A Passion for Leadership

by Robert M Gates

  Even as I dealt with the immediate crisis, there was the equally obvious need for a broad, long-term vision of how to reorient the massive resources of the CIA and other American intelligence agencies from their decades-long preoccupation with the Soviet Union to a post–Cold War world. The collapse of the Soviet Union created a unique window of opportunity to make dramatic structural and operational changes at the CIA and in the intelligence community that would likely have been difficult if not impossible in normal times. While the agenda for change was long-term, I needed to take immediate advantage of the drama of Soviet collapse before its galvanizing impact on everyone dissipated.

  Identifying my immediate goals for change as secretary of defense under President Bush was easy. As he, Congress, and the press reminded me daily, in December 2006 we were losing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The need for immediate action to rectify that situation subsumed all other agenda items. My primary and urgent mission was to turn the wars around. In Iraq, the president made the courageous strategic decision to surge nearly thirty thousand additional troops in order to regain the initiative and put us on a path to establishing security and stability. My job was getting the troops there, getting them the equipment they needed, empowering the commanders to do what was necessary to accomplish their mission, and holding Congress at bay long enough for the strategy to have time to work. I was responsible for developing the necessary management priorities and strategies at the Pentagon. In Afghanistan, because we had few additional resources available during 2007–8, the agenda was to do whatever we could to prevent additional Taliban success until we and our allies could provide significant new assets. That involved modest reinforcements, better equipment, new commanders, and efforts inside the U.S. government to narrow our objectives in Afghanistan to those we could realistically achieve.

  When I was unexpectedly asked by President-elect Obama to remain as secretary, there was still much to do in terms of the wars, both in the Department of Defense and on the battlefield. But I decided my vision for change at Defense had to expand dramatically beyond simply a successful conclusion to the wars we were in. I had been secretary for two years, and I had realized early that two very big, very ambitious reforms were needed, changes I would now have the opportunity to get under way. As my staff put it, “Gates 2.0.”

  The first was to begin changing the way the Pentagon thought about the future and how to plan, train, and equip our forces for what I believed would be a very diverse range of potential conflicts in the coming decades. While we needed to retain our capability to deter—and, if necessary, defeat—other powerful countries with modern militaries, we had to abandon our long-standing single-minded focus on so-called conventional conflict and strengthen our capabilities for unconventional non-state foes, such as those we had encountered in the Balkans, Somalia, Lebanon, Panama, and Libya, and non-state enemies such as al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, and other terrorist groups. Those are the sort of adversaries we had actually fought over the previous forty years—with the sole exception of the brief first Gulf War in 1991, when we expelled the Iraqi army from Kuwait. This mix of unconventional and irregular conflict—with the lesser likelihood, but hugely consequential possibility, of a major military confrontation with Russia or China—was the world the U.S. military was most likely to encounter in the future. I knew the changes in approach I felt necessary would be a heavy lift with the military services and the defense establishment.

  The second big reform was prompted both by political reality and by the 2008 economic crisis. I concluded we had to preemptively and dramatically begin to restructure the Pentagon budget—to cut overdue, overcost, and underperforming weapons and other acquisition programs and to take far-reaching steps to reduce bureaucratic overhead costs. We needed to tackle inefficiency and waste on the merits but also in anticipation of future significant budgetary pressures on us from both the president and Congress. I thought we’d be foolish moving forward if we didn’t anticipate some financial belt-tightening. I hoped that if we credibly showed we could change the way we did business internally, we might just preempt others from making draconian and strategically dangerous cuts. This would be, I knew, a long-term undertaking. But this vision—or goal—of beginning to change the Pentagon’s approach to budgeting and fiscal management would dominate my internal agenda throughout the time I served President Obama.

  With regard to our approach to future conflicts, I had few allies among the military top brass. As for the budget, nearly everyone saw a train wreck shaping up, but no one was much interested in cutting his budget or organization.

  Another bumper sticker I like reads, “Lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way.” I felt it was my responsibility to take on these two big challenges under Obama. No one else was in a position to do so—in either rank, experience, credibility, or political independence. I believed the change in course to address both was critical to the future of the department and to America’s national security. (The importance of such changes is why I am taking you inside the institutions I served—to make clear just how important the matters dealt with by bureaucracies are and therefore why it is so important to improve them.) I had talked about both reform agendas throughout 2008 in a series of major speeches and in an article published in Foreign Affairs. I had also listened to the concerns and views of both civilian and military leaders. But moving the Defense Department forward was my responsibility, and I was confident of the direction we needed to go, so I acted despite the reservations of others.

