Leading an Army with General Stanley McChrystal

Graham Allcott 0:07

My guest today is General Stanley McChrystal, General McChrystal led a stellar military career culminating in becoming the commander of US and allied forces in Afghanistan. And since leaving the US military, he's founded the McChrystal Group, and has also written several books. His latest book is called Risk: A User's Guide. So in this episode, we talk about different ways to think about risks, how he led an information sharing revolution in the American Secret Services, the recent phone call, patching up his differences with Joe Biden and what it was like to get sacked, but in a kind way by Barack Obama, I could have listened to Stan talk all day. This is General Stanley McChrystal,

General Stan McChrystal, welcome to be on busy. Well, how are you doing today?

Stanley McChrystal 1:32

Doing great, thanks for having me,

Graham Allcott 1:33

you're recording and talk to me from a very purpose built high tech office in Virginia?

Stanley McChrystal 1:39

Yeah, it'sgreat. And we can talk more about it. It's three blocks from my house. When I was in Iraq, my wife bought a house, you know, sight unseen to me, put me in great debt. And then when I retired, and we moved into it, we literally drew a circle because we knew I wanted to walk to work. And so when I came, when I established McChrystal group, we put it three blocks from my house, and it's one of those little decisions about shaping your life.

Graham Allcott 2:03

Yeah, that means so much for those who like, and, you know, perhaps our younger listeners to the podcast, who are not so aware of your military career. So just a very successful and seasoned military leader, you're the commander of the International Security Assistance for forces in Afghanistan. And in your book, you talk about some amazing stories from your time serving and leading in Iraq as well. And of course, since then, you've then gone on to found the McChrystal group, and you're working with businesses and, and, you know, looking and helping organisations around leadership and strategy, we're going to start by talking about your latest book, which is called risky user guides. And I just wanted to start with a little quote from the book, which I thought would be a really nice place to start just in terms of how you view risk yourself. So a couple of things that you said in the book that really stood out to me. One was you said, you were asking yourself the question, How did you rank the risks of losing the fight against the risks of losing colleagues, and then was the risk of losing your own humanity a factor in your decision making? So I just thought that might be a good start. Point in was, was that process where you started to think about risk in a different way and started thinking about writing this this kind of book?

Stanley McChrystal 3:24

It sure was, you know, like most people, I went through a career when people try to teach you how to deal with risk, sort of a theory of risk and their formulas and matrices and other things to deal with it. But the reality is, there are some things that are intensely human about it. In Afghanistan, one of the things that leaders in the US military did was mandate that every soldier wore their body armour when they left an installation, any of our basis, all of the heavy body armour and protective glasses and helmets and whatnot. And their their reason was well intentioned to protect our service members for potential home. But there were a couple of complicating factors. First was when you deal with Afghans, and they don't have body armour and you're going through their village or town, you start to look increasingly alien to them. It increases the distance the intimidation factor, and decreases your ability to connect with them. And second, you send this unintended message that your your safety is more important than theirs because you have body armour and they do not. There's a famous story from the Korean War of a, a Marine Lieutenant goes out on a patrol to capture an enemy prisoner. And when they come back into the lines, the lieutenant's not wearing as flak jacket and the prisoner is and the someone asked him he says, Well, the important thing was to keep this prisoner healthy and so protected. And so if, if the mission is to protect the people, then you can send unintended messages. Similarly, if you try to go out and do combat operations in the mountain of Iraq mountain, so of Afghanistan at 10 or 12,000 feet, you don't run around in body armour you just it's physically too taxing. And so we ran into this, this tension, the risk to our well being, our personal well being, or the well being of the people that worked for us against the risk to the mission. And I found in Afghanistan, I had to give direction to people to accept more personal risk to them and to their soldiers. So that we could operate in a way that was not going to be as damaging to the Afghan people using massive amounts of firepower. And there was there was a lot of scrutiny of that, particularly from people back in the United States, not as much from soldiers on the ground, because I could explain the rationale to them. But but people back in the states would said, you're putting my son daughter or somebody I know, at risk, you're, you're not letting them do everything to protect them. And I said, well, the real risk here is us losing, losing the potential support of the Afghan people. And so in many things in life, I think you've got to look at what's the real risk, what what are we really worried about, and then you've got to accept often other risks to get there. You also Graham mentioned the thing about the the moral risk. There is something in all of us, it has a set of values that we believe in, and when we're in a warm, dry place on Christmas Eve with our family, and someone asks us what our values are, it's pretty easy to say, I'm honest, I won't hurt innocent people out protect the the vulnerable, but then you are in a very difficult war, or even crime on the streets or whatever scenario you want to draw. And you are dealing with that a hard edge raw environment. And you can find yourself starting to rationalise that I have to be more hard edged, than my opponent so that it can achieve the greater good. You know, if I torture prisoners, and I get the information I need, in the end that that's okay, because I am trying to accomplish something positive. There's a logic to that. And I don't think it's completely wrong, but it's certainly not what I sign up to or what I want to do. But there's another risk. And that other risk is the corrosion, to your values to corrosion, if without getting too over the top to your soul, and to a military force, that corrosion is almost irreversible. Once in Oregon, once that unit or an organisation starts doing things that they shouldn't do, whether it's a military unit, or even, I would argue a business, if you start operating in a way that's cutthroat or takes advantage of your customers and whatnot, there's a near term reinforcement for it. But there's a long term cost to it. You're not the same people. You're not the same organisation. And I think it's hard to redeem an organisation going bad without major changes.

