http://www.rowleyassoc.com Using the art and science of psychotherapy to drive leadership and business performance Thu, 19 Jan 2012 18:09:35 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 http://www.rowleyassoc.com/2009/12/the-war-in-afghanistan-%e2%80%93-a-lesson-in-objectives-and-consensus-building/ http://www.rowleyassoc.com/2009/12/the-war-in-afghanistan-%e2%80%93-a-lesson-in-objectives-and-consensus-building/#comments Mon, 07 Dec 2009 17:00:27 +0000 Anna Rowley http://www.rowleyassoc.com/?p=519 To be honest I’m not one for consensus building. I worry it produces groupthink or a regression to the objective people think the leader wants rather than the one he needs. However, a recent article in the Washington Post, chronicling how President Obama and his cabinet decided on the latest strategy for Afghanistan, was a serious lesson in how to manage by consensus. Rather than just ‘pick a number of troops’ out of the air Obama wanted his team to define the problem they needed to solve and then develop the strategy.
The critical turning point in achieving his objective came when General McChrystal, the top US and NATO commander described his mission in Afghanistan. His objective was to ‘Defeat the Taliban. Secure the Population’. His audience in the situation room had a Eureka moment – the Generals objective was, quite simply, impossible. The Post reporters describe the aha moment for Obama, his cabinet and advisors came when they realized they could not kill every member of the Taliban. The problem the strategy needed to solve was not how to defeat the Taliban but how to degrade their influence. A small but significant change in the Mission the military sought to prosecute. What followed was a series of meetings designed to craft consensus around how this new Mission could be achieved. Once a plan of record was drafted Obama asked each member of his team one question – “Do you support this strategy?” Until and unless he had unanimity, and shared accountability, their would be no strategy.
Prior to making his decision Obama had been accused of dithering by NATO chiefs, and as being too technocratic, too deliberative and too lacking in emotion by critics inside the Beltway. As an answer to these criticisms I ask this simple question, if your son or daughter was in harms way who would you want to create strategy, someone who solicits input, clearly defines the problem to be solved, and isn’t swayed by emotion, or a more seat-of-his-pants Commander in Chief who wears his emotions on his sleeves and bull-dozes his strategy through. Come to think of it wasn’t he just in the White House?

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