A Passion for Leadership

by Robert M Gates

  It is imperative early on for a leader to reassure (or disarm) those who will be apprehensive about his intentions—that is, probably nearly everyone in the organization. At minimum, opposition needs to be preempted or defanged; at best, allies can be won. Taking the time and making the effort to prepare various constituencies for change are steps often omitted by new leaders, dismissed as “stagecraft” or “getting warm and fuzzy.”

  I know such an approach to be important because early in my career I failed to take it, with profound consequences. In 1981, the CIA director, William Casey, was unhappy with the quality of analysis produced at the CIA, as were a number of appointees of the newly elected Ronald Reagan. Indeed, I knew from having spent five and a half years on the National Security Council staff at the White House under Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Carter that they too had been disappointed by the CIA’s analytical work. I had long felt there was room for improvement. By late 1981, I was a senior CIA officer running the offices of both the director, Casey, and the deputy director, Bob Inman. I wrote a long paper for them laying out a number of specific measures I felt if implemented could significantly improve the quality of CIA analysis. When the job of deputy director for intelligence (analysis) came open, they jumped me over a number of more senior managers to become its head and to implement the recommendations I had given them. I had little experience running a large line organization. (I was thirty-eight.)

  I proceeded immediately to prove it. In retrospect, it was clear that a number of senior officers in the directorate also believed far-reaching change was needed, that our analytical work for the president and his senior advisers had become intellectually lazy, lacking sufficient rigor. But confident I had all the answers, I hardly consulted with my colleagues. Instead, I filled the agency auditorium with managers and analysts and proceeded to deliver a jeremiad about past failures and shortcomings (with little reference to successes) and announced nearly a dozen measures that would upend the way the directorate had been doing business. In the space of an hour, as a brand-new boss, I managed to anger nearly everyone who worked for me and to antagonize even those who agreed with me on both the diagnosis and the remedies. It was the worst possible start.

  I held that job for more than four years, and over time many of the changes I imposed by fiat were accepted as necessary. The analytical product improved substantially in the eyes of most policy makers. But, internally, resentment smoldered for a long time over my early, mistaken approach to bringing change.

  I learned my lesson and applied what I learned in every subsequent job. From the first days I took charge, wherever I was, I targeted the career employees whose roles and attitudes would determine whether any initiative for change would succeed or fail. Gaining the respect and cooperation of the professional cadre—or at least getting them to keep an open mind—should have very high priority on every new leader’s to-do list.

  Both real and symbolic actions and gestures of respect early can have significant impact in softening resistance to change and persuading people to be receptive to what a new leader is trying to do. The following actions I describe are peculiar to the three institutions I led but are easily adaptable to any public or private bureaucracy.

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  Faculty are deeply suspicious of university administrators and their often empty promises of “shared governance.” To paraphrase Mark Twain, for an administrator to deliver on such promises “will gratify some [faculty] and astonish the rest.” But making the elevation of the faculty the first item on the broadly agreed agenda for change at A&M addressed that problem quickly.

  Texas A&M has commencement ceremonies in May, August, and December. Before I arrived, the entering procession at the ceremonies was led by the vice presidents with the deans and faculty following. On the stage, the vice presidents sat in the front row, with the deans relegated to the back rows. The faculty in attendance were seated on the arena floor next to the stage, nearly invisible to everyone. At my first commencement in August, just days after I arrived on campus, I placed the deans in the front row onstage (some were a little miffed they now had to pay attention and not read Sports Illustrated or check their e-mails during the ceremonies), the vice presidents behind them; and the faculty were seated together on the expanded stage at the side of the official party. At the next commencement, the faculty led the procession. These were little things, symbolic to be sure, but the faculty noticed.

  The administrative vice presidents at A&M essentially ran the university when I arrived. Decisions on budgets, space allocation, and spending priorities were made by them and the university president with little input from deans and faculty. I resolved to subordinate administration to the academic mission of the university. (You would be surprised to know how often it is the other way around at colleges and universities.) The head of academic programs at Texas A&M, the provost, also carried the title of executive vice president, a hollow honorific. I made it real by requiring the administrative vice presidents to report to me through the executive vice president/provost, again sending the message that academic needs would drive administrative decisions. The person in charge of the academic program would be the chief operating officer of the university.

  Less than a month after assuming my position, I went before the faculty senate to inform them of these reforms—and more. I would, I told them, create four councils of eight to ten people to advise the provost and me, three of the councils to be chaired by deans with both faculty and administrators as members. A finance council, chaired by the dean of the business school, would participate in creating the university budget and make recommendations for how better to align academic needs and budgetary allocations. A research council would be chaired by the dean of the College of Science, and an education council would be chaired by the dean of the College of Education. The “built environment” council would be chaired by the vice-provost and would make recommendations on the allocation of existing space and new buildings.

