Authors: Colin Powell
It Worked For Me (16 page)
O
ne morning early in 1988, shortly after I became President Reagan’s National Security Advisor, I went into the Oval Office to discuss a problem with the President. We were alone. He was sitting in his usual chair in front of the fireplace with a view of the Rose Garden through the beautiful glass-paned French doors. I was sitting on the end of the couch to his left.
I don’t even remember what the problem was. But it involved a not-uncommon fight between the State and Defense departments, made more complicated by significant Commerce, Treasury Department, and congressional interests. I described the problem at some length and complexity to the President, underscoring that it had to be solved that day.
To my discomfort, he kept looking past me through the French doors without paying much attention to my tale of woe. So I talked a little louder and added more detail. Just as I was running out of gas, the President raised up and interrupted me: “Colin, Colin, the squirrels just came and picked up the nuts I put out there for them this morning.” He then settled back into his chair and turned back to me. I decided the meeting was over, excused myself, and went back to my office down the hall in the northwest corner of the West Wing.
I had the feeling that something important had just happened. I sat down, gazed out my windows across the north lawn and into Lafayette Park across Pennsylvania Avenue, and reflected on it. And it became clear.
The President was teaching me: “Colin, I love you and I will sit here as long as you want me to, listening to your problem. Let me know when you bring me a problem I have to solve.” I smiled at this new insight. In my remaining months with him, I told him about all the problems we were working on, but never asked him to solve problems that he had hired me and the rest of his team to solve. Reagan believed in delegating responsibility and authority and he trusted those who worked for him to do the right thing. He put enormous trust in his staff. The President’s approach worked for him most of the time. But it could also get him in trouble, as the Iran-Contra debacle demonstrated.
On another morning in 1988, I went into the Oval Office with another problem. U.S. naval forces in the Persian Gulf were chasing Iranian gunboats that had threatened them. Our ships were approaching the Iranian twelve-mile limit and Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci wanted authority to break that limit in hot pursuit of the boats.
President Reagan was sitting behind his desk, calmly signing photos, knowing that we were in action. He trusted our ability to manage the situation and keep him informed. He looked up as I approached and locked his eyes on me. He knew he was about to be handed a Commander in Chief problem to solve. I laid out the request, with all the upsides and downsides, potential consequences, press needs, and congressional briefing strategy. He took it all in and simply said, “Approved, do it.” I conveyed the answer to Frank, we chased the boats back to their bases, and the action was over.
On many occasions during our time together, I brought Reagan presidential decisions that he would think through, question, analyze, and make. He was always available for Oval Office decisions. But he was happier if problems could be solved at a lower level.
One of my most treasured mementos, and the only signed picture I have from Reagan, shows us sitting side by side in front of the Oval Office fireplace. We are leaning toward each other examining charts I am using to explain some issue. He later inscribed that photo, “Dear Colin, If you say so, I know it must be right.” Gulp.
I have always loved making things work well. From rebuilding worn-out Volvos to reshaping senior executive staffs into fine-tuned instruments, one of my deepest passions has been taking something that is not functioning as well as it should up to its highest level of performance. President Reagan taught me how to better achieve that goal by creating and maintaining mutual trust and accountability with my senior staff. They’re as essential to a smooth running organization as an electrical system or driveshaft is to a Volvo.
In all my senior positions after serving under Reagan, I worked hard to create a Reaganesque level of mutual trust and accountability—trusting that my senior officials would be prepared, do the right thing, know what I wanted done, and be ready to be accountable for their actions.
Maintaining mutual trust and accountability meant keeping my people close to me, with very short and direct lines of communication and authority and the fewest possible bureaucratic layers between us.
My military training rested on the concept of the chain of command where everyone knows who is in charge and where only one person at a time can be in charge. From this training came my belief in working with direct-reporting subordinates without lots of assistants or other intervening layers helping me to run the staff.