Graham Allcott 8:07

Yeah, there's a bit in the book, I can't remember where exactly it is, in the book that you talk about the idea of the difference between an unruly mob and an army is discipline and, and having structures. And that part really resonated with me, I have no military experience or backgrounds. And yeah, the other thing that I suppose that resonated was that thing about how many generations of your family had been in the military before, but it sort of made me think about that sense of values being tested. And, you know, the kinds of situations that you would get into that and the pressure that you would feel, you know, what I read was 150,000 troops and leading 45 allied countries. I mean, there must be untold pressures on you to do things that you don't necessarily feel reflect your values or feel comfortable with. How do you hold steadfast with that and be true to yourself and your style of leadership? Well,

Stanley McChrystal 9:08

first off, you have to think about it, you have to talk about it a lot when I was in the counterterrorism world, and I spent a long time there. It was a a difficult fight against a truly, incredibly difficult enemy. And that difficult, probably not a good enough word. In some cases, I'd say psychopathic, in terms of Abu Musab al Zarqawi in Iraq and what not. So we would have forces captured or killed by the enemy. And we came upon torture chambers. And I went into some environments where I thought I'd seen an awful lot, but I went into things that were mediaeval. And when you see those things, it first builds up an emotion inside you, and you want to go get the bad people and your force wants to go get the bad people. And there's this tremendous temptation to sort of let loose the hounds. And just let's go after him and Get this done. And the problem is, with the power of leadership, in many I know military organisations, if the military leader says to do it, the force will do it. Or if the military leader even does a wink and a nod and says something like, do whatever you have to do to get it done, then suddenly, you'll see part of that force initially, and then potentially more start to slide into that, because they think they've got tacit approval from the leadership to do that, of course, we've seen it historically, it's just horrific things happen in military forces. So I would say that, as an individual leader, you've got to remind yourself constantly what your values are, and then you've got to talk about them to the organisation. And you've got to give them a logic to it, you can't just say, we are going to be good, because it's morally right, in Afghanistan and made the argument, we are going to try to protect the population and limit things like collateral damage to the casualties, because it's the only way to win. It's also morally right. But the only way to win is to convince the Afghan people that our success is in their interest. And so leaders have got to play that essential role in taking all of the values that we know are right and keeping the organisation harnessed to those values. As we mentioned in the book, you know, the difference between a, an army and a mob is discipline. And we've seen that once an army loses discipline or loses its way, then suddenly it becomes a terrible thing for society. And those are, those are forces that we've got to keep in check.

Graham Allcott 11:39

And it's that's the trust thing, isn't it, you have to have trust that an army is going to operate in the right way and kind of see. And kind of, you know, look after people ultimately, and be interested in the security of the country not interested in their own interests and stuff. And so often, particularly in, I guess, in smaller armies, where there's there's just, there's fewer components, it's kind of easier to lose that discipline, I guess,

Stanley McChrystal 12:07

well, our nations can't remember a time when the military overthrew the government. And so we get up in the morning, and we just assume that the military is aligned with the values of the nation, it protects the institutions of the nation. And yet, in many countries, that's not the tradition. And whether or not they are doing it for greed or misplaced sense of responsibility. militaries play this different role. Think about it if you have a challenge or unrest in the nation, and you use the military, and they don't perform as ordered. And suddenly, the military becomes this different factor. And that's terrifying. If you can't trust the military to do what you need them to do

Graham Allcott 12:53

truly is, let's talk about the book. So the book is called risk a user's guide. And one, one of your starting points in the book is to talk about the immune system of the human body, and how that deals with the rest. So you say you studied how the human body deals with its own risks, or, you know, viruses coming in and everything like that? How can that was your starting point? What was the what was the thinking was that really the

Stanley McChrystal 13:23

reason for the book was, I'd studied risk and understood a little bit about the theory and science of it. But then you look back at our experience with it, and it's very different. So for example, before the 911 attack in the United States, all of the information needed to stop that attack existed inside the United States government. It just couldn't connect the dots. Then we look at the financial crisis of 2007, and eight, all of the data was there, the indicators were there, that we were faced with a bubble and housing and other vulnerabilities. And yet we we've dropped the ball, and yet we've been doing financial markets for a long time.

