I. Introduction—-The Key
“I concur,” said Admiral Forrest P. Sherman, “that we can take average good men and, by proper training, develop in them the essential initiative, confidence, and magnetism which are necessary in leadership. I believe that these qualities are present in the average man to a degree that he can be made a good leader if his native qualities are properly developed; whether or not he becomes a great leader depends upon whether or not he possesses that extra initiative, magnetism, moral courage, and force which makes the difference between the average man and the above-average man.”
The question remains: How? The answer, I believe, was exemplified in Admiral Sherman’s life; but the lesson has been too little noted.
Never before has there been such a verbalized concern over leadership, nor such a spate of written doctrine on the subject. Books and articles deluge us. Counter- currents and crosswinds of dogma buffet us from all sides. One author preaches “personality.” How then explain the success, on the one hand, of Hitler, the flamboyant and neurotic, and on the other, of Stalin, the silent and secret? Another author speaks of integrity, nobility, good example, and care of one’s men. How then were Nero and Louis XIV able to obtain so much “cooperation” for their corrupt and despotic rules? Those who think of Nero as a foolish sot kept in power by the Praetorian Guard overlook the fact that he remained in power for 14 years and put down a lot of conspiracies against him during that time. In short he must have been a good administrator in spite of his personal faults, which have been so highlighted by history. Louis XIV stayed in power over 50 years! Did these men rule by our modern concepts of leadership, or did they keep their positions by playing one faction against another—as some men say that Roosevelt, the modern “good leader,” did? How many “good leaders” have swayed large groups, national groups, as long as did Hitler (23 years), or Mussolini (25 years), or Stalin (30 years)?1
Is there a realistic thread which a man may follow in improving his chances for effective leadership? Is there an objective course of self-training which he may follow no matter how the winds of leadership doctrine change? Is there a key that he may turn to some advantage regardless of his inherent capacities and personality? In the Armed Forces Officer Col. S. L. A. Marshall suggests that the key ideal of military virtue for an officer to cultivate is fidelity. For abilities “vary from man to man,” but “fidelity is the derivative of personal decision. It is the jewel within reach of every man who has the will to possess it.” Now is there also a key quality of leadership within the reach of every man who has the will to cultivate it?
I believe there is. I believe that the Navy has always taught this key quality, but I also believe that the present day confusion over “psychology,” “attitude surveys,” and “human engineering” has obscured the value of a concept which, being still expressed in traditional and Anglo-Saxon terms, does not receive the continuing, explicit re-affirmation it deserves. It is the concept of forehandedness, the everlasting practice of forehandedness.
The Watch Officer’s Guide for the past twenty years has stated it thus: “The superior watch officer, however, is always ready for any situation that may arise, and for that reason . . . the most important faculty to be cultivated is that of forehandedness.”
A destroyer division commander in the midst of World War II expressed it in these words in the Proceedings: “It is the real business of the day—a great deal of hard, straight thinking, which consists mostly of visualizing situations that might occur . . . and figuring out what should be done.”
For the sake of some logical—and useful— distinctions, let us consider leadership under four aspects: hindsight, foresight, fore thought, and forehandedness. The last three terms may be used interchangeably for all I care; only, for emphasizing practical readiness, I should like to discuss them separately. Foresight visualizes probable situations. Forethought plans their handling. Forehandedness not only visualizes and plans, it makes ready; it “gets the gear out and ready for operations.” But first I had better review what is meant by the situational approach to leadership study.
II. The Leadership Situation2
Modern study of leadership tends toward the study of the “leadership situation” rather than toward the traditional analysis of the “personality of the leader.” Naval Leadership is cogent on this point:
“Many people define leadership in terms of personal traits of a leader. . . . The man with leadership traits, the reasoning goes, will be a senator or foreman, executive or admiral, depending only upon where he chooses to direct his energy. . . .
“The other way of looking at leadership is quite different. The leader, this view has it, is the person who occupies a central or controlling . . . position in the group. ... You may or may not get interested in the traits of this man. What is really important is what he does. . . . The individual who is a leader in one group situation may not be the leader in another group situation.
“In the past, both laymen and psychologists have adopted the trait approach to leadership. [But] Stogdill, working under the sponsorship of the Office of Naval Research . . . found a preponderance of evidence from a wide variety of studies which indicates that patterns of leadership traits differ with the situation.”
Another significant study comments on this quotation of Stogdill as follows:
“The leader can then best control his behavior so as to have the most desirable effects upon his group, not by cultivating specific traits—a dubious accomplishment—but by learning to diagnose the situation in which he finds himself, and by doing those things which are most sensible and most effective in that situation.The aspiring leader can take comfort in this: Few, if any, are born leaders in all situations, and changing situations are likely to present other opportunities sooner or later for many types of men.”
