If they like golf, the information we provide them includes golf analogies. If they like seafood, I take them out for lunch at the local oyster bar. I learned to do this when I worked for a consumer products company. This is how we analyzed the relationships between multiple target customers at the same time to determine how to sell more, and it made sense to apply it internally here.” As noted, mass

Choose tactics that are simple and safe to execute and will ensure the greatest chance of survival for your men. We do a dangerous job, and the team needs to understand this.

You need to be technically and tactically proficient with all your weapon systems and set the standard for the newbie on the team. They should aspire to be like you one day. If you live the example, you set the stage for success. You also take away all the excuses, should anyone want to fall back on one.

This is once again where trust plays a huge role in an effective team. Not only did he have to trust me when I first gave him the order to go to the building, but now that he has said “Negative” to me, I have to trust him. I have to trust that he’s seen something that I don’t see; I have to trust that he

Taking Extreme Ownership means that leaders are responsible for every action the people on their team make. It is as simple as that.

The Zionists’ ambitions also went beyond a permanent partition of Palestine. It is widely believed in the United States, especially among Israel’s supporters, that the Zionists were willing to agree to a permanently partitioned Palestine, and indeed they did agree to the partition plans put forward by Britain’s Peel Commission in 1937 and the UN in 1947. But their acceptance of these plans did not mean that they intended to accept only part of Palestine in perpetuity, or that they were willing to support the creation of a Palestinian state. As recent scholarship makes abundantly clear, the Zionist leadership was sometimes willing to accept partition as a first step, but this was a tactical maneuver and not their real objective. They had no intention of coexisting alongside a viable Palestinian state over the long run, as that outcome was in direct conflict with their dream of creating a Jewish state in all of Palestine. There was fierce opposition among the Zionists to the Peel Commission’s partition plan, and their leader, David Ben-Gurion, was barely able to get his fellow Zionists to accept it. They eventually agreed to the proposal, however, because they recognized that Ben-Gurion intended eventually to take all of the land of Palestine. The Zionist leader made this point clearly in the summer of 1937 when he told the Zionist Executive, “After the formation of a large army in the wake of the establishment of the state, we will abolish partition and expand to the whole of Palestine.” Similarly, he told his son Amos that same year, “Erect a

Leaders are never good enough. A leader must be constantly improving and learning since, in any leadership job, new and unexpected challenges arise all the time and, as one continues to lead, the number of people being led increases, projects multiply in number and scope, and the overall strategic impact of the missions being led also expands.

But no matter what type of leader I worked for, my goal was always the same: to build a relationship with them so they trusted me, gave me what I needed to get the job done, got out of my way, and let me accomplish the mission.

In an age where emerging leaders are skeptical of inauthentic leadership tactics, it is best to confront mistakes honestly while not using them as opportunities for condemnation. To many, passive-aggressive approaches or manipulative encounters with leaders diminish their view of that particular leader and make them cynical about their contribution to the task at hand or even the organization they serve. It is to your advantage to pull people out of their dejected state as quickly as possibly. Do so by calling out their mistakes quietly and returning them to a place of confidence and strength.

The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender and the bigger you can dream. Without hard work, grit, and belief, no theory, strategy, or tactic will save you. But with hard work, grit, and belief, anything’s possible. Don’t apologize for hard work. Celebrate it!

This leads us to a central tenet of tactical excellence: if your people aren’t executing well, it’s not their fault. It’s yours. Leaders of great companies have faith in the ability of ordinary people to perform extraordinarily well. They know that there are very few lazy, uncaring people and that, given the right environment, most people will deliver outstanding performance. Poor performance is usually the result of poor hiring decisions, poor training, lack of clear expectations, poor leadership, inadequate appreciation, poor job design, or some other failure of the company, not the employee.

There is no such thing as a dysfunctional organization, because every organization is perfectly aligned to achieve the results it currently gets.

