How to Lead by David M. Rubenstein

Author:David M. Rubenstein
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2020-09-02T00:00:00+00:00

GENERAL DAVID PETRAEUS

Former director of the Central Intelligence Agency; Partner in the Global Investment Firm KKR; Chairman of the KKR Global Institute

“I’m a particularly great fan of Teddy Roosevelt. The ‘Man in the Arena’ speech has always captivated me. ‘The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood;… who, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly.’ ”

General David Petraeus may be the best-known U.S. military combat leader since the Vietnam War era, in part because of his successful leadership of the “Surge” in Iraq, which came nearly four years after the U.S. invasion and turned around a failing war. A similarly successful effort to shore up a faltering U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan, though different in scope and anticipated outcome, cemented Petraeus’s reputation as an exceptional combat leader, and especially as a leader of troops in extremely difficult counterinsurgency missions.

All leaders take risks, but the risks that combat leaders take are somewhat different. Their decisions can lead quickly to deaths and casualties, so they need to be very precise and decisive in their orders and directions, and need to instill discipline, teamwork, and confidence into their troops. No one wants an indecisive or uncertain military commander leading the troops.

David Petraeus’s military career, begun at West Point, might never have continued had he not recovered from two close brushes with death: an accidental gunshot wound to his chest during an aggressive live-fire exercise when he was a lieutenant colonel, and a free-fall parachute landing that fractured his pelvis when he was a brigadier general. In both cases, his will to survive, to regain exceptional physical fitness, and to be an extraordinary leader overcame medical challenges that might have ended the military careers of others less driven and focused.

Where did this drive and leadership skill come from? What made David Petraeus a military and civilian legend? The general addresses these questions in a Peer to Peer interview held at the Bloomberg studios in New York City in front of a live audience in March 2017.

I had not really known Petraeus during his military career. But after he left government service, which culminated in fourteen months as CIA director, and joined the private equity firm KKR, I began to see and talk with him at various business and public policy conferences.

As he explained to me, Petraeus believes that strategic leadership—leadership at the very top—involves performance of four critical tasks: 1) getting the big ideas (i.e., the strategy) right; 2) communicating the big ideas effectively throughout the organization; 3) overseeing the implementation of the big ideas; and 4) engaging in a process to determine how the big ideas need to be revised and refined in response to what has been learned and to changing circumstances. In his view, these tasks have to be performed superbly by strategic leaders to succeed in the military world and also in the civilian world.

Of course, accomplishing these tasks in a truly large organization may be easier for someone with the drive, intellect, courage, and presence of General Petraeus.

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