"A More Positive Leadership Approach"

What do tenured Harvard faculty members and raw recruits at an Army boot camp have in common?  They're both groups of people whose negative response to authoritarian leadership is having a dramatic effect on the management of their respective institutions.

Yesterday Harvard President Lawrence Summers announced his resignation, just one week before the Faculty of Arts and Sciences planned a no-confidence vote in Summers, their second in less than a year.  Summers has been embroiled in a number of controversies since assuming Harvard's presidency in early 2001, and criticism of his leadership (accurate or not) has focused on issues ranging from fundraising to sexism, so his decision to step down can't be ascribed to any one cause.  But a thread that runs consistently through articles about Summers and Harvard is his "abrasive personality and the way he tried to ram change through an entrenched bureaucracy," a concise description by Daniel Golden and Steve Stecklow from their front-page article in today's Wall Street Journal.

Summers was tapped as president by the university's board for his potential to be "an aggressive reformer who would administer strong medicine to help Harvard maintain its edge," according to Golden and Stecklow.  But both the board and Summers underestimated the influence of Harvard's faculty and the importance of winning their support for a new president's leadership and for his reform agenda, and no matter what you think of the faculty and their complaints, this was a fatal mistake.

It was also a suprisingly obtuse mistake.  It shouldn't have been news to Summers or anyone on Harvard's board that turning their vision of a reformed, revitalized university into reality was going to require at least tacit support from the faculty, and that was going to 1) limit the scope and pace of change and 2) influence their tactical approach.  Instead, the man who in 1983 became one of Harvard's youngest tenured professors at age 28, and a body that includes such notable leaders as Robert Rubin, former Secretary of the Treasury under President Clinton, and Nannerl Keohane, former President of Duke University, blundered into a series of unnecessary confrontations with the  faculty, which served only to reinforce Summers' reputation for abrasiveness.  In the end, the agenda that the board had hoped Summers would champion became a footnote in a debate that was dominated by questions about his management style and leadership abilities.

This virtual impeachment by the faculty will surely weigh heavily on Harvard's next president.  Summers' successor will take office keenly aware that in an institution where human capital has an effective veto over management, cultivating their support is a prerequisite of success.  Whoever he or she is, I fully expect to hear the new president described as a "kinder, gentler" leader with strong interpersonal skills who's eager to listen and reluctant to impose.

A concern, of course, is that Harvard will overreact to Summers' departure and select an inoffensive and ineffectual leader who will mollify the faculty while conveniently ignoring any unpopular but necessary reforms.  They need to be careful not to let the pendulum swing too far in the opposite direction.  But to paraphrase Jonathan Swift, management without the consent of the managed is a recipe for failure.

Shifting from the rarefied air of Cambridge to the more prosaic setting of Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, we can compare Harvard's approach to that of another historic institution, the U.S. Army.  The traditional image of Army drill sergeants is encapsulated nicely in the photo above of Lee Ermey (from Stanley Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket"), who served in the Marine Corps for 11 years before beginning a long career as a character actor: Not merely authoritative, but actively confrontational and even frightening.

But on the front page of the February 15th Wall Street Journal, Greg Jaffe described a sea change that has taken place in how the Army treats new recruits at boot camp:

For most of its existence, boot camp was a place where drill sergeants would weed out the weak and turn psychologically soft civilians into hardened soldiers.  But the Army, fighting through one of its biggest recruiting droughts, now is shifting tactics... Once-feared drill sergeants have been ordered to yell less and mentor more.  "Before, our drill sergeants' attitude was 'you better meet my standard or else.'  Now it's 'I am going to do all I can to assist you in meeting the Army standard,'" says Command Sgt. Major William McDaniel, the senior enlisted soldier here.

The changes in boot camp life seem to be focused on the interpersonal dynamic between recruits and their drill sergeants.  According to Jaffe, "Recruits still must meet the same basic standards and pass the same tests for physical fitness and marksmanship to graduate, say Army officials."

This new regime, which was implemented in all five of the Army's basic-training camps last fall, has already had a profound effect.  According to Jaffe, "Army-wide, about 11% of recruits currently flunk out in their first six months of training, down from 18% last May."  The Journal article also includes a graph with figures from the Department of the Army indicating that just 24% of recruits washed out of basic training because of "failure to adapt" in 2005, down from 33% in 2004.  (The leading cause, a "pre-existing condition," increased from 46% to 52%.)

