August 6, 2024
by Stephen T. Messenger
My daughter started playing volleyball many years ago and became quite an athlete. In her first year of competitive volleyball, she was asked by a woman at church, “Do you like playing because it’s fun, or because you like to win?”
My daughter thought about this for less than two seconds and replied, “What do you mean? They’re the same thing. Fun is winning and winning is fun.” Now, I felt like a horrible father because those words were most likely taken from me, but I also agree with the premise.
Everyone loves being on a winning team. American sports culture is a prime example of our Nation’s obsession with winning. In three of the four American sports—basketball, baseball, and ice hockey—a tie is not possible. In arguably the most popular American sport, football, the teams can play to a tie, but the NFL added an overtime rule in 1974 to limit the number of draws. Since that change 50 years ago, only 29 games have ended in a tie compared to 210 the previous 50 years.
Most other sports, minus soccer, follow suit. Golf goes to sudden death, tennis uses a tiebreaker, NASCAR will continue racing until someone wins (“If you’re not first, you’re last…”), and the Olympic athletes battle it out for gold at all costs.
Our American culture is one of winning, and it translates into leading others. Everyone wants to be on a winning team and organizational culture is better when ethical leaders generate success upon success by, with, and through their people. It’s incumbent upon us to ruthlessly chase results and lead our teams to victory.
The Warrior Monk
Retired Marine Corps General James Mattis is a warfighter laser-focused on victory. He truly understands the mission of our armed forces, to “deploy, fight, and win our Nation’s wars,” and embodies battlefield success.
Across his 41-year military career, he led marines at the tip of the spear during the Persian Gulf War in 1991 and the initial invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. His last military assignment was at the head of U.S. Central Command from 2010 to 2013, overseeing all American forces in the Middle East and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His civil service culminated as the Secretary of Defense for both President Obama and President Trump.
Mattis is known as the warrior monk because of his prolific reading and studying. The author of the 2018 U.S. National Defense Strategy when he was Defense Secretary, Mattis made a decisive shift in America’s security priorities from combating terrorism to great power competition with near-peer competitors and lesser adversaries such as Iran and North Korea.
Mattis understood the need to win at all levels, from small tactical skirmishes to the global stage. You can hear it in his language: “I don’t lose any sleep at night over the potential for failure. I cannot even spell the word.” American loss on the battlefield is unacceptable, and we must do everything in our power to succeed.
In his National Defense Strategy, he outlined three priorities: a strategic environment, strengthened allies, and technology and weapons modernization and development. For leaders to win at any echelon, these are three core issues we must master. Winning requires understanding our environment, building coalitions, and having the best equipment to complete the mission.
Winning in Our Organization
Our people demand the same winning mindset from us. The first three leadership qualities in this BRAG+1 series framework were about taking care of people: being where they are, putting them above ourselves, and being resilient to life’s attacks. But this fourth one is an attribute that our people insist upon: winning.
To do so, we must focus on Mattis’ three priorities.
1. The Strategic Environment. Leaders understand the bigger picture and where to generate wins. We have to be able to see the big picture around us and place blood and treasure at those points to achieve strategic results. We can’t be winning battles but losing wars.
Whether this is money for our company or defeating an enemy on the battlefield, there’s always more going on than what we see. For example, we must know that our shareholder profits rise and fall based on a myriad of factors, and just because we won every major victory in Vietnam doesn’t mean the history books declared us the winners.
Leaders understand strategy, and then create wins based on a deepened understanding of the situation.
2. Strong Allies. Very seldom do people do great things alone. Mattis believed in leveraging global partners to deter enemies and fight wars if needed. We need to create alliances and partners where we serve to harness the full potential of those in our organization and outside of it.
John Kotter in his book Leading Change, talked about developing guiding coalitions—find key players with influence to drive our objectives forward. We generate victories by getting everyone rowing in the same direction and ruthlessly focus on success. Once we all have the same vision and shared understanding of what wins look like, we can work together to achieve them.
Leaders develop allies and partners to achieve collective results that everyone can see and celebrate.
3. Equipment Modernization. Every organization needs tools to have success. A winning sports team has training and game day equipment to have a competitive advantage. A lethal military has quality and updated weapons, supplies, transportation, and equipment. A thriving business has all the materials they need to accomplish their goals.
You have to spend money to make money. Leaders understand that we must invest in our people, and that means providing them with the stuff they need to do their jobs. If we’re to achieve wins, this means focusing on our people and equipment to provide them with what’s needed to win.
Leaders ensure victory is possible by building the best trained, led, and equipped force possible. Without the necessary tools, our teams will struggle to meet their goals.
Focus on Victory
Americans love a good win. Whether in sports, career, or life, we like to be successful. Often, the most effective way we can improve the morale of our people is to win. Going home a champion every night after ethical, hard work does wonders for our team’s mental well-being as individuals and as groups.
To achieve those victories, we need to know and communicate the strategic picture, leverage partnerships, and provide our people with the best equipment needed to do their jobs. By focusing on these three items and ruthlessly striving for ethical victories in our organization, we create stronger teams.
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This series is part of our BRAG+1 Leadership Philosophy. If you’re just joining us, start from the beginning on 16 January: A Team to BRAG about and continue from there:
Boots: Put Boots on the Ground
Regimentals: Place Service over Self
Armor: Be Resilient to Life’s Attacks
Gun: Close with and Destroy the Enemy
+1 (Belt): Not a Hint, Sniff, nor Whiff of Impropriety
This website is a personal blog and all writings, podcasts, opinions, and posts are the authors’ own and do not represent the views of the United States Army nor any other organization. Podcast music credit in this audio file is to: “Alex Productions – Legends” is under a Creative Commons license (CC BY 3.0). / @alexproductionsnocopyright
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