 General Sir Richard Dannatt - Annual Lecture 2009 |  General Sir Richard Dannatt delivers Annual Lecture 2009
For those of you who were unable to attend, you can experience General Dannatt's keynote speech along with his response to the first question regarding the timing of his invitation to assist the Conservative Party's Defence Team.
The full transcript of the speech is listed below along with links to the audio version of the first question response, you can also watch a recording of both his speech and the first question (in four individual parts) here.
Listen to his response.
'Leadership in Turbulent Times'
May I begin this evening as a Trustee of the Windsor Leadership Trust, by adding my welcome to you to this annual lecture and offering the hope that next year we, as a Trust, can get a really good speaker and not have to use one of our own staff – or, as they say in some Non-Conformist Churches when they are struggling for a preacher , "Next week, it will be Own Brethren!" That said, I am of course delighted to be giving this year’s lecture – thank you for coming - and I am most grateful to our Chairman for his very generous introduction.
Now, the title that I have taken this evening “Leadership in Turbulent Times” - at first sight a few months ago when I originally accepted the Chairman’s invitation to speak tonight - seemed then to be a somewhat easier challenge than it does now - financial turbulence, political turbulence and Afghanistan turbulence, notwithstanding. But I think that concern rather misses the point. If leadership is to be of any real value - if leaders are to really earn their pay - then it is in turbulent times that the real qualities will out, where the real value will be added, and where true leadership will be displayed – and not when everything is going swimmingly, and according to plan. So I would suggest that leadership is for turbulent times, and turbulent times are the context in which effective leaders should thrive. After all - where in the history books would Winston Churchill have sat without the menace of National Socialism, or where would Margaret Thatcher have sat without the challenge from Argentina or indeed the challenge from the National Union Mineworkers? Yes, and one conversely also has to recognise, that weak leaders who fail in turbulent times, are cruelly exposed – promoted beyond their level of competence, as Professor Norman Dixon suggested some time ago. But, of course, that is not us!
So let me offer briefly some views on the leadership challenge more generally, as a lead in to this evening, and to our subsequent discussions.
Of course, at the outset, not only do we all recognise that leadership is an important subject, but I strongly suspect we can also agree that it is a fundamentally difficult area:
o After all, discussion has long raged as to whether leaders are born or made, and
o If they are made, how is it done, and what qualities and characteristics should they exhibit?
o But, I would contend, that whether leadership is gifted or acquired, it is more useful to consider what leaders actually do, and I will come back to that in a moment.
Now, like one or two in the audience, I first came across leadership as a subject to be considered formally while I was a Cadet at Sandhurst. It was treated differently to other subjects we studied – for leadership discussions, we didn’t sit in the classroom, but we sat around in armchairs, in the Company Bar, or Anteroom as we called it, and we were asked for our ideas, as opposed to just being told what to do and what to think.
And, I believe, that sets leadership apart from the other more technical things you need to know in any profession– leadership it is a personal thing, it is an individual thing, it is an intuitive thing, but, despite that, I don’t go as far as to subscribe to the notion that leaders are born, not made. Yes, a bit of natural leadership ability helps a bit, and a lot of natural leadership helps a lot – but if you have any leadership ability, then thinking about the subject, studying the subject, experimenting, modelling yourself on a leader you respect, all those things can really pay dividends.
But when we sat in our armchairs at Sandhurst we had a range of erudite discussions, on the one hand listing the qualities of a leader and, on the other hand, debating the merits of a more functional approach to leadership techniques. I recall extensive discussion about the thoughts of one of my predecessors as Head of the Army, the late Field Marshal Lord Harding, who had produced an impressive list of the qualities – in his view - to be exhibited by a good leader, based on his experiences. He said a good leader needed:
o Absolute fitness
o Complete integrity
o Enduring Courage
o Daring Initiative
o Undaunted Will-Power
And, interestingly, he stressed the Adjectives, as well as the Nouns – Absolute Fitness, Complete Integrity, Enduring Courage, Daring Initiative, Undaunted Will-Power, but to these he added three other pre-requisites – Knowledge, Judgement and Team Spirit. Now, your are probably thinking, all that is good stuff from a soldier’s perspective – certainly applicable in the battle space, but I think on reflection, probably also more widely applicable in the business-space and elsewhere.