A recent article by a psychologist comes to much the same thing:
“Leadership investigation can no longer be realistically handled by the stereotype of a single leader and a mass of followers, but must be met rather by the conception of different problem- solvers rising to different occasions.”3
Isn’t it time to say that the best preparation for leadership consists in preparing for situations that are going to arise, that usually do arise, or that can be expected to arise? That is, be forehanded! This approach, moreover, has the advantages of being both practical and available. It is practical because it means preparation for actual situations. It is available because all men can develop it on their own. Not every man can generate a “magnetic,” “compelling,” or “forceful” nature; but every man can improve his ability to forecast the situations of the hour, day, the week, the month, and the year ahead of him, visualize how to handle them, and make the necessary advance preparations. He who is most ready for a situation will be the leader for that situation, and continuous readiness means sustained leadership.
III. The Hindsight of Leadership
The hindsight of leadership is simply the study of the past in order to enumerate instances of leadership success and error, and to draw from these instances principles and rules for future conduct.
“He who does not know history,” said Santayana, “is condemned to repeat it.” Nowadays we are making innumerable efforts to know the past; and we generally assume that, being armed with such knowledge, we are avoiding past errors. Not so, for disturbingly enough we continue to repeat the worst errors. “The only lesson men learn from history,” said Chesterton, “is that men do not learn from history.”
How does this paradox come about? It is due in part to inadequate knowledge of the past and of present conditions; it is due to incorrect applications of “historic principles” to apparently similar but basically dissimilar situations; and it is due to the sheer inability of men to understand the significance of every event. Moreover, some of the fault lies in the mediocre approach— attitude and method—of so many history teachers and students. They look only towards the past.
History is a science; but historians, following the same trend as the other practitioners of the “new sciences,” such as psychologists, educators, sociologists, el ad., are trying too hard to prove their “objective” and “quantitative” approach. They confine themselves to the details of the past, to the testing of accumulations of past facts, and to the formulations of certain “safe and sound” statistical generalizations. The modern “true historian” would be horrified if anyone imputed moments of prophetic endeavor to him.4
Thus, most history teaching consists in spreading out a display of past happenings, leaving the student “to draw his own conclusions.” Unfortunately, most “students” never draw any conclusions. They forego that last creative step and leave what they have learned all boxed and packaged on their memory shelves. The great majority need to be taught, to be stimulated, and to be required to project their historical knowledge toward future events.
If anything is to be learnt from history, if hindsight is to be used profitably, we must change the emphasis on past history to intensive research into “future history.” A good third of any history course should be devoted to showing students how to apply insights into the past to foresights of the future.
The triumph and final proof of any law or theory of chemistry or physics—certainly the two most “scientific” of the sciences—is that it permits the prediction of future chemical or physical reactions. Many plausible hypotheses can be devised to fit the facts of the past; but that account is scientific which gives control of the future. There is nothing unscientific about attempts to visualize the future: it is implicit in all the physical sciences—meteorology, geology, mechanics, astronomy—and it is vital for the social sciences if they are to be more than mere remembrances of things past.
Another view that confuses attempts to think hard and straight is the “intuitive leader” fallacy. This fallacy consists in assuming that the historical process is governed by secret forces which only certain men at certain times are able to grasp “intuitively’ ’ and ride to fame and power. The exponents of this fallacy even believe that human affairs go leaping unpredictably ahead while rational understanding comes “hobbling after,” trying to pick up the pieces and patch them into a “philosophy.” It is strange that this nonsensical idea should be so attractive to many people. For it holds that the few thinking men of this world are actually blundering about in error, while the “unconscious, the intuitive” (even the ignorant and reckless!) somehow are merging with the wave of the future and guiding it to great events.
The fact of the matter is that all reasoning starts out from observations and mental reactions, i.e. immediate responses which are called intuitions. The thinking man crosschecks these intuitions and selects or rejects certain ones with conscious awareness as he constructs reflex secondary and tertiary judgments. The “intuitive” man takes off with his first reaction. Sometimes it is a good one and he hits the jackpot. If he is a genius, he may hit it several times. But in the long run a lot of good hard rational thinking is required to get him and his followers out of the mess his jumps take them into. Reason does not come hobbling after, philosophizing sterilely about what has happened; rather it comes manfully along, trying to get things straightened out.5
While the Russian bear is looming over us, we in the United States and in the Navy have been doing some pretty hard, forward thinking. We have to. The danger is spelled out and our course is check and countercheck. But when peace comes, or when we “learn to live with the cold war,” we will all too probably settle down to “historic considerations” and “concepts steeped in tradition.”
I have no bias against the military mind. (Likely enough I have such a mind myself.) I am not going to take any space to make comments of my own on the subject of “maginot-line” thinking. But I do want to emphasize my concern that our military training methods, academic and vocational, should teach the future first and the past second. Colonel S. L. A. Marshall on page 178 of the Armed Forces Officer6 says:
“It is the military habit to ‘plow deep in broken drums and shoot crap for old crowns,’ as the poet Carl Sandburg put it. As much as any other profession, and even possibly a little more, we take pride in the pat solution, and in proof that long applied processes amply meet the test of newly unfolding experience.”
