As It turns out
there's a pattern as it turns out all the great and
Inspiring leaders and organizations in the world whether it's Apple or Martin Luther King or the Wright brothers. They will think act and communicate
The exact same way, and it's the complete opposite to everyone else
All I did was codify it and it's probably the world's simplest idea. I call it the Golden Circle
Why how what?
This little idea explains
Why some organizations and some leaders are able to inspire?
Where others aren't let me define the terms really quickly every single person every single organization on the planet knows what they do
100%
Some know how they do it
But very very few people or organizations know why they do what they do why why I mean, what's your purpose?
What's your cause? What's your belief?
Well as a result the way we think the way we act the way we communicate
Is from the outside in it's obvious we go from the clearest thing to the fuzziest thing
But the inspired leaders and the inspire or inspired organizations
Regardless of their size regardless of their industry all think act and communicate from the inside out
I'm learning to manage teams by allowing the teams to do more themselves
there is a
brilliant
leader by the name of David Marquet
Who wrote a book called Turn the Ship Around and he had an experience as a submarine captain on the USS Santa Fe where
He realized that as much as he knew about
Submarining you know he'd been a submarine or his whole career
That put on this new submarine
He learned the hard way
They actually didn't know how the submarine worked and so he realized he had no choice
But to trust his people and he went through this transformation as a leader of
Telling everybody what to do to allowing people to tell him what should be done?
and I've learned a lot from him, and I highly recommend his book and
and I've
Really learned that which is you know at the top of the organization?
As David says the people have all the authority the leaders have all the authority, but at the bottom. They have all the context
right and so
You can't just push all the context up you have to push the authority down
And so the responsibilities of leadership is to train people
Make sure that they have the skillset help build their confidence that that they have the confidence to do what needs to be done they
Have to have competence and confidence and that's that's your job
That's the only job at the leader instead of sort of showing people how I would do it
I want them to learn how it's done
You know and feel good about themselves and then just however they do it is how they do it?
Yeah, you know and the result is remarkable um people feel better about coming to work
They feel like they have something to contribute
They feel more valuable as opposed to just being told this is how I would do it or I'm going to do it this way
Or do it my way
If you provide
The task the purpose of the task and the end state of how we want it to look when it's done
That you will empower
your subordinates to act and
Will be far more effective at getting the job done
Well when you look at leaders intent as it filters down through a chain of command
and I'll give you an example from our experience in Special Operations
Doctrinally as we went through our mission planning process we had to articulate
What we thought our leaders intent was two levels above us so our boss and our boss's boss we had to
Restate what we thought their intent was and have that validated so that we could then properly form
My leaders intent to provide down to my people now
I would interpret that differently because obviously
At the strategic level the leaders intent when you talk about end state it's a very big picture
Talking about what is the end state of this half a million acre?
Unit that this fire's on now when I'm down with a with a crew level
Or smaller my leaders intent is only going to be concerning my chunk of ground
But I'm going to make sure that my leaders intent is based on me understanding
What is supposed to happen several levels above me so that my actions
as they move from
Directed to delegated and highly independent that what I'm always doing is in sync with what that senior leader wants
What what is what is anyone's responsibility?
To understand leaders intent in wildland fire and let's start at the newest crewmember first year crew member
What does that mean?
On the most effective crews what you'll find is that that first year firefighter
Understands the leaders intent of their squad leader
How that fits in to what the Sup
wants and
Ultimately what the division assignment and what the end state on the division is because we see all the time little modules going off
Things happening one person can get in assignment to go move cubies of water
Or go get saw gas if they understand that the division assignment
Is that a certain amount of line has to be ready by nightfall to conduct a burnout and they're faced with a decision back in
camp because they're picking up gas from logistics and
They've meet a roadblock, and they understand well
I know that the big plan is that this has to be there so that this line can get tied in tonight before we start
The burnout then that's going to guide their decision-making it's going to guide how much risk they might be willing to take to try to
Get that job done. It's going to guide. How hard they push the system. It's going to guide whether they let Division C
Get the gas
Versus try to make an argument for our division to get it based on the intent all those kinds of things can guide one person's
decision making that just got sent to get
10 gallons of gas
Trust the the longer I have been in public service and the more people are asking about leadership over the years
leadership ultimately comes down to creating conditions of trust within an organization
Yeah, maybe hold up for a sec [inaudible]. Everything's starting to come together all at once here. Copy.
In 2009 I went out and I took command of the counterpiracy task force and
then about three or four days into the job captain Phillips was kidnapped and
So you're new to a job your task force is a very complicated organization
You have multitude of ships some of the ships are from other countries
And then you're trying to synchronize and organize all of this capability
And focus around a mission that no one has ever done before
Pretty clear to me the challenge as the task force leader was defining the mission correctly in the very first few hours
You've got a multitude of ships
You've got sailors and Marines
You've got intelligence support coming in and it would have been very easy
I think for us to define that mission is to take out the pirates
But that would be the wrong mission success the correct mission success would be bringing Captain Phillips home safely
But it's interesting. It doesn't sound like a big difference but
Getting the correct mission defined in early communicating that to people lets people focus on what the end state needs to be
I put our enlisted people the people on the deck plates on the team they were uncomfortable one of them came up to me and said
We, we this is not we don't do planning we do we do things
We are the doers, and I said I've got a few hours here
I need plans
options that are feasible and
the people on the deck plate
You have got to tell the people in the room whether or not what you're coming up with is feasible because I don't have time
They came back and they came back with the swish idea that some of you have may seen in the movie
pulls away from the life raft
backs off and does a high-speed run sort of like a ski maneuver
She runs across in front of the life raft for 30 knots and the waves
pushed the life raft back
We waited three hours, and then they started up again, and then the second ship came in and did a swish maneuver and
Then they started up again
And this was one of the suggestions of the enlisted people on the team then we used fire hoses to push him back
Water to push them back and at that point
the balance of negotiation and who had control of the situation shifted to us
Our people know they can grow up to be successful
We harvest their good ideas we empower them. We listen to them and we are successful as
organizations