Views of a Modern World

Everything else Rick writes

General under investigation in Afghanistan

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I know Bill Caldwell. Worked for him. He convinced me, unintentionally I’m sure, to leave the Army. I know nothing about what he did, didn’t, should, or shouldn’t have done with all this stuff in the paper. But my personal opinion, FWIW, is that he’s not above suspicion and should not get the benefit of the doubt.

Shit, Rick, I do illegal searches all the time.

I debated on posting this, but there are people I know who are solidly upstanding, courageous men, full of character and good hearts. They have been in actual harm’s way for longer than I was even in the peacetime Army. Those men deserve our support and gratitude every day.

At the 3-star general level, maybe it’s no longer about moral courage, character, and choosing the hard right over the easy wrong; maybe it’s about politics just like it is when a congressman posts on Craigslist: you screw up and get caught, you’re out.

I hope you didn’t step over the line, sir.

Some women DO belong in Ranger School

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Sometimes the WSJ depresses me. I read it for sensible, no BS news and financial analysis, and then their opinion page goes off the deep end with this sort of crap.

I almost don’t want to link to this — it’s that embarrassing to the author in my opinion, but some guy whose Army time criss-crossed mine wrote an opinion piece saying that there should be no women in Ranger School.

Well, I’ve always thought this view was dead-ass wrong. He collapses a whole lot of assumptions inside his argument — that physical standards will go down, for example — and makes other arguments that have nothing to do with the real issue for him or for female soldiers. If standards go down, that’s the problem, not the women. There certainly are people who think that the standards went down between the time many of my peers went, early 90s, and me in 1993 — there was no live fire in Utah in my class. Since then, of course, Ranger School has dropped a phase, and might even be shorter in terms of days. I don’t really know — and it doesn’t matter because that’s not the point. The point is that there is someone making decisions about the course whose job it is to improve the training and selection of young leaders. It’s that person’s job (and the RI’s) to maintain the standards, not those people talking about the golden age of Ranger School.

My Army was a meritorious one. We tried really damn hard to focus on whether a solder could do the job, not the color of his skin, the personal equipment hidden inside her underwear, the language he spoke at home, or even, frankly, the passport she carried.

Some soldiers belong in Ranger School. Others don’t. The criteria we use are not in any way automatically linked to having a penis, even if strength is typically correlated with the testosterone that accompanies having a willy. There’s a world of difference in quality among the males in Ranger School, too, let’s not forget. Can you compare a bat boy E-3 to an O-3 Navy seal? Those guys are worlds apart in skill, will, and future promise. But both were part of my platoon and worked their asses off. Can you compare a white warrant officer helicopter pilot with a black infantry lieutenant with an asian commo officer? No, even then we knew that was a distinction without a difference. Two made it, one didn’t — that’s the only difference anyone should care about.

There are women I knew in the Army, and certainly some I’ve met since, who absolutely have the physical stamina to survive Ranger School (yes, an Ironman is only 17 hours, but there’s a whole lot of training and dedication that can’t really be separated from the race itself). Mental stamina? I don’t think anyone can argue that out of all the women who’ve already decided to join the Army, there’s no chance that any of them could tough it out.

This article embarrasses me — it’s one more stupid-ass stereotype that I have to fight as a former soldier, Infantry officer, and proud recipient of MY Ranger Tab, Class 9-93.

Fuck this guy. If I ended up in battle, hell yeah, I’d want someone wearing a tab next to me. I’d look there long before I tried to peek in someone’s underpants.

Set people up for success

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Ever feel like the deck was stacked against you, that your boss or wife or boyfriend had somehow made it impossible for you to succeed?

In the Army, we called that being set up for failure. It sprouted from poor planning, from shirking responsibility, from deliberately withholding resources. (Some might say at this point that the President’s refusal to authorize AC-130 gunships significantly contributed to the tragic loss of life recounted in the movie “Black Hawk Down,” having set the US forces up for failure by holding back.)

But there’s something you can do once you learn what the short end of the stick feels like: you can set people up for success.

How?

  • Tell them what you expect, and mean it.
  • Tell them what’s not important.
  • Tell them how to work for you.
  • Listen to them as they discuss conflicting priorities.
  • Set an example.
  • Train them properly before expecting them to succeed.

People can tell when they’re being pointed in the right direction, even if they still choose to go the wrong way!

When was the last time you set someone up for success? How did it turn out? What extra benefits (if any) did you experience afterwards?