Graham Allcott 14:02

I know there's companies that went bankrupt had CHIEF RISK officers and you know, risk teams and everything.

Stanley McChrystal 14:08

Yeah, somebody's getting paid a lot of money to manage risk, and then not being brought in to the Investment Committee meetings, like in Lehman Brothers. And then COVID-19. We started the book before COVID-19 arrived. But it turned out to be almost a perfect descriptor of the problem. Because if you think about COVID-19, it's not novel, this particular variant is, but we get them all the time and they come into they become pandemics with disturbing regularity. And we know what to do about it because public health has a lot of experience and we we actually know the right steps. And we put together institutions and whatnot to be prepared for that. The United States even did an exercise the year before, in 2019 testing a scenario that was frighteningly similar to what COVID-19 and was an American traveller coming back from Dinah. And we found all of these weaknesses. And then this time, we also had a medical miracle, we had vaccines created faster than any time in the history of men. And so those three factors together, you know, it's common, you know what to do about it, and you get this incredible silver bullet of vaccines, and yet, we've still dropped the ball. We've still in my country had almost 800,000 People die. And so, so why is that? So it gets back to your human immune system question. I was disturbed by the fact that we theoretically know so much about risk. But every time we deal with a big risk, we have a lot of trouble. So why is that? Yeah, if you, I think we focus on the wrong thing, I think we are looking for that risk over the horizon, around the corner or wherever, when in reality, we can find the risk, just go to the mirror and look there, because the greatest risk to us, is us. And the analogy to the human immune system comes because every day our body's estimated to ingest 10,000 micro organisms that can make us sick or kill us every single day. And you say, well, wow, maybe I take this thing for granted, maybe I need to get up in the morning and kind of do something to get my human immune system motivated for the day, we just take it for granted because it works until it doesn't. And once our immune system is weakened, like with HIV AIDS, you don't die from HIV AIDS. Nobody ever dies from that. What happens is it weakens your immune system. And suddenly one of these other threats that normally we fend off with these becomes potentially lethal? Well, that's what I think we, as organisations and societies have, we have a risk immune system, which is very analogous to that human immune system. And it's really those factors which come together to give us the ability to deal with the 10,000, microorganisms of isms we ingest every day, so that we can detect those threats, assess them respond effectively and learn to get better next time. And it's the health of that system that determines an organisation or an individual's ability to deal with risk.

Graham Allcott 17:10

Can we just go through those four and Lebbon was Ito because they sort of like a little common theme that comes back throughout the book. So detecting, assessing, responding and learnings, you just want to just go through those four in a in a bit more depth.

Stanley McChrystal 17:23

If you think about it, we have to detect risks out there to us threats that are coming, the human body can only detect them once they're inside you. But that's okay. It then uses the ability, we have to be able to understand when something is arriving on our doorstep, we don't have to know every threat that's coming next year, next week, because that's impossible. There are too many, and they're too complex. But when they arrive, we've got to be able to determine, assess how dangerous they are to us, is this a big deal? Or not? Do we have to do something about it? And if so what the respond. The third is, what do we do? And you say, Well, of course we'll do the right thing. But that's not the case, we normally hampered by some form of inertia, either, we're not doing anything, we got to get moving, or we're doing something else, we're going in a direction and a velocity that we have to change, we have to stop doing it or change direction. So that response is key. And then the final one is we got to learn because you have to get smarter with each one. So you're more efficient next time, you can do it more quickly and deal with that particular threat in a very rapid way. So the key is the health of this system. One thing

Graham Allcott 18:37

that struck me, which was quite interesting, in the chapter on communication, you talk about the idea of access to information. And you I mean, I just associate the military, and particularly anything to do with counterterrorism and Special Forces is being highly secretive informations, power, it's very difficult to leak information out because you want to run a really tight vessel around information. And what you took out in the book is that you really sort of campaigned internally to make information more available so that different silos are kind of seeing more of the bigger picture and can put things together. So I'm guessing that's a really risky thing for you to do. So I'd love to just hear more about that thinking and how, how you came to some of those conclusions that that was what was needed?

