Perseverance - The Reading Glasses Principle

By Rick Van Arnam

Bagram, Afghanistan

On the outside legs of the Army Combat Uniform (ACU), below the knee, is a pocket. No one knows exactly for what the pocket was designed, but I can tell you from daily experience that it holds a case for glasses comfortably. In my right leg pocket, you will find my reading glasses. It is such a convenient spot for holding reading glasses that I am certain the designer must have been somewhere north of forty-seven years old and wore reading glasses, too. For those older than I, you are likely smiling, even chuckling thinking, “Van Arnam is finally accepting the inevitable – he’s getting older, too.” For those younger than me, you are probably thinking…..well, I probably don’t really want to know.

On the occasion of my 48^th birthday, which I celebrated on August 20^th, I thought about my reading glasses as a symbol that reminds me of the process of character development. Among my Eleven Principles of Character, The Reading Glasses Principle states “Character development takes time.” The accompanying question for everyone to answer, whether twenty-eight or forty-eight years old is, “How will I find contentment along the way?” That question is likely more difficult to answer at twenty-eight than at forty-eight and more difficult even at forty-eight than at sixty-eight.

I recall a day back at Ft. Jackson, South Carolina on a basic training firing range during the summer of 1985. I can go back to that moment in seconds recalling the morning summer’s humidity, the light orange Southern clay and the wooden ammunition table around which I was having a conversation with a Command Sergeant Major twenty years my senior. At Ft. Jackson, I was an infantry officer working with basic trainees and a world removed from most of my peers who were leading infantry platoons in units far more recognizable than mine. I had not been to Ranger school or been assigned overseas. There was so much I wanted to do and it felt as if these opportunities would never come to me. His advice to an impatient young lieutenant was to stick to a plan, follow the process and get yourself ready. Not the advice I wanted to hear. The problem I was having was not so much around the process or next assignment, but how was I going to find contentment along the way?

A partial answer to that question rests in accepting wisdom in action as a definition for character. I’ve often been asked what is the diference between my 2003 Aghanistan tour and my current 2010 deployment to the same theater. Half jokingly, my reply has been two words, “Reading glasses.”

Truthfully, there is a big difference in the seven years between deployments and most of the change can be rolled into the application of wisdom, or as the Army calls it, lessons learned. Organizationally or individually, we are either more or less effective based on how much of what we learned in the past, we apply in the future. This is the measure of a character’s maturity. The more wisdom applied, likely the more developed our character. And there is no gettting around this fact – with reading glasses comes approximately four and half decades of living and most of that time represents learning opportunities.

I thought of this principle as I read about Syracuse Coach Jim Boeheim earlier this year when his team was ranked near the top of the college basketball polls. Boeheim is the longtime coach of the Orange and a 1966 graduate of Syracuse University. I grew up an hour north of Syracuse in the 1970’s where following SU basketball is what one did in the winter. Before the Carrier Dome, Syracuse played in Manley Field House and had enviable regular seasons records, but struggled annually in the post season. Then came the Carrier Dome, larger tournaments and greater expectations. But the the knock on Boeheim remained; his teams could not shoot free throws down the stretch or win the really big games. Attendance at the Dome soared past 30,000 when rivals visited and Boeheim’s future was secure anchored by twenty-win seasons and his deep Syracuse roots despite disappointing fans each March.

Slowly, a funny thing happened began to occur. Under Coach Boeheim and along the way to 829 wins – Syracuse began to win in the post season. In 1987, Boeheim’s eleventh season as head coach, Syracuse made their first Final Four appearance. That year, the Orangemen (later the nickname was shortened to Orange) lost to Indiana in the championship game on a Keith Smart basket with seconds remaining. Nine years later, Boeheim guided his team to the Final Four and the championship game for the second time where they lost to Kansas. In both appearances, Syracuse was not favored to win and did not.