But why wait for the new experience to unfold before making sure that the long applied processes are going to work? Our pride should be in our practice of visualizing possible surprise solutions, of testing by mock-ups and by dry-runs, and of determining by mental and actual experiments what solutions will really be ample for the situations of the future.
In his column in the Washington Evening Star of September 5, 1951, Mr. Thomas L. Stokes recounted the following:
“A hard-boiled Regular Army colonel who was in Europe toward the end of the Second World War came here, after the war, for a ‘refresher’ course at the Army War College. During his ‘student’ days here he remarked rather cynically:
“ ‘They are still fighting the last war over there at the College, just as we were fighting the First World War when the Second came along’.”
I shall let these two quotations make a point for me here, and bring no arguments of my own to bear. It appears from them that unless we watch carefully we will always end by having large parts of our organizations redredging the past rather than scanning the future.
It is heartening to see in the recently revised syllabus of the Naval War College that there are considerable assignments requiring the student to plan whole campaigns—not the replanning of Napoleonic and Nelsonian operations, but the foreplanning of possible assaults of the future.
Our academic halls and craft unions are filled with men who possess the leadership qualities specified by General C. B. Cates, when Commandant of the Marine Corps: “self-confidence based on expert knowledge, initiative, loyalty, pride, and a sense of responsibility.7 Countless professors and mechanics have expert knowledge, initiative, pride, and responsibility, yet they are not leaders. It is in the application, not in the mere possession, of these qualities that leadership exists. When the expert stops sitting passively on his heap of collected information and starts visualizing uses for it in coming situations, he begins to have a feeling of responsibility for the future; he begins to give direction not only to himself but to those around him. Planning what to do next spells initiative as well as the more useful application of past-acquired knowledge and skills. It proposes also the acquisition of new capacities—without wasteful digressions of study. The man ready for a situation is the leader of the group connected with that situation.
For military historians, then, history should start and end with forecasts of the future. As they work out the ramifications of the future they may turn as necessary to the past for greater insight and understanding. Having their quest of the future in mind, the historians will draw from their study of the past direction, decision, and action, rather than scholastic recollections and intellectual exercises.8 The key to leadership lies in preparing for future situations, not in recounting past successes.
IV. The Foresight of Leadership
For the purposes of this essay, the term foresight means the visualizing of possible future events. It means expecting the unexpected but without wasting time on the imagining of all sorts of improbable situations. There must be a logical likelihood to the envisaged events; naval foresight should indeed connote strongly a very scientific form of predicting. A little effort at sorting visualizations into categories such as “probable,” “improbable,” “possible under this set of conditions,” or “possible but improbable under that set of conditions,” will enable one to distinguish between real foresight and mere day dreaming.
I am not glossing over the difficulty of predicting the future; it is hard, but it must be done. Even not to do it is a form of doing it; by default, despair, or inaction, we accept the predictions of others, we indicate that we do nothing to prepare for their surprises or for the logical consequences of their actions and for our own. The new mathematical studies being made of “strategy in war, business, and games” show how many events of the future can be narrowed down to a selection of those most probably most valuable. As a matter of fact we shall rarely be called on to make vast, ingenious, or extremely long range predictions. Long or short, the returns from even a slight effort to look ahead are very great. In a world where so few look ahead, the man and the nation that glance up now and again easily become outstanding. A recent study of executives showed that a common characteristic of the successful ones was their habit at the close of each business day of thinking over what they were to do the next day. (It is said that the first J. P. Morgan thought in periods of ten years ahead.) If nothing else, the effort at foresight will ready the mind for action even in regard to unexpected events. Actually, the number of correct predictions will be surprisingly high, for, as Aquinas phrased it: “Though the number of possible circumstances be infinite, the number of actual circumstances is not; and the judgement of reason in matters of action is influenced by things which are few in number.”
I have already remarked on the ability of the chemists and physicists to predict phenomena^ The same may be increasingly said of meteorologists, biologists, and sociologists; in other words, scientists predict the behavior of the weather and of human beings more accurately every day. The Navy has been a prime mover in nearly every form of research undertaken in these areas. But many of its officers and men have yet to seek out the results of these studies and to begin applying their significance to their own thinking with regard to the course of naval and national affairs. I wonder what a poll of naval officers would show with regard to an awareness of the significance and coming use of such concepts as: “statistical quality control,” “theory of games,” “motion time measurement,” “cybernetics,” and above all “operations research”?
V. The Forethought of Leadership
The forethought of leadership consists in having a plan ready for any situation that arises. This is not impossible. It certainly was a characteristic of a recent top leader of the Navy: Admiral Sherman, about whom the following was written: “His old associates remember him as a man who always had a plan.” The advantages of having a plan ready are obvious, and it is axiomatic that war plans, peace plans, general drill plans, and emergency plans must be mapped out in advance of the occasion. Again, Admiral Sherman provides a good example: “Captain Courtney Shands recalling the brilliantly handled abandoning of the sinking Wasp described Admiral Sherman’s actions: ‘It was as though he had filed away a Plan “A,” a Plan “B,” and so on down to Plan “Z” and at the crucial moment implemented the proper plan’.”
