[turning point] The strongest combat commander in the world: The new leaders are all authorized managers.

In fact, the most efficient organizational change is the military, and the CEO from the military is far more than Harvard Business School. Ren Zheng Fei, president of Huawei, has repeatedly urged 6,543,800 employees to study American military.

Stanley, commander of the US Special Operations Command and the highest commander of the US military in Afghanistan? General McChrystal built the most powerful American army in the world. In his new book Empowerment, General McChrystal provides management ideas that business leaders can learn from military commanders.

A chess player who doesn't play at the board.

Chess is the ultimate strategic competition among players, which can effectively exercise strategic thinking and train future leaders. All kinds of chess pieces, whether kings, queens, horses, elephants or soldiers, move on the chessboard in different ways. The largest number of soldiers, the most limited way of action. Post-action mode is the most flexible, largest and most powerful. Although Wang is relatively weak, this piece can never give up.

In this extremely "centralized" situation, no chess piece will think independently when acting, no chess piece will examine the whole chessboard from its own unique angle and make suggestions for action, and no chess piece will say that it is in danger. Everything is in the hands of the chess player.

The task force in 2004 is like a chessboard, where the "chessboard" is unpredictable, and the "chess player" has to face the time limit every step. I can observe the whole chessboard, which enables me to command troops to fight Al Qaeda in Iraq like playing chess.

But I soon found that it is very unreliable to regard this battlefield as a chessboard. Even at the fastest speed, chess is still a turn-based game. Each opponent takes a step and plays the game in turn. However, the 2004 war will never abide by this agreement. The enemy may use several pieces at the same time, or beat us one by one in a very short time. They can't wait for us to take one step before taking the next, like chess players.

Al-Qaeda acted very quickly, and we soon found that their changes were not the result of careful decision-making by its top management, but the timely response of the frontline troops, who obviously felt comfortable in the new environment.

Our team was forged into a well-trained, unthinking leader of "puppet chess pieces" and trained as a chess master. After a series of fiasco in a short time, we knew it was necessary to make a change.

Work as a gardener in a vegetable garden

In order to make everyone understand better, I want to tell a story.

My parents bought a new house when I was a child. My mother uses part of the yard as a vegetable garden. She grows fruits and vegetables there. All kinds of beans are arranged neatly like an army, with potatoes on the right and lettuce behind. Fertilization places are also particular, and we will study how to save a few seconds of labor. If the vegetable garden is well cared for and fully maintained, and the vegetables can be harvested once they are ripe, the output of the vegetable garden will be considerable. The gardener has created an environment in which crops can thrive. Previous work and careful care day and night enable each crop to grow independently at the same time.

After serving as a task force commander for many years, I began to feel that to be an excellent leader in the new environment, I should be more like a gardener in a vegetable garden than a chess player on a chessboard. For management actions, it seems natural to implement gradual control, but in fact, it is more effective to cultivate the whole organization and establish its structure, process and culture so that all its components can operate independently. This is not completely arbitrary, because the efforts of each part of the team are inseparable from the insight into the overall situation, and all units can continuously gain the overall sense of enjoyment, so that they can take the most appropriate actions according to the overall strategy.

In our team, just like in a vegetable garden, gardeners can't really "grow" tomatoes, pumpkins and beans. What she can do is to help build a good environment for crops to grow and grow.

Maintain the organizational atmosphere and "empower" enterprises.

It is not easy to change from a "hero leader" to a humble gardener. But I made a choice. I must adapt to the new reality and reshape myself, just as the objective environment forces us to reshape the army. But how can we become an excellent gardener?

My main responsibility is to create and maintain an atmosphere of teamwork. I will continue to shape our organizational network, and the enjoyment and empowerment of information is the magic weapon to make our combat operations successful. I found that only with the promotion of senior leaders can we maintain the rhythm of action, the transparency of information and the good cooperation between various units.

Our big team composed of small teams is distributed on many continents. How to make them understand the importance of communication and establish the corresponding organizational culture is a challenge. Written guidance is necessary. In order to disclose the latest situation at any time, I enabled a secure internet interface and carefully prepared every memo, which not only reflected my thoughts, but also reflected my "voice". If you want others to remember these things, you must emphasize them many times. Only when my subordinates can repeat or summarize what I said and regard it as a necessary "fact" can I be sure that these words have been fully accepted by them.

1. Operational briefing is the most effective leadership tool.

I asked the whole army to speak freely at the operational intelligence briefing to show this new leadership style. The number of participants in the video conference is distributed in 70 locations. I will never cancel even one operational intelligence briefing meeting and force everyone to attend. I feel that if the operational intelligence briefing is regarded as occasional, important leaders will not always attend, and it will eventually collapse.

Operational briefing should be combined with key information reporting and active interaction. Participants are thousands of miles apart and have different organizational and cultural backgrounds. They have never met before. In this case, it was not easy to be honest with each other, but we did it.