Why you can’t just hedge your bets

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Here is another interesting take on the notion of not keeping all your eggs in one basket. The lesson is twofold: first, spreading your efforts is the same as diluting your efforts. That single vocabulary change really makes you stop and think. It slaps me in the face and I just came up with it.

But life moves on and the lessons aren’t always there at the beginning (multitasking used to be considered an asset; people put it on their resumes). So what do you do, today, when you stop and look at your life and there isn’t an obvious 10,000 hours of violin practice behind you already?

The alternatives:

  1. give up and accept that while you have built skills over the years, you haven’t become great at any one easily defined thing;
  2. pick something that you think will fulfill you and dedicate the next 10,000 hours to that (5-10 years is not a big deal if you’re 25 – trust me – but it might be when 43 is two weeks away, or now, as I actually publish this, three weeks in the rearview mirror);
  3. figure out how to think about what you’ve done in a way that captures your possible expertise in a brandable way that you’d like to continue.

I’m opting for #3, which means I’ve got to push off a writing project to push the personal branding exercises to the shortlist. But I’m not sure I need, meaning I’m sure I don’t, to solve the personal brand question before finishing that project. (Wow, I’m glad I talked myself out of that detour.) That’s prioritization in real time — that’s exactly the stream of thoughts that just ran through my head.

I’ve learned the hard way that you can have too many priorities. But that’s a post for another day.

Character is for when it counts

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The NYT can’t understand corporate finance [link to come; post underway], but they can do headlines: “Hijacker Overpowered on Norway-Turkey Flight.”

I guess we did all learn from the heroes on United 93. “Never again” is as good a motto as “let’s roll.” It stands to all of us to do something, perhaps not everyday, all the time, but absolutely when it counts. For a time, it seemed like I opened nearly every essay I wrote with Hemingway’s definition of character as “grace under pressure.” It sure is true, and if you disagree with that definition, you better find me another word to carry that meaning.

Just as courage is action in the face of fear, character is action in the face of everything, of the hard right vs. the easy wrong. That’s why we call it character, to show that it’s the deep inside, our own soft underbelly of fear, selfishness, blame, and vanity, that we’re supposed to conquer at the moment it matters, not when it doesn’t. I’ve quoted him before, and I’ll do it again: Milton in the Areopagitica: “I will not praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue.”

I was thinking about this the other day in the context of someone who let me down when it mattered most, and also thinking about a case I’m involved in. In the lawsuit, one business partner ended up embezzling about $7 or $8 million from the company’s clients. His partner was a high school friend, who is now almost certainly liable for the losses, and they will certainly fall on the company and theoretically put it out of business.

I think about that guy, and his longtime friend, and think about how awful it would be to have that happen. I think of it because I’ve been in business with a longtime friend, Mike Princi, and I have no fears of this ever happening. Not only do I not fear Mike doing this to me, but I don’t fear ever doing this to Mike. I know that whatever awful thing might happen in my life, such as the embezzler’s fear of not giving his wife a luxurious lifestyle, I could go to Mike for help rather than break our trust.

Small failures are different; or maybe I think they are because those are the kind I’ve made, day after day, even year after year sometimes. But small failures shouldn’t cause us to lose faith in someone, to doubt their actions in face of the most important decisions we could imagine. Small failures are readily correctable, if not so easily corrected.

In my personal life, the other person didn’t choose the path of stopping before breaking the trust. And that leads me to wonder what happens next? If there’s only one test, maybe only one time in your life, does it matter if you failed since you’ll never get asked again? Or does that failure really take the measure of a person?

I know the choice I made on that front. Let me know your thoughts about character and the really big choices.

Thought Leader: what is “Trusted” worth to you?

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I recently mentioned how I’d come across Scott Ginsberg’s six-part definition of “thought leader.” As promised, here’s the first part of six expanding on his theme.

Trusted

It’s funny to see this up front, because my resume has led with the words “trusted professional” for at least 11 years now. To me, it’s shorthand for two related but distinct ideas: trustworthy and responsible. The first, being trustworthy, is about being honest and honorable. It means, for example, that a colleague might rely on your character without questioning what you might have done in some sticky situation because there’s no doubt that you didn’t steal, for example. I don’t think that this should be a major point of contention — who does business with people they know upfront they can’t trust? (Sure, we’ve all done business of some kind with people it turned out that we couldn’t or shouldn’t have trusted, but that’s how experience turns into wisdom.)

The second sense, being responsible, is what I think Scott is aiming at. Here, Trusted implies that what you say has more value because your ability to deliver means that (1) you make and keep commitments, and (2) you can achieve results rather than being just good at coming up with ideas, i.e., you’re grounded in practicality.