When the event occurs it is too late to start planning. This principle of advance planning should also be put to use in the routine affairs of life. But since the pace of ordinary events is slower, and the consequences of error and clumsiness normally less dramatic, the urgency for planning is less apparent. But such should not be the case. Out of many small occasions the great ones grow; and if little events are well planned and well handled, many of the big ones will never become emergencies. This is most important in the handling of men— leadership)—where errors, delays, and inconsistencies accumulate to chronic and acute dissatisfaction.
Here, a distinction might be profitably drawn between forethought and initiative and resourcefulness—though all these qualities are, of course, closely related. Initiative usually shows itself in forethought; yet there are many creative men who are unprepared for important situations and even for the ramifications of their own inventions! On the other hand, many men with little creative ability do develop much practical forethought. Similarly, a man with a high degree of resourcefulness might be lacking in forehandness. As a matter of fact, a constant exhibition of on-the-spot improvisation may be an indication of an underlying weakness in planning and preparation. True, a quick thinker is always to be admired, but how much more so if he does a good part of his thinking well ahead of the routine or emergency situation!
VI. Developing Forehandedness
My purpose in this essay is to rediscover and to highlight that universally applicable and simply worded gem of seaman’s counsel: Cultivate Forehandedness. It has been lost in the present day subjective, personalized, and latinized literature on leadership, preachings which harp on “how-to-get-along-with- people” and not on “how-to-do-the-work.” Too many people are overlooking the fact that though a leader may indeed obtain the admiration and liking of his group, unless he ably plans and prepares their work, his leadership will actually mean low production and spotty performance by the group. He obtains their cooperation, but it is for cooperative confusion and cooperative loafing.
My method is primarily that of establishing a theoretical justification for the problem-solving, situational, forehandedness approach to leadership. Hence my host of footnotes and references. The “public-relations” approach to leadership, like the socialistic approach to economics, seems to have a moral and philosophic advantage over any other systems of attitudes. Never in history has extreme socialism been a success, yet somehow people feel uneasy about condemning it. Similarly, the man who says, “Let’s study the situation and then the people concerned,” feels at a disadvantage to the man who says, “Let’s be humane and study the people involved and then the objective facts of the situation.”
There are, however, many in the Navy and outside9 the Navy who would protest against the “yearning-over-the-group” concept of leadership, but they are unsure about speaking up lest they find themselves treated ass being behind the times. I hope that this essay will help them, and others, to clarify their thoughts and to stand up more explicitly for the man who solves a situation as against the man who soft-soaps it.
An emphasis on forehandedness would permit us to concentrate upon the objective aspects of a situation (what is going to happen, what preparations should be made) without having to challenge the ingrown assumptions of the “group-yearners.” Human relations, etc., can be tied in neatly by pointing out that personnel considerations must be taken into account in the forehanded planning of events. Keeping men busy estimating situations and enumerating the gear needed, will mean more time spent on how-to-do-something and less time spent worrying how-to-feel-about-it.10
The practice of forehandedness is actually the doing of the same thing twice: once in one’s mind, and again in reality. Thus it is always under a pragmatic, a step-by-step form of testing, thereby affording a pragmatic discipline to one’s thinking processes whether a situation occurs or not.11 There is something speculative about foresight and even forethought. It is forehandedness that tests their conclusions by visualizing the consequences of each foreseen step. Often, when I study “plans and policies” I wonder: “Just who actually will do this and that? What tools will be used? What secondary effects will come about? And after such and such has been done, then what will happen?” Implementation is a favorite word for planners who hope others will do the work; but ramifications is another big word which should be kept in mind by planners and implementers.
Parachute riggers are required to test their work by jumping with the pack. Perhaps we should force ourselves—-if not others —from time to time to jump our plans down into reality; if not in actual practice, then in hard, straight visualizing of each step which must occur if a plan is carried out. How many of the “great philosophic systems” would have kept their prestige a week, if each follower had tried to carry out in everyday life the logical consequences of their ideas?
The greatest growth in industrial efficiency came after Frederick W. Taylor had convinced enough men that a complete “mental revolution” was required in order to see work and organization with scientific eyes. I believe that where leadership doctrine is concerned we need another mental revolution. We need to see leadership as the solution of situations, solutions so clear and so valid that people are led to cooperate from understanding and not from emotional tugs. Necessities not moods should govern and guide us. But in the midst of a situation there is not time to think, to solve, to teach. This must be done beforehand. The situation must have been mentally moved up in time so that it was solved before it occurred. Thus forehandedness is, by definition, the practice of the practice of leadership at all times; and it is available to all men who think past their noses.