Stanley McChrystal 19:26

Sure, where you really hit the the crux of it. I mentioned that the 911 attack, all the information existed inside the US government, but we couldn't connect it. And I'm not too critical. I mean, it was a failure. But the reality is that the way our structures and cultures were set up, that was a very difficult problem. And so you have to take that on and you're right about counterterrorism because it is essentially a challenge about learning what is happening and identifying what you have to do about it. In the movies. The hard part is this Commando. kitted out and all the right stuff, jumping through the window and shooting the bad guys. That's hard. But that's the easy part of the mission. The The hard part is understanding the threat having the the information to know what window to jump in, what person to go after and deal with it. And you're also right that in the counterterrorism community, you start with this idea that information is secret, the very idea of the word secret or top secret, or even what we call special category, intelligence, compartmented. Intelligence. And how many times have you seen in a movie somebody says, you don't have a need to know okay, well, the problem, the fallacy, and that is, who knows, who needs to know, interact? One time my force was going out to get this bad guy. And we literally had launched. And the CIA called me and said, Hey, that guy's our agent. And I said, Well, I'm glad you're telling me now. Because in 10 minutes, you know, that would be too late, we might be bringing them to you in a body bag. And yet, they were protecting their information, not because they were evil, but because that was the habit, we had this idea that you don't share information, because it could leak with a problem is if other entities who need to have that contextual understanding don't have it, everybody's less effective. So my major task in the counterterrorism world for the five years I commanded JSOC, or Joint Special Operations Command was to connect all the parts was to make a community that included civilian agencies, Department of State, British forces that were operating with us, this intelligence community, which is really a whole bunch of different organisations, and then different military forces, and get them all into sharing information to a level they never had before cooperating to the point so we can actually understand what was happening and operate more effectively and efficiently. And you say, Well, no problem, that's just, you know, just get everybody to talk that is really hard. If you've never been in a big organisation, you may not have an appreciation, but any big organisation creates silos and cultures and habits, and, and things that impede the ability to pull it together. And so in a complex world, to me, that's, that's almost a first order task.

Graham Allcott 22:16

Yeah. But I suppose the thing that interested me about that is, if you're going to be the one that changes the culture, then the risks on you if something goes wrong there. So if that information then starts to leak or, you know, the wrong people get hold of the wrong information. So what was what was your sort of personal thought process around that? How were you thinking about that? What was the what was keeping you up awake at night

Stanley McChrystal 22:40

with that, when we were started the fight when I took over in 2003, that was exactly the problem. People said, You can't do this. Because other entities, you'll be leaks and all this. And so we kept these tight little interactions every day. And finally, I said, this won't work. And we blew it up until it was 7500 people every day, for 90 minutes across all this sharing information. And you're right, wow, the results were high, because it was top secret. That was the level of video. But you know, you got 7500 people, it only takes one to go out and leak it, we actually had very few problems during that period, for several reasons. One, there's a tendency to over to over classify information. So a lot of things which are classified secret, don't need to be another was that people showed a level of responsibility. That was pretty impressive. One short story in 2007, we we did this operation in the northern Iraq, and we hit an al Qaeda entity that contain their personnel records. And they were personnel records for recruits from across the region, North Africa, Syria, and whatnot. And so we captured our Cadis personnel records. And I remember when I'm with my intelligence officer, and I said, Wow, I'd love to share all this information with the countries of origin so that they could go back find out where people are coming from start to deal with a problem upstream, and like to deal with it in in countries where they pass through. I said, but how can we it secret? And he said, No, wait a minute. You captured it, meaning our unit. So you're the classifying authority. And I said, You mean I could unclassified just make this unclassified, if I want to any and you know, sort of reflexively I wouldn't have done that. And he said, you can? Okay, okay, I do. And, you know, people go, Well, wait a minute, and I said, it's the enemy's personnel records. They know we hit the target. They know what was in them there their records. What are we going to leak to them? What's the danger there? Yeah. And yet the culture across many organisations initially recoiled at it, but then it worked magnificently. And it taught me a lesson about information is only powerful if you use it. And so some of the risks associated with spreading around are overblown.

Graham Allcott 24:58

That's so interesting, and it's Also that thing of narratives, right? So to so everybody is so used to some of those narratives around holding on to information really tightly. And so that's just what does the habit that you carry on. But you just get beyond that narrative. And people just make a new one. It

Stanley McChrystal 25:18

just changed. It was funny because our narrative before that in JSOC was secretive tiny force. And after that it was the narrative, we are a network, we connect organisations.

Graham Allcott 25:29

Okay, so I'm going to interrupt the podcast, which you know, I don't do very often. And that must mean I've got something very important to share with you.

One of the other risk control factors was diversity. And you describe diversity is the antidote to groupthink, which I thought was was really nice. Do you want to just talk a little bit about why you think diversity is so important in helping to do those things of detecting and assessing and, and responding and learning from risk?

