Opinion
McChrystal: An Individual's Relationship With Risk Is Innate and Rarely Changes
“I think everyone has a relationship with risk, and it doesn't really change. You may get a little better with it, a little more experienced, But you have a certain Ability to deal with that uncertainty. And I think that comes from birth.”
What-if
McChrystal: With Al Qaeda's Background, I Might Have Reached Identical Conclusions
“Rather than hate the Al Qaeda operatives because they were bloodthirsty and they would do horrible things, you had to step back and say, if I'd had their life journey and their perspective, I might very well Have the exact same conclusions and activities as th…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
McChrystal: The US Government Possessed All Information Necessary to Stop 9/11
“And I think of the nine 11 attacks where we had all the information necessary to stop the World Trade Towers being hit. Inside the U S government, but we couldn't connect the dots”
Insight
McChrystal: Executives Must Defer to Frontline Operators Despite Having Remote Visibility
“Don't fall into the self-deception that you have a better understanding of what's happening than they do. Use that, that position and that visibility to gain some perspective, but then listen, talk, do everything else you can and support the person on the grou…”
Insight
McChrystal: The Military Systematically Reports What It Wants to Be True
“The truth is, if you sit back in D.C. And you listen to what the military tells you know, the military, God bless us, will say what we want to be true. It's not that we're lying, but we've been given a mission and we desperately want it to be going well, and s…”
Assertion Supported
McChrystal: Robert E. Lee Killed More US Soldiers Than Any Commander
“No commander in history has killed more American soldiers, United States soldiers, than Robert E. Lee.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
McChrystal: The Next War May Be Won Before People Realize It Began
“And in fact, the next war may well be won or lost before people actually realize it's on. Maybe so fast that that's occurred.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
McChrystal: Future warfare will feature countless uncoordinated adversaries
“We can have countless opponents, and they don't all have to be coordinated. They just have to share a general common intent to do us harm, which makes them more difficult because you have to defeat each one, not, you can't defeat them as a network, and that's …”
Opinion
McChrystal: AI and Big Data Will Not Solve Intelligence Detection Overload
“Now, some people will say, well, big data will solve this. We use artificial intelligence and we'll crunch and we'll see patterns and trends. And to a degree that will be of help. But I don't think it will be the panacea. I think there will still be too much n…”
Insight
McChrystal: Appointing a Chief Risk Officer Creates Organizational Moral Hazard
“There's a moral hazard here in that organizations like Lehman Brothers, who named a very capable chief risk officer Created an impression inside the organization that other individuals didn't have to worry as much about risk because they had a person who was r…”
Assertion Supported
McChrystal: Lehman Brothers Excluded Its Chief Risk Officer From Investment Meetings
“And she wasn't allowed in things like an investment committee meetings where the biggest risk decisions were made.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Bloomberg Told McChrystal Only Elected Executives Invest in Long-Term Infrastructure
“I had Mayor Mike Bloomberg one day tell me that he thought that only executives, meaning elected mayors, presidents, and whatnot, are likely to do long-term infrastructure things. At the time he was talking about a project to make New York City more resilient …”
Insight
McChrystal: Bureaucrats Avoid Accountability by Stalling Decisions Instead of Deciding
“And that's to your point of sometimes not making a decision is making a decision. It's creating an outcome, but avoiding responsibility for it. And it's pretty common in bureaucracies where people are not incentivized to take risk. Where people tend to be puni…”
Insight
McChrystal: The Military Outperforms Civilian Firms by Heavily Investing in Leadership
“They, they've decided that that's an expenditure that is not worth the cost, and so the vast majority of them don't, ah, invest there, whereas the military, for all its weaknesses, spends an awful lot of time developing leaders, and as I described, the militar…”
Insight
McChrystal: Personal Mythology and Extreme Habits Help Leaders Inspire Teams
“On the other side of the coin, you know, there's a value in sort of mythology sometimes because people started thinking, you know, McChrystal, some kind of Zen warrior who, you know, the stoic who eats one meal a day and he's, Etc. He's never slept, slept in h…”
Insight
Stanley McChrystal: Risk Equals Threats Multiplied by Internal Vulnerabilities
“If you think of it as threats times vulnerabilities equals risk, then you suddenly realize that threats are things that are out there that are inevitably coming our way in most cases, and then our vulnerability to them. And so if we can drive threats down low …”
Insight
McChrystal: Swatting Away Every Threat in Complex Environments Is a Fool's Errand
“We're really not very good at seeing where all the threats are coming from, particularly in a complex environment. And also we're not very good at predicting when they will come. So I think it's a fool's errand to try to think you're going to swat away every t…”
Insight
McChrystal: Tech Improves Risk Assessment, but Inertia Keeps Society Vulnerable
“And so I would argue on the one hand, there is the ability to assess the risk with greater accuracy and more timeliness, but we have problems in our society and our organizations now where it's very hard to overcome inertia, either The inaction or the momentum…”
Insight
McChrystal: The CIA Prioritizes Long-Term Networks While Military Drives Short-Term Expedience
“The central intelligence agency took a longer term view. They would operate in an area and they would build intelligence networks and capabilities because they were going to be there forever in some form or fashion. The military was typically there for much sh…”
Insight
McChrystal: Determine decision deadlines by back-planning from required execution time
“Your one technique that's worked very well for me is you start with what action would need to be executed to be effective. And then you back plan and figure out how long it would take to implement that action. And so that's your decision point. You must make t…”
Insight
McChrystal: Voice communication captures vital emotional signals missed by text
“There was incredible value in voice communication. You could talk to a subordinate and you could tell by the tone of their voice, how their morale was, Whether they were upset, whether they were shaky, and you could hopefully be a reassuring voice to them that…”
Insight
McChrystal: Corporate Demands for Innovation Clash With Penalties for Real Failures
“I hear leaders say, I want people to take more risk. I want, you know, push the bounds, all the rhetoric that you hear about that. But then you ask them to point out the people who've failed significantly and where they are in the company now. And typically th…”
Insight
McChrystal: Bad outcomes do not mean decisions were bad
“And just because you got it wrong or you get a bad outcome, doesn't mean the decision was bad. You can make the best possible decision and bad luck or randomness. Similarly, you can make a stupid decision, get a good outcome and convince yourself you're a geni…”
Insight
McChrystal: Decisive CEOs Have Much Greater Maneuver Space Than Peacetime Military Leaders
“Civilian leaders can do that's much better is they can make big decisions. A military leader in combat can make a big decision, but in peacetime, laws, regulations, tables of organization equipments really narrow them down to a pretty small area of maneuver sp…”
Stanley McChrystal