Tuesday, October 19, 2021

The General Who Knew the Field Officers Were Usually Right.

 


Copyright – Bloomberg

Colin Powell, the first African-American to be Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff died passed away today (18 October 2021). He was 84 and he died of complications from Covid-19. The full story of his passing can be found at:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-58957273

I grew up in the UK during the first Gulf War, when he was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs under the first President Bush. The media made much of the fact that he was the first black man to reach the highest ranks of the US military. He was, as they say, a media personality in the making in that he was a black and had climbed the ranks of a conservative institution, when most black people that were talked about in the media were either sports stars, rappers or civil rights activist.

As the obituaries are coming in from the great and the good, I shall try to limit myself to two particular aspects of Colin Powell, since my knowledge comes from reading about him from a different part of the world and never serving in the institution that was most beloved to him – the US Army.

The first thing that one could say about Colin Powell has become particularly pertinent in today’s age of divisive politics. The late General was someone who could function in an environment with people whom he disagreed with.

Powell served with both Republican and Democrat administration. He was National Security Advisor under Regan, Chairman of the Joint-Chiefs under the first Bush and Bill Clinton before rising to the ranks of Secretary of State under the second Bush. If you read his biography “My American Journey,” he managed to find something good to say about all the administrations he worked for and whatever criticisms he had of his political masters were inevitably professional. Although appointed by Brush the first, Powell continued to serve as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and despite the initial fracas over the “Don’t Ask, don’t tell” policy regarding homosexuals, he actually got along with Bill Clinton, the Democrat who had effectively ended the career of his “mentor” (as things would have it, Bill Clinton and George Bush the first would eventually become close).

Then in 2008, when a young Barak Obama was running for president and facing accusations of being a “Muslim,” Powell, a card-carrying member of the Republican Party came out to say “So what if Obama is a Muslim.”

This aspect of General Powell’s story shouldn’t be extraordinary. However, in a world of “With us or Against us,” it is. He understood that it was the objective that was important rather than the ideological differences. Hence, he was able to work with both Democrats and Republicans.

The second aspect of Colin Powell comes from his post public service career as a leadership guru. The man was filled with common sense and ten of his better leadership quotes can be seen in the following link:

https://news.clearancejobs.com/2021/04/27/powerful-words-from-colin-powell-top-10-quotes-from-decades-of-service/

One of the things that struck me came from a book about him that I was browsing in the book shop. He stated that he tended to side with his field officers over his staff officers. An extract of his explanation can be found in the following interview with Forbes Magazine:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/danschawbel/2012/05/17/colin-powell-exclusive-advice-for-entrepreneurs/?sh=7e0be5496002

He wisely says, “I have sort of always felt that the guys in the field are closer to the troops, closer to the problem, who are actually executing what’s supposed to be done by the organization, they should have a better understanding of what’s going on, so if they tell me something is wrong, I am going to assume they are right.”

If you look his words, you’ll realise that this is common sense for most situations. The guys in the best position to deal with any given problem are the guys on the ground rather than the guys sitting in offices far away from the problem. The worst people to deal with any particular problem are the guys sitting far away in ivory towers and getting excited over statistics.

Yet, while this is common sense, the system that we live in tends to reward the guy furthest away from the problem rather than the actual problem solver. In Singapore, for example, we get particularly excited about paying our political leaders a lot of money but struggle to pay rank and file workers a few cents more. Our military is run on a system where anything resembling field experience (actually facing bullets) is something of a handicap and the guys who are on the field doing the work get shafted by the paper pushers.

To be fair, this isn’t limited to the military or even to Singapore. One of our media organisations was once known to have a surplus of vice-presidents but a lack of producers. Everybody wants to be a boss and nobody wants to be the guy actually doing things.

If Colin Powell is to leave a legacy, it should be a reminder that it’s the people on the field, in the battle field who actually know what’s going on. We should trust the people doing the work rather than the people sitting behind desk and screens and jacking off over statistics


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