BEHAVIOUR NOT QUALITIES
But as respected and useful as possession of a large number of key qualities is, our discussions at Sandhurst also turned to functional models of leadership behaviour. At that time, the Action Centred leadership model put forward by Professor John Adair of The Industrial Society, and a Fellow of the Trust, was very influential. His Three Balls Venn Diagram approach of the individual, but over-lapping and inter-locking leadership elements, had much resonance with us cadets. His model required the identification of the need to blend:
o Identifying and Achieving the Task, on the one hand, while
o Maximising the efforts of the Team, on the other hand, and while perhaps most critically,
o Looking after the interests of the Individual - all this seemed like a winning formula to us.
And that single construct of Task, Team and Individual still, I believe, retains great merit – but, one wonders, is that enough?
WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO DO?
Now while a dry debate about the merits of a qualities approach to leadership or a functional approach is very interesting, it remains essentially theoretical and, by definition, not that useful, as I discovered a year or so out of Sandhurst when I hit my first really complicated leadership challenge. It was on my second tour in Northern Ireland – actually the first one had been tricky enough, inheriting a platoon of 27 soldiers but only having 19 left three weeks later, but thats another story. The problem I had next time was far more complex. The little bit of Belfast I was responsible for was bang-slap on the sectarian divide, and the issue was housing. The details don’t matter now, but to my great relief, as a Second Lieutenant, the General Officer Commanding Northern Ireland came to visit my patch. I walked him around the area, explained the problem as I saw it, and in my innocence asked him: “ So, General, what do I do?” He put his arm on my shoulder, and said: “Richard, we’ve got broad shoulders in the British Army, just muddle through!” - which, of course, is exactly what we did. But my take away from that – was that all the theoretical leadership and decision-making discussions and training that you can do at military academies and business colleges is worth, not a lot, when you come across the harsh reality of taking decisions that affects peoples’ lives directly, either over their safety in the battle-space or their well-being in the business-space – it is here that the rubber really hits the road.
So I think a key question that roots our discussion rather more, is to analyse, as I have already suggested, the practical reality of what it is that a leader is actually trying to do? Discussion of qualities and functional approaches are fine, but do they pass the “So What?” test. In my view the key leadership tasks are threefold – to analyse, to decide and to deliver. Getting those things right definitely passes the “So What?”.
Now time precludes me going into those three individually, but to take our discussion forward, I suggest there is an over-arching need to have an understanding of what level of activity the leader is trying to lead within and to lead at, and I believe that this will help him or her decide what it is that needs to be done, at any one moment, and how that should be delivered.
In my sphere of work, we separate out activity into three levels – the Strategic, the Operational and the Tactical.
Now the first and last of those are well known. The Strategic level is where the big thoughts are thought, the major analysis is done, and every business endeavour or large organisation seems to be well supplied with Strategic thought – strategies for this, strategies for that – probably too many strategies.
And then down below, where it all happens, is Tactics – where the rubber hits the road – and in this sense the tactical level is about Delivery.
Alan Leighton, who is a very talented leader but has struggled to make a go of the Post Office over many years, was very interesting on this in his Windsor Leadership Trust Annual Lecture a few of years ago.
His view is that 20% of a business is about Strategy and the other 80% is Delivery, but critically, in his view, the glue that holds it all together is Communication – successfully communicating the Big Idea to those who have to make it happen. And if Communication is delivered by leaders, or managers who know their stuff, who can inspire their staff and who can drive through to their objectives, then this is probably a very commendable formula.
But in my construct and with deference to Alan, I believe this overlooks the key level of activity, and this is the Operational level, which is the level that sits between the Strategic and the Tactical, and thus the level that sits between the ideas and the action – it is the level where the key decisions are taken, and it is the level which turns the ideas into action - it is the campaign planning level - and in my book that is the level which lifts the mediocre to the exceptional, it is the level that lifted Nelson, Wellington and Montgomery into the history books, and the likes of Bill Gates and Richard Branson into the Worlds Rich List.
Because, It is at the Operational level – this campaign level - where the General or the Captain of Industry does his real work, and where an End to End plan is formulated to transform the original idea – the Big Idea – into success on the battlefield, or to serious profit on the balance sheet.
And it requires serious intellectual rigour to do this – to devise a plan – a campaign plan – to take one in a series of steps, which we, in the Army, would call battles or engagements, to the pre-identified End-State – and success in the Campaign.
But the compilation of the Plan – through strategic analysis and operational level decision-making - is nothing without the application of energy, drive and inspiration to take the team on the journey to successful delivery, and this aspect of leadership is key – and it begs the question: will those who are integral to your plan actually come on the journey with you? Because Leadership is one thing, but successfully promoting followship is another. To arrive with no-one behind you is a very lonely experience! And many a young officer has been enthusiastically followed, but only out of curiosity.
