Several years ago, a young Army officer asked me to give him a one word answer to a very specific and complex question, arguably deserving more than a single word. He asked, “What is leadership?” After three seconds, my answer was, “predictability.”
In over 30 plus years in uniform and a decade in business, all in leadership positions, I was frankly unprepared for the question. My surprise, however, did not prevent me from honoring the question as it was asked…with a single word. Predictable behavior by a leader is THE most important ingredient to organizational success. When a leader is predictable, good and bad news are embraced similarly. Organizations respond predictably. Calm can be restored more quickly; routine can become routine.
As a newly commissioned lieutenant, my first company commander (a hardened Vietnam vet with little perceived sympathy for any anticipated “newbie” problems) instructed me to run to him with bad news and walk with good. What an insightful and helpful concept. He wanted me to know with absolute certainty that he was always available regardless of circumstances; that I could count on him…storm or calm. I did a lot of running! Over time, my commander, a practitioner of the art and science of leadership, became my leadership Yoda.
The lesson of predictability is in my DNA, my culture. I passed it on because it works. It’s a timeless virtue of leadership.
Above all else, it helped me get beyond the exigencies of the moment and encouraged me to get ahead of events and try to shape them. There was predictability in how I engaged with my team, my requirements, the linear sequencing of time and the physics of pushing things to be accomplished to the top of the stack of competing demands. It got me out of the “now.”
Today, our President has told the world that he wants to be unpredictable. But what does my leadership journey have in common with the President’s? Frankly, a lot.
I suggest that unpredictability is not what our President really wants. Sure, the President wants to keep his cards close and not telegraph every decision at a tactical, specific, and minimally bounded level. The decision to deploy forces to strike ISIS targets in Syria is best shared with our Congress in a classified setting to seek their approval (not socialized with the media…or ISIS). The only thing ISIS needs to know is that the United States will do everything in our power to crush them. Now that’s predictable; anything else is foolish.
Similarly, our friends and allies should be equally confident knowing where we stand together and where we diverge. This is the basic foundation of all relationships. Private discussions lead to public agreements. We hold hands in public and throw fists in private. That’s how partners are emboldened and trust flourishes.
The opposite does not work. I do not want my friends or enemies to be confused about how I may interact with them. Predictability and certainty must guide our relationships. There’s too much at stake. Markets hate uncertainty. Guess what? So does every aspect of human endeavor.
The world is volatile, uncertain, complex, and with social media, increasingly transparent. Everybody knows everything. These circumstances, which by the way will never abate, scream for predictability. How the United States, the world’s surviving super power, will react must be known a priori crisis.
Here’s the challenge. Absent facts, people make stuff up. That’s not a good thing when existential threats have assumed many forms…a nuclear North Korea, ISIS, Russian adventurism in Europe and the Middle East, or an expanding Chinese Navy. Every nation, every non-state actor, and every potential threat must be cautioned by a clear understanding of how the United States will react to their adventures.
America’s unpredictability unnecessarily adds an ingredient to an already toxic brew. Most of the world’s challenges seem to be isolated and have achieved their own momentum, marching to their own drumbeat. In other words, what our President says has little to no bearing on the current projected international challenges that we face. By contrast, what our President may choose to do is highly relevant.
And those strategic choices must be predictable. Leadership among nations (and non-nations) is all about a philosophy of leadership that is at its core predictable.
Our media slams the President for “stirring the pot” of North Korea with his tweets. Here’s the real news. The North Korean pot is in a continual state of self-stirring. Our President’s tweets are irrelevant; actions are huge. The actions of the United States and South Korean alliance are predictable. Nothing is aberrant or unpredictable or new to the North Korean intelligence collection efforts. We are predictable.
Today, the last thing the world needs is for the North Korean leader to think that the US presence on the peninsula is unwilling to act to keep the regime from acquiring a fully functioning nuclear capability. We’ve been on the peninsula for over 70 years. We have no current plans to go anywhere. Although President Jimmy Carter naively put that offer on the table, it was wisely removed quickly. The United States remains a predictable presence on the peninsula.
President Assad used chemical weapons on his people again just a few weeks ago. The United States responded proportionally by striking the air base that launched the attack with cruise missiles. That’s a predictable and proportional use of force to punish a murderous regime that continues to ignore internationally recognized protocols banning the use of chemical weapons.
China continues to be a “community of one” in its economic and political support for the North Korean regime. That is changing. Following President Xi Jingping’s visit with President Trump, China abruptly ceased accepting coal from North Korea, choosing to impose economic sanctions on the regime. Albeit, unprecedented, China is creating a new relationship with the North Korean regime. This is inevitable and, not surprisingly, predictable. North Korean nuclear ambitions have gone unchecked for decades. The world is running out of time and patience. Predictably, China will be on the right side of history by helping to eliminate this threat and stabilizing the regime.
In these first 100 days of this new administration, it’s fair to suggest that our President’s preference for unpredictability has failed on the international stage. He’s actually quite predictable. He admires the Andrew Jackson, no nonsense leadership style and sits beneath the seventh President’s portrait in the Oval Office. Like Jackson, President Trump is certain, bombastic, and controversial…if comparisons are even worth making at such an early stage in a President’s administration.
Not unlike Jackson’s epoch, today’s world is experiencing undiminished volatility and uncertainty. Possibly, our President’s form of unpredictability is the new predictable. Everything we can nail down and remove from our “to do” list of crises, provides some rare calm and certainty.
Chaos, not calm, is the new normal; it’s predictable. How we handle it going forward needs to be equally predictable.