Strategy: A strategy is a direct or indirect course of action, consisting of a series of maneuvers, to reach an objective at a cost that is significantly less than the benefits to be gained. A strategy is defined by judgments about what to do, how to do it, what to do it with, and how to limit both the costs and adverse consequences of doing it. Tactics apply strategy to the circumstances of the moment. Strategy: "The best strategy is always to be strong." — Carl Maria von Clausewitz, 1832 Strategy, components of: "Insofar as states act to prepare or to avoid war, or use a capacity for warmaking to extort concessions by intimidation without any actual use of force, the logic of strategy pplies in full, just as much as in war itself and regardless of what instruments of statecraft are employed. Thus, except for their purely administrative aspect, diplomacy, propaganda, secret operations, and economic controls are all subject to the logic of strategy, as elements in the adversarial dealings of states with one another." — Edward N. Luttwak, 1987 Strategy, criteria for effectiveness: "To be effective, a strategy must ... be able to win a domestic consensus, both among the technical and the political leadership. It must be understood by the opponents to the extent needed for ... deterrence. It must receive allied endorsement if alliances are to remain cohesive. It must be relevant to ... problems in ... uncommitted areas so as to discourage international anarchy." — Henry A. Kissinger, 1964 Strategy, diplomacy and: "The distinction between diplomacy and strategy is an entirely relative one. These two terms are complementary aspects of the single art of politics — the art of conducting relations with other states so as to further the 'national interest'. If, by definition, strategy, the conduct of military operations, does not function when the operations do not take place, the military means are [yet] an integral part of diplomatic method. Conversely, words, notes, promises, guarantees, and threats belong to the chief of state's wartime panoply with regard to allies, neutrals, and even today's enemies, that is, to the allies of yesterday or tomorrow." — Raymond Aron

At most, the law can be a tool, and even then, its efficacy will depend on multiple factors. These include geopolitical power, national and international interests, personnel capacity, strategic cohesion, effective leadership, and most significantly, political vision. There is no lack of good Palestinian lawyers. There is a lack of a robust political movement to inform their legal advocacy and to leverage their tactical gains.

A common question is, once we have a sense of our strengths and weaknesses, how do we measure the relative strength of the attributes we do have? In a recent interview, Dr. David Weller, founder of Leadership Alliance and a true expert in assessing top talent, told me that about a third of the variants for success are simple competencies. These include, but are not limited to: Possessing a drive for results and being able to get results from others The ability to make decisions, including unpopular decisions Strategic agility when dealing with ambiguity A certain level of risk tolerance Financial acumen Critical thinking, which is an innate trait Tactical ability Perseverance Self-awareness, which includes the ability to work through your weaknesses and not have blind spots Interpersonal skills The last one is worth noting. When you are CEO of a company, you must be able to sell; it’s a requirement. This does not mean that you need to commit your time to being a salesperson—that will depend on the type of opportunity you choose. The ability to grow small companies into big companies will always include the skill of selling, which is a learnable skill, despite the thought that salespeople are either born with this talent or not. Whether you’re selling your services to a prospective customer, selling the vision of your company to the employees, or selling the model to a potential investor, sales skills are a fundamental requirement of growing a business. Having strong interpersonal skills makes it possible to connect people and activities and grow a business.

The Multipliers framework fit nicely with Intuit’s business values, but the company wanted to ensure that ideas would translate from training-room scenarios to real-time business decisions in the leaders’ daily practice. Instead of just teaching skills, they used a business leadership simulation from the consulting firm BTS. In the simulation, teams managed a fictitious business modeled after Intuit, and faced a series of strategic and tactical decisions wherein they had to choose the actions that would both deliver the desired business results while simultaneously utilizing and multiplying the company talent. As the teams played through the simulation, leaders learned how to approach the most difficult business problems with a Multiplier mindset and behaviors. When they were faced with similar business decisions back on the job, they understood the trade-offs and were prepared to lead as a Multiplier.

Your résumé, your title, your tactics, your fancy speeches—none of it counts for much if your employees don’t already know you care about them as people.

I had a lot of chachet as a protest leader, showing the ability to muster crowds, command a confrontational situation, and garner press. That is heady stuff for a young man. But in walking away from those tactics, I found that my science education, flair for spectacle, and organization and leadership skills opened ways to be more effective with an American populace that to a great degree shared my love of nature.

Becoming an AI-driven leader means shifting from playing at a tactical level to leading with strategic clarity. Your ability to ask the right questions is a valuable skill. It will elevate your leadership by helping you overcome biases and assumptions, drive greater growth, and unlock new levels of value as you use AI as your Thought Partner.

When teams are split apart

The next law is Prioritize and Execute. There will be multiple tasks that need to be accomplished or numerous problems that must be solved. If the leader or the team members try to accomplish too many things at once

So even from a young age

The more often I detached

Speed of execution often trumps perfection of plan.

I want to make sure I understand your thinking here so I can learn to think through these issues myself,

This rumor mill will compound and eventually become a self-fulfilling prophecy of doom. This is gossip and groupthink; if the frontline troops aren’t sure why something is happening

What starts out as micromanagement becomes more and more hands-off. The more trust that is built