Stanley McChrystal 26:22

Absolutely. First, let me tell you how I see diversity. You know, it's a tendency to think of it as gender, or race or religion or whatever, those who are all important, and they are a right, those are equal opportunity. But real diversity is diversity of perspectives. And so to look at this, to to eliminate your blind spots, we went back to the Bay of Pigs invasion that a brand new President John F. Kennedy, executed in his first weeks in office. And it was a dismal failure. It was a bad plan to use Cuban exiles or expatriates to form a military force and go try to overthrow Fidel Castro. And it wasn't very well conceived or coordinated. But the new president was a bit pressured by the CIA and by other people to go on and execute this plan. He didn't want to look soft on Communism. And so we did. But they did a study afterward. And a guy named Irving Janis did it, he actually created or coined the term groupthink. And what he found was is in the discussions, there were limited perspectives in the room, there were a number of dynamics, which caused people to want to go along with the opinion of the group, they didn't want to be seen as an outlier and whatnot. And it created this idea that groupthink can be very powerful, and it can take you in very wrong directions. And so 18 months later, President Kennedy, who was now changed by that experience faces the Cuban Missile Crisis. And what he does is he creates a different dynamic, he creates the X commerce executive committee to deal with the crisis. And he had some of the usual people, Secretary of State Director of the CIA, the Chiefs of Staff of the military services, but then he brought in some non traditional participants, and he set up a process where the organisation would table the problem, and they would break into separate groups, they would come up with courses of action, they would compare, essentially critique the opposing courses of action. And he, the President would only come in and interact with them on an episodic basis, over 13 days. And he did it because on day one, they all got in the room, and everybody was saying, essentially, we've got to invade Cuba. And he needed more options than that he didn't want that to be the only thing he could do. So he goes through this process to create it. And it really creates one a range of options, which resulted in a blockade, which prevented nuclear war, and also with the ability to interact more effectively with the Soviets during the crisis. And it was wasn't perfect. I mean, there's a little bit of mythology about this about, you know, helped by his brother's book written later, but the reality is, he got diversity of perspective. And so he was able to get different thoughts into the room,

Graham Allcott 29:13

I think it's so difficult in, in certain organisations or certain teams, right, particularly when, you know, people get into this sense of hiring people who, you know, sort of look a bit more like them or kind of have the same kind of perspective or background as them just to get people who are going to see things in different ways. And in the book, you talk about symptoms of diversity challenges. And you've got a really good list of the stale preservation of the status quo, finger pointing. So when when the ball gets dropped to whatever, everyone's kind of looking at each other, and, you know, trying to find the blame. Why didn't I think of that? Who could have known outpaced by an innovation So diversity is also about bringing in fresh ideas right and them, and sort of adding the kind of Spectres that that really drive drive things forward.

Stanley McChrystal 30:05

And that's necessary. In fact, the book, I co wrote with Anna Treecko, a 25 year old young lady who works in McChrystal group, and she wasn't a ghostwriter, or researcher, she was co author. And it was intentional. I wanted to have someone from a different gender, a different generation, a different family background, because she was going to come at risk differently, she was going to look at these case studies differently. And it did that now there were only two of us. So obviously, there's some limit and diversity there. But the importance of getting different because this would be a different book, if Stan McChrystal had gone into my office and written it

Graham Allcott 30:41

have the same thing sometimes, when so the last two books that I wrote, I co authored, and then this new one I'm writing on my own, but one of the things I always do before I give it to my editor at the publisher is almost do an Edit process with a few different people. So I pick people who I know, and also invite people who I don't know. And it probably goes to about 30 people before it gets to my editor. Just what was your experience like reading that, and you know what stuff I missed, and it is amazing. It's amazing how much stuff you do, miss, isn't it? And, you know, when you think you've, you think you've been thinking about one topic for a long time, and then there's still some huge hole in certainly just a huge hole in what you've written down, or what you've chosen to express about that

Stanley McChrystal 31:27

thing. You're right. And what I found is you have to be very thoughtful about who you give it to, because there's certain people who love you so much, they will say we love it. It's the greatest book ever. Yeah, they just want your feelings, you should give it to my wife, me, she read mine. It's crap. I had this wonderful story in the book and the stories there about my relative who came up missing on the eve of Pearl Harbour. But when we originally wrote it for that chapter, we wrote it as a counter historical. So we wrote it, like he didn't disappear. In fact, he, he went on to become an admiral and all like that. And I thought it was his clever literary rousse. And she goes, she finishes a chapter and she goes, You lied to me, said, Wait a minute. Yeah, I don't want to be tricked by the author said, All right.

Graham Allcott 32:18

I find that sometimes myself as well as you can run the risk of in this in the sort of creative parts of it, I do think there is always a creative part, even to, you know, nonfiction business books, there's if there's a creative aspect isn't there. And then even if you're dealing with, with stuff that's researched, and factual, and everything else, but sometimes you can get really drawn into the idea of trying to try to become a better author or being too creative or too clever. And it's like, actually, what needs to win out is the user experience of the reader, rather than like how clever you feel at the end of it. I want to talk about a few other things before we finished as well. So aside from being having a long period of time, where you must have been under just an intense amount of public scrutiny, as well as obviously having some pretty high profile bosses, who are the President of the United States and other things like that. You were also in the news a little while ago for endorsing Joe Biden. And there's something really human about that story. Do you want to just give us the the background to it, and, and then how it is the sort of code or at the end, if you like, is the endorsement of Joe Biden,