My later experience in government has been that staff numbers multiply and fancy titles proliferate in an inexorable kudzu manner unless the bosses regularly and viciously prune them.
When Frank Carlucci was named National Security Advisor at the end of 1986 and asked me to be his deputy, I had only one condition. I wanted to be the only deputy: our predecessors had three. Frank readily agreed and the other two deputies were redesignated and given other duties.
I kept this model when I replaced Frank as the National Security Advisor, and followed the same model when I became Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in October 1989. My immediate line subordinates were two- and three-star generals and admirals, experienced officers at the top of their profession, each averaging more than twenty years of service.
At that time, the Chairman had an organization in the front office known as the Chairman’s staff group. It consisted of four extremely talented colonels and Navy captains who monitored all the work coming in from my line subordinates. I eliminated the staff group. If a three-star general couldn’t send me quality work, I didn’t want a layer of bureaucracy covering for him. My now direct-reporting line subordinates quickly learned that once they signed something, I was the next stop. I was counting on them to make it right, and they knew it better be. Trust, responsibility, and accountability for results all go hand in hand.
When I became Secretary of State I put together a robust administrative office staff, but I neither wanted nor had special assistants in the front office working on substantive issues. That was the job of my senior line subordinates, the Assistant Secretaries who each presided over a large staff and had responsibility for the different regions of the world and major functional activities.
Historically, the Secretary of State had only one Deputy Secretary, whose chief function was to serve as an alter ego to the Secretary, and whose primary focus was on management issues. However, because Congress felt that the department was not being managed well, they had authorized a second Deputy Secretary of State to focus solely on management. I dutifully nominated someone for this statutory position; but, remembering the reasons for my demand to Carlucci, I saw to it that the nomination was never acted upon. I wanted only one deputy, Rich Armitage. Neither of us believed that management of the department was separate from our responsibility to manage foreign policy. Rich was more than capable of doing both, and we were blessed with talented subordinates who understood how we operated.
Another authorized position I didn’t fill was called “Counselor of the Department,” whose job was to do whatever the Secretary wanted him to do. It was a position I didn’t need because my preference was always to use my line leaders and not supernumeraries.
A case can be made that my lean, direct-reporting approach was shortsighted, and that the Secretary of State should have constellations of special assistants orbiting around his front office to extend his personal presence. My successors felt the need to fill the second deputy position, they occasionally filled the counselor position, and they also added special emissaries in considerable numbers to oversee high-profile or sensitive issues of unique importance. Sometimes these emissaries added value, sometimes not. There is a place for special emissaries for selected missions, limited in time and scope, but foreign leaders have been confused at times about who is in charge of what. Special emissaries cannot substitute for the permanent staff.
I want to make it clear that my choices and the reasons I made them are not judgments on either my successors or predecessors; I am just saying that their preferences were not mine. Every senior leader up to and including the President must organize his team in a way that is consistent with his needs, experience, personality, and style. There is no single right answer to the “how do I organize my staff?” question.
I have always preferred to keep my staff at the top as small as possible and to work directly with my senior subordinates, whom I vested with authority and influence. Because I considered them an extension of me, they had to be close to me, and they had to know that I believed that when they said so, it must be right.
President Reagan taught me more about leadership than creating trust and accountability; he was an example of how the leader at the top has to step outside the pyramid of the organization to see the wider view from atop the highest hill of the shining city. He was always at what I call a higher level of aggregation than the rest of us.
One morning the President’s entire economic team marched into the Oval Office to discuss a problem. The Japanese, who were then doing well economically, were buying up lots of U.S. properties—even icons of American real estate like Rockefeller Center and Pebble Beach Resorts. Congress was starting to stir, the public was buzzing, and the purchases were causing economic and security concerns. “Something has to be done and done now,” said the team. They quietly waited for the President to respond. He did.
