Ep 201: Zachary Griffiths & McKinsey Harb on the U.S. Army
Lt. Col. Zachary Griffiths & Maj. McKinsey Harb joined the show to discuss the U.S. Army’s new Field Manual 1
Aaron MacLean:
Hi, I am Aaron McLean, thanks for joining School of War. I'm delighted to welcome to the show today, Zach Griffiths and McKinsey Harb. Zach is a lieutenant colonel of the United States Army. McKinsey is a Major. And they have recently collaborated on the Army's new FM 1, Field Manual 1, an introduction to what the Army is and what it expects of its soldiers. Zach, McKinsey, thank you so much for joining the show.
Zach Griffiths:
Aaron, thanks so much for having us. This is a great honor; I've really enjoyed your podcast. So, I'm Zach Griffiths, I'm a special forces officer in the Army working right now for the chief of staff. I direct the Harding Project for him as well, which is an initiative to renew professional writing, and I've had the pleasure of collaborating with McKinsey, the lead author on FM 1.
Aaron MacLean:
McKinsey, tell us a bit about yourself. Actually, I'm going to go deeper with McKinsey. And then Zach, I'm going to come back to you because I want more from your story as well. But McKinsey, how'd you grow up? How'd you end up in the Army?
Mckinsey Harb:
Well, I am initially from Columbia, Missouri. No military family. I joined really for free college. I applied to West Point. It was the only school I ended up applying for, because I got in as a junior because they accept early, and was delighted to have a solution for going to school for free. Thought I would do my five years and peace out. But here I am almost 14 years later and still enjoying it, so yeah.
Aaron MacLean:
Yeah. My parents desperately wanted me to apply to either West Point, the Naval Academy, or the Air Force Academy. And I was having none of it and ended up applying only to one college, which was the private hippie liberal arts college across the street from the Naval Academy. Which went over great, let me tell you. I probably couldn't have gotten into the service academies anyway, but that was my version of the story. And Zach, what about you? The Army and the special forces, how did that all come to pass?
Zach Griffiths:
I don't have a great answer for why the Army or why the special forces. I think when I was a boy scout as a kid, and I just saw a path in my life where I was going to work in an office as some kind of professional, and I wanted to do something different. And so I applied to West Point, thought I wanted to be an infantry officer, and ultimately pursued the special forces.
But I tell people the joke's on me because as an officer, you primarily work in an office. I don't even have a window. I'm in a little cubby that I sit in right now. So, it's been great. I'm really happy to be headed back out to the field next year to command a battalion. But that's my path to here. One thing Mckinsey didn't tell us was that she's a classically trained ballerina as well. Is that right, Mckinsey?
Mckinsey Harb:
That is true, yes. I was not on any teams growing up, just did ballet. So that made me a bit of a unique one. I guess going through West Point, most people were the star of their whatever teams, but that was not me.
Aaron MacLean:
Well, was there any way to continue that at West Point, or on the side while you were at West Point?
Mckinsey Harb:
Oh no, I gave it up. It just lingered as part of the personality, but that's it.
Aaron MacLean:
That's fascinating. Well, what do you mean by that? What lingers from ballet as part of the personality?
Mckinsey Harb:
Sure. Ballet, it's an art. So I think it's influenced me in terms of just remaining a critical thinker and seeing things from a different perspective. I think I enjoy being a bit of an outside thinker in the Army, and especially with a project like this where we really were asked to engage it from a completely different lens. Trying to really look at the problem from an artistic perspective was fun, and I think Zach and I really enjoyed approaching it differently than I think others have approached doctrine in the past.
Aaron MacLean:
And sorry, one last personal question before we move to FM 1, but what years were you guys at West Point?
Zach Griffiths:
So I graduated in 2007, started in 2003.
Aaron MacLean:
Okay.
Zach Griffiths:
And then I did go back and teach American politics from 2017 to 2019, which was a really awesome opportunity as well.
Aaron MacLean:
And Mckinsey, how about you?
Mckinsey Harb:
I graduated in 2011, so I came in right after Zach.
Aaron MacLean:
Yeah. So the reason I ask, and I'm curious to your response here, is you guys are both at a wartime West Point where... I ended up spending time at Annapolis, though not as a student. At a wartime Annapolis where the students were very aware that they were going, many of them went into combat in pretty short order after graduation. Actually, a lot of the students had been in combat, or at least a decent minority as prior enlisted. And I assume that's a bit what West Point was like when you guys were there.
The Army has obviously... It's entered a new phase. How are young officers or officers at West Point or whatever the commissioning source is, how has the mindset changed, if at all? What are the cultural changes you see as a consequence of the Army not being actively at war as it was a decade ago, and how is the institution managing those changes?