But even with the losses, Boeheim’s reputation was growing favorably. He had coached two teams to the Final Four and he had established Syracuse as a national power. His next trip to the Final Four would come sooner than his previous. In his twenty-sixth year as head coach, he guided a Carmelo Anthony led-team to the championship game where Syracuse beat Kentucky – an achievement that seemed impossible during the Manley Field House days in the late 1970’s.

Talk about wisdom in action – by the 2009-2010 season, Coach Boeheim surpassed 825 wins and is widely recognized as a master of the two-three zone defense. His name is now spoken of in the same conversations with other great coaches that include famed Duke coach Mike Krzyzewki with whom he is serving as an assistant coach for Team USA in the FIBA World Championships currenlty underway. Next to his 829 wins are 293 losses which likeky add as much or more to the lessons learned as the victories. And therein lies most of the contentment – whether wining or losing – it is not the current tally that matters as much as how much a person applies from what is learned on both sides of the win – loss column.

RVA

Perseverance - The Three Decisions Principle

By Rick Van Arnam

Bagram, Afghanistan

Not many organizations make as many decisions as the Army. The Army, I think, is pretty good at making decisions if not at least very comfortable. I was thinking about this during a recent Battle Update Brief (BUB) to the commander and just how routine it has become to brief him and ask for a decision. Last night’s BUB was particularly succinct comparable to a pitchers’ duel in baseball marked by both efficiency and effectiveness.

The staff’s success at mastering the decision making process as instinct made we wonder about one of my Eleven Principles of Character Development. The Three Decisions Principle states that, “Making a single decision requires you to make two more.” These latter two decisions address the when and how surrounding a single decision and are summarized by asking the question, “When and how will I act on the decision I made?”

It is not that we endeavor to make wrong decisions, but the realization that even when we make the right decision, the outcome can be limited because we made a mistake in timing or an error in execution. So if you have ever asked yourself, “What was that person thinking?” chances are good that he or she did not understand that every decision requires two more. Let’s dig deeper.

Kathryn Schulz is the author of the book, Being Wrong, and also writes a blog called The Wrong Stuff. She has a “credible claim as the world’s leading wrongologist” according to her homepage description and is consumed with doing forensics on decisions. In a recent interview with Peter Norvig, an engineer and director of research at Google, he reminds us that to be a good engineer requires failure. It is a prerequisite to learning, refinement and improvement on things consumers like to buy or services customers like to use – like Google.

I am not an engineer, but have believed that in order to be a good leader, I have to be willing to make decisions even if a decision may be wrong. It is perhaps the best way to learn as well as a fast way to make progress – as long as a quick, corrective decision is made subsequently. For years I have reminded my team that I’d rather be seven out of ten, with three wrong decisions, than to be two out of three with only one wrong decision. Seventy percent is better than sixty-seven percent and I generally believe that progress results from making decisions, not in avoiding them. I don’t encourage hazard by this, I am encouraging progress – and I recognize that there are those decisions that are major or strategic and require more time, more analysis or more input because there may be lives at stake or require a major investment.

But aside from the decisions of business or the military, I am even more interested in personal decisions that affect a person’s character development. And I think there are parallels that can be drawn in analyzing Google’s engineering philosophy and decisions that shape who a person is becoming.

At Google, Peter Norvig talks about two kinds of errors. He says, “One is, there's a clear error in the code: It's supposed to do one thing and it does something else. In that case, you know when you've got it wrong, and you'll know when you've got it right.” I speculate in this case, the fix includes a re-write of the code, which even I understand from taking a very basic programming course a long time ago.

The second kind of error, according to Norvig, occurs when the code may not necessarily be wrong, but it is not providing the best or most effective result. And that is the purpose of correctly answering the when and how questions in the Three Decisions Principle. Assuming a person makes the right initial decision, the when or how can either make the initial decision wildly successful or marginally effective.

Let me provide an example. Jackie Robinson’s story has always captivated me as one of the best displays of personal courage in human history. His ability to be one of the best baseball players of all time required tremendous restraint amidst both on and off the field hate, prejudice and threats and is beyond modern day understanding for most. It is fitting that his number “42” has been retired by Major League Baseball in honor of one of the greatest human achievements in baseball’s history.

