Untangling Colin Powell’s leadership
I recently came across a review (here) by Elizabeth Spaulding of Colin Powell: Imperfect Patriot, by Jeffrey Matthews.
Up front, I haven’t read the book itself--among other reasons, I’m on a hiatus from book purchases until at least June while I work on my tsundoku problem. But I think, based on what I read, that the book is probably worth pursuing.
Beyond having admired Powell, I had only a fuzzy appreciation for his career. But my eye was caught by this passage as I scanned the review (my emphasis):
Matthews does not always elaborate on the tension arising from Powell’s attempt to be both a good leader and a good follower. He implies but never outright says that ultimately Powell may have been comfortable with his status as exalted follower.
The second sentence is a curious one. What’s wrong with being an “exalted follower”? And what does that phrase mean in the context of a career like Powell’s?
Where We Sit Is Where We Judge Our Leaders
One clue comes from an offhand comment a few sentences later. The reviewer seems disappointed that (my emphasis again):
Powell—who...enjoyed remarkably high approval ratings for over a decade—chose not to run for and was never elected to any office. In some senses, Powell’s career is a story of what might have been. We are left wanting to know why.
This seems like a variant of the “Great Person” theory of history or leadership: if we hold that the Great People of highest repute in democracies are the most senior elected representatives, then Powell may be something of an underachiever.
It makes sense. Spaulding is a political scientist who has written on the Presidency (Truman’s) and the mythic-scale interaction of policy and the real world known as the Cold War. So this may put him into a relatable context for her.
This mirrors a very common point of view. How far someone’s gone in a competitive environment is a simple, common shorthand for achievement. It’s a very personalized measure of success.
How To Judge?
Having introduced this theme, Spaulding doesn’t pull the thread very far. She does compare Powell and General George C. Marshall, somewhat to Powell’s detriment:
When one considers [Marshall’s] term as Secretary of State on top of [World War 2], it becomes clear that he belongs in the pantheon of American statesmen.
Will Powell’s contributions to the Reagan and first Bush administrations, loyal service to presidents of both parties, and impressive professional accomplishments earn him a place in that pantheon? Still lacking history’s long view, it is too soon to say. [Long section on Matthews’ treatment of the Iraq War omitted.] From today’s vantage, though, it is unlikely that Powell will join Marshall—and Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt—in the company of America’s greatest statesmen.
It seems to me this begs the question of how we judge leaders--what are the mental yardsticks by which we measure their accomplishments? Do we even have a theory about what a leader should be?
If Marshall is to be judged less harshly, is it because he was inherently a better leader than Powell?
Or is it that he had the advantage of better timing or better luck, or some other intangible advantage?
Can we balance an oversized accomplishment (the Second World War and after for Marshall) or an oversized demerit (the second Iraq War for Powell) against the totality of someone’s record?
This is tricky--and Spaulding doesn’t give much of a sense of what guidelines or rules of thumb were being applied. This makes is very hard to argue with the conclusion.
Thinking about this sparked me to consider how I’d assess the aspects of Powell’s career highlighted in the review--what, basically, is my theory of what we can learn about leadership from Colin Powell’s career from the facts outlined in the review?
Personal or Institutional Success?
First, I think we should step back from the personalized type of measure of success described (caricatured?) just above. It’s close to the default setting in our culture, especially in politics. It has a huge drawback, unfortunately: history is full of senior figures no one wanted to follow in a crisis.
Rank and position don’t describe performance the way outcomes and impact do, particularly when dealing with those at the helm of large organizations. This requires us to assess their institutional impact. This is a subtle, tricky thing to gauge but is a better long-term measure of a leader. I don’t think it scales well, though, and it’s inherent very subjective.
This might be in part because it involves judging what someone did for someone else. Mistakes in the run-up to the Iraq War are things I can relate to. Powell’s managerial qualities at State or the profound impact he apparently had as Chief of the Joint Staff are not. Unless you were there, they’re just anecdotes.
Tentative conclusion: History may judge Powell harshly for the UN speech, but his leadership in key institutions may well be more significant for the institutions he led and the nation as a whole. Are they comparable in impact? Hard to say.
Context Is Underrated
Second, our celebrity-driven culture celebrates Great People, often rightly. We forget, though, that they’re often made or broken by mundane aspects of daily life in the institutions they came from.
Powell excelled at advancing through the military, and by all accounts was capable in his policy roles. In both cases, he did an excellent job of working the system to get support for himself and his positions:
While advancing in the Army, Powell benefited from direct interventions by career guides[.] If not for them and others...Powell might have plateau at the level of either Brigadier General or Lieutenant General. [A]nother essential influence: Powell’s wife, Alma. For Powell, part of “leadership is all about followership” means that his family, especially his wife, supported and enabled his successful career.
His career seems to demonstrate that skill in using the system and finding support networks, whether they’re institutional or personal, can scale with increased seniority. It is an open question whether they would have supported him as fully or successfully in other areas of effort, at still more senior (or simply more prominent) levels.
There’s good research on how superstars in the private sector often struggle when they move between companies that gives reason to actively doubt this. If history judges him harshly for his legacy as Secretary of State, which in many ways was the culmination of his whole career arc, what might have happened if he’d wound up in an office with less structure and support?
Tentative conclusion: Powell’s success in the Army and in cabinet positions would not automatically mean he would have had as much--or any--success in electoral politics.
Domain Competency Is Important
Another aspect think was critical for Powell’s success: each of his positions was built on his success in the previous one. This may sound obvious, but it helped position Powell for success in his more senior assignments. Powell did not go into being SECSTATE cold--he knew the policy arena from his time as CJCS and the National Security Advisor.
These roles in turn were built on previous jobs, going back to Powell’s initial experiences as junior officer in Vietnam. This no doubt influenced him later--consider the Powell-Weinburger Doctrine on when and how the US should fight wars.
Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett talk about the critical importance of knowing where your circle of competence is. It’s interesting to speculate about whether it’s coincidental that Powell’s most bruising experience, his tenure as SECSTATE was also the one least directly connected to his formative experiences in the military.
Tentative conclusion: With the caveat that I don’t know enough to have a real opinion about this, Powell’s struggle with the Iraq war run-up may have been a result of his operating, if not outside then at least on the margins of his talents and experience.
Conclusions
If my earlier points are true (or at least close to it, or somewhat realistic) it follows that the “exalted follower” comment at the beginning of the review is misplaced. I believe this is the case; from the information presented in the review and what I know of the man, it’s hard for me to make the case that he was in some way complacent or lacking in judgment.
I would not have expected to ever spend so much effort on a book review. But, my reactions to it forced me to consider things I wouldn’t have otherwise, for which I’m grateful--even if this post may err on the side of being critical.
Having tried to tease out some conclusions from the book review, the next step is to try to either validate or refute them. For this, I look forward to the opportunity to read further on Powell at some point in the near future.