Birthday Interview: Defense Secretary Jim Mattis
Jim Mattis is a retired United States Marine Corps four-star general. He served as the 26th United States Secretary of Defense.
[Editor’s Note: General Jim Mattis just celebrated his birthday over the weekend. Here is our interview with him where he gives a deep dive into the personal aspects of leadership and strategic thinking. We discuss some of his favorite thinkers, books, music, and lessons from history — including how he learned from the 1880s Geronimo Campaign how to hunt Osama bin Laden. He shares how he got his “Mad Dog” nickname, as well as what he learned from sci-fi and Starship Troopers to train Marines.]
“The Tyranny of the Here and Now”
Max Raskin: From your reading lists as a commander, it’s clear that you were concerned with terror and have lots of recommendations on Islam and the Middle East. But as new threats emerge and evolve, how do you get up to speed and stay smart on them?
Jim Mattis: As a leader – whether you're a second lieutenant in the infantry or you're a four star commanding 250,000 U.S. and allied troops – you must take responsibility for your own personal understanding. You have to engage the right people, and it also involves a lot of reading. A historical framework will allow you to ask the right questions of the real experts – people who've lived with the subjects for a long time.
I also kept a member of the intelligence community with me for my last years as a four star and my time as Sec Def [Secretary of Defense]. Her job was to be in every meeting, look broadly at what we would discuss, and also to challenge any assumptions we made. That’s because oftentimes the problem as you come to grips with an emerging threat is that due to the unknowns you've made certain assumptions. So I had someone whose primary job was to raise her hand and say, “No, that assumption is no longer the case.”
As you try to plan ahead as a commander or Secretary of Defense, you try to look out for the person after next in your job, not just the next person. You’re playing the sentinel role. In that role, you have to make certain you have lines of communication coming in that are quite broad in their own way. You don't get sucked totally into the tyranny of the here and now and the “in” basket.
MR: As a practical matter, how do you create that space for yourself so you're not always responding to the next email?
JM: Just to confirm the validity of your question, I was sitting with General Ray Odierno, rest in peace. He became the chief staff of the army and was the commander in Iraq. The two of us were having dinner one night – I think I was the MARCENT [Marine Forces Central Command] Commander at that time and I'd been selected or nominated to go up to be a NATO Supreme Commander. I said, “Ray, what is the biggest deficiency among our four stars today?” And without a moment's hesitation, General Odierno said, “Lack of reflection.” He said we're overly focused on getting things done, but we’re now at the very rank when we need to do the most reflection. We're not making time for it because if we don't respond to certain things right away, given the speed of decision making today, we can spend six weeks undoing the damage of people who are largely operating in a strategy-free mode.
I thought about that because when I left active duty, I was out at Stanford at the Hoover Institution and George Schultz used to stop by my office. He was a World War II Marine and got out as a captain…but he was the senior Marine on campus, not me, the retired four star. He was one of only two men in our history to hold four cabinet-level posts.
We would talk every morning after his morning workout at age 97 – he made it to 100, God bless him. I asked him the very question you asked, because it was just something I was never able to do as much as I wanted, as much as I tried to prioritize reflective time.
He said once or twice a week as Secretary of State, he'd go out to his secretary and say, “Unless it's the president or my wife, no phone calls for the next two hours.” And then he would sit there with a blank pad of paper. He would not catch up on letters he owed or on emails or whatever it would be today. He just sat there with the blank paper saying, “What am I not doing? What am I missing? Where am I starting to feel uneasy?” And he would just use a couple hours reflecting. That’s discipline, and that discipline is critical to leaders.
MR: Why is it so critical?
JM: Because especially in the military, but probably in most government positions, you deal with crisis after crisis. You careen from one to another.
What makes a crisis a crisis is it's unpredictable. If you could predict it, you would've dealt with it, mitigated it, avoided it, whatever. And the people who are affected by a crisis are not in control. So you're in a race between time and knowledge.
Take COVID. Doctors, scientists, nurses are racing to figure out how it’s transmitted. How do you treat it? Can we make a vaccine? And so you make assumptions and those assumptions must reflect competence and experience because you don't have time to wait for good input.
MR: Did you have a similar practice to Schultz when you were either a commander or Secretary of Defense?
JM: Yes, and like I said, imperfectly. I didn't take enough time, but I made it a practice either on my long runs or sitting in the back of an airplane heading to the Middle East while people snoozed – I would take the time to do it.
I kept people around like the intelligence officer who challenged my assumptions. I also kept a deputy around who was a very open minded three-star Navy SEAL. He had many of the strengths I thought I perhaps didn't. As Dirty Harry said, “A man’s got to know his limitations.” So I tried to find people who backstopped me in the areas I was weak. By doing that, I didn't get bogged down into areas that required me to do more study. I knew I had somebody there that could do that aspect, and I listened to them, which saved me time when I could do some reflection, which often involves expanding the problem to solve it.
General Mozart
MR: Everyone knows that you're a reader, but I read your letter to your men on the eve of the 2003 Iraq invasion. Do you spend a lot of time with words and with thinking about how to present information in the proper way?
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