Of course, forehandedness is not the be-all of leadership: spiritual power, communicative ability, insight, knowledge, to name a few, are important ingredients. But I am writing here about the key to leadership. In different situations different ingredients are required. Forehandedness is the key to having the right ingredients at hand and to using them effectively. Men who take thought of the next day and of the next job, not only prepare themselves to be leaders for each event, but they also obtain the inherent and collateral advantages of a forehanded habit of mind: alertness, curiosity, practicality, readiness, and all the enrichment of character and mind that accompanies a purposeful, forward-looking course of selfteaching and self-disciplining.
I have intimated above that theoreticians should test their riggings with real jumps, and I have sneered at philosophers whose systems are seen to be fictions once their consequences are developed (unfortunately some consequences do not show up for years as the warring “isms” of the world testify). Accordingly, the reader may by now be ready to ask me: “Assuming that all you say is true, what should be done? Show us some steps to take.”
In reply I must first point out that this essay is not the place to outline specific programs in detail. However, a listing of some practical steps might be introduced not only to answer the questions just put, but to serve also to clarify further some of the assertions which have been made in this essay. Therefore, most briefly, the following suggestions are made, trusting that the stimulated ingenuity of the Navy will improve on these and devise a hundred others.
1. Training should emphasize the impersonal aspects of leadership—at least to the extent of counterbalancing the present excessive zeal on the part of the public relations experts, human engineers, and group-dynamics authorities. A lot of depersonalization will be required just to get us back on an even keel. We should not preach, “The leader should be forceful, be brave, be intelligent, and be wise,”12 but should state, “When the following situations arise, and they usually do under the following conditions, do this and do that.” If the best a man can do is to talk about motivation and group dynamics, then he should keep quiet and not try to give counsel. Seniors should stress the work and problem sides of leadership. Above all they should look for the preparations which have been or have not been made for any situation. In this regard, the old maxim “results count” should be applied with caution. It is a dangerous maxim for many people, because either it is self-evident redundancy, or it is the gloss of good fortune over error or inefficiency. Assume that one Gunner’s Mate has the job of painting a forward gun mount, and another Gunner’s Mate has the job of painting an after gun mount. Their working parties are equal, both are to start at 1300, and both have 15 minutes before noon mess. The GM with the forward gun uses the 15 minutes to plan the job in his mind, to decide which man is to do what; and he sends a man to stack some of the needed gear near the gun mount before mess call. The GM for the after gun mount uses the 15 minutes for desultory conversation and genial group relations. At 1300 the GM for the after job gets his men off to a straggly start, and there is some delay spent in discussing assignments and obtaining gear. The men on the forward job, however, never get started for they are sent ashore on an emergency working party. At 1600 the after gun mount has been painted; the forward gun is untouched. The executive officer takes a turn around deck. He congratulates the after GM on the appearance of the after gun. When he sees the forward mount, he merely grunts disappointedly. Have results counted? There is no doubt that one gun looks much better than the other. But closer analysis would show that the finished job took too long, that time and manpower were wasted, and that a petty officer and a group of men were further set in habits of thinking and preparing after work is started. Where the long range efficiency and accomplishment of the Navy are concerned, the preparation for the unfinished job was more important than the very evident coat of paint on the after gun mount. In the Training Bulletin article already cited appears the following; “Results always count, but a job well prepared for should also be highly commended. A lucky success should be analyzed to show how better preparations would not have left so much to chance. Where training is concerned, conscious preparation and right method, in the long run, are more important than haphazardly improvised though fortunate results. Sustained success depends on handling situations with foresight and planning—and sustained success is leadership.”
2. Some of the energy being spent in discussing and improving (?) “morale” should be used to promote two allied though converse axioms: “Accidents don’t happen, they are caused,” and “Good results are planned, not jumped at.”
3. Readiness inspections should also emphasize the individual readiness of officers and men. Awards should be given to organizations and to individuals for their effective methods of promoting forehandedness. (Perhaps we should give an “F” for forehandedness?)
4. All training courses should emphasize forehandedness aspects of the material. History texts should include sizeable discussions of the use of the history lesson in future situations. The Forrestal History Fellowships could take the lead in this. Surely Forrestal himself, whose foresighted anguish is now being proved to have been so justified, would have preferred his name to be attached to studies useful for coming events. I am not recommending a rush for bold new ideas, but an insistence on hard, straight thinking as to what will happen next in the light of past and present events.
5. Officers’ fitness reports and enlisted men’s quarterly marks cards should require an entry with regard to demonstrations of forehandedness—or its lack.13 There must be many ways of practicing forehandedness, and many ingenious methods of teaching it and of requiring it, which would come to the surface throughout the Navy if the incentive machinery were set up. The individual reported on will take pains to cultivate and demonstrate an objective, practical forehandedness which can be checked off on an objective report form. The reporting senior, who must make such entries, will come to look for the quality; and then it is a short step to the practice of stimulating it in subordinates and demanding it of them. There is nothing subtle or ambiguous about forehandedness. A man either thinks ahead and gets the gear ready, or he doesn’t.