And as I think about what I aim for when I’m advising clients, it’s also about having a solid sense of where your own core competencies lie, so that when I ask you a question, I know that I’m going to get one of the following answers:

  • Here’s the absolute right answer.
  • Here’s the best answer for you, balancing everything in the way that I understand everything that I know is important to you and everything that I know would be important to you if you knew about it.
  • Here’s the mostly right answer for your situation, and the cost of having the wrong answer now isn’t worth the cost of getting the absolute right answer.
  • Here’s a good working answer, and we’ll hedge our bets in case I’m wrong.
  • I don’t know, and we’ll find the answer.
  • I don’t know, but I do know that this is a big freaking deal so don’t do anything until I come back to you with the absolute right answer.

As I read these made-up answers, I realize that they are definitely part of “trusted.”

Counter-example: As part of a transaction I was putting together with a partner in the Middle East in which we were considering forming a new entity to serve as the joint venture between our US company and the foreign company. For a US joint venture, there is a simple default answer: you form a Delaware entity to serve as the JV. But my experience hadn’t extended to multiple-jurisdictional joint ventures that require tax-sensitive treatment to optimize total returns. So what jurisdiction is the global equivalent of Delaware? Isle of Man? Cyprus? Caymans? Vanuatu? I sure didn’t know anything more than that we were working on putting the deal together with a Kuwaiti or Dubai partner. So we called up some folks we know at a large law firm with a tremendous amount (as in over 150 years) of international experience. Our contact doesn’t have this direct experience and so passed us to his partners. I was on a call with them just a day or two later and I got this answer: “well, we can get you a Dubai lawyer to get the answer to that.” What? Why am I talking to you if you don’t know the answer and are just going to punt? If you don’t know the answer, you better tell me that you don’t (instead of pretending) and point me in the right direction. These guys, and conveniently I don’t remember their names, don’t fit my definition of “trusted.”

So, TRUSTED means reliable and outcome-focused.

What is that worth to you? Do you work with someone who exemplifies “TRUSTED” to you? Tell us in the comments.

What is the “point of Rick?”

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I just saw a little contest on Appstorm relating to mac/iphone/ipod skins. (If you didn’t know, these are essentially decals/decal sets that decorate or protect your device. But “skin” generally means decorative as opposed to a generic screen protector or similar product.)

I’ve got a smallish-skin for my old Fujitsu and was surprised how much I liked the unique difference. It’s just a blown-up version of the ASDworld logo; we got some free offer when buying a portable DVD player for Dylan to use in the classroom.

Now, with a new Airbook as my first Mac, I’m excited to find something that helps say “Rick” in all the different places and contexts and roles where my laptop shows up.

I wonder what that is? I guess that looking at all the “personal branding” and “own a word” tasks/notes/ideas that cluttered up my task list have me thinking about this a little more closely. My desktop images are generally pictures of my two boys playing or being cute. But the laptop skin is a different environment, slightly less personal, more general in audience. One thought is to simply send the message you want and the audience will find you – the triiibes mentality. Another would be to aim for something a bit different with the goal of sparking interest or even intrigue. That might be a way of communicating to people that I do some things or have some skills/goals/interests that they might want to learn more about.

Those two thoughts sound the same at first, but they’re different. One is just putting the equivalent of, for example, an Autism Speaks blue puzzle piece and something to indicate that I’m partly a special education lawyer who works with families with children on the spectrum. Or, something to show that I’m a corporate lawyer who works with startups. Or that I’m a strategic corporate advisor who helps companies develop performance management systems to improve financial performance. I’m also a hopeful triathlete and a writer of sorts.

So do I pick one role to represent me everytime I pull the laptop out? Or do I show them all, which given my range of interests might cause people to think I’m a Nascar fan with all these logos everywhere! My sense is that the right answer for me is to go through the branding exercise and distill the common theme, the core competency of “Rick,” the ur-Rick, the eleven secret herbs and spices of Rick-ness, and, quite simply, the point of Me.

I’m certain to post several iterations of this process and idea here, along with some tangential ideas (I’ve got a draft post on career path & progression waiting to be edited a bit more) and related thoughts.

What is the “point of Rick?” What should my brand be? What words or ideas do you associate with me?

Are you a thought leader?

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At some point, and I’m not sure I can remember why, I started subscribing to Scott Ginsberg’s blog. About now, you’re thinking “Who?” Scott. The Nametag Guy? Oh, now you remember. *That* you’ve seen.

