On Leadership

I've been in command positions a good part of my life, on the ground, in the air. I'm not usually just the only woman leader, I'm often the only woman-- period.  I fondly remember one group in a unit that has been all-male before I came along.  I miss that team, all but one veteran, all strong men, strong personalities. We've had some losses, and we had some laughs (specifically someone in defense that once called a planned Post 9/11 tabletop exercise among various agencies as a  "Practical Exercise Not Involving Soldiers".)  Yes, Operation PENIS had us in stitches before someone caught that and changed the name.

I wouldn't trade these years for anything and it's the reason I still work, still feeling like I have something to pass on.  My husband is a leader in his company, and he understands.  He knows that if he asked-- I'd quit my career in a heartbeat as he is more important, just as he knows he won't ask that of me, for he totally gets it.

These thoughts here tonight, are based on the core principles of military leadership that many have passed on to me, as well as things I just learned by watching bad leaders as well as making my own mistakes, and finding my way.  I revisit them regularly, and with humbleness.

Seek out your strengths and weaknesses, even the ones you can't see yet, and look to improve on those daily.  Do it openly, do it quietly, but each day try to improve on something in which you are lacking and perform just a bit better on those things in which you are skilled.  Teach those with you to do the same.

You can get away with not knowing how to play Dungeons and Dragons but if you are managing people, you must know the latest technical developments in your field and how to use them to deploy your resources. Never stop learning.

Seek responsibility and take it.  A key leadership principle is that we ALL make mistakes, but it's how we respond to them that separates the "men from the boys", as they say. If you make a mistake and blame someone else, no one is ever going to trust you again  (though some people might be stupid enough to vote for you again).

Your Mom doesn't work here.  If you screw something up, own it, don't wait for someone to make an excuse for you or correct it for you.  If you break it, fix it, if you open it, close it. You are accountable for your actions, you are accountable for your outcomes.

Act with your head, not other parts of the body.  You're angry, desperate, or just want to fling a colleague into the next county with a trebuchet? Don't.  Take a deep breath, go drink some cold water and deal with it rationally. Once you've acted rashly or solely on emotion or hormones, you will lose the ground you don't get back. If you're already perceived as weak, it can be fatal, as a leader.

The rules that apply to your team, apply to you.  If they have to sort it, document it, retain it, verify it, or fill out 8 forms for it,  SO DO YOU.

Lead from the front. You are setting an example. If you are thinking  "just this one time",  or "let's take a shortcut",  "let's just this once, sacrifice a (little) standard", whatever it is, then your team will be OK with it too when you're not looking.  Hold yourself to a higher standard, and they will try to as well.

Waffles are great for breakfast but they make lousy leaders.  Think out your decisions and take into account, every bit of information you can get when you make them, asking those who are more informed and, if they aren't available, then questioning yourself.  But make them decisively. Do NOT wait for popular opinion or the news cameras to come out to make them.

Questions are less bloody than not asking them.

Know yourself, but know your team as well, and look out for their welfare like your own.  Loyalty may be bought, but only very briefly. Be compassionate, but be firm, and be clear that what they offer is important. If they know that they can count on you, you can count on them.

We all have wounds that drive us and the scar tissue usually isn't visible.  Understand what drives your people, what gets their hackles up, what motivates them not to be in some particular place.  Never be so busy that you fail to listen to them about something that may sound like it has nothing to do with the team.  It will have everything to do with the team.

Successful missions come in threes - the mission you plan, the mission you do, and the mission you wish you had done.

Some things are classified, but don't be a mushroom farmer.  Keep people informed.  Share those things that may not necessarily be their specialty, or even within their current technical grasp. They will learn, and they will feel included and valuable, for they are.

Go into battle with them.  Don't sit at your comfy desk with your giant mocha latte every single time they hit the field when conditions are beyond crappy or risky.  Get out, be in front, and get seriously dirty and a bit dinged up with them.  Never forget those places that got you to that desk and revisit them when you can.

Successful completion of a task depends upon how well you know your unit’s capabilities. Don't give out a task you have not prepared them to do.  Experiments are for a science lab, not the field.