  I also told the members of the faculty senate that I understood past administrative practices had created skepticism, even cynicism. I invited them to ignore my rhetoric and just watch what we did—but also to work with me as I tried to build a form of governance that recognized the primacy of the colleges and the faculty in accomplishing the mission of the university.

  There were other gestures toward the faculty. I invited the speaker of the faculty senate to be a regular attendee at my staff meetings. I said we would have no secrets from the faculty—“After all, this isn’t the CIA.” I met routinely with the senate’s executive committee and consistently sought its recommendations for faculty members to sit on search committees and task forces. I created a new award, the Presidential Professor for Teaching Excellence, two of which would be given out each year with a stipend of $25,000. That award had great appeal to the faculty but also scratched the itch of those who felt research universities like Texas A&M did not sufficiently value superb teaching.

  Nothing makes an impression on a constituency accustomed to being ignored, in this case faculty, than for them to make a suggestion and have the boss simply say on the spot, “That’s a hell of a good idea. Let’s do it.” I went out of my way to find such opportunities from my earliest days at A&M.

  Midway through my first year, I announced that we would hire 450 new faculty, with the deans and faculty working with the provost to decide how to allocate the positions. That would be transformational, having substantial impact both on teacher-student ratios in the classroom and on research.

  Through the actions I have mentioned and others—outreach efforts, symbolic moves, and more—by the end of my first semester I had gained the important allies I sought among faculty and deans. Without their support, there was little I could have accomplished. Collectively, the blitz to win friends and allies took a lot of time, but the investment paid off handsomely when I started to change things. A consistent message to all was the need to preserve and strengthen those traditions at A&M that were core t
o who we were and made us unique and to shed those that were holding us back.

  When I became secretary of defense, I had the same strategy for winning allies early through gestures of respect and recognition. When I was nominated to be secretary, rumors were rife that I would purge most of the senior civilians who had worked for my predecessor, Don Rumsfeld, and name new people to take their places. But I had learned a lesson about that. Many years earlier, I had worked for a director of the CIA who, when he assumed the job, had brought with him dozens of his own acolytes from outside the agency. He never recovered from the hostile reaction. Before I began my job, I resolved not to change a single senior official at the Pentagon at the outset and to walk in the door alone, entirely alone, without bringing even a personal secretary. It was a message of both confidence in and respect for the incumbents. It was also recognition that in the midst of two wars, both going badly, trying to find (and get confirmed) new people would be a waste of precious time. This was in stark contrast to my approach at A&M, where I was far more willing to replace senior administrators because, as I’ve said, I had plenty of time and no pressing crises.

  There were gestures toward the military leadership. Rumsfeld nearly always met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff in his conference room. When I met with them as a group, I would go to their conference room, “the Tank.” I would try to meet there with them once a week just to hear what was on their minds, even if there was no other reason to get together. Similarly, rather than summon the ten or so major commanders from around the country and the world to brief me when I took over, I visited their headquarters; I went to them. Aside from the gesture, that gave me a chance to see them in their “native” habitat, where they were comfortable, but also to meet a number of the men and women in uniform who worked for them—from whom I would always learn something. I also would try to attend as many change-of-command ceremonies for these major commands as possible. I believe that the respectful way I treated senior military leaders made a huge contribution to their support of what I was trying to do or, when they disagreed with me, their willingness to refrain from undercutting me or running to Congress to sabotage my efforts. That had been a common practice under many of my predecessors.

  Until 2004, the DCI not only headed the Central Intelligence Agency but also was the nominal head of the “intelligence community,” with considerable control over the budgets of the other fifteen or so major intelligence agencies and authority in establishing priorities both for collection of information and for assessments. As deputy DCI from 1986 to 1989, I put into practice what I had learned from my earlier managerial mistakes, so my relationships with most senior people in the CIA were pretty good. When I became DCI in 1991—I had been gone less than three years—that paid off.

  As for the leaders of other intelligence agencies I did not know, I quickly began to establish a close working relationship. Unlike a number of my predecessors and successors as DCI (and later director of national intelligence), I realized the limits of my direct authority to manage the other agencies. I had real influence—partly statutory, partly because of my close relationship with President George H. W. Bush—but knew I couldn’t boss the others around. I used regular get-togethers as vehicles for gaining their support for my ambitious agenda for adapting the intelligence community to the new, post-Soviet world. Treating them as colleagues and not subordinates, listening and using their ideas, I forged a strong team with them that made historic changes in American intelligence—restructuring agencies, reorienting our activities and budgets away from the Soviet Union to myriad other global problems, and changing the way we collected and analyzed information for the nation’s leaders. I think these lessons can be successfully applied wherever change is sought.

  There is another important constituency to cultivate in every organization: those low in the institutional pecking order—line workers, staff, troops, or students. The only way for a leader to persuade them he has their interests at heart is through consistent actions over a period of time. Rhetoric cuts no ice. But knowing the person at the top cares matters a lot, regardless of the kind of institution or its size.