Jackie’s ascension to the Brooklyn Dodgers was led by Branch Rickey. Rickey was the president and general manager of the Dodgers when he signed Robinson to a minor league contract in 1945. Basically, Rickey had already made the initial decision – that he would break a long standing policy and allow an African American to play in the Major Leagues in order to desegregate baseball. Once that decision was made, Rickey likely spent far more time deciding on the when and how decisions that followed than he had in deciding to sign Robinson in the first place.

During spring training in 1947, Rickey was asked by reporters about his plans for Robinson and replied, “If Robinson merits being with the Dodgers, I’d prefer to have the players want him, rather than force him on the players. I want Robinson to have the fairest chance in the world without the slightest bit of prejudice.” This quote, from Arnold Rampersad’s biography titled, Jackie Robinson, provides great insight into both the consideration of timing and the skill with which Rickey handled the execution. The rest, of course, is history. Robinson debuted for the Dodgers that year on opening day and went on to win the first-ever, Rookie-of-the-Year award commencing a Hall of Fame career. But Rickey’s precise execution, which included moving the Dodgers’ Spring Training location to Panama and Cuba from the South, led to a very effective result.

In the development of a person’s character, the ability to think through the latter two considerations may be just as important than making a right first decision. You have probably made an important decision in the past and were confident that the decision was correct. In that case, you may have confided to someone, “I want to do this, but I don’t the best way.” It is that habit, that curiosity and that mental exercise that leads to better results by making three decisions, rather than just one.

Maybe I have a little wrongologist in me or that all of us like to engage in dissecting high-profile decisions like that of President Obama’s to relieve General McChrystal this summer or watching how LeBron James handles his free agency decision. Regardless of why, I think the purpose of analyzing decisions is to reduce the cycle time in learning. This is what Peter Norvig referred to when he mentions “failing faster and smaller” to describe how a public company like Google can tolerate errors and actually become stronger. A large part of reducing personal cycle time is being able to answer, “When and how am I going to act on the decision I have made?”

RVA

Credits

The Wrong Stuff, Kathryn Schulz, 3 August 2010 (www.slate.com)

Missed History and a Reputable Principle

By RICK VAN ARNAM

Bagram, Afghanistan

Dining facilities in Afghanistan are filled with sports fans with their eyes glued to flat screen televisions just as they would back home. And from these seats, counting the days until one goes home includes counting sporting events like the World Cup, Major League Baseball or following Lebron James’ odyssey from Cleveland to Miami. And by my count, there are seventy-three regular season baseball games remaining confirming my status as a both a sports fan and soldier anxious to return home.

As I have followed sports this summer, I have become more curious about the impact of the rules of a game and the regulations of a league and the impact both have on players and sports history. Maybe you have had similar thoughts throughout this summer as history has been both made and missed.

Detroit Tiger pitcher Armando Galarraga, for example, missed history on June 3rd when umpire John Joyce made a mistake on a call at first base with two outs in the ninth inning that otherwise would have completed one of baseball’s most difficult achievements. Instead of being one of twenty-one pitchers in the history of the game to toss a perfect game*, Galarraga became just another pitcher to throw a one-hitter – an accomplishment achieved a thousand times or more. If there was any consolation it could be found in the grace with which he handled it. Subjected to many interviews following the missed call, the sound bite now universally associated with his missed history is Galarraga’s statement that keeps things in perspective, “I know nobody’s perfect.” On the other side of Galarraga’s grace is matching humility in umpire Joyce’s acknowledgement that he screwed up. “It was the biggest call of my career," an emotional Joyce told reporters, "and I kicked it. I just cost that kid a perfect game." In the days after June 3rd, Galarraga and Joyce were like elegant dancers with one allowing space for forgiveness and the other humbly submitting. And when history records what really happened as a result of the missed call, it may have more to say about character and reputation than about the score or the skill of those involved.