Zach Griffiths:
Aaron, I would start and say, I know for both Mckinsey and I, lunch times frequently would have a moment of silence when cadets were killed. And so that was certainly present the whole time I was at the Academy. Not every day, but it was certainly not an uncommon occurrence where they would just say, "Make everyone be quiet, have a moment of silence."
That certainly is much less common now, but I think the Academy still does a fantastic job readying people for whatever conflict is in front of them. It's got a broad liberal arts education, though may be a little bit different than St. John's. Focused a little bit more technically, but a great exposure to a lot of things.
I think one difference when I was a cadet, almost everyone was trying to branch infantry because that's what you saw out there. That was where the fighting was. Whereas I think you see cadets branch in a more diverse range of MOSs now, just because there's occupational specialties. Because it's not clear where the challenge may be, and being an air defender is putting you in harm's way right now every day. In a way that wasn't the case when I was a cadet.
Aaron MacLean:
Mckinsey, how about you?
Mckinsey Harb:
One thing that's shifted in the mindset that I've seen, and one thing we actually tried to consider when we were writing this was we saw the Army's mission differently when we were going through than perhaps young people see today. Obviously looking forward to large-scale combat versus what we were familiar with, which was the COIN world.
But I think also just being really involved in the deterrence mission, it has a different impact on young people who are really still extremely busy. The Army is still extremely busy. But focused a lot more on training and readiness, and it's not immediately apparent how all of that training's going to be applied. And I think that's one of the things we thought about as we were working on this project was, what mindset does that create in young people?
Because it's not something that Zach and I were familiar with. We both knew where we were going to apply ourselves coming out of West Point, and I think that's just something... It means the Army is different. It's more open-ended, and it maybe requires a little bit more nuance and maybe it has more complexity for young leaders who are trying to build teams for the sake of readiness, instead of for something specific, tangible, known. They're not on a deployment schedule.
Aaron MacLean:
Yeah, you guys... In the manual itself, you cite Eisenhower. Was it 27 years? He had been in for 27 years, and had risen very rapidly at the end to the rank of lieutenant general before... Torch would've been his first experience of commanding in combat. That's a long time. That's a long time to go. And he's in during the first World War, right? And he just misses it.
Mckinsey Harb:
That's right.
Aaron MacLean:
Let's use that to transition to the document itself, which is obviously part of the project of educating soldiers and officers about what their tasks are today, but what they may be in combat. So the title of FM 1 is The Army, A Primer to Our Profession of Arms. What is this document? How long has the Army had such a document, and why the need for a new version?
Mckinsey Harb:
So the document's actually... It's not replacing anything. There was no FM 1 prior to this. There have been FM 1s in the past. The initial idea behind this was to do a rewrite of ADP 1, which is the Army's foundational document on the... It's called the Army, and it describes a lot of the stuff that is covered in FM 1, what the Army does. The mission, how it plays a role in the joint team.
So that was the initial project, was to do a rewrite of ADP 1, but make it something that is more likely to be read that's a little bit more engaging, something that soldiers will pick up as they enter the profession and read it all the way through. The project shifted. Now it's more of a companion piece, because a lot of the doctrinal publications that we have established, like a professional lexicon for soldiers, this intentionally doesn't. It basically creates a feeling, and it creates understanding without really going to the detail of definitions or throwing a bunch of terms at people. So it ended up being like a companion piece.
But the point is to baseline young leaders, especially newly minted NCOs or officers. Base lining them to the profession, so that they understand the essentials of what the Army does, what's expected of them, how they should be leading.
Aaron MacLean:
And is the formal expectation that every soldier will read this, or just officers and NCOs, or what is the actual formal expectation for a document like this?
Mckinsey Harb:
The intended audience was for new NCOs, so E5s and second lieutenants. That was really the target. But we've workshopped it around the Army, and the feedback has been that a lot of people think that it has applicability at a much earlier stage. So initial entry training, cadets, because that's when they can really learn some of the basics of what the Army's about. That wasn't the intended audience, but I think it certainly does have applicability. And we've even had actually feedback from folks that you can pick it up later in their career and still learn something, or revisit old ideas.
Aaron MacLean:
Yeah. And it's noticeable. I read it over the weekend, and it is noticeable that... And actually I want to commend you for achieving a style that I think it's not crazy for it to be read by exactly that audience, by E5s and O1s, maybe even a bit beyond, while at the same time not being just stupid. It's hard, and I'm not trying to be flippant. But it actually is hard, as I don't have to tell you because you just worked on it, to have something that is readable, and engaging and fairly brisk on the one hand without being substanceless.