  Most new bosses—both in business and in the public sector—who want to change things don’t make much of an effort to reach out to these folks. Especially in very large organizations, the leader is usually a remote figure seen at ceremonies or special occasions. One summer at the CIA, an upper-echelon boss who rarely visited our office was spotted in the vicinity. One office wag loudly commented that because the boss was visiting us, “it must be Christmas.” College students, like their contemporaries in the military, are especially skeptical about the intentions of older people and cynical about authority figures.

  At A&M, I became a sort of ombudsman for students, lending my personal support to individuals when I believed the bureaucracy was being unfair or too inflexible (with grades, fees, and university rules, among other issues). One August, I voided three thousand parking tickets given out on freshman move-in day by overly zealous campus police. I was persuaded by a group of students not to convert their small residence hall into offices, and I agreed to student pleas to delay for a year a similar move involving another dorm. There were numerous other such actions.

  I gave student leaders a lot of my time at A&M. I invited the president of the student body to attend all my regular staff meetings—like the speaker of the faculty senate—and I routinely went before the student senate to answer any and all questions. I showed up at virtually any event student leaders suggested. I appointed students to every university search committee, task force, and council. They became strong advocates for a number of my initiatives for change, including especially the push for greater diversity.

  I think my approach to winning the confidence of students worked, because when I left the university to become secretary of defense, ten thousand of them turned out to say good-bye.

  My chief of staff at Texas A&M was a young lawyer, Rodney McClendon. Rodney brought many skills to the position, but one special asset was that he knew—by name—nearly every staff person at A&M, whether secretaries, members of the grounds crew, people in food services, or custodians. When I would walk across campus with him, he would make sure to introduce every one of these folks to me when our paths crossed. Perhaps more important, he made sure I was aware of issues that affected them, their concerns, and their complaints. He arranged for their leaders to meet with me to discuss problems. Rodney also kept me informed about key events in the community in which many of these employees participated, and I would often attend them. Through his efforts, I was able to establish a connection to those who played a critical role in the life of the university even if they were on the lowest rungs of the rank ladder.

  On every visit to a military post or base around the world, and on every visit to the front lines, I would have breakfast or lunch with enlisted troops, noncommissioned officers, and junior- and middle-grade officers. In these get-togethers, too, I learned a lot, but they—like the other actions I have described—were also calculated gestures of respect. From my actions to help wounded warriors and their families, to get needed lifesaving equipment to the war zones, and more, the troops came to have confidence I had their backs—that I was truly there for them.

  I also would regularly visit offices in the bowels of the Pentagon that no previous secretary of defense had ever seen. I visited workers in the mail room, the loading dock, the communications center. I attended the morning briefing for the Pentagon police. I visited offices of professionals many links down the chain who did critical work but never saw the boss. They were always forewarned of my visit to ensure that most who worked there were present. I stayed just long enough for each person to tell me briefly about his or her job, to have a photograph taken with each employee, to shake hands, and to thank them for their work. Such visits have an impact.

  My efforts as director to reach out to lower-ranking employees at the CIA included eating lunch most of the time in the cafeteria and
inviting myself to join several of them at their tables. On one occasion, this led to an embarrassing situation. I had engaged a group of young spies in a lengthy conversation, and during the course of it I dismissed my security detail, telling them I would just return to the office on my own. I had forgotten that there was a security guard post between the cafeteria and the main building and, as director, I had no identification badge. The young guard on duty properly refused to let me pass. He did agree to let me use his phone, and I called my office to arrange a rescue. The senior officers on my detail rushed to the guard station and escorted me through. As they did so, I overheard one of them talking about reporting the guard to his superiors for treating me disrespectfully. I turned on the man, telling him in no uncertain terms the guard had done exactly the right thing, and if anybody called his superior, it would be me to commend him for doing his duty.

  The thinking behind the steps I took to meet and cultivate support among employees at every level is universally applicable, even if my exact steps aren’t. Other organizations offer different opportunities to gain the support of the people in them. These gestures are all a part of leadership, a means of connecting with those you seek—and need—as partners.

  The wise leader’s strategy for change must include a concentrated campaign to make as many friends and allies as possible as early as possible before he starts taking actions that will inevitably make enemies. To be an effective leader, one must demonstrate from the start an understanding of and respect for the role and views of the career employees in an organization and be clear that the new boss intends to make them participants and partners in reforming the place. This is the best possible preparation of the bureaucratic battlefield.

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  As mundane as it might seem, another important aspect of a new leader’s strategy from her first days should be to quickly seize control of her calendar. No matter the size of an organization, a boss’s time is her most precious commodity. It is her “capital,” and she only has a finite amount to spend. Every day there will be innumerable demands on a leader’s time that have nothing to do with her agenda for change. Indeed, be warned: the most effective defense of every bureaucracy to keep the boss from meddling, interfering, or changing the status quo is to fill up her calendar with meetings.