APPLICATION OF STRATEGIC, OPERATIONAL, TACTICAL
Now you might be thinking that it is all very well to think in terms of separating out the Strategic from the Operational to the Tactical in a large enterprise like an Army or a big multinational company, but where is the application in a small firm, business or a charity?
Well, I would suggest, that in any application, size does not matter. What does matter is a proper analysis of what you are doing at any one time and why. Even in a small business there will always be moments when a strategic review is needed – there will always be moments, probably the majority of time, when leading the workforce at the tactical level at the shop floor will be essential to delivery, but most critically there must be those moments when you engage in Operational level thought – to work out the Campaign Plan which translates the Strategic Objectives into Tactical, practical and, hopefully in the business-space, financial success, and in the democratic-space, electoral success.
So my point here is that whether in a large or small enterprise, what is really critical is weaving together those three vital levels of activity, and, if necessary, one person can do all three provided he or she knows what he is doing and at what level he is thinking at any given moment – and that, I suggest, requires clarity of thought and discipline of mind.
DELIVERY
So if this successful leader in these turbulent times – and is his name Obama, Brown, Cameron or even, Clegg – if has thought about what he is going to do and why, and has identified the qualities he needs to be effective and also has a good understanding of the need to balance the trinity of Task, Team and Individual then perhaps he is on his way.
But then the question is: how to do all this?
In my organisation – and this is where I am a victim of my own experience - we exercise leadership through a process known as Mission Command – and we aim to do this both in barracks and in the field – but I would apply the principle more widely still.
That said, and in a general sense, I have already touched on the key elements of this – but essentially there are three components to what we call Mission Command, all of which hinge around the leader:
o First, the Commander, the Senior Manager, the Leader needs to think through and fully analyse his problem and convert his strategic goals into the front end of his Operational or Campaign Plan, and this results in him clearly setting out his Intent. He needs to have applied sufficient analysis and intellectual rigour so that he can set out to his subordinates or his employees his statement of what needs to be done and his overall intentions as to how it is to be done. This, I suggest, is more than just a rather wishy-washy Vision Statement.
o The second stage, in a non-prescriptive way, is to take a series of decisions to separate out the tasks that need to be done and delegate them to subordinates along with the necessary manpower, equipment, training and financial resources to carry out those tasks.
But he doesn’t tell them what to do – he tells them what they are to achieve; this is truly output or outcome focussed, not simply input focussed.
o And finally – and this is where the process can go wrong – having delegated the task appropriately, he needs to supervise the execution, or delivery, of those tasks – not in a way that stifles the initiative of the subordinates to whom the tasks have been delegated, but in a subtle way, remembering that while tasks can be delegated, responsibility can never be delegated – the buck always stops with the boss.
Actually without going down a rabbit hole unduly, I think that the degree of ownership and responsibility came home to me most starkly in July 2000 when I gave evidence for the Prosecution at the trial of one Radovan Krstic before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in the Hague. General Krstic had commanded the Drina Corps of the Bosnian Serb Army at the time of the capture of Srebrinica and the subsequent massacre in Eastern Bosnia in July 1995. He was about the same age as me, had a professional military background in the Yugoslav National Army that had begun at the same age as mine had in the British Army, and in 1995 was commanding a formation very similar in size and organisation to 3rd (United Kingdom) Division which I was then commanding. His mistake – on 13th July 1995 – was to accept a mission from his superior and develop a plan that led directly to the massacre of 7000 to 8000 Muslim men and boys. He had accepted ownership of the operation, became responsible for the plan, but then based his defence in Court on having delegated his responsibility, and - was convicted and sentenced to 42 years imprisonment for a variety of war crimes.
When we say glibly, "the buck stops here", for Radovan Krstic it stopped for him in spades on the day he was convicted! That said − and as an aside − I know, he knows, and the Court also knows that his real failure was a complete collapse of personal moral courage.
Had he refused to accept the Mission from General Ratko Mladic, or talked his superior out of the idea, then he would not be in prison now, and upwards of 8000 people would still be alive. The risks of the morally correct line were obviously high, but on the day he failed the test.
LEADERSHIP – THE SPIRITUAL DIMENSION
But to come back to my central theme, in these turbulent times the activity ultimately centres on the leader himself. I have always been very influenced by a wise comment by the late Viscount Hambleden, the founder of the WH Smith Empire. He stated in relation to the leader as the engine of success that “Character and integrity are as important in a manager as capability”, and I think those two aspects – character and integrity – are absolutely key in a leader. And I have already touched on both aspects of character and integrity in what I have said so far. A leader does indeed need certain qualities, of which integrity is key, and at the same time there are certain other capabilities that a leader needs as well – to understand the objectives, to map out the route from strategic endstate to tactical decisions, and above all to communicate his intent clearly while delegating responsibly.