You set the standards by what behaviors you ignore, reward, and punish.

There is no "I" in "Team" but there's "Me" if you rearrange the letters.  Yes, and No.  Respect the individual, and know the individual.  But train and cross-train as a team, individuals have weaknesses, and teams learn to compensate and overcome them.  The reward is not the only thing shared, responsibility is.

Have a sense of humor.  It can disarm, it can engage.  Don't overuse it, and in the workplace, avoid with strangers, but never forget it.  And someday, when I'm retired and all witnesses are dead, I'll tell you a story about getting someone to collect evidence by milking a goat.

Just because it's not your fault, doesn't mean it's not your problem.

Trust but Verify.  You have to trust your team to do their job without micromanaging every step.  But verify it's done to the standards you have set, standards that are clearly communicated and adequately supervised. Their mistakes aren't just theirs, they are yours, for you are accountable and credible with your superiors.

People like rewards, be it monetary or even a plate of home-baked cookies - but that's not why they sign up to work with you when there are other choices.

Recognize not just physical courage but moral courage.  Standing firm on values, principles, and convictions is just as important as putting life and limb on the line.

Know your limitations. Not just your own, but the limitations of your team and the individuals that comprise it, as well as those of your organization as a whole, at the highest level.  If you know that, you know when to call in backup and how and who to call for backup.  And don't be afraid to, no matter whose toes or egos get stepped on.  There are jobs, where failing that might mean a bad meal, a bad haircut, loss of income, or a loss of face for someone.  In some positions, failing means people will die.  NEVER forget that.

On Target

Target Acquisition is the location, detection, and identification of a target in sufficient detail to permit the effective employment of lethal and non-lethal means.

It takes more than a good eye, it takes a combination of vision, resolve and strength.  I know that when I first starting shooting rifles, I could do a pretty good grouping for those first few rounds, then it went south.  That was simply a matter of muscle strength. I got a couple of five pound weights, holding one out where a support hand would be, one where my  grip would be. At  home each morning, I'd pull them up, like I was pulling the rifle up quickly to target and hold 30 seconds or so, drop, rest, hold, repeat, 80's music  sounding out a rhythm on the stereo.

"Hammer Time!"

But it's seeing what you are doing that's the most important element of target acquisition, not just maintaining it.

When I was a child, we'd take a vacation every year to the Oregon Coast, renting a small cottage with a view of the beach. Coming down a steep hillside into Cannon Beach, the station wagon dissolving into damp grey light, streams of fog pouring over the road to lie like barely congealed oil, we kids would have all eyes glued to the front windshield.  It was always a contest to see who first could spot the water and call it out.

There it is!  We'll pull ourselves up in the seat seeing that ocean as if for the first time. You've never seen small children so focused, so concentrated. It was something our parents taught us early on.  There is fun, and there is play, but there are times, that for your safety, you need to be able to sit still and truly look.

Eighteen years later, I'm in the left seat of a transport, shooting down the barrel of an instrument approach into a tight runway in the mountains.  We have enough fuel to give it just one try and then go to our alternate airport.  But thanks to a weather system  that didn't bother to read the accu-hunch forecast, there were some serious thunderstorms drifting in that moat between us and our only other option.  We needed to get into this airport,  now, this once. If we blew it, we'd not get a second shot.

There is no range concentration that can match that of pilots that have just one shot at getting in to land or face a dire horizon. If you're lucky, you can pick up the tease of the approach lights and stay in the clouds til you're a hundred or so feet from the ground. But if you break out of that ragged overcast at that point, rain splatting on the windshield like a thousand guppies, doing 130 miles an hour, you'd better have your target in clear view or your day is not going to go well.

As the shotguns and Daisy's of my youth gave way in my middle years to pistols and AR's and a cranky Mauser or two, the ability to see and quickly lock on to a target became more of a priority. Things like humidity and breath suddenly become issues, safety glasses fogging up and things like foliage becoming more than shade when hunting from a blind.  Even eyewear was an issue.  I wear contacts, deciding to get rid of glasses that could be used for vision as well as setting ants on fire.  There's no fogging, and although my vision isn't as "crisp" as glasses when I'm tired, I have the peripheral vision to see the target coming into view if it's a moving one.  As nearsighted as I am now, a Beluga whale could sneak up on me from the side if I wear glasses.