If you don't care about substance, it's easy. But I actually think you managed to convey a fair amount of information, doctrine, call it what you want here in a way. I'm struck by opening of the first chapter, which opens with this great Patton quote, “The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other dumb bastard die for his.” Which has a nice soldierly feel to it, that is at the same time attention getting in a way that I imagined. I don't know if you faced any friction on making that the opening of the book. Did you? Whose decision was it to put this quote first up? Because I loved it.
Mckinsey Harb:
Well, Patton's speech to the 3rd Army is one of my favorites. I think it's the best speech ever done, just because, well, it is so colorful as Patton always was. Luckily, the chief of staff of the Army thought this was a fantastic quote. We really received no pushback, so I was super glad to get a quote from that speech in the book to be honest.
Aaron MacLean:
That's refreshing and reassuring. And then it leads to this first chapter is just about warriors. The first part of the book, it's like these three layers. You talk about warriors, then professionals, then leaders, and this is all a cocktail and there's some obvious tensions there which we can talk about. But you open with this incredible story, which I did not know, of a young officer named Ben Salomon on Saipan in World War II. Maybe just give us the brief version of that story, and speak a bit about why, of the literally millions and millions, or let's just say Medal of Honor recipients, hundreds and hundreds of stories you could have chosen from, why this one to lead the first chapter?
Zach Griffiths:
I'll jump in here. I just don't think there's a better soldier story than this one that captures the spirit of the Army. We opened the book with Sal Giunta earning his Medal of Honor in the Korengal during Afghanistan. That's a pretty standard Army story, where it's an infantryman against terrible odds. What's great about Ben Salomon's story, he's a dentist. And so his story is that he is the unit's dentist. The doctor gets hurt, he says, "Hey, I'll stay and I will treat patients even though I'm just a dentist." And then the battalion is overrun.
The Japanese soldiers come into the tent as he's treating patients, he fights them off and then comes outside and sees the whole unit's being overrun, mans a heavy machine gun and kills I think eighty-some Japanese soldiers that are there. And so this just shows everyone in the Army that they need to be ready to be a warrior. And so it was such a great story. I think McKinsey picked this one out. Such an awesome story.
This one was a little bit controversial for us to include, because there's some question about the legality of a dentist, a medical professional manning a heavy machine gun. But ultimately he receives the Medal of Honor later on, not immediately. And so we thought it was the United States recognizes his incredible act of heroism, and so we should too in this book, and offer a challenge to all of us. I may be a special forces officer that trains for this, but McKinsey was a medical service officer before she became a strategist. And so everyone in the Army needs to be ready for these kinds of challenges.
Aaron MacLean:
Mckinsey, how did you pick this story?
Mckinsey Harb:
So I actually read this story in the Army Medicine Museum down at Fort Sam a long time ago as a medical service officer going through... My husband actually picked it out. My husband's a Marine by the way, and he-
Aaron MacLean:
Perfect.
Mckinsey Harb:
And he-
Aaron MacLean:
This has a very Marine flavor to it, by the way.
Mckinsey Harb:
Oh, yes.
Aaron MacLean:
Not that we have dentists in the Marine Corps, but this whole ethic we're discussing here. I've been restraining myself and not saying that, but you just opened the door right there.
Mckinsey Harb:
I did, yep. So he actually found the story on the wall and was like, "This is incredible." And I came over and read it, and it stuck with me ever since to be honest. And I think that what Zach just talked about, that the idea that everybody's a soldier. You might feel like you're an... You might call yourself an EOD technician. But really, you're an EOD soldier, and that's a different flavor to it. Whether you are a medic, you are still a warrior. If you're a nurse, speaking from the medical side.
But a logistician, a finance officer. Everybody is a warrior first. And when push comes to shove, everyone needs to be able to engage the enemy and do the basics. And I think that's just what I love about this story. A dentist. Not to put dentists down, they're great. I had an actually amazing dentist working for me who really embodied the warrior ethic. I just think it's so powerful because of where he came from and who he is, and what he ended up achieving which is just... Zach, go ahead.
Aaron MacLean:
Yeah, go ahead.
Zach Griffiths:
I think Aaron, this ties it a little bit back to the experience McKinsey and I had at West Point where people were getting killed. Yeah, there were infantry officers, but also folks from all branches. Whereas I think that's a little bit lacking now. And so now it may only be the infantry company or the field artillery company that's pushed really hard to do this kind of combat training. But we want to show everyone that, hey, this really could be anyone who's going to be called upon here.
And so I think where maybe those minutes at the mess hall serve that purpose for us as we were coming up, stories like this in FM 1 should hopefully do the same thing and provide a challenge for leaders at all levels.
Aaron MacLean:
How does the Army, which is just a vast organization, what is the strength of the active-duty Army right now? Is it 400,000 something? Where are we?
Zach Griffiths:
I think it's 450,000.
Aaron MacLean:
Yeah, it is huge.
Zach Griffiths:
470,000 is the in-strength active duty.
