My basic leadership principles

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I learned these leadership principles as a soldier:

• Do my job and my duty.
• Take ownership.
• Accomplish the mission.
• Improve my craft with technical and tactical proficiency.
• Set (define and exemplify) the standard for my soldiers.
• Know my soldiers.
• Take care of my soldiers.
• Create leaders from my soldiers.
• Peer leadership.
• Active followership.
• Respect the enemy.

I carried over those principles and added these leadership principles as a student activist:

• A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and the beginning steps are no less than creation.
• Inspire with Vision.
• Do.
• Seize opportunities with aggression and intelligence, for I understand opportunities multiply as they are seized.
• Learn the parameters of the operating environment and its players, and continually update my intelligence.
• Strategize and outline a framework to be filled in.
• Be imaginative and think big, even if we can only act small for now.
• Identify the group's and mission's needs.
• Know my own strengths and weaknesses to fulfill the needs.
• Seek out teammates and resources to fulfill the needs.
• Communicate and foster a culture of communication.
• Articulate the 'why', not just the 'how' and 'what'.
• Knowledge is power and actionable information is lifeblood.
• Extroverted outreach and public engagement and a highly visible public profile change the operating environment and create beacons to attract support, opportunities, and likeminded people.
• In weighing risk vs reward, I give more weight to why than why not.
• Uncertainty is normal.
• A risk-averse, zero-defect mentality that seeks certainty is a self-restricting handicap that's not necessary.
• Push the envelope.
• At the same time, prepare to mitigate risks and recover.
• Account for unintended consequences as best I can in my risk analysis.
• Failures, mistakes, and defeats - if processed tactically - advance the learning curve for victory.
• OODA and learn.
• Have a future-time orientation and think ahead to the medium term, long term, and horizon, though horizon plans are inherently fragile.
• Cost permitting, act to set up future maneuvers even when the near-term benefit is obscure and the future maneuver is only a possibility that's beyond my administration.
• Anticipate and plan ahead.
• Put out as many fires as I can before they start, because I'll have my hands full with the fires that inevitably flare up.
• Do the best I can with what I have to work with.
• Logistics and cost/benefit analysis.
• Be creative.
• Improvise to stretch resources.
• Where appropriate, design a group action to serve multiple purposes.
• Don't reinvent the wheel if I don't have to; observe what other groups do effectively and tailor it to our mission.
• When inventing the wheel is necessary, innovate.
• Strengthen the organizational base.
• Every group action, in addition to its near-term benefit, should generate an investment for developing the group.
• Timely event follow-up to invest the event's profits is important.
• Productive reporting of a quality event is more important than a well-attended event.
• Grow the brand and guard the group's public identity.
• Control the narrative.
• Constantly network.
• Gather good people.
• A good team, well led, in the right structure is greater than the sum of its parts.
• Group intelligence and capabilities should multiply when combined.
• Know my teammates and position them to be their most productive.
• Balance leading from the front with facilitating teammates and accept that facilitating them means equal-or-more personal effort with less personal credit.
• Give credit where credit is due.
• Mold a team of aggressive, smart leaders who take ownership of the mission and do.
• Prepare the group to continue mission without me.
• As best I can, staff my team with people I trust, but also recognize people I don't trust who could be useful.
• Protect myself and the group from the people I don't trust but use for the mission.
• If a mission-essential subordinate is doing a bad job, I can try to rehabilitate him, but I will fire him if the problem persists.
• Organizational structure is a constant, so make it as ergonomic as possible.
• Bureaucracy obstructs when done wrong and facilitates when done right.
• Be meticulous with the details of management, records, and organization.
• Set out criteria and goals.
• At the same time, adapt and be flexible; when shit happens, make it an opportunity.
• Acting for the good of the group or mission may entail a decision that clashes with a personal belief.
• Defining the problem frames the solution.
• Activists seek controlled destruction as a necessary stage of creation.
• Activist passion is fuel for cause-based movements because it's explosive, so handle with care.
• Disappointment with the return on investment and frustration are normal.
• Near-term success does not guarantee long-term success and vice versa.
• The disposition of a leadership decision may only manifest years later.
• The most important leadership principle was my answer to 'What are you prepared to do?'.*

*Answer: What is needed, and it was exhausting. Jim Malone's negotiation with Elliot Ness in The Untouchables reminds me of my negotiation with Oscar when he recruited me to be his vice-president.

Excerpt from Leaders and Lanes about what I learned about leadership from my high school bowling team:

I learned that leadership comes from within and that a good leader does not set out to win popularity contests. Charm and charisma help, but they are not the main traits required of effective leadership. A leader must be tough, smart and reliable. The job comes first. Friendships come second. Popularity is not a concern. The path of leadership begins with a vision that is followed by sacrifice, endless work, anxiety, and loneliness. Leaders must be responsibility embodied; excuses are reserved for politicians and critics. After high school, the Army tried to teach me about prioritizing "the mission and my men" ahead of myself. It wasn't necessary--I had learned the lesson on the bowling team years earlier.

Our best and worst leaders are revealed in times of adversity, when there are no easy answers and leaders are forced to rely on themselves. That's why our most beloved presidents are associated with our nation's wars. For the same reason, bowling teams are an ideal training ground for leadership. High school bowling differs from football, basketball, baseball, and other sports, which are granted automatic respect. Even winning high school bowling teams are usually stigmatized. A bowling captain must work against the status quo, peer judgment and, most of all, his own insecurities and those of his teammates to shape his bowlers into a proud team.

A good leader sees the dormant possibilities in his surroundings, a skill that I learned as a high school bowler. At first, I accepted the popular image of the bowling team as shameful--until we defeated a highly ranked opponent in the playoffs. I realized then how special the team could be. I saw its hidden potential, and my world changed. From then on, the status quo stopped being the only way and became just one of many options.

During my next three years of high school, I learned some enduring lessons about leadership while I built the bowling team that I envisioned. To my surprise, few of my teammates were as motivated as I was to build the team. I had hoped to share the work equally with them, but I was forced to separate myself from my friends to become the team leader. For the first time in my life, I challenged authority, in the form of my coach, because he was not making the changes I knew were necessary. From the same coach, I learned that hard work and good decisions are not always recognized, and that initiative must be its own reward. . . . The bowling team taught me that a good leader is the difference between success and failure; . . . I have learned that even among the best and brightest, leadership is a rare, valuable and an absolutely necessary trait. I firmly believe now that in everything--this world, this life--good leaders make all the difference.

Eric