6. Three basic questions—in a variety of forms—should be put to subordinates, and to oneself, again and again:
a. What is going to happen next?
b. How should the situation be handled?
c. What preparations are needed?
VII. Conclusion—Deserved Leadership
The Navy has always taught the necessity of forehandedness for survival at sea and victory in war. Realistic concepts of leadership)—here-and-now leadership)—-teach us that the situation is the lock and frame of leadership, and that forehandedness is the key to the situation.
The Navy must teach mental disciplines and mental habits as well as technical skills. The Navy must choose certain attitudes of mind to inculcate or emphasize. Among all the controversial choices forehandedness alone seems to possess the requisites of objectivity, practicality, and availability. This is attested to not only by modern analysis, but by the way in which forehandedness, prudence-at-sea, has been esteemed by seafarers from the days of the galley to the day of the nuclear submarine.
The nation that first sees the possibilities of the future and makes itself ready for all of them will assume international leadership. If it is a small nation it will provide moral, and therefore ultimately, actual leadership. If it is a large nation, it will gain all the more in prestige and immediate power. Within a nation’s boundaries, that public service, institution, or group most forehanded for events will take by virtue of its own readiness, or through the lack of readiness on the part of other groups, the national leadership. Within that service, institution, or group, that officer or man, most assiduous in visualizing the next step and most forehanded in preparing for it, will take by his own readiness, or through the default of others, the leadership of his own group.
This essay is dedicated to Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King and to the memory of Admiral Forrest P. Sherman who “always had a plan.” By being always ready for the next situation they achieved for themselves the highest military office in the Navy, and at the same time did so much to preserve the Navy as one of the most foresighted, most ready, and most trustworthy of the Nation’s institutions. It has been the Navy’s readiness not only for its own missions narrowly defined, but for the broad “facts of international life” that has done so much to stimulate and further the United States’ recent, practical steps toward world leadership—moral leadership and physical leadership.
But forehandedness and leadership are not for the top alone (so easily and tragically may the top be truncated). The rule for every man in the Navy is the same. Every man, whether Chief of Naval Operations, plebe, or seaman, should be ready; every man should have a plan.
1. “The military student, searching the pages of history for some glimmering clue to greatness, is concerned with action, not adjectives. History is written by historians. But first it is hammered and molded by leaders. If we know them, may we not, following their example, duplicate their success? Unfortunately it is not so easy as that. The world has moved too rapidly and too far; there are too many imponderables for exact and scientific comparison. Principles we may examine, yes. But it is dangerous to apply them unless we keep constantly in mind that the present is as far removed from the past as tomorrow will be from today.
“The mercenary forces of Hannibal required a different leadership from the national armies of Napoleon. Proud and aristocratic knights, who furnished their own mounts and equipment and who served without pay, would have greeted with contemptuous scorn the repressive methods employed with hardheaded peasantry, or the rabble of the towns. The leadership problems of a democracy are certainly at wide variance with those of an autocracy and even with those of a liberal government in which there are rigid social and class distinctions.” Major (now Colonel) Richard M. Sandusky, “Leaders Win Where Commanders Lose.” The Infantry Journal, 1938.
2. This section is based in part on the article “Training for Leadership: Forehandedness” which appears in the December, 1951, issue of the U. S. Naval Training Bulletin.
3.Cattel, R. B. New Concepts for Measuring Leadership. Human Relations, Vol. IV, No. 2, 1951. See also Human Behavior and Leadership, NavPers 10058, 1949, pages 1, 94, 108. A statement on page 94 is pertinent, “When the final book is written on leadership it well may state that one of the cardinal characteristics of the successful leader is his ability to solve problems."
Similarly, Dr. Launor F. Carter, ONR investigator, University of Rochester, reported to the American Psychological Association, said: "The two types of leaders did, however, have some characteristics in common, i.e. the ways in which their behavior differed from that of the other members of the group. These differences, shown in all three types of tasks, indicated that leaders were concerned with analyzing situations and initiating the actions required."—Research Reviews, October 1951. Office of Naval Research.
4. A few men, Adams, Spengler, Toynbee, for example, have sought to project the past into the future. But they have done so in very general terms, and their talk is of millennial cycles, eons, and epochs.
5. What about the mystic, intuitive fuehrer, Hitler? An excellent example for my thesis. Closer scrutiny of his record shows that he did not ride the waves as blindly as some legends would have him. His book Mein Kampf, written in advance of events, blueprinted the course of Nazi empire and iniquity. On the other hand, when Hitler did sail off on uncharted intuitive voyages he quickly got into trouble. (Stalin, too, it might be noted, has in his writings and addresses already adumbrated a substantial part of the Soviet imperialism and intrigue we now see developing.)