Aaron MacLean:
A massive org, so that's not even counting the garden reserves.
Zach Griffiths:
It's a million I think about, if you get the whole organization.
Aaron MacLean:
It's just a massive... Really, it's a slice of American life in a way that my former organization, not that I'm a former Marine, which as we know is impossible. The Marine Corps, it's much smaller. And even there, candidly, I would say in the infantry units, which is what my experience was. At least by the time the Marines got to me, one rarely had trouble cultivating the warrior side of things. If anything as a junior officer, my responsibility was more on the restraint side of things. Maintaining restraint, imposing restraint.
But I think if you go to motor T, or supply or these other units with Marines with different occupational specialties, it had to be a matter of active effort. You had the Marine culture, you had a lot of stuff helping you keep what you guys are calling the warrior mindset central. But it was work. It was work to keep people on their toes and ready to fight is my impression. And that's in a relatively small organization that has this overarching culture that's kind of helping you.
In an organization as big as the Army, beyond obviously talking about it as you're doing in this chapter, which of course is not going to get it done in and of itself, how does the Army actually pursue this? This is a massive undertaking to have every last man and woman really think of themselves, you put it first in the book, first as literally a warfighter.
Mckinsey Harb:
Sure, I can try to take a stab at this. Because it really is very difficult, and especially to infuse that warrior spirit across the entire enterprise, which is vast as you've said. And as a former medical service officer, I can certainly relate to being a platoon leader with a platoon of people that don't necessarily... My platoon, we went to Afghanistan, so it might've been a slightly different perspective there.
But as a company commander, say I had a headquarters company out in Hawaii and really actively had to get people engaged in this warrior mindset. And that's exactly why we put the chapter first, because it's really at the heart of it, and it takes stewardship from leaders all across the Army to really believe in this, and to find ways to inculcate it in their teams. I don't think the Army as an enterprise can do this without the help of leaders at every level really embracing it.
So that was part of the reason why we decided to write a book like this, that people would actually read through and would have elements of rhetoric in it. We really were trying to go for ethos, logos and pathos so that people would really have a connection that would get to the heart of it and allow them to embrace this feeling that would drive them to foster it in their teams at every level. And hopefully they pick it up, and when they lose sight of it and remind themselves of what they're supposed to be doing, and that they're a warrior at heart and get back at it. That's the goal here, and why it's a key chapter.
Zach Griffiths:
Yeah. And as Mckinsey said, it really is incumbent on leaders to cultivate this in their units. And so that's part of why we emphasize it here. Hopefully everyone can see themselves in FM 1. We were trying to be very deliberate about casting a wide net for the stories we include, such that folks can feel themselves as a warrior or in the book.
And then part of the idea of this is that people will revisit it through their career in each level of their professional military education. And so maybe as a lieutenant, Lieutenant MacLean is just stoked to be there leading his platoon. But by the time you're maybe a senior captain or a junior, you may be a little bit jaded, or you go through these ups and down periods. And so we hope that by revisiting something like FM 1, folks that before they go back out to touch troops are like, "Oh, actually this is a really important mission, we need to stay connected with it." And so I think this is a helpful, corrective tool to keep people on the right path, focused on that.
Aaron MacLean:
Yeah, candidly. I got out as a captain, and I had no desire to be a major. I think if the opportunity to go straight to lieutenant colonel had been there, that could have been intriguing. Because those kinds of jobs seemed... You get to go back to command. But the long stretch as a Major had limited appeal to me. I can't speak for others, but condolences, McKinsey, good for you.
Zach Griffiths:
One thing if we could jump in on it. This actual term was not without controversy. McKinsey and I, as we workshopped this, really the junior folks actually loved it, or certainly supported it if we talked to sergeants, we talked to lieutenants, captains. It was when we did our expert workshops at West Point and at Carlisle where the war college is, we got some pretty significant pushback on the inclusion of warrior as a term, and I think for good reasons.
But ultimately, McKinsey and I agreed that the warrior ethos is easy for people to understand. I need to be proficient in my battle drills, my warrior tasks, and I need to be ready to fight. And then as we build towards subsequent chapters, we layer on the other parts of how we become professional soldiers. But I don't know, McKinsey, if you wanted to offer anything else on that, but it was not without controversy.
Mckinsey Harb:
Yes, and that's very true. People either loved it or they hated it. And we spent a lot of time thinking about whether we should change out the term. One of the suggestions was soldier. Although I think soldier was... It doesn't quite get at the point we were making, which was that at the bottom of it all is just this grit and determination. Not that soldier doesn't embrace that, but soldier has a bit more of a complicated meaning I think for people, whereas warrior really just gets it. You have to gut it out at some point, and you have to have a level of aggression. You have to be willing to go do something. You have to be willing to go kill people on behalf of your country, just has Ben Salomon did.