Stanley McChrystal 33:35

Senator Biden and I met a couple times earlier in my career, he was aware of me, and obviously, I was aware of him. But then when he was the Vice President, for Barack Obama, that's when I was a four star. And I was assigned to go to take command in Afghanistan. And that was a war that Vice President Biden didn't agree with from, from some time back. He thought it was a bad idea and what not so when I was putting command, I was asked to do a review of our strategy. And I came back with a review that said, we have to change the way we're operating significantly. And only if we change significantly, do we have a chance and to make it work we need to reinforce with 40,000 More soldiers. So we went through this process in the fall of 2009. It became very contentious, I'd say net never ugly or anything personally, but contentious in the sense that I was advocating for additional forces based upon the change in strategy and Vice President Biden was not for it. And so in the interactions with the National Security Council in that process, they were by video conference from me from Afghanistan. There were some tough discussions. You could almost call them arguments. It is we talked about it. There was no personal animosity, but there was a great deal of scrutiny, President Obama decided to conduct the reinforcement. And so he basically accepted that the argument We made and did it and I know Vice President was not happy about that. And then in the spring, an article came out in Rolling Stone magazine from a freelance reporter that had profiled my command team and it was a negative article. You know, it was a hit job. And I don't think it was an accurate article or fair, but that's irrelevant. It, it came out. And it basically intimated that I and my team didn't respect Vice President Biden. And that we were dismissive of him and whatnot. I call Vice President Biden I told him, I didn't see that, but, but I apologised anyway. And that resulted in my very rapid offering my resignation to President Obama, and him accepting it, and me leaving the military. Now is a perfect time for me to become a retired bitter old general, you know, I could tell people, I got food, there were a lot of people who were whispered in my ear, you got screwed. But what's the point of that? I, you know, I came to conclusion pretty quickly. One, I own it, whether I think it was right or wrong, it's my responsibility. So I gotta admit that, and second, it takes a lot of energy to be bitter, and as much as it does to be happy and love people. So I just didn't want to waste it. So I didn't. So I moved on in life. And then it's the I stayed out of politics, because I'm not naturally political. But I became very much convinced that the re election of Donald Trump would be very bad for the United States of America very, very bad. And so I was asked, as it started to sort itself out that, that Vice former Vice President Biden would be the candidate, I was contacted, and people said, and they thought they thought there was a personal animosity, or at least a history that would make it uncomfortable. He said, How do you feel about it? And I said, Well, I think he has to be elected for the nation. And they said, would you say that? And I said, I would. Because I think that's important. And I think, I think President Biden is an honourable man. And I think he's got the right intentions. And that's what I said. And he called me that afternoon afterward, it was it was one of those cathartic calls. Because it was very human. He was thankful that I did it. But it was a connection. It says, I know, we've got some history here. But I really appreciate you stepping up and doing that, which, which I thought was a class act. So those are those moments that that you get to take, I think a bigger view.

Graham Allcott 37:28

And the quote that was then in some of the articles was you talking about Obama and Biden, and you said, they didn't see everything the way I did, but in every instance, they listened. I thought that was a really lovely quote,

Stanley McChrystal 37:41

I think that's the relationship you need to have, particularly with military and civilian leaders. In our nation, the civilian leaders aren't the final decision makers. What they owe me is to listen to what I have to say, what I owe them is candid, as clear as possible, my views and my recommendations, and then if they make a different decision, it's my job to follow that, and not to undercut them and whatnot. And so I think that I very much felt like they listened. And we went through a contentious but important process, it feels

Graham Allcott 38:19

that there's a real humanity to the book and to a lot of the stories in the book. And there's obviously just such a humanity to that story, too. And maybe that leads us on quite nicely to what I'm obsessing about over the last few months in the next few months, which is writing a book about kindness in leadership. So I just wanted to ask you how you see the role of kindness in leadership, and have there been particular leaders where you've really noticed kindness being in strong effect,

Stanley McChrystal 38:53

I think of the people that that I most appreciate that personally dealt with the day I you know, I left the service with all that notoriety and very painful moment. And the day of my retirement about 30 days after that came out, and I'm still a bit in shock. I got several phone calls, but one came from former President Bush HW Bush, the first and I had never been, I'd never met him. And he just called me to say, I know this is a tough day. But I want to tell you, I respect what you did, you know, your service and all that kind of thing. small acts of kindness. When I had my outbreak with President Obama, he was businesslike as he is but also kind because he knew that this was about to be a tough moment. We're in an era right now. The reason I think your books so important, where kindness isn't as popular because we may say we want to be kind. But what gets you on the news? What gets your tweet a lot of views is to be particularly Prickly, to write something negative about somebody and people make an entire career Fear of, of doing that. And so the leader who is kind is a bit vulnerable in that environment. But at the same time, they also build up from the people interact with him a deep loyalty that, you know, a connection and loyalty. And so I think that I think kindness will come back, I really do. And I think that it will, it will win out, it just may not do it. Next week, or next year, maybe, maybe the book will help. And I think the rise of authoritarian leaders around the world makes kindness more challenged. But yeah, that's what it's about.