But I wonder if these qualities and capabilities that I have suggested are enough? Fitness, Integrity, Courage, Initiative and Will-Power – these things, and more, are all really important, but are they enough?
Indeed as an organisation, the British Army, which I have been a member for 40 years, has itself identified six Core Values which are the heart of the ethos of the Army. So important are these to us that we now educate our soldiers in certain core values that in a previous generation they may well have picked up in their family or wider community. But I wonder if these six Core Values of Selfless Commitment, Courage, Discipline, Integrity, Loyalty and Respect for Others, are themselves enough?
My own feeling is that a range of leadership qualities and those core values provide a very sound moral baseline – a baseline that is acceptable to all and quite a challenge to live up to.
But, and this is a question I often ponder, is a sound moral baseline enough? Should there not also be a spiritual dimension to this? I believe there should after all, we often refer to someone as being an “inspirational” leader.
And, of course, it is that word “believe” or “belief” that is at the heart of any spiritual dimension…..
For some, belief in the Cause, belief in the Leader or even in my organisation within the tribal nature of the British Army, belief in the Regiment – will be enough. But I am not so sure. What really sustains, in my view, is something more than this – something far bigger than ourselves, something bigger and deeper than we can imagine or rationalize for ourselves.
This first came home to me as a young platoon commander in Belfast in the early 1970’s when my Platoon and I were engaged in a fierce and protracted gun battle after which several terrorists were left dead and one of my soldiers had been killed and another shot in the chest. We had all been frightened – even though no one admitted it! The next Sunday I asked the battalion Chaplain to come to the platoon base and take a service.
I put a notice up to say this was happening, and that I was attending. All the Platoon turned up.
That experience told me that even the toughest of men, when the chips are down and the reality of life and death confronts, these people are reaching out into the spiritual dimension, beyond the rational and the moral, for something! And I know they are doing that in Afghanistan tonight, as we speak. But it is personal thing, for all to find for themselves, where they can.
But I don’t think this just applies to Armies in a combat situation. I think there is an application to any situation of pressure, stress or challenge, in these turbulent times, when individuals are stretched to their physical or psychological limits.
And I think the truly effective leader needs to recognise this – but he is, of course, personally challenged to provide what is needed for his employees or subordinates – if he does not have some empathy with or some experience of a spiritual anchor to his life himself – so this is very much a personal thing. But ships without anchors on the sea bed in turbulent times, run before the prevailing wind, and the rocks can be very unforgiving.
CONCLUSION
But time presses, so let me dismount from that particular hobby horse, and try to pull my thoughts together by way of conclusion.
There are traditional ways of understanding and developing leadership – the qualities approach and the functional approach are but two. But in today’s more complex environment in both the business-space and the battle-space, there needs to be more.
I contend that the leader needs to analyse very carefully, at any moment in time, what he is trying to do and at what level of leadership. The Strategic analysis, the Operational decision-making and the Tactical delivery levels of activity make different demands on the leader, and he needs to know this and understand the differences.
Moreover, in my view, he needs to have done his own homework, become crystal clear what he wants to achieve and can then – very clearly – articulate his Intent.
It is that statement of Intent, which provides the focus for the sensible delegation of tasks and the framework for appropriate supervision and the foundation of motivation.
But what really gives the leader his authority – his right to lead – does at the end of the day come down to him, or her, as a person – the nature of their character and the degree of their integrity – and this is very different from image.
In my book, Character defines the person – and answers the question as to whether this is someone to emulate or to follow, and with what enthusiasm.
Moreover, integrity establishes the moral baseline to lead. Is this someone who can be trusted? Is this someone whose instructions are honourable? Is this someone to commit too? Do they really have legitimate interests at heart, or is this person simply a self-seeker, or purely interested in the bottom line?
These are all judgements for the subordinates, the employees, the followers, the voters to make. Their judgements, I submit, will ultimately define success or failure in the enterprise – perhaps not in the short term, but certainly in the medium and long term.
So, in these turbulent times for our Nation, it is quite clear that in our business, political and community lives, confident leadership is needed. But who has an understanding of the differences between the Strategic, the Operational and the Tactical levels of problem solving. Who has a clear understanding of moral responsibility for the ownership of decisions taken, and who have characters that excite, and the degree of integrity that invites commitment to the finish? We need these people right across our public, private and voluntary sectors life – and to finish on a parochial note – I believe the Windsor Leadership Trust has a huge role in bringing these people forward. So, thank you for being here, and thank you for your participation. I look forward to our discussion.
|