6. The Armed Forces Officer, 1950, Department of Defense. Anyone interested in seeing a really terrific salvo fired against the practice of fighting with old weapons may refer to Dr. R. E. Lapp’s article “U. S. Science and Modern War” in the September 18, 1951, issue of The Reporter. By indirection Dr. Lapp compliments the Navy—he doesn’t mention the Navy at all. He does say: “Our Air Force’s development program may be damned with faint praise: It is better than that of Army Ordnance.”
7. The whole passage is: “Leadership is intangible, hard to measure and difficult to describe. Its qualities would seem to stem from many factors. But certainly they must include a measure of inherent ability to control and direct, self-confidence based on expert knowledge, initiative, loyalty, pride, and a sense of responsibility. Inherent ability cannot be instilled, but that which is latent or dormant can be developed. Other ingredients can be acquired. They are not easily taught or easily learned. But leaders can be and are made. The average man in our service is and must be considered a potential leader.”
8. I am not critical of attempts to know more and more of the past. The platonic concept that the highest end of man consists in contemplation, in an understanding vision, is one in accord with my own temperament. The great Christian philosophers have taught us that man’s desire to know is so insatiable that it can be assuaged only by infinite reality, that is the beatific vision of God, the infinite reality. All efforts, therefore, at the understanding and contemplation of history, even if without any practical purpose, are to be commended. Indeed, attempts to make the study of history purely pragmatic (as I indicate above for most of military history) would be foolish and self-defeating.
In this regard we should be cautioned by what happened in the physical sciences. Two generations ago the name of Auguste Comte was still one of the greatest among scientists. To this day many of our textbooks and many of our village-school chemistry and physics teachers (and reactionary college professors—scientifically reactionary and materialistic, that is) follow Comte unwittingly and teach science in the “positivist” manner which they have learned from his successors. Emile Meyerson in his book La Deduction Relativiste (Payot, Paris, 1924) said this of Comte: “What Comte dreamed of was, in effect, a veritable organization as is understood by the believers in authority. The beliefs of the public in the matters of science and, more especially still, the research work of the scientists themselves, would be strictly ruled and watched by a constituted corps, composed of men judged competent and armed with all the powers of the secular arm.” [Sounds like Russia in 1950-1951, doesn’t it?] “This regimentation would come, of course, as is the case everywhere and always with all regimentation, to consist principally in prohibitions, and Comte traced in advance the program of some of these. The prohibition of time spent on investigations other than the ‘positive’ ones, that is only those having as their object the search for a law. The prohibition of any attempt at insight into . . . the constitution of the stars. The prohibition of the too minute phenomena, especially that with the microscope, which only was an ‘equivocal’ method of investigation and to which was accorded an ‘exaggerated credit’.”
Who now remembers these “positivist exaggerations” of Comte in this day of the super telescope and the ultramicroscope? To quote from Meyerson again: “The fact is . . . that what has most contributed to the progress, even that purely practical, of humanity, have been those disinterested researches having as their end only theoretic knowledge.”
It is foolish to attempt to dissuade the mind of man from the pleasures of detached contemplation whether of science, history, art, government, or even naval affairs. Moreover, it is, as I have just emphasized, self- defeating. But having conceded the value of the disinterested study of history for history’s sake, let me repeat that the study of history for most of us in the Navy should be directed to finding ways of dealing with present and future situations. The Nation does not organize, sustain, and pay for a Navy in order that its officers and men may enjoy the curiosa of historical research. Certain men in the Navy can most profitably, and will, engage on their own time, and on the taxpayer’s time in the pure study of history, and from their work great benefits may ultimately develop. But the average naval officer and man will get nothing but entertainment and some cultural broadening from the reading of history, unless both are guided, and guide themselves, by the ever present teaching and thought that they are looking for solutions to immediate and future events. In this regard the development and extension of the procedures of “Operations Research” in the Navy is a most welcome thing.
9. QMC W. J. Miller, USN, “The New Look,” U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings, September, 1951. “ . . . a new concept which through the efforts of many nonfiction publishers has taken hold of the minds of half the people of the civilized world. This concept is that popularity and the affection of our fellow man are more valuable than money, honor, and health—with eternal salvation thrown in for good measure. Even if an officer possessed these two qualities without going through the steps to get them, would he be a more capable leader?” (The rest of this short article is extremely significant.
Dr. Lillian Gilbreth, internationally known management and labor consultant, said in an address on scientific management given to the Washington, D. C. Chapter of the Society for the Advancement of Management, December 3, 1951: “There are waves of these things. Sometimes the emphasis is all on the technical side, at other times it is on the human side. At present we are going through a wave of human relations. This time there seems to be a belief that proper emphasis cannot be put on the human side without letting the technical side drop off. The idea is prevalent that if we let the technical standards slack so much, by some means or other we will be rewarded with a great improvement in human relations, and from that an improvement in over-all production. That won’t happen. It can’t happen. No matter how we develop the human engineering side, we must not lower the technical standards.”