“Well,” he said, “they are investing in America, and I’m glad they know a good investment when they see one.” The meeting was over. Reagan once again demonstrated his confidence in America. He was above our ground-level view.
Postscript: the Japanese greatly overpaid for their American investments. Rockefeller Center and Pebble Beach were soon back on the block; the Japanese lost money on the sales.
If Reagan were in the Oval Office today, he’d say the same thing about Chinese investments in America, and then go put out nuts for the squirrels.
W
hen I was assistant to Secretary of Defense Cap Weinberger, one of my duties was to help the receptionists move about a dozen chairs into his office for the morning staff meeting. When it was over we moved the chairs back out.
The meeting was called the “LA/PA” meeting. Mr. Weinberger wanted to start the day hearing about hot media stories and Capitol Hill mischief from his legislative affairs and public affairs assistant secretaries. The other assistant secretaries of defense also attended, to listen to what was going on and to raise other pressing issues. The meeting lasted about thirty minutes. It was a very useful way to start the day.
Once or twice a month, Secretary Weinberger chaired a meeting of the Armed Forces Policy Council, a more formal body that assembled in his conference room. All the service secretaries, senior military leaders, and the Secretary’s top staff members attended. This meeting had zero substance. It was absolutely useless. Well, not quite. The attendees could report to their staff and family that they had actually seen the Secretary that month. Because it was formal, infrequent, and had no real purpose, we had to struggle the day before the meeting to come up with issues for Weinberger to talk about. He barely scanned our paper before he headed in. During the meetings, people scribbled furiously as he droned on about the issues we had given him to drone on about.
Presidential cabinet meetings are no different. I attended cabinet meetings in four administrations. They were all the same. I’d be shocked to learn that they have changed.
For obvious reasons, they are not held on any particular schedule. The cabinet assembles in the Cabinet Room. Media come in, listen to the President discuss whatever subject interests them that day, and then leave. The President gives a pep talk to the cabinet. Designated cabinet members do a departmental show-and-tell or discuss a particular timely issue. People chat. After an hour they all depart. In the United States we don’t really have cabinet government.
When I was National Security Advisor, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Secretary of State, I used a variation of the Weinberger LA/PA model—an early morning meeting of my direct reports and principal aides that I called “Morning Prayers” . . . just starting the day together. It was a large meeting; as many as forty people attended. I had very strict rules:
“My morning meeting will never run longer than thirty minutes, usually less, so we can all get to work.
“This is the way we start the day as a team. I want you all to see me and check my morale and whether I seem okay. I want to look around the room at each of you and discern any subtle signals suggesting something I need to probe.
“This is not a show-and-tell meeting. If you have nothing to say, don’t speak.
“No one gets reamed out here. We are sharing with each other, talking about the needs of the day and what we need to do, discussing how to fix problems. If anyone has really screwed up and needs counseling, we’ll do it later, alone, in my office.
“You will leave the meeting knowing what is on my mind and, therefore, had better be on your mind. I want each of you to meet with your staff to share with them what we have discussed. We need to connect from top to bottom.
“And oh by the way, you can tell your spouse and relatives that you see the Secretary every day.”
I told them not to be surprised if I poke fun at them or get a little goofy sometimes, too.
One Tuesday morning I came in and asked if anyone had seen
Monday Night Raw
wrestling with Hulk Hogan and the Undertaker. I was met with blank stares and bewilderment from the assembled ambassadors, senior Foreign Service officers, and other intellectual types. I described the match. It was a heavily choreographed ballet, I had to admit, yet the wrestlers showed considerable athletic skill and training as they bounced each other on the mat.
The bewilderment remained until I told them why the match interested me. Thirty thousand people had come out on a Monday night in a mid-sized city in the Midwest to watch it. This is what average Americans do. They also love NASCAR and Walmart. These are the folks we really work for. We can’t forget that.
