This week’s message reaches back to a post I made last May on the power and importance of failure. It was re-inspired by a paragraph I just read from the former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis’ book, “Call Sign Chaos”:
“The Marines are bluntly critical of falling short, satisfied only with 100% effort and commitment. Yet over the course of my career, every time I made a mistake – and I made many – the Marines promoted me. They recognized that these mistakes were part of my tuition and a necessary bridge to learning how to do things right.” – Jim Mattis
Making mistakes are never fun. It’s often embarrassing on multiple levels – you feel like you’ve let down both yourself and the “others” that depended on you. They’re often accompanied by an unenviable and uncomfortable feeling in the pit of your stomach as you watch your best laid plans fall off the rails. Regardless of where the fault lies, either due to an internal miscalculation or externally in something outside of your span of control, it’s always hard to accept that you didn’t meet the standard. In others words, in Jim Mattis’ language, the tuition is high. But the hard and obvious lesson here is that this is exactly how we continue to grow and develop. Once we’ve acknowledged and own our failures, we can begin the process to learn from them. And while a harsh tutor, I can certainly admit that I certainly learned more from these many mistakes than I ever have from my successes.
As an example, when I was a young Army Captain I found myself selected to conduct the company combined arms live-fire exercise (LFX) at the Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) in Fort Polk, Louisiana. Our Infantry Brigade (approximately 5000 Soldiers) out of Fort Drum was preparing for our upcoming Bosnia Stabilization Force mission and as part of our JRTC certification training, several of the Brigade’s units would take part in a series of intense live-fire scenarios. Most were at the small unit (platoon: ~38 Soldiers) level and only one at the company level. Mine was the lucky (?) company. The scenario required adding a platoon of four Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles (IFV) to my 154-man Infantry Company, so we could execute a coordinated attack on an enemy bunker complex and then fend off an armored enemy reinforcement counterattack. Without boring you with the details, adding the maneuverability and firepower of the Bradley platoon was something I had never been exposed to in my prior 6 years in the light and airborne Infantry. The coordination required to balance my slow but surgical ground infantry tactics with the new speed and lethality of the Bradley platoon was challenging to say the least. To add additional stress to the situation, my Brigade Commander (my boss’ boss) came along for the ride to watch. To make a potentially long story short, we “survived” the LFX. While my company+ of soldiers and IFVs were successful in isolating the objective with direct and indirect fires, conducting an explosive breach, clearing and securing the bunker complex, and maneuvering the IFVs into position for the counterattack, my ability (or lack thereof) to effectively synchronize the multiple actions in a smooth and seamless manner left quite a bit to be desired. At its conclusion, I was angry, frustrated, and concerned that my lack of combined arms experience let my Soldiers down. During our official After-Action Review (AAR), the JRTC Observer/Controllers were brutally honest in their critique of the exercise. Yes, we were successful in the action, but it was a far cry from being one of the better executed LFXs that they had seen. Ouch…
At the conclusion of the AAR, my Brigade Commander called me over and asked me to take a walk with him. Remember that comment earlier about that “pit of the stomach” feeling? My first reaction was “Good job Weis – you just got yourself fired from Company Command.” As I followed COL Barbero out of the tent and down the road, we walked in silence for what seemed like 5-10min – my heart rate and blood pressure increasing by the step. When we reached a quiet copse of trees, COL B turned to me and asked me how I thought the LFX went. Immediately multiple rationalizations and justifications jumped to mind, but instead of voicing them, I took a moment to gather my thoughts, smiled and simply said, “Sir, that was amazing. I want to do it again.”
I think my smile and answer caught him by surprise. After having experienced (and witnessed) both the execution of the LFX and the AAR, we both knew that it could have been done a lot better. When he asked me “Why,” I enthusiastically shared that I had never experienced something like that before. I knew how to fight my company and I was familiar with the capabilities of the IFVs, but I was wholly unprepared for the pace and coordination required to optimize their combined arms actions. Having experienced it now and gained a better appreciation of the scope and speed of synchronizing ground and mounted troops, I immediately wanted to try it again, leveraging this new-found knowledge and testing out alternative courses of action.
COL Barbero was silent for a few moments and then he smiled too. I think our walk was a chance for him to assess my mindset and resilience after not meeting my own high expectations – how would I react to getting knocked down. He didn’t want to hear excuses. He wanted to hear how I planned to use this experience to get better. COL B then shared one of his first “less than optimal” experiences in attempting to orchestrate this complex and dangerous combination. It was one of the coolest conversations I’ve had in my 25-year Army experience. I highly doubt that COL Barbero was planning to fire me following that LFX performance. He expected it to be a challenging and humbling event. If everything would have gone flawlessly, not only would he have been surprised, but I believe he would’ve thought that I’d missed out on the priceless opportunity to imagine and explore a wider range of options that could have been used. These “mistakes” are important learning opportunities that allow and encourage us to reflect, reassess, and analyze the many indicators, decision points, and consequences that we may not have considered during our initial attempts. Like GEN Mattis above, COL Barbero recognized that failure is a great teacher when paired with a learning mindset and definitely worth the price of admission.
I still don’t like failing (despite its frequency in my life), but I am thankful that early in my career I learned that a humble and positive attitude is key to ensuring that instead of pouring energy into dwelling upon a mistake, that effort is much better channeled into focusing on and paying attention to what important lesson(s) was gained. I fully acknowledge that this is often easier said than done. Feelings of disappointment, anxiety, and doubt love to rear their ugly heads during these types of situations. The challenge is therefore to decide which internal voice do you plan to listen to? While passive acceptance and rumination of failure is an option, it’s not a very proactive and healthy one. When I think back upon my military and professional leadership consulting experiences, I’m reminded of a phrase that helps me listen to the right voice and put my failure into better perspective: “Your team knows and accepts that periodic failure is part of the journey, so long as the leader does not believe it is the destination.” How are you approaching (or encouraging) failure today?
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