The recently concluded World Cup provided plenty of officiating drama including a missed goal in the Round of Sixteen match between England and Germany. Both nations are historic contenders for the FIFA World Cup Trophy and this match was considered one of the premier contests in the tournament. With Germany leading 2 - 1 and the English pressuring a comeback late in the first half, a linesman missed a goal when a ball struck by one of England’s players ricocheted downward off the crossbar, hit clearly inside the goal line and spun backward to the German goalkeeper. Despite being in the proper position, the linesman missed it and play continued without interruption proving that Armando Galaragga’s comment that “nobody’s perfect” can apply to officials in any sport. Had the goal counted, the match would have been even at two likely changing the second half strategies for both clubs. Germany eventually won by a score of 4 – 1 before dropping their next match to the Netherlands who subsequently lost to Spain. Fortunately, Spain’s first World Cup Championship seems unaffected by the missed goal – unless perhaps you are a die-hard English fan.

Lastly, there was the Lebron James’ free agency circus. James, arguably the best player on the planet, spent his first seven years in the league with the Cleveland Cavaliers who play their home games not far from James’ hometown of Akron. Lebron’s decision to leave his home state for the Miami Heat was guided by NBA rules which set a salary cap designed to give every team the same opportunity to sign the best available players. These rules and his personal decision process created a winner-take-all sweepstakes that attracted paparazzi and ESPN in the prime time for the official announcement. Joining James in Miami are two of the NBA’s best – Chris Bosh, formerly of the Toronto Raptors, and Dwayne Wade who re-signed with the Heat – the only team for which he has ever played. All three took less money to be on the same roster sparking reaction ranging from accusatory to mean. Dallas Mavericks’ owner Mark Cuban, for example, suggested that the players involved, the Miami Heat or all had done something unethical. Dan Gilbert, majority owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers, wrote an open letter to Cavalier fans harshly criticizing James. His letter drew a fine of $100,000 from the NBA based on another rule meant to shape off court conduct.

In this last example, only time will tell if James’ decision was right or wrong. And even with time, it likely depends on your definition of right and wrong in how you make the call. Aside from the statistics, records and championships the three might compile, what will be revealing is how the three handle the decision that each has made. How they handle their decision will require each to lean on their developing character and not on the rules of the game or rules the league. Because it is the former, not the latter that will cement their reputation with those who love sports and those who love to hate sports.

And that leads to a key nugget, one of twelve reputable principles I am crafting especially for athletes, that I observed from a summer spent watching sports to help pass time until I can go home. Officials can rule the play on the field and leagues can rule off field conduct, but neither can be held accountable for a player’s reputation. A player’s reputation is ultimately accountable to his or her character.

I don’t know Armando Galarraga, but I really admired how he handled an unfortunate call that went against him. Even during the summer in which he missed a perfect game, he has pitched in the majors and in the minors with flashes of brilliance and streaks of mediocrity. Maybe it is that roller coaster ride, unlike the super-stardom status applied to World Cup players and Lebron James, which led to Galarraga’s instinctive response that, “Nobody is perfect.” But while his response resonates well to reflect on his being, it also reminds us that character is more important than the balls and strikes called against us in our daily work.

* There have only been twenty perfect games thrown in the history of Major League Baseball.

RVA


Author’s Note

For the record, I hoped that Lebron James stayed in Cleveland. I believe it would have been a good thing for the city and the Cleveland fans, who likely and generally speaking will remain always faithful to the Cavs, to see Lebron mature as a player, teammate and businessman finding a way to bring a championship, or simply the character of a champion, to the shores of Lake Erie.

What I Learned On Leave

By Rick Van Arnam

Bagram, Afghanistan

Like some of the best things learned, this lesson was not planned. When I deployed to Afghanistan in early January, I had no intention to take mid-tour leave (vacation). I wanted to save a year’s worth of accumulated leave so that I would have a six week sabbatical prior to returning to work.