Graham Allcott 40:39

And then on the smaller scale, you know, social authority, authoritarian leaders on the the, you know, bigger scale, and then social media and people's online interactions on the smallest possible scale kind of feels that there's a, there's a link there in terms of kindness being a useful, useful tool, are you are you able to say a bit more about President Obama and how he was kind in that situation,

Stanley McChrystal 41:05

it's not fair for me to talk any of the specifics in there. But I will say that what was clearly the most difficult day in my life, he didn't make it any more difficult. In fact, in many ways, he, he did something that he thought he had to do. And I would have preferred to do differently, but I didn't, I respected his decision. And he did it with a level of class and compassion. That is what a president on a half. And so I walked out of there, appreciative of that, you know, still in shock. But there are a lot of ways you can do things in life, there's a lot of ways you can treat a waiter at a restaurant, or someone who does some interaction with you. And you get a choice in every interaction, whether to show kindness in class or not. And I would say that, that that's in many ways, that's a measure of someone, I don't know how many times I, I've known of leaders of business, or military, and they're very successful and whatnot, and then you find out that their people just hate him, or they are terrified of them. And my opinion of them just drops immediately. Because I think if someone is fundamentally dismissive of people, then they fundamentally don't respect them. And that is a very essential character. issue with me,

Graham Allcott 42:26

you've obviously worked for some incredible leaders in terms of their fame and notoriety as well as studied lots of leaders, and you indeed have a whole book profiling leaders as well. Are there particular things that you always look for in, you know, if someone is to say to you what makes a good leader,

Stanley McChrystal 42:48

I think it's funny, the first one I say is always self discipline. Because most of us know what we believe a good leader is. And if we all wrote a list down of behaviours, they'd be pretty similar. The difference is we don't do them. And again, it's from big things, it's staying focused on a vision, not becoming discouraged and following through for your organisation or for yourself. It's how you treat people, it's what are your priorities? If if we say my priorities, or customers, or my priorities are my people, and then your behaviours don't reflect that, then that's a lack of self discipline. So I think that becomes the number one, one, can the person control themselves and therefore be the right thing for other people? I think empathy is really key too. And I say here, not sympathy. You know, you don't want to be rubbing everybody's belly and telling them you know what nice people they are. But empathy allows you to understand that everybody comes to it from a different life journey. I used to talk about meeting with Afghan elders, and I'd sit across from them and they have turbans on and big beards and, and weathered faces, different religion from me different background. And so it was very obvious that their conclusions about life, their views were based upon their experience, if I'd had that same experience, I'd probably have those exact same views. And so it doesn't make me right, and then wrong, or vice versa. What it means is, you've got to be able to put yourself in the other person's position and at least respect the fact they're probably not irrational. They probably have a reason to think what they think. And so if you start there, you can start to deal with people on a different level. And again, you don't have to agree. You just have to be able to respect that their their background has produced a view.

Graham Allcott 44:41

And then the final question, if you look back on the incredible career that you've had, is there. Is there a particular thing that you look at if you're thinking about success and reflecting on success? Is there a particular moment or a particular instance that you look back on and say, Yeah, I'm really happy with that? Yeah, I'm

Stanley McChrystal 45:00

going to describe several because they all had the same DNA. Last Friday, my firm, we got 88 People had our all hands. First time in two years, we've been back in person, we did all the protocols for COVID To be safe, before and then we had the all hands. And then we had a social event that evening. And there was this sense of family, and connection and affection for each other. And that reminded me so much of my time in the counter terrorist fight, when it although it was very tough, we had this sense of we're all in this together and this pride, that we were doing it really well. Or back when I was a young company, Commander 150. So Rangers, and you do a tough training operation. And then the next morning, you'd still be exhausted, and you'd be sitting around a little defensive position or whatever. And you'd be connecting in a way where the bonds are extraordinarily strong, and you've just been through something you love the people you're with, you never use the word love, that would not be acceptable then. But the idea is, I'm so happy to be a part of this, because they've accepted me. I admire them. And I take great feeling. So what I'm proudest of and what's made me happiest whenever I'm part of creating that dynamic. When people think that they're in an organisation that is really special to be in and I had some part of creating or crafting it, you can just step on the sideline and, and sort of smile, my wife and I walked home from the social event is all of the young people headed out to bars and whatnot. Just sort of basking in the idea that we've been a part of something special. And that's a gift.

Graham Allcott 46:44

It reminds me of that saying that good leadership is shaping what happens so that good things happen when you're not there as well. really feels like you've made that happen. Stan, it's been just such a pleasure and an honour having you on beyond busy. Obviously, the book is out and you can get it everywhere. Is there anything else you want to share with us in terms of people being able to connect him with you find out more about what you do anything else you want to share?