One of my jobs as Deputy National Security Advisor under Frank Carlucci was to convene interagency committees to resolve issues for the cabinet and the President. These meetings were more formal and serious than LA/PA-type meetings, with very senior attendees. Out of them came advice for presidential decisions. Thus their name—“Decision Meetings,” because they had to end in a recommendation to take to the President for his decision. Attendance was at the deputy and undersecretary levels from the State, Defense, Treasury, and Commerce departments. The CIA was there, the Attorney General’s office, the National Security Council staff expert, and White House experts. I had the Chair.
We had a lot going on in those days, with lots of meetings. We had to keep the trains moving on time. Meetings needed a tight structure.
An agenda was always set and briefing papers provided to each attendee well in advance. If you haven’t had time to read the paper, send someone who has. Don’t waste our time.
I would open the meeting with a five-minute description of the issue and the current state of play. For the next twenty-five minutes each agency with a position on the issue gave its presentation without interruption. For the next twenty minutes we had a food fight. Anyone could jump in and disagree and support or attack whoever they wanted. Strong language, passionate views, fight for your position. “Nothing personal, Sonny, just business.”
At fifty minutes, I took over the meeting and made everyone shut up, summarizing the merits and demerits of the arguments and reaching a tentative conclusion that I would recommend to the President for his decision. This took five minutes. The attendees then got five minutes to object and clarify. If my recommendation still seemed right, I would confirm that. The meeting was over. They returned to their departments and briefed their Secretaries. If a Secretary strongly disagreed, he or she would call me that night. The next day the decision paper—with concurrences, nonconcurrences, and options—went to the President.
The paper reflected all the edges of our debate. Everyone present had their say. We didn’t want to round the issue into a small beach pebble that might roll in any direction. Any cabinet Secretary who still strongly disagreed could go to the President.
I don’t recall a single instance when a Secretary did that. We had made sure every view had been presented, considered, and reflected in the paper.
As with so many issues, we could often whittle a problem down to a series of alternatives, each of which should work. We then tried to pick the best of breed.
The full NSC worked the same way, with the President in the Chair. Cabinet officers presented their views, while either Frank or I served as the master of ceremonies, laying out the issue and guiding the discussion. The President usually asked questions, but seldom made a decision during the meeting. After it was over we prepared a decision paper for him. When he reached his decision, a written confirmation was disseminated.
Because some NSC staff members had gone rogue during the Iran-Contra period, we made sure the process was formal and documented. We succeeded in restoring credibility to the NSC system.
I’ve run many other kinds of meetings.
Informational or briefing meetings simply inform attendees about a subject of immediate interest. I kept a time limit on these meetings to keep them from wandering all over and to prevent spring butts from popping up mostly to hear themselves talking.
The principal official meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was called a “Tank Meeting,” so called because the original room where the World War II Joint Chiefs met was located in the basement of the Commerce Department and was reached through a tunnel-like entrance. In later years the meeting was normally held in a special room in the National Military Command Center at the Pentagon. The chiefs, their operations officers, and lots of backbenchers and note takers attended. There was a formal agenda.
I found it more useful to have the Chiefs meet in my office without assistants or agenda. This relieved them of their bureaucratic veneer, and we could talk openly—the most senior and experienced military guys in the armed forces and not just the leaders of large organizations whose interests the service Chiefs were expected to defend at all costs. Those meetings worked beautifully, as we dealt with the most fundamental issues of war and peace.
Not all my meetings were structured. I liked to end the day, for example, with a freewheeling get-together where three or four of my closest associates could sit around my office, feet up, and review how things were going. It was an unhurried time when we could prepare ourselves for the challenges and opportunities of the next day.
Humans are not by nature solitary. They need to connect with other human beings to share dreams and fears, to lean on each other, to enhance each other.
Two people together are a meeting. As organizations become larger, ever more people need to meet formally and informally. I have always tried to conduct meetings, no matter how large, with the intimacy and respect two longtime close friends show each other when reminiscing about their shared past.