  I encountered a completely different situation from the CIA and Defense at Texas A&M. Five years before I became its president, my predecessor, Dr. Ray Bowen, proposed that A&M strive to be recognized as one of the ten best public universities in the United States by 2020 while at the same time maintaining and enhancing the distinctiveness of the institution. He mobilized a broad effort involving more than 250 people on and off campus to assess the current strengths and weaknesses of the school and how to achieve his goal. As mentioned earlier, the nearly two-year-long study was called Vision 2020. The conclusion was honest and stark: “We are good but not good enough.” The report expressed “steadfast determination to build on strengths, eliminate weaknesses, seek opportunities, and face threats creatively and energetically.” The report had broad support from the board of regents, the faculty, and administrators.

  The recommendations were presented as twelve overarching ideas called “Imperatives.” In brief, they included strengthening the faculty both in excellence and in size, enhancing both the graduate and the undergraduate academic experiences, emphasizing the liberal arts, increasing ethnic and geographic diversity, expanding and enhancing the physical plant and landscape, developing more “enlightened” governance, attracting more financial resources, and building closer ties with the local community and the state of Texas.

  Just six months after the board of regents approved the Vision 2020 report in 1999, a huge bonfire fifty-nine feet high and consisting of some five thousand logs—built by students before the annual football game with the University of Texas—collapsed, killing twelve students and seriously injuring twenty-seven more. The bonfire had been one of A&M’s most cherished and popular traditions for ninety years. The entire campus was devastated, and the university leadership would be preoccupied with the tragedy and aftermath for the remainder of Bowen’s tenure as president. When I arrived on campus as the new president in August 2002, little progress had been made in implementing Vision 2020.

  I had made clear during the interview process that I would consider the study a blueprint for change if I became president. As I said earlier, I had no interest in the job if maintaining the status quo was expected. I wanted no illusions about my intentions.

  Shortly after arriving at A&M, I appointed Dr. David Prior, dean of the College of Geosciences, executive vice president and provost—my second-in-command. We immediately undertook a rigorous schedule of visiting each of the colleges in the
university (engineering, agriculture, science, liberal arts, veterinary medicine, and all the rest) to meet with the dean, department heads, and faculty—a listening tour. I had already concluded that addressing all twelve imperatives in Vision 2020 was impossible. To tackle change on so many fronts at once would be a formula for paralysis if not disaster. So at each college we asked which three or four of the imperatives we should tackle that would give us disproportionate leverage and momentum—and a fast start—while advancing the other imperatives as well.

  In less than a month, by early September, I was able to report our findings to the faculty senate. I told them that there was an emerging consensus on the top four priorities: We needed more faculty, and we needed to increase salaries. We needed significantly more graduate fellowships and other financial assistance. We needed to confront the critical shortages of classroom and laboratory space. We had to vastly improve our record in recruiting and retaining minority faculty and students, which was lamentable.

  I made two other points. First, we would not diminish strong academic programs to strengthen weak ones. Second, I made clear that Vision 2020 was a set of aspirations, not a plan. I wanted each college to develop specific objectives looking out one year and five years, with clear milestones and metrics by which we could measure progress. I said I expected the plans for each college to be unique, reflecting its particular strengths and weaknesses. I left no doubt that “change has come to Texas A&M and more is on the way. This university is ready to move to the next level of excellence.”

  In just three weeks of listening and of dialogue, we had moved from twelve broad statements of intent in Vision 2020 to a prioritized set of four goals with broad support across campus.

  Universities are often held up as examples of the most difficult institutions in which to make changes. I inherited an aspirational set of goals and ideas with broad faculty support. By involving the faculty and staff in establishing priorities for change from among those goals and ideas, I made the professionals my allies and strongest supporters for moving ahead. That is key in any public institution. While faculty are, by nature, independent actors who are rarely motivated en masse, there are faculty organizations that can play an important and constructive role. I worked hard to develop close, cooperative relationships with each of these groups, and the effort paid off with the faculty as a whole in gaining their support for what I was trying to accomplish.

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  Leaders of public institutions often cannot avoid politics, as I mentioned earlier. In this case, before becoming president of A&M, I would have to face off with the governor of Texas, Rick Perry, an A&M graduate who, I was told, had promised the president’s job to Senator Phil Gramm, who had taught economics there for some years. After the search committee had settled on me, I received a call from Perry, who pressured me to withdraw my candidacy. He said he did not want me at A&M, neither did many Aggies, and he would be appointing all the members of the board of regents in the future—hinting I would face very rough going as president. The last thing I wanted was to get mixed up in Texas politics, but I also wasn’t about to let the governor intimidate me into pulling out. As I later told my wife, I had been confronting—in person—the leadership of the KGB while this guy was a freshman member of the Texas House of Representatives. I told Perry I would just let the board of regents decide. All three of his appointees then on the board voted against me (including Gramm’s wife, who did not recuse herself, as is normally done when there is a personal conflict of interest), while of the other six, appointed by the previous governor, George W. Bush, five voted for me and one “courageously” abstained. (Behind the scenes, Perry and I would have an adversarial relationship the entire time I was at Texas A&M, though we managed to maintain public civility. I contacted him on several occasions with private, handwritten notes, but there was never a response. He was not an advocate of Vision 2020.)