But something magical happened, though, as soon as I landed at Bagram Airfield on March 1^st. I learned that all soldiers deployed to Afghanistan for 270 days or more were authorized fifteen days of non-chargeable leave that would start the day after landing in the United States. So I departed Bagram on May 26^th and landed in Vermont and into my wife’s arms two days later. Thinking back on my twenty-six years of work, I have only had this much consecutive time off once. It was back in 1986 when I took thirty days leave between Ranger school graduation and flying to Korea for my next assignment. At that time, I was single, did not own a house nor own nearly as much responsibility.

What I learned over the next fifteen days is a lesson for life that may be of value to you – especially if you are fully embedded in your career-life balance which makes the thought of a two week vacation a near impossible dream.

The value of a two-week break is immense. Although a two-week vacation is twice the length of a one-week vacation, I believe it offers at least five times the benefit. I feel refreshed, relaxed, recharged and reinvigorated. I never felt this way after only one week of vacation. Experts can likely explain this in better physiological terms than I, but I think it is due to a couple of simple ideas. First, it takes a few days to really unwind and unplug from work. Second, deep relaxation came to me quicker when it occurred to me throughout my first week that I still had more than a week’s vacation left! That realization was a multiplier allowing me to relax and enjoy each day more fully without the usual ‘work creep’ occurring.

Here is my advice and challenge – in the next year, do all you can to take a two week vacation and do all that you can to enable those who work for you to do the same.

There may be more objections than I can tackle here, but I’ll address a few of the quick pop-ups. If you are still uncertain afterwards, take this idea to a trusted friend and get a second opinion.

Objection # 1: My job isn’t like being deployed to Afghanistan.

Maybe. Maybe not. I am forty-seven years old and serve as a primary staff officer to the brigade commander. I work on an airfield that is more like a small city than a combat outpost. I work in a new building and have a nicely furnished office. I have air conditioning. I am awake by 5:30am and work a fifteen-hour day usually getting to bed by 10pm. My day is filled with meetings, briefings, e-mail, making decisions and leading a 100-soldier intelligence section. Truthfully, I feel like a senior executive in a medium-sized company. I go to the gym at lunch and have most of the resources I need. If you work in a white-collar environment with mid-to-senior level executive responsibilities and work over fifty hours per week, our jobs are more similar than you may think. So go ahead, take two weeks off.

Objection # 2: My team or company can’t afford to lose me for two weeks.

We are in the middle of the summer fighting season in Afghanistan and it is likely the most pivotal fighting season since 2002. Bagram Airfield was attacked on May 19th and I took vacation on May 25th. In my absence, our section performed outstandingly and all earned praise from the command group and higher headquarters.

Lose the ego and take vacation – you will be doing more for your organization than you think. I know that I am more valuable to my commander now than I was in the month prior to leave. My head is clearer; I am rested and simply feel more enthusiastic about tackling the complex problems sets (see Puzzles, Rubik's Cube and Brainteasers, posted 6 June 2010) that define Afghanistan. Leaders can instill confidence in their people by turning over the reigns to the person that they should be developing to replace them. If you have made yourself indispensable, you are likely limiting your organization’s growth.

And, if you are at the very top of the organization as an owner, commander or CEO and believe that you cannot be gone for two weeks, think again. Does anyone else in your organization have more people under him or her than you? In five years, no one will reflect back and comment, “If only so and so had not taken that two week vacation back in 2010, we wouldn’t be in this mess today.” So go ahead, take two weeks off.

Objection # 3: I don’t need a two-week vacation.

An extended vacation is not just about you. I’ll bet that you have family members or friends that would really enjoy some extended quality time with you. Deployed soldiers do perhaps learn this better than most people, but don’t miss an only opportunity to create a lasting memory. My kids did not know I was coming home this early and that provided perfect opportunities to surprise them – separately. I thought that I would have to close Elana’s wide-open jaw when she first saw me and I am convinced Connor was nearly in shock as I surprised him at his school’s chapel and he realized that I would be there for his 9^th grade graduation. A few days later, our family together climbed New Hampshire’s Cardigan Mountain and posted the pictures on Facebook to prove it. These memories, plus a lunch in Lake Placid with my mom and brother, are sustaining, and not just for me. So go ahead, take two weeks off.