That kind of just basic role for soldiers we thought was best embodied by the word warrior. Of course warrior, like any word, it has a lot of meanings for a lot of people and we've seen, as Zach pointed out, people had some problems with the term. And even some junior folks I think are maybe getting a little fatigued of the term, because we've used it a lot recently. And that's fair. But we really couldn't find a better replacement, and it just got at the heart of it. And we're hoping when people read it through that they say, "Okay, maybe I'm tired of the term." But I get what the point is, and it does fit.
Aaron MacLean:
Yeah. Well, let's stick with this, because I think this is really interesting. My next question was being this neighborhood anyway, which is I don't think it would've made sense at all to call Chapter One soldier. Because really what you're suggesting through these first three chapters of Warrior, Professional, Leader is that all of these are the things that make up a soldier. So you would've been naming one of the categories. The containing category, the genus or whatever.
But the layers, it's not without complications and tensions. Something about what you talk about in the professional chapter, chapter two, which is about ethics, a code of honor, restraint, et cetera. I can imagine any number of famous warriors from history who were not particularly troubled by the things that you outline in chapter two, and there's something about the contents of chapter one, is what you're suggesting, that needs to be contained by the contents of chapter two. And that's a complicated thing to write about and talk about, no?
Zach Griffiths:
I definitely think so. But being a professional in the Army is definitely... With these tensions, you at one point you're being asked to deliver violence on behalf of your nation. We also must restrain it by the different rules that we abide by. And so I hope as folks crack open this book and they read some of the stories that those tensions are built out over time.
And then one of the audiences for this book certainly is in military education, but also in units as leaders do different professional development talks or discussions. Hopefully they can pull out those threads and then try and help bring it together for their unit at the end to understand these tensions that are real for all of us. And certainly, I feel the longer I'm in the Army, the further I am from Lieutenant Zach who was an infantry platoon leader who's just going out to try and crush objectives in Afghanistan, towards now where I see a much more nuanced view of my role.
Mckinsey Harb:
Yeah, I think it is. To piggyback on what Zach said, I think it is really complicated. And that's actually part of why we tried to explain everything like we did in non-prescriptive terms and without definitions. We wanted to really bring out some of the nuance and the complexities of how warrior fits with professional, fits with leadership, and how that all is involved in the mission.
And I think one of the goals is actually not for everybody to agree with the word choice or how we describe everything, even though it is doctrine and doctrine is authoritative. One of the intentions with this is that people discuss it. Because that really is kind of how the profession is stewarded from generation to generation, is people revisiting some of these actually challenging topics. And instead of going to this source material for a hand receipt of everything you need to know about being a professional is listed here, and as long as you memorize these terms, you're good, we wanted this to generate discussion, because that's, in our view, is how it's going to actually build good soldiers.
Zach Griffiths:
Yeah. And if the Warrior chapter is pretty individually focused. The professionalism chapter, the second one, it also explores the roles of a professional in a very large institution that we just talked about. Right, so we talk about Marshall speaking up to Pershing. That's a different kind of courage. It's not this Warrior courage where you kill 80 Japanese on a beach in Saipan, but it is the speaking truth to power or representing your organization's interest. In a really big organization, how do you advocate for your soldiers and those things?
But then we build to the next chapter towards leader. But I think those aren't exactly intentional, but we have a role as a warrior, but also as a role as a leader in a big organization. And so I think that's part of what that second chapter helps us think about too.
Aaron MacLean:
Yeah, it's interesting. There's a raw physical courage that's obviously part of the capacity for violence, and then a kind of professional courage or moral courage that you talk about in the chapter. No, it's interesting, and I'm struck by the way in which the critique of the warrior talk... It comes from at least two directions, and I've heard of both as obviously you guys have in the preparation of this. There's the line of critique, which is just a bit uncomfortable with the whole thing. And I've heard this, unfortunately I can't really tell this full story.
I've been in a room where somebody wanted to use fairly violent language to describe what the military was going to be up to in a fairly significant venue and was counseled by other people in the room like, "Oh, don't say that. Don't say it. Just say readiness. You don't have to use those violent words, just say the word readiness. It's the same thing."
And it was clearly a sense of discomfort in a sense that the principle in question shouldn't sound brutish or something like that, and that the whole thing was just to talk in those terms. To use violent terms, or terms that directly suggested violence like warrior was somehow unprofessional. Which in a way, the structure of your book concedes. It concedes that they are at least two different things, and they need to somehow be married in order to produce soldiers.
And then there's the other line of critique, which you guys alluded to, which is... What you said was that some soldiers probably at this point rolled their eyes at the warfighter talk over and over again. Which if it's not married to some actual access to realistic training or whatever, becomes just talk. And it's like, "We can say we're warfighters all we want, but in this unit, we know it... Come on, what are we talking about here?"