Anyways, he writes some good stuff. My personal opinion is that there’s a lot of chaff in the wheat, if I can deconstruct that metaphor.

I can generally do without the too-clever turns of phrase, and the rehashes of the same sayings in three or four different blog posts.

But.

There has to be a but, right? But, sometimes he comes out with really great, great stuff. Actually profound and meaningful instead of just rambling and space-filling noisemaking.

This definition of “thought leader” is by far the best thing I’ve seen from him. It’s just great.

So short and sweet that it’s like a nine-word poem:

A trusted source who moves people with innovative ideas.

He breaks out the six key themes (trusted, source, moves, people, innovative, ideas) and distills his message down to just a sentence or two. It’s really that good.

So, of course, I’m going to create the entirely opposite effect and write six separate posts, one on each of these themes, to dig deeper into discovering and communicating, living and expressing, your (and mine) thought leadership platform.

  1. Trusted
  2. Source
  3. Moves
  4. People
  5. Innovative
  6. Ideas

(I’ll link each post back here so you can get the full effect if you’re so inclined.)

What experience led you to recognize any of these traits in yourself? What did you do to clarify your message on one of these themes?

Can you share an experience in which you saw the benefit of one of these traits or the harm from its absence?

Claiming false medals is demeaning

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A recent NYT article discussed the rash of false medals/military honors since the long war on terror has greatly increased the number of “everyday” people with some plausible wartime service.

(For example, I recently met an in-house attorney with JetBlue who was in the Army National Guard during law school and then deployed to Iraq. That’s not easy either.)

I found this language to be odd:

Some First Amendment scholars worry that laws regulating the use of symbols are similar to those against flag burning, which the Supreme Court has said are unconstitutional limitations on free speech. Others have also questioned whether overzealous activists risk slanderously and erroneously accusing people of fraud because of missing or misprinted military documents.

I agree completely with the “wearing a medal” issue, even more vehemently if it’s protected speech criticizing the military and the government. We protect the Constitution so that we can keep these rights; I’m one of the only former military folks I know who doesn’t have a problem with flag-burning. I believe that it’s great for other people to take out their frustration and anger on a US flag rather than on a citizen or soldier, sailor, airman, or marine.

But to accuse someone? That would take some serious self-righteousness and some serious proof. I doubt that anyone who actually held any of these medals would take it on themselves to throw stones at someone else without being absolutely convinced; the idea of denigrating a soldier who was deservedly decorated would seem to me to be the type of conduct that these folks would find outrageous. I, for one, have no problem detailing the extent of my “action” in the Army: the unit I was to join went to Panama in 1989 but I was waiting for OCS and never joined the unit; I was in OCS during Desert Storm, and all of Ft. Benning was worried about thousands of casualties; at OCS we openly talked about the School’s prominence in turning out 2LTs, many of whom went to Vietnam and promptly died; but we stayed home and the war was over; I was in Hawai’i during Bosnia, and my old boss went to Somalia. I didn’t do any of those things. All I did was stand ready to do whatever was asked of me, and that’s enough. I know people with actual medals, who’ve actually fought. I can’t imagine demeaning them by pretending I did something I hadn’t. I don’t know who would.

This quote is both heartening and disturbing:

Special Agent Mike Sanborn, who since 2007 has led the unit in the F.B.I.’s Washington office that handles stolen valor cases, said that while the bureau did not keep statistics on the crime, the biggest increase came after 2006 with the passage of the Stolen Valor Act, which made it a federal crime to falsely claim, verbally or in writing, that a person had been awarded a medal. Previously, the law only prohibited wearing a medal that a person did not earn.

I know of someone who apparently (and I won’t name him or how I know; he knows the truth; his name certainly doesn’t appear on this list) noted the award of a Silver Star to his resume at one point early in his career. It hasn’t appeared in a recent bio (he recently held an admittedly high-profile government job) and I didn’t see the resume with my own eyes. I guess he certainly won’t be punished for violating this law (ex post facto rears its ugly head), but he knows if he should be.

That’s the end of it. Even knowing that I don’t believe him, I’m humble enough in the face of thousands who did vastly more than I did to give him the slightest benefit of the doubt by letting the world sort it out. It’s not my place to pretend that I’m protecting the honor of the heroes I know by challenging one misguided fellow; I honor them by displaying the character traits they taught: courage, competence, character, commitment; by living up to the motto many of them lived and fought by; and by raising my children to be honorable themselves.