Every day, several intelligence analysts (usually young people, whom I have never met) are asked to provide brief updates at their locations (including 70 different locations). It is not a pleasant experience for them to introduce themselves to a general in his fifties on TV. I don't have to think much, I can understand their bad mood at that time.

However, when they give a briefing, I will pause and say hello by their names. They are often surprised and moved by this. In the command system, they are eight grades lower than me, separated by Wan Li-how did the senior general know their names? The answer is simple. My team has prepared a list of people who will give a briefing today. This is a small move to relax them.

When they give a briefing, I usually listen carefully. Finally, I want to ask a question. The answer is usually not very important, but I want everyone to know that I am listening. This also gives them the opportunity to show their knowledge and ability in front of the whole headquarters.

For a young member of the headquarters, I will praise his report even if his briefing is poor. Then others will give advice and see how he can improve. I don't need to give him advice in front of thousands of people. If we do well, analysts will be more confident, more responsible and more committed to our cause after the briefing on operational intelligence.

Attention and enthusiasm are my most powerful actions. I also adopted what I call "thinking aloud". I will summarize what I have heard and explain my first reaction roughly. This practice will make the whole headquarters follow my logical track and understand my way of thinking, and they can correct my thinking track when appropriate. In order to successfully implement authorization, I often ask my employees what kind of action is appropriate and ask them to tell me how to do it. Through the briefing of operational intelligence, we strengthened a message as a whole: we are faced with all kinds of problems that we can solve.

2. Communication skills of battlefield patrol

If we want to do a good job of "battlefield patrol", we must carefully plan and implement it. Most of these visits have multiple purposes: to increase leaders' understanding of the situation, to convey guidance to the troops and to boost morale. A successful visit can achieve all the above goals, while a bad visit will confuse and demoralize the troops.

Visiting the army can show you what you can't see in the official report. Before I visit the army, I'd better talk about the main questions I want to ask. I'll try to get some background information before I arrive at my destination. When visiting the site, it is of course necessary for local leaders to introduce the situation, but at the same time, they must interact with the lower class people.

It is skillful to ask questions during traveling. The content of the briefing is mainly what subordinates want you to know, and the information they provide is often incomplete. I have a useful trick. At that time, we were visiting an intelligence unit, which claimed to have 250 intelligence sources. I asked a simple question: "Can you elaborate on your so-called best intelligence source? Which intelligence sources are useless? " This unit only admitted that the best information source they said was newly collected, but did not prove its value, so we immediately understood that its intelligence network had almost no practical value.

Later, when I talk to junior officers, I will ask the same question: "If I tell you that you can't go home before we win the war, will your performance be different?" At first they thought I was joking, but they soon began to think seriously.

Once the question "What will they do if they can't go home before the end of the war" is reconsidered, most people will adjust their strategies and consider how to deal with this problem from a longer-term perspective. They are all smart and experienced people, and they can immediately realize that solving problems requires a long-term vision. When I leave, I will ask every soldier to keep the mentality they mentioned when performing their duties.

I won't talk to them condescendingly, I will try to understand and respect their views. In many cases, soldiers who have worked hard for a whole day in bad conditions will feel that their leaders are far away from the world they live in, Wan Li. If there are only beautiful words without practical actions, it will only lead to ridicule from subordinates. If I can't do anything for them after listening to their questions, I think I should tell them frankly instead of pretending that I can change something for them. Frankly expressing my respect for them can also win their respect for me.

A little interaction will make subordinates feel depressed, so if you ask questions, please leave enough time to listen to the answers. The soldiers spent several days preparing to brief or show the visiting "big shots", only to be told at the last minute that their work was meaningless. This is not a good way to boost morale.

Gardeners sow and harvest, but more importantly, they water crops, fertilize the land and remove weeds. They walked on the wet dirt road all day and knelt beside the tender seedlings. The daily visit of excellent gardeners is not a formal and caring gesture, it can make crops stronger; The same is true for leaders.

3. The leader's mission

In order to make our organization adaptable, we must establish, guide and maintain an agile and lasting culture. The main responsibility of the new leader is to maintain the overall policy, no matter how tempting the macro-management policy is.

Perhaps for an organization that sells decorations, its leaders find that they like everything related to decorations-design, construction and marketing, but in fact, this is not the most important aspect of the organization's leaders. The main duty of a leader is to be responsible for the whole organization.

What a leader says is very important, but his behavior is more important for forming a big team composed of small teams. Using new technology to monitor the performance of employees at all levels is certainly in line with frederick taylor's wishes, but at the same time, the leader must also allow team members to monitor him. In addition to guidance, leaders must also show personal transparency. This is a new concept.

As the world becomes more and more complex, the importance of leaders will only increase. Even the beating quantum in artificial intelligence can't express personal wishes, spiritual encouragement and enthusiastic praise, all of which need leaders to do. It is always difficult to persuade small teams to form a network with each other, but this culture can be cultivated and will flourish if it is maintained. What is needed here is a gardener-a person, sometimes a completely lonely person. In order to make the ecosystem work well, leaders should show their willingness to take on great responsibilities.