And there's a broader critique as well that matches onto that, which would run something like this is tied up with populist critique, not only of the Army but of the military. It's like we talk a big game; there's all this good talk. But what's our actual record in places like Iraq and Afghanistan? Which in my view is defensible at the battlefield level, and then harder to harder defend the further up you go. So, all of which is to say kudos to you for attempting to steer those rapids without getting subsumed by them.
Zach Griffiths:
I think that was a great breakup of all the different tensions in this word. And so those things, those are the same critiques that came out in some of our workshops. But the Army also has a very long history of using the word warrior. We may be burning out a little bit on it as a term right now, but I sometimes check out the Army's archives that are at Carlisle, and there's stuff that goes way back. Certainly, by the 70s it was being used regularly. We have a warrior ethos; we talk about warrior tasks and drills.
And so is this, I think you've identified lots of reasons why people use it. But for all those reasons we picked it, because it makes people feel something without question. And so, it anchors on that. We open with the story about Ben Salomon who is unquestionably a warrior, and I think that sets the tone for what the warrior is. And then hopefully that anchors them enough in their individual identity, we can pull them to professional and then to leader.
Aaron MacLean:
From a recruiting perspective too, it seems essential to not leave that kind of language or thinking behind. This is anecdotal, I don't have the data in front of me. Presumably there's any number of recruiting officers and planners out there that stress over this data all the time. But I've always been perplexed by... It's usually not the Marines, it's usually other services that run advertising campaigns to recruit that seem to suggest that you're going to be doing something other than super dangerous stuff, violent, maybe really violent on behalf of your country on a team.
Which seems to me to be exactly what the target audience is looking for. Otherwise, there's a lot of other things to do with your life. This is the military's actual competitive advantage or comparative advantage when it comes to recruiting young people. And so it just seems it's crazy to walk away from it. Also, when we know on some level, as difficult to manage as it is, it's actually what's going to be called for on the day.
Mckinsey Harb:
Yeah, this is interesting. So my husband's actually... He does Marine recruiting right now, so we have a lot of-
Aaron MacLean:
Oh wow, okay.
Mckinsey Harb:
We have a lot of conversations about the differences in how the services brand themselves. And of course, one thing you noted is the Army is huge, and so we really have to find a way to get all of those skill sets in, and so we need people with all sorts of different interests and goals in their life to join the Army. But yeah, we did intentionally still go back to that word. Because no matter who you are, you're still going to have to learn those basic skills, and you're going to have to have basic warrior competencies and you're going to learn them in initial training. And they should stick with you. You're expected to maintain them throughout your career.
At the heart of it, it still matters. And I think that the Army has refocused on that a bit, even with recruiting. I can't speak for our marketing enterprise. But understanding that that is an essential part of not just the Army brand, but the Army being. That's a part of who we are, and it will always have to be.
And just one more note on the word warrior. Zach mentioned that it was at least since the 70s. But I believe in your research too, Zach, you found that prior to that, World War II for instance, the word was fighter. So there's always been this interest in getting at the base level of what is... there's an essence of soldiering that just requires something, a little bit of brutality. A little bit of aggression, and violence and what word embodies that? And it's “warrior” now, and it seems like a good one to me. “Fighter” to me just doesn't cultivate the same emotion. It's not the first time that the Army has tried to find a word to get after that essential element.
Zach Griffiths:
Yeah. And I think to both of what you're saying, plain language is also a testament or part of it. It was a key part of FM 1. And so whether it's warrior or... I don't think we use any ambiguous language when we're describing the heroics of Ben Salomon, or of Sal Giunta or any of these folks. That plain language is really important to setting expectations. Even for people who might've joined the Army just to go to college, they still need to understand that warrior is part of it. And by being clear in our language, you can't hide from the example that we gave.
Aaron MacLean:
Yeah. And it's jarring I think to people who have not served in the military, or maybe to young people who are coming into the military without experience derived from their family or whatever about what they're getting into. They come from a society where, by and large and for the whole, compared to some other societies out there these days. It's not that violent, except maybe on video games. But your actual day-to-day lived experience, I can think of exceptions. But they're exceptions.
The day-to-day experience of a lot of people growing up is not particularly violent. We're lucky as a country, people are not out there fighting for their bread. Literally, for the most part. And so, taking young people and getting them into a head space where they need to realize that actually no, doing violence is your job. But also stopping when you need to stop is also your job, and those are two totally different human capacities, but we're going to need you to have both. It's challenging, especially when you're going to then apply it to a million people.