Be sure of your target and what is behind it.  Wise words, especially with distance.  How often do we hear of someone accidentally shot and killed while hunting because someone mistook them for a moose.  Frankly if some someone mistook me for a moose, I'd be visiting Weight Watchers after I wrapped their firearm around their ears.  But it happens , first a sound, a rustle of brush, and some muttonhead fires, not waiting to notice that his target is sporting a Cabelas hat, not a full rack.

It is so easy to just react without a true target (patience grasshopper). I've sat in more than one blind, feet freezing, stomach growling, just waiting for it.  You can hear everything,  the retreating darkness, the smell of first light, the delineation of leaves, the Morse code of squirrels chattering their warnings. But you can't really see. Then the forest emerges into smooth, bright shapes, light and shadow and movement, and your eyes can only scan, looking with that tense, unmoving sobriety that is a blind man listening.  If you are lucky you will see it, a flash of fur, a mass of bone that is more fight than surrender.  You make sure it is all there, all four dimensions, solidity, mass, a shape that could be no other than an animal, and something else.  Not hesitation, not fear, but pure and intent assurance as you draw up your weapon.

If you don't CLEARLY know what your target is, keep your finger off the trigger.  If you do, and ONLY when you do, use the front sight of the gun as a guide to aim.   If you are after multiple bogies (i.e. kevlar vested doves) leave your front sight as soon as your next target approaches and as the gun approaches it, sight again and pull the trigger.  Always know where your front sight is.  It will tell you almost anything you could want to know about a shot.  If you're new to shooting, just practice watching the sight, no targets.  When you get used to seeing the sight in recoil, move onto paper. If the shot needs to be dead center precise, the sight needs to be clear. 

I know many people that can shoot faster than their sight picture and do so with the accuracy needed to stop a human target in most situations.  But that involves the instinct of practice and an intimacy with their weapon that someone that takes that firearm out of the nightstand drawer a couple of times a year is not going to have.

Unless you are being mugged by a 18 inch tall paper squirrel, your target is going to be moving.  Remember, as far as triggers- mechanical things all happen at the same speed for each given piece of machinery.  You need to learn to act upon what your eyes tell you.  Like anything else with shooting, that requires practice and concentration.

Practice close up. Practice at a distance. If you have never shot long range, you won't ever forget it, a moment whispered and dreamt about, laid out flat in front of you. In that fleeting moment, you will hold your breath in the presence of power. You count that pulse between heartbeat and breath, compelled into an aesthetic deliberation you don't quite understand but fully desire, faced for the first time in your living history with something proportionate with your capacity for awe.

Target acquisition is when what you have been waiting for comes from an enormous distance. It sometimes comes directly, sometimes coming as if by magic from no where when you least expect it, giving you a clear view after long  dark, days of solitary combat.

My weapons are at rest and dinner is simmering on the stove.  Coming up the long road, the sunlight streaming off of it like shining wind, is an SUV, its form and windows giving no hint of what it brings. 

Inside, a rescue Lab gives a gentle "woof", recognizing the sound and what it means before human ears can even hear its echo. We look up through the light, beyond the drive, beyond the wasted years in which we looked, but never really did see.

We stand in the drive as the vehicle comes into view, bringing up an arm in greeting, in that moment between heartbeat and breath.

On Strength

Nobody can hurt me without my permission. - Mahatma Gandhi Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect. - Ralph Waldo Emerson We should ask God to increase our hope when it is small, awaken it when it is dormant, confirm it when it is wavering, strengthen it when it is weak, and raise it up when it is overthrown. -  John Calvin In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer. -  Albert Camus I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters. - Jane Austen, Pursuasion Now throw the switch and let us begin the battle for the planet. - The Brain, Pinkey and the Brain

So Happy It's Friday

 Uh, I'll have the BSOD and a large coffee please.  