Deployments have a way of teaching me more lessons than I can predict. This one took about two weeks to learn and is now wisdom for life.

RVA

Dead Bodies, Lies and Broken-Hearted Mothers

By Rick Van Arnam

Returning to Afghanistan

Leaders have a responsibility to think deeply on matters that shape character and chiefly, but not solely, include beliefs, values, and motivators. While this post may at first seem off the topic of leadership and character, it does reflect a single leader’s thinking on these important matters while deployed. The views and opinions are mine and mine alone and should not be interpreted as shared by others with whom I serve or the U. S. Army.

The bloated toes of the foot were curled unnaturally into a tight cringe that made me at first think that I was looking at something you would pay to see at a County Fair. The foot appeared almost unrecognizable to my forty-seven year old eyes that are trained naturally to recognize a normal foot. Attached to the foot was a long, white sinewy cord that was sort of like a well-worn telephone cord that had lost its original shape, but was still functional attaching the handset to the phone – except this cord was detached from the rest of the body and no longer with function.

I’m not medically inclined or trained, but I guessed that the white cord was a tendon that stayed attached to the foot when the suicide bomber self-detonated. The rest of the remains, body pieces and equipment, were scattered on a screen to be photographed and studied as part of an investigation following the 19 May 2010 complex attack on Bagram Airfield.

At some point, though, this dead body – body parts is a more accurate description – had not been an insurgent. He had been born a human being, a son, to a mother. As I looked at the remains of this attacker, somewhere my mind drifted back imagining with certainty that this dead body had once been a young boy – innocent and naïve like any young boy – playing games made up as he ran alongside other boys. I know that moment took place because I have been deployed or lived overseas a few times now and have seen dirt-poor, half-dressed kids play and frolic with smiles worn on their faces.

His mother had been present for some period of his life – I know this to be as close to fact as possible because Afghanistan has one of the world’s highest child mortality rates and kids who reach adulthood can only do so with the help of their mothers, close family or just pure luck (or all of the above). As I studied a picture of a piece from a torn satchel I wondered what her dreams were for her son on the day that she gave birth. I doubt, but could be wrong, that she gazed down her tummy to a crying newborn and smiled knowing that he would some day blow himself to smithereens. I don’t think that thought crossed her mind at that time, but I could be wrong – it is just not a natural thought no matter a person’s beliefs or ideology. I think, but could be wrong, that her heart would break on this day knowing the violent death her son had inflicted on himself. Underneath my military crust, which believes with a cool heart that this is the desired end state of any body committed to killing others who intend to do good, I was near sad-hearted thinking of the loss of human opportunity now scattered to be photographed.

Then I became mad – on two levels.

First, I was mad that in the press this futile attack would quickly pass overshadowed by multiple insurgent attacks on coalition forces in the days and weeks to come. On this day, insurgents tried to inflict mass casualties on Bagram Airfield and failed – miserably. One United States citizen, a young man from North Carolina working as a contractor, was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe, in honor, he was the reason more casualties were avoided. When the attackers killed him sitting in the driver’s seat of his vehicle, tower guards were easily alerted and quickly eliminated some of the attackers. The insurgents sent more than twenty attackers to Bagram on that day. Several wore identical suicide vests and most died either by self-detonating or killed by coalition forces. A few more suspected attackers were captured and I estimate that only a few were fortunate to retreat escaping death or capture.

But I was also mad at another level. I was mad that the suicide attackers had been recruited and seduced to believe that their horrific, self-inflicted death was either better than the opportunity of life itself or justified in the name of extreme religious ideology. My reaction to this anger was a desire to photograph the remains, including the bloated foot with the sinewy white tendon attached, and drop millions of these photos on the areas in which suicide bombers are recruited and trained. On the way to believing lies cast as vision, every recruited suicide bomber should have the right to see just how his body will end up.