Zach Griffiths:
Yeah, and that's why this book is aimed at the sergeant and the lieutenant. Right, because they're the ones who we're going to ask to push forward and pull back. And so I think hopefully as folks read through, especially the first three chapters, we've given some grounding on examples in what's expected of them to lead in those tough circumstances.
Aaron MacLean:
Well, let's talk about the last part of the trinity you've got here for your first few chapters, which is leadership. And it is interesting, just to step back for a second. Fair enough, your book's for sergeants and lieutenants. But it's also just called The Army, and one could imagine writing a book about The Army where it's a given that there will be leaders, because any organization has leaders. But it's not necessarily a theme. The Army does all kinds of things, it means all kinds of things to be a soldier. And actually, what you're saying is one of the foundational things is leadership. Why is that important? Why do you guys want to put that as it were right at the top of the memo about the United States Army?
Zach Griffiths:
I think there's nothing more fundamental, especially for the sergeant and the Lieutenant than the leadership that's going to be expected of them. And so as you think about, hey, so we challenged you to be a warrior, we challenge you to be a professional member of this organization. And now we're not just letting you off the hook, but now empowering you as the one who is going to steward this organization into the future.
I always try and cultivate a sense of agency in people. Often folks in a million-person organization feel like I can't change this thing, or I don't have the ability to. But in this section on leadership, we want people to feel ownership of the profession in a sense, and a requirement to lead.
One thing that's new that we added to doctrine here is a section on followership as well. And that's because really every leader in the Army is basically also a follower. And so you need to figure out. You take orders and you give orders. And so as you move up or anywhere you are, that's the case. Even the chief of staff, he works for the secretary of the Army, and for Congress and other people. It almost becomes more complicated the higher up you get, and so being a good follower is just a really important part of being a good leader. And I don't think there's anywhere else we could end this trinity. Mckinsey, any thoughts on that?
Mckinsey Harb:
No. The followership piece actually came out of workshops and people started talking about what the obligations are to the profession for followers. And I think sometimes we get in the habit when we're in a large organization of thinking that something is somebody else's problem. And one of the things we were really trying to do, as Zach pointed out, was create agency, which is why it's all written in second person. You do this, you do this. And the charge at the beginning and at the end of the book is to essentially don the mantle of the profession and own it, because it's up to you.
So we really started exploring in workshops what the role of a follower is. Even if you are a member of a squad, what is your job in stewarding the profession? Do you have a role in making a cohesive team, or is that all up to the leader? And I think that's where that chapter went, and we actually got a lot of input from the Sergeant Major of the Army on that actually, who had a lot of really interesting reflections about... Especially from the NCO perspective about how to follow, and also assist and advise leaders.
Even if you are not the one that is in charge, you still have a really important role in setting leaders up for success by being a good follower. So I thought that was a... I don't know, it was an interesting section to explore. It is a new thing, but I was really grateful that we got that feedback and decided to include it, to be honest.
Zach Griffiths:
Yeah. And Aaron, I would just build on that. I think we all know because we served in service that there's a stereotype of military service as just taking orders and just marching out, saluting and moving out. But I think we all know really at every level there's a little bit of a dialogue. It depends on the circumstance. If things are really an emergency, we're just going to issue orders and we're going to move out.
But probably we're going to give instructions, and then hope for refinement from those who are below us. And so this section on leadership, I think challenges appropriately folks to give instruction, but also to understand and not to think it's disloyal if someone offers feedback back. Because the Majors, they're probably just trying to help you realize your objective in the most efficient way, or in a way that accomplishes it most effectively.
Aaron MacLean:
I want to talk about mission-type orders and mission orders in a second, because I think that's a really interesting aspect of things that folks who have not served may not be... It might be new terms to them, and I think it's important to understand the way the Army works to understand that. But just in response to what you guys have been saying, the complexity of this stuff. It's complex when you're junior, but it does seem to get more complex the bigger the stakes.
And I was just reading an account of the Battle of Midway, not to suddenly switch to a Navy example. But an account of Spruance, Admiral Spruance and his staff during that battle. And I don't know if... There's no reason you guys would necessarily be in the weeds on this, but I wasn't until I read this thing a few days ago. Spruance basically spends the whole battle at war with his own staff. Because they're not his staff, they're Admiral Halsey's staff. And Halsey is sick, and Spruance has been subbed in at the last second to go command this what will be a world historical battle. And the staff doesn't really trust him. And as the days go on, he doesn't really trust the staff.
And there is real tension. There are not shouting matches exactly, but there are definitely veiled threats from the staff to Spruance that when they get back to port, they are going to settle accounts and Halsey's going to take care of him because they're not doing what the staff suggests. And what the record in the end shows is actually Spruance's instincts were all right, and the staff was all jacked up when it comes down to it.