Labor Day Thoughts - Hygge

Hygge. The word comes to mind, especially during a holiday. It's a Danish word that roughly means eating and drinking and being together with friends, a feeling or mood that comes from taking genuine pleasure in making ordinary everyday things simply extraordinary. We don't have any such word in the English language, and life today seems to rarely accommodate such a ritual.

I can be insular and driven. At work, I take no quarter and am not intimidated by blood, death, or bad hair days. Yet at home, I am a caregiver, as my Mom was with us. Even when she was tired, she would make us homemade cookies and pastries to have after school or with our lunch. Shortening scrapped from its can, dough formed and rounded, rolled flat, and rolled up, carefully studded with fragrant spices and baked golden.

When at school, I'd open up my lunch box, and find every given day, a peanut butter sandwich, an apple, coins for milk, an ice cream, and a small tinfoil packet I'd unfold with great care. Inside, the scraps of her making, dusted with cinnamon and sugar, soft and whole. I do not share. I scrape the foil clean.

Dinner at the big table wasn't just on a holiday. It was every night but "TV Tray in the Family Room Night". But on those dinners around the big table, I can't recall so much of what we talked about or who said what, but I do remember the gathering, the smells of beef and fresh vegetables, of laughter, of stories from school, from work, a discarding of weighty thought and the simple gathering of those you love, for the nourishment of the soul. I can't recreate the exact moments through what I cook, or to who I serve it, but I still can remember how those simple meals made me feel, the redemptive power of the communion of those who love one another.

When Dad sold the family home the only things I wished from it were small; things of worth, but perhaps not value. A couple are tattered cookbooks in which are written Mom's notes of when she made something new and if we liked it. One was a folder in which Mom placed handwritten menu plans for family gatherings and holidays and some of our favorites, like the cinnamon rolls I made for EJ this morning. Some were planned dishes, and some were instructions for the meal itself. Piece after piece of small lined paper, on which her handwriting lay.

So many scraps of paper, so many meals, some dated 1962 when she and Dad were still new in the house.

It was the house she lived in the remainder of her life and to which they brought me and my brother home as small, scared children, to heal with them, to belong, as family.

As the smells of cinnamon and cardamon fill the air, I hold those pieces of paper and feel the warmth, a woman preparing food for her family, for her friends, small hieroglyphs that tell me nothing but that someone loved us, scribbled messages that would not make sense to everyone but will never fail to be understood.

At that family table, we learned many things. We learned patience (I tell you, young lady, you are going to sit here until you eat that squash!) We learned aerodynamics (spoon at 45 degrees, wind from the SE at two mph, PEAS, initiate launch sequence!) We learned thanks, and not just during a holiday meal. We learned comfort and safety.

As I went out on my own, even when I didn't have a family of my own, there was a gathering, even if I just invited over my bachelor colleagues, put together a ham and some homemade mashed potatoes and the trimmings while we listened to music and actually talked about something other than our jobs. For it was the sharing and the care that was important, not necessarily what we ate.

Hygge, it's something I learned from my Mom as I watched her growing up. Even as Dad bought her the latest appliances to ease her burden as she grew sicker, she continued to make things as her Mom and generations past had done, stirring by hand, shaping and crafting, only forming a brief and sullen armistice with the food processor when chemo was winning.

She made meals in health and she made meals in sickness, those last days where there was a look on her face as if having seen something which she knows existed even as she refused to believe in it. She'd pause, blink as if the sun was in her eyes, then go back to peeling the carrots for one of perhaps thousands of relish trays she made in her life. Then she'd set it up on that old dining room table with the captain's chairs that looked like something taken off an old schooner, a table that looked out of place among all the 70's orange and yellow shag carpeting but was as timeless as that moment.

She carried more than meals to the table, she carried us, with broken dreams and broken hearts, holding us together, even as she left us.

"You did good Mom," I say to an empty kitchen, the curtains in the window moving with the opening of a door as if breath. Then the curtains fall still, the room quiet as if this hushed little space is isolated in space, without time or dimension, hollowed whisperings of love and safety amidst the turmoil and fury of time. There is no light in the room now, but for one small kitchen candle, the flame standing sentient over the wick as I wait for the sound of steps on the porch.