We do not do that, though, because it is not humane. How ironic is that? That we would not publish, in pictures, the most inhumane way to die because to do so would be inhumane? I suppose we don’t do this out of respect for human life – which includes the respect and compassion for the life of the broken-hearted mother who lost her son to a lie.

In America, there is a common saying that there are only two certainties in life – death and taxes. But having been deployed, I can say that throughout the world only one thing is really certain and that is death. Very few of us will ever have an opportunity to manage a graceful end to our life, this I believe. But no one should be led to embrace a lie cast as vision over which a mother’s heart would break at the site of a body contorted beyond recognition. It is just not right.

RVA

Puzzles, Rubik's Cube and Brainteasers

By Rick Van Arnam

Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan

I grew up in the 1970’s putting together jigsaw puzzles at my grandparent’s house. Even my Great Grandmother Walrath always had a puzzle in progress with pieces scattered across a card table. As kids, my siblings and I would often get a jigsaw puzzle for Christmas. After wearing out or losing enough of the puzzle’s pieces, we would scotch tape its box corners and take it to camp where it likely remains. In the 1980’s, the Rubik’s Cube became the puzzle to own (I never solved it). By the time my kids were born in the mid-1990’s Connie and I started to buy clever travel puzzles for the kids. We actually enjoyed these puzzles more than the kids competing against one another until she consistently beat me and my anger increased to a point that I didn’t even want to kiss her goodnight!

As challenging as those puzzles were to me, I’ve been introduced to much harder puzzles on this deployment with much more at stake than a good night kiss from my wife. The Army even has a name for these puzzles – we call these Complex Problem Sets. For example, a Complex Problem Set could be anything from figuring out who really holds negative or positive sway in a province to looking at poppy eradication as a national strategy in Afghanistan. Complex Problem Sets are characterized by having several factors that cause second, third and fourth order effects. These brain-straining conundrums call out the ongoing need for deft leadership skills grounded in a selflessness that puts others first for a greater good and humility to recognize that one person alone cannot solve these issues.

Today, I sat in a meeting discussing a Complex Problem Set that required our staff to understand many things about many villages that surround us. As I looked across the room and listened to several inputs, it struck me not only how hard we are working to solve this Complex Problem Set, but also how many different areas of expertise and diversity had a chair at the table. As a reminder, I am serving in an Infantry Brigade, but you would not have guessed that by the makeup of those in the meeting or the range of topics of discussed.

In the room where I made this private observation, service members from the Army, Air Force and Navy participated (for good measure, we share a building with Marines). Joining these men and women were civilians from the Department of State, USAID (United States Agency for International Development) and the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) as well as civilian contractors who study ‘human terrain.’ The organizational diversity was matched by the diversity of individual expertise. For example, there were Army Civil Affairs’ personnel who were experts on public health and from one I learned that three factors – dirty water, upper respiratory disease and malnutrition – contribute to eighty percent of the public health issues in Afghanistan. Contributing to the challenge of the Complex Problem Set is the overarching chemistry challenge brought on by a melting pot of organizational cultures, competing priorities and individual personalities.

Trying to select one leadership skill or character trait on which success hinges is like trying to find a single solution to “solve” Afghanistan – or for that matter, figuring out how to turn around GM, fix healthcare or balance a university’s budget in the wake of plunging endowment values. From my observation, success in solving Complex Problem Sets requires a holistic and patient approach; this same attitude can be applied to leadership and character development if we want to experience similar success at solving the Complex Problem Sets that occupy our future conference rooms.

Humility, for example, is a character attribute brought into view by recognizing that a single person cannot solve these problems. It takes a room full of input just to draft a plan in order to positively impact results. One person cannot be smarter than the collective wisdom that gathers to figure out Complex Problem Sets. Big problems don’t require big egos, but instead, big humility that enables brainstorming over singularly directed answers or the will to take a new position after further thought or admitting that a third or fourth order effect had not been considered.

Working through a Complex Problems Set is not always enjoyable. But like the brainteaser we returned to as a kid, the challenge and opportunity to get something important right draws out the leadership and character in people.

RVA