And it dawns on Spruance as the days go on, and he's just got a totally different style than Halsey, who's this buccaneering figure. It evinces the warrior appearance. He actually is a warrior, but he also embodies it in his manner, his affectations. Whereas Spruance is this cerebral, restrained type and he's commanding the battle in this very restrained way for very good reasons it turns out because he... Well, we won't go through the whole history of the battle. Anyway, it's just fascinating.
The point is, it's fascinating to watch this interplay of a rear admiral and senior staff officers really at loggerheads all combating each other over the stakes of these epically important strategic decisions. But also, emotion and passion. Pride playing a role. That's the reality, that's actually how it looks in the moment, which is probably not that apparent to people who have not been... This is a particularly dramatic example I grant, but it can look like that and it's not the only time it's ever looked like that on that flag deck. That's the complicated, messy reality of command and leadership at senior levels.
Zach Griffiths:
Yeah. I think we all have experiences where personal emotion, especially if you're in the height of battle, there's real people at stake who personally may be your friends or your close colleagues, your classmates. And so those tensions get high. And that's part of I think why we focus so much on leadership and followership. But that's also why the Army takes leadership development followership so seriously. Why we wrote a book like FM 1, why units... We try not to create situations where we change the leader at the last minute, but try to build a team over time such that they know what to do when they get there and there's not a surprise.
Obviously, situations happen. Commanders are killed; things happen. Everything we do in the Army I think is to try and make sure that a cohesive team goes into battle together, so hopefully we can avoid situations like that. And hopefully FM 1 plays a small part going forward to help.
Aaron MacLean:
So I do want to talk about mission type orders before we wrap, which is the stereotype of the Soviet soldier or even the Soviet officer is soldier, you stand here next to this rock and you face that way, and anything comes at you from that direction, you shoot it, do you understand? And they say, yes, they understand. And then by God, that's what they're going to do. And if they do anything else, they're in deep trouble. That is not how the US Army thinks about this. How does the US Army think about orders and missions?
Mckinsey Harb:
So we call it mission command. And mission command is essentially not telling subordinate leaders how to do something, but giving them a mission to accomplish and allowing them to apply their judgment and critical thinking to figure out how to accomplish the mission. And this is what makes... It's also how the Marine Corps fights; it's just how the American military fights.
And it's I think what makes us really great, because we are capitalizing on individual ingenuity to get the job done. Which makes us less predictable, more adaptable, more agile. It's less controlled. The Soviet example, the leaders have control over which direction they're going to shoot and exactly when everyone is going to do each step. But Americans, first of all, maybe we're not wired quite that way. We don't like to listen to authority quite that well, and I think that is what makes us strong.
And so we go into mission command in the section, but also highlight in the book that mission command is something that is earned. And so it's not an entitlement. So it's based on this trust relationship, and also your personal competence. So in order to be a leader who is trusted to accomplish the mission, you have to demonstrate that you're trustworthy, and that you know what you're doing and that you're an expert. And so it's built on this relationship, and it's complex. It's not a given. Yeah, so I think that we go into the nuance there, because there certainly is some.
Zach Griffiths:
Yeah, I totally agree with McKinsey. I think about when I was deployed as a special forces team leader, one of the things that drew me to the special forces was just this opportunity for maybe more mission command, a greater degree of trust and ability to execute missions on my own. But we were given a very broad task, which is support the specialist police just to stabilize Nangar. And I really didn't get that much more oversight than that. If I was doing major operations, people would want to make sure that I'd planned them and resourced them appropriately. But it was a ton of personal discretion, and so that's kind of on one end.
And the other end to McKinsey's point, if you're a... Maybe Lieutenant MacLean couldn't keep his platoon organized, or whatever. And so that guy, maybe we're going to put him somewhere where he's got a little bit firmer hand to make sure he's moving in the right direction. Not to call you out on that, Marines I'm sure are great at planning their tasks.
So, there's that tension in mission command, in mission-type orders. But certainly, I think we're maybe putting a little more nuance on it. To your point, I think American soldiers by and large are trusted an incredible amount to accomplish the mission, especially when compared to almost any of our peers around the world. And it's certainly a relative strength, I think, of the US Army that we want to reinforce in this book.
Aaron MacLean:
Mckinsey Harb and Zach Griffiths, thank you so much for coming today. Thank you for a really, really interesting conversation, and I hope that all of the sergeants and all of the lieutenants who are meant to be reading this will read it. And I will say, I actually did think that it struck this nice balance between readability and genuine substance, and was thought-provoking, which is for something that has an official field manual designation, a pretty good thing. Well done, guys.
Zach Griffiths:
Thanks, Aaron, I appreciate you having us. Folks could find this at Army Pubs, order it through their online pubs. We hope you will crack it open.
Mckinsey Harb:
Yep, thank you very much for the conversation, it was great.