Despite--or because of--this impact, the changes have been controversial.  There are concerns that the Army's new approach amounts to nothing more than lowering standards to insure that recruiting quotas are met.  Jaffe quotes a company commander at Fort Leonard Wood: "Asked if his soldiers are as disciplined and tough as their predecessors, Capt. [Christopher] Meng pauses.  'There are some who feel we are not sending as high a quality soldier to the Army...I am not that smart enough to tell you,' he said."

But Jaffe also notes that, "Army officials say that attrition has fallen because the new techniques are helping more soldiers reach their full potential.  'This generation responds to a more positive leadership approach. [emphasis added]  They want to serve and they want people to show respect for that decision,' says Maj. Gen. Randal Castro, the commanding general at Fort Leonard Wood."

I'm in no position to judge whether the Army is admitting unqualified soldiers by failing to weed out recruits who will crack under pressure in battle.  (Unfortunately it appears that we'll have far too many real-world opportunities to determine whether or not that's true.)  But it seems possible that even if the new boot camp regime is allowing some "false positives" by graduating unqualified soldiers, the old regime was resulting in some "false negatives" by eliminating otherwise qualified recruits for superficial or irrelevant reasons.  And at a time when human capital is more valuable than ever, it's appropriate for the Army to adopt "a more positive leadership approach" to insure that no potentially qualified recruit is lost.  At a tactical level, they may have to make some further adjustments to screen out the truly unqualified, but at a strategic level, they're on the right track. 

(Of course, while I applaud the military's attempt to recognize the value of human capital by revamping boot camp, I have to note that they could attract and retain thousands of highly qualified soldiers simply by ending discrimination against gays and lesbians.  The Army's "more positive leadership approach" at boot camp only highlights the gross unfairness and counterproductive nature of the current "don't ask, don't tell" policy.  A full discussion of this issue is beyond the scope of this post, but it bears mentioning.)

I don't want to overreach and make a facile comparison between Harvard and the Army in these situations.  The institutions and the issues involved are far too complex.  But it's worth noting that these topics made the front page on the Journal within days of each other, and that they highlight several similar themes: the significant (and sometime surprising) leverage of human capital, the importance of interpersonal relations in contemporary leadership, and an organization's willingness to adapt to changing circumstances.

Although the leverage possessed by Harvard professors (tenure) and Army recruits (the voluntary nature of military service at a time of war) differ in kind, both were sufficient to influence major changes in large and tradition-bound institutions.  There's a larger lesson here for almost every organization in the contemporary economy, from technology companies that employ highly-skilled knowledge workers to nonprofits whose staff accept below-market wages to support a cause--people truly are your most valuable resource (Ed. It's not just a recruting slogan!), and as a result they may have a surprising degree of influence over your organization.  Discount that influence at your peril.

As mentioned above, both Harvard and the Army will have to exercise care to insure that an increased emphasis on positive interpersonal relations in their leadership doesn't become counterproductive.  University presidents as well as drill sergeants need to be able to exercise authority and command respect.  But Gen. Castro's comments are relevant for any institution, not just the Army: people respond better to positive leadership, and they want their institutions to respect the sacrifices they're making.

Finally, both organizations are demonstrating a notably high degree of flexibility.  It's striking that Summers will be the shortest-tenured Harvard president since Cornelius Felton, who died in office in 1862, and while the Army has been considering changes in boot camp life for a number of years, such plans have faced significant resistance.  This isn't to say that Harvard's decision to dump Summers (or, more charitably, to accept his resignation) or that the Army's decision to revamp boot camp are right simply because they represent dramatic change.  Harvard may find that their newly empowered faculty will work to block any and all positive change.  The Army may find that their new recruits can't actually fight.  But when such historic institutions can put previously unthinkable options on the table, I think the rest of us owe it to ourselves to expand our own range of possibilities.

tags: harvard us army lawrence summers larry summers boot camp management leadership human capital

Comments

[Allison]

The picture you have posted is a depiction of the United States Marine Corps drill instructor, not the Army's Drill Sergeant.
Just thought I would bring that up.

[Ed]

You're absolutely right, Allison. As the insignia on Lee Ermey's hat in the photo makes clear, his character is a Marine, and the first half of "Full Metal Jacket" is set at the USMC's Parris Island, not an Army boot camp.

That said, from a civilian perspective, I don't think there's much difference between Marine DIs and Army sergeants--although that may be changing. I wonder if the Marines have made any changes at Parris Island or Camp Pendleton similar to those made by the Army at their boot camps. If I understand the relationship between the Marines and the Army correctly, that seems unlikely.