10. I would like to hear of a modern commander or executive who, when a subordinate was reported on thusly, “He doesn’t cooperate well,” or “He doesn’t get along well with the group,” would say: “To heck with whether or not he gets along with the group! Is he right in his purposes or methods or isn’t he? When he stops getting the work out, then tell me if it has happened because of his lack of groupiness or of cooperation.”
If a few top men would speak like that, perhaps the busy little cooperators and group manipulators in all the interstices of modern organizations would take themselves less seriously. Who knows? Maybe the groups would quit some of their anxiety over the proper measures of the glad-hand, morale-building, human-relations which they have been told to expect.
In their book The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character (Yale University Press, 1950. Studies in National Policy Series) David Riesman, Reuel Denney, and Nathan Glazer describe the modern trends in leadership thusly: “(In) his anxiety for approval . . . the leader will act not because of an inner- directed plan of action . . . but because of his psychological need to be continuously judged by others. . . . He is in the position of an actor, looking for response from an audience. . . . Indeed, mood leadership ... in America is becoming increasingly self-conscious; it is part of the same development that has taken us from morality to morale. The spread of ‘group dynamics’ may perhaps be used as an index of this shift. . . . The other- oriented leader, unable to take a stand against a particular audience, may actually fail to discover other potentials in the latter. Hearing the signals from the others as they seem to be, and not as they might with his aid become, he actually facilitates a circular process of mutual enslavement. If he were less ‘realistic,’ he might occasionally have the decisive experience that, by resisting a current trend, the trend itself would suddenly be seen as mythical. . . . (Even) an engineer . . . must be a good teamworker; he must be able to get along with the other engineers and to ‘sell’ the foreman and others down the line. Up-to-date personnel directors are weeding out of commerce and industry the lone wolf who is not cooperative, no matter what his gifts. . . . (However) someone who is inner-directed and not especially interested in emotional mood may be in demand . . . when the going is rough.” (Pages 261, 264-266 passim.)
11. Cf. Aquinas, Sum. Theol. II-II, QQ 47. “The worth of prudence consists not in thought merely, but its application to action, which is the end of practical reason.” The section on Prudence by Aquinas is illuminating. E.g. he writes: “Other matters in the state are directed to the profit of individuals, whereas the business of soldiering is directed to the protection of the entire common good.”
12. Cf. ,The Armed Forces Officer, p. 93: “The counselor says: ‘Be forthright! Be positive! Possess a commanding appearance!’ The young man replies: ‘All very good, so far as it goes. But tell me, how do I get that way’?”
One basic trouble in leadership literature is the fact that the teachings are written by or about men who are already leaders, i.e. middle-aged or older. Obviously by definition the things the actual leader has done must have been the right things. But years have passed since he was a junior officer, the men he led then have grown up and away, new times, new men, and new situations have come along. The leadership of the admiral and the corporate executive in our changing society is not that required of the lieutenant and the foreman thirty years away in age and a generation away in social mores. Too often it seems that one must already be at the top of the heap to understand or to appreciate the “best” text on leadership. The book tells what a leader should be, but the aspiring student will have to live ten years longer and be actually in the age and grade of leader before he can apply the prescriptions. Thus many leadership books are useless to the men who need teaching; their phrases serve to reinforce the prejudices of the men in power, and their major contribution is to praise and justify what has already been done.
For similar reasons, methods of evaluation such as fitness reports should be on an objective basis: “Did he do this, or did he do that?” and not on a quality or trait basis. How often have we seen the man who frowns, bustles about, and always carries a paper file in his hand, and “stays aboard to finish up” considered a “hard-worker?” How many people have the courage and insight to ask and to analyze: “But how much hard- work does he actually get done?” Fitness reports should measure work accomplished, not the intangibles of personality. (Of course there should be some general entries which do throw some light on the man’s personality, but these should be stated in a separate section and clearly labeled under an “opinion” or “I think” heading.) In one situation an active, gruff personality is needed to stir things up, in another situation a slow, smiling personality is required if subordinates are to learn (or be forced) to make up their minds and act on their own initiatives.
13. Many people, no doubt, will protest against “putting anything more into the fitness reports.” But poor forms and their misuse do not prove that a system of regular, behavior reports is not a powerful, specific, and continuous method of keeping every man aware of his strong and weak points. If the recommendation of the Senate Armed Forces Preparedness Subcommittee (the “Lyndon Johnson Committee”) is acted upon there may be a change in the fitness forms to include entries regarding an officer’s exhibition of “cost consciousness.” At the same time, provision for demonstrations of forehandedness may be added.
In passing, I. might observe that the fitness reports should reflect what a man does, not how he appears to be in the eyes of the reporting senior. Moreover, in order that the reports should have real training and incentive value, the officer reported on should always see his report, and he should always talk it over with his senior officers. (Not to protest or to argue, but to obtain advice on how to improve his weaknesses.) At such times, too, the seniors can point out the objective demonstrations of such qualities as forehandedness rather than popularity that they are looking for in a man.