  If a leader is not making at least a few enemies along the way, he must not be doing much. Still, in public or private institutions, overt hostility to elected officials or one’s bosses—or disloyalty to them—is an unaffordable luxury. If the leader can’t persuade them, accommodate them, or reconcile with them, if he cannot do his job in good conscience, then he must quit. No job is worth selling one’s soul for. The governor was a pain in the neck, but I could still do my job the way I thought best.

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  So, what is the relevance of my experiences as a new leader to others in government or business when developing an agenda for change—a vision for future action? After all, almost no one will be faced with a challenge like the collapse of the Soviet Union or how to redirect American intelligence after the end of the Cold War, leading the military in wartime, or repositioning a large university.

  One takeaway for a new leader is that external circumstances and challenges must take center stage in developing her agenda for change. At times, those circumstances will dictate the agenda. The leader should proceed accordingly. Ignoring the realities of the bureaucratic battlefield makes no sense: a leader must not fight reality just because she arrived with a preconceived plan or goals that pointed in another direction. Her plans must accommodate the situation as it is in creating an agenda for present and future change.

  Another lesson is simply this: in developing an agenda, as change agents, all leaders will have to decide the relative importance of urgent problems versus long-term challenges and, in the process, figure out how to allocate time and effort among them. If a new leader faces an immediate crisis, dealing with that must take precedence over, while not totally eclipsing, long-term goals. A leader placed in charge of an organization facing a firestorm should reach for a hose, not a PowerPoint. In consultation with her professional staff, she must ascertain what should be done to address the immediate crisis—and then act. Her success in dealing with immediate problems also will pay dividends as she deals with longer-term challenges.

  Finally, when challenging the status quo, even after listening to everyone, the leader must sometimes be prepared to act alone, to boldly go where no one else wants to go. Many leadership training and management programs, in business and in government, focus a great deal on teamwork, team building, group dynamics, and building consensus. Such skills are important, but when establishing an agenda for reform, for transformational change, a leader will almost always be going against the consensus and conventional wisdom in much of what she does. People will think she is wrong and will tell her so. The change agent must be an oak, not a daisy.

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  Successfully leading reform in bureaucracies, large and small, is not for the fainthearted or for the egomaniacal. As a leader develops her goals, hearing the ideas, assessments, and thoughts of others in the organization about what change is needed will make a critical contribution on many levels. Still, also taking into account the realities of the organization’s situation, the leader alone must decide the path forward. The important thing to remember is that in any public or private sector organization, whether it has three million employees or three, having a clearly defined and achievable vision—or set of goals—and getting the priorities right in moving forward are the preconditions for successfully leading change. After all, as Yogi Berra said, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you will wind up somewhere else.”

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  * Disclaimer: I serve on the Starbucks board of directors; Schultz’s qualities of leadership are a big reason why I wanted to.

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  Formulating a Strategy

  Armed with clearly defined goals for change, a new leader will be tempted to plunge ahead and let the chips fall where they may. He shouldn’t. Too often, especially in the public sector, a leader comes in with a bold agenda for change, gives a powerful speech, and then…Nothing. There is no plan, no strategy for implementation.

  A good example of this was the speech President Obama gave in Cairo in his first months in office. It was a terrific speech, candidly acknowledging U.S. missteps in the
Middle East and describing the new directions he intended to take. Arab audiences were excited by what he had to say. But over the following weeks, their enthusiasm turned to bitterness when it soon became clear there was no follow-up plan or strategy to implement his vision. This happens too often both in the public sector and in business.

  Carefully considered strategies for implementation are critical in reforming bureaucracies. On every matter I thought important, small or large, I always took time to devise a specific strategy to achieve my goal and to identify milestones and deadlines to measure progress. You can’t depend just on luck or goodwill to make things happen. Begin with a concerted effort to win the support of internal and external constituencies for the reform agenda. Decide on the sequence in which you will pursue your objectives and the managerial tools and techniques to be used for each. And then carefully choose your lieutenants.

  For successful change at every kind of institution in both the private and the public sectors, a leader must win the support of those in the trenches who deliver the mission of the organization. Recognition of their critical role and respect for them go a long way.