Stanley McChrystal 47:10

Well, this is what McChrystal group does, we help organisations work. And if people take a look at the book, I think you'll find that it's approachable. It's not a textbook. And so if that's helpful, then I'm happy. And I just thank you so much, Graham, for letting me be a part of it.

Graham Allcott 47:26

Absolutely. And I really enjoyed it. As I said, it's just full of just really fascinating stories, and quite a few that I've written on my notes, and we haven't even had time to get on to. So thank you so much for being with us. And hopefully speech against some of the points.

Stanley McChrystal 47:40

Thank you Take care.

Graham Allcott 47:41

So there you go, General Stanley McChrystal. I just want to say thanks quickly to Penguin for helping to make that one happen and also to Stan's team and to Emilie in my team for helping to figure out the date, I sort of had some trouble trying to get date in and then I had to cancel at the last minute as well. And so finally, we got there. And it was worth the wait really love that episode, and actually really loved the book, I've read a couple of those books before where it's, you know, kind of looking at lessons from military operations, and then putting that into business context. And, you know, I have to say, sometimes it feels like some of those books lack a bit of the humanity and the reflection on the idea that actually the industry involved is obviously like, it's brutal work, right, like by its very nature. And I think what was really interesting within that book, and I really implore you to go and get not just actually the Risk book, but but we actually didn't really talk about his other book, which is called Leaders, which is really good, but it really feels like he is someone who thinks a lot about the nature of that work, and what's involved and, you know, weighing up those different risks, and also just just being very aware of the kind of operations and work that he's doing and the consequences of that stuff. So yeah, real sort of sense of humanity from reading his work. And yeah, just just really interesting storyteller, too. I'm sure you, I'm sure you found that listening to that episode.

So that's a really good way to kick off the year. So just want to say Happy New Year, we're back and we're going to be back on our normal two-weekly scheduled through 2022. I'm actually recorded this little outro at the end of 2021. So I can't actually tell you what my New Year's resolutions are. I've got kind of some some idea in my head of what I'm going to be writing down as I record this in the past, but Yeah, happy 2022 I hope you're off to a good start with everything. And just want to say if you've not signed up yet, so I do this Sunday email is called Rev Up or the Week. And basically it's one positive or productive idea for the week ahead. It goes out every Sunday evening at 4:05pm. And if you want to sign up to that, just go to grahamallcott.com. And you'll find little, you know, forms signup forms on every page on my site, you'll be able to sign up for rev up for the week. So please go and do that if you haven't already. And all through the year. I'll just drip feed feed you just little ideas, little bits of productivity advice, but also just little thoughts on perspectives and just stuff I'm seeing in the world. And just the idea is one idea. They're nice and short, it's every Sunday, it's free, just head to grahamallcott.com and find out more and thanks also to our sponsors for the show, Think Productive. So, if you're interested in helping to revolutionise the world of work helping to help your people to do their best work then give us a shout it's think productive calm, and we've got offices all over the place to in the UK, in Western Europe, in North America and also in Australia, for Australia and New Zealand as well. So all over the place and developing some new territories as well. We're actually starting some work in India this year and couple of other places which are really interesting the Middle East too. So wherever you are, drop us a line and if you want to contact me directly I'm I'm actually really taking a break quite seriously from from all social media. So I know I'm kind of active on Instagram and Twitter in terms of putting out content, but that's actually not me. That's generally Emilie that does that. And I've got a little message on Twitter that basically says I don't check out replies, but also that I've just deleted Instagram I just got really sick of it. And for me, once I download it as soon as I start to feel myself doing that mindless scrolling, then I just get rid of it completely. And even though I was using freedom to good effect before it just felt like I wanted the extra layer. But yeah, so if you want to get in touch with me, email is definitely the best way graham (at) think productive.co.uk. Does that make me sound old? You know how younger people now they don't ever sort of exchange phone numbers and start WhatsApp and each other. They just exchange like Instagram handles and probably tick tock what do they call those their talks or whatever, I don't know what it is. Whatever your tick tock avatar is, I don't know probably sounds so old saying that. But yeah, it's not funny how I probably think this is like me doing productivity in a really good way. And I'm being very conscious of my attention by not being on Instagram and to anyone sort of younger than 30 I probably just sound ancient. So just drop me an email. It's Graham at think productive.co.uk And that's it for this week. We'll be back in two weeks time with another episode and I'll be back recording the outros in the same year that they go out. So I'll tell you more next time about what my New Year's resolutions are for the year and what plans I've got ahead. But right now I'm heading off on my Christmas break.

So from the past I'll just say take care and bye for now.

Links

Stan McChrystal on TED: https://www.ted.com/speakers/stanley_

Stan McChrystal on Twitter: https://twitter.com/stanmcchrystal

McChrystal Group: https://www.mcchrystalgroup.com

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