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Interview with Jason Santamaria By Sonshi.com Business is war. Whether or not you agree with the statement, there are many valuable lessons to be learned from the military. Naturally, there is no shortage of books on the subject. But as readers we need to separate the wheat from the chaff. We at Sonshi.com want to introduce you to a book that will become a classic and required reading in the top business schools around the world: The Marine Corps Way: Using Maneuver Warfare to Lead a Winning Organization. Co-author Jason A. Santamaria was kind enough to sit down and share with us his experiences. Prior to co-founding the change management advisory firm, Santamaria & Martino LLC, Jason Santamaria worked as an associate in Morgan Stanley's investment banking division in New York and as a business analyst at McKinsey & Company in Houston, TX. From 1994-1998, he served as an artillery officer in the United States Marine Corps, where held the positions of battery commander, battery executive officer, platoon commander, fire support coordinator, and forward observer. From 1993-1994, he conducted research in international economics in Venezuela as a J. William Fulbright Scholar. His
education includes a BA in Economics from the University of Texas at
Austin, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa, and an MBA from the Wharton
School at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2003, Jason received from Secretary of State Colin Powell the first-ever Harrison Schmitt Fulbright Student Alumni Leadership Award for his academic successes, leadership accomplishments, and contributions to the Fulbright program. Jason has presented to numerous U. S. corporations and has served as a guest lecturer at The Wharton School. In addition to co-authoring The Marine Corps Way, he has co-authored three highly regarded business articles, two of which appeared in Harvard Business Review. To learn more about Jason Santamaria and his book The Marine Corps Way, please visit the official website at http://themarinecorpsway.com. He and Vincent Martino also have a blog: http://santamariamartino.blogspot.com/.
Santamaria:
Many companies today are struggling with how to deal with: 1) uncertainty,
2) a disordered market environment, 3) disruptive change, 4) a loss
of the sense personal security stemming from the heightened threat of
global terrorism, 5) increased regulatory scrutiny and accountability
stemming from all the scandals that have been plaguing Corporate America,
and 6) resource limitations. In a nutshell, companies have been waking
up with splitting headaches "the morning after" the frenzy
that occurred in the late 1990s. And they are realizing that they need
to invest in many areas that they neglected - most notably leadership,
ethics and culture - as they raced to stay on top of booming market
demand Decentralized,
outward-looking, free-wheeling, and risk-embracing, maneuver warfare
is an ideal means to deal with this imperfect world. It is specifically
designed to achieve a maximum impact with minimal expenditure of
resources in the face of the challenges mentioned above. And it
emphasizes trust, integrity, unselfishness, and initiative
as keys to success. Effectively, Vincent Martino, Eric Clemons and I have uprooted and translated an approach to strategy and leadership that has made organizations, most notably the United States Marine Corps, successful in one environment - the battlefield - and applied it to another - business. If you agree with the assumption that warfare, like business, is a competitive encounter - an ongoing series of move and countermove in which competitors are constantly trying to impose their respective wills on one-another - then this uprooting-translation-application effort promises to be a potentially breakthrough approach to competing in business.
Santamaria: All legacies of inter-service rivalry aside, we believe our book is different than the Ranger and SEAL books for three important reasons. First and foremost, with 24 case studies from business history, The Marine Corps Way makes the full translation to business and links strategy and leadership; the reader need not have any military experience of pre-disposition at all to understand the essence of our message. Second, the Ranger book is actually a re-branded book originally titled Ranger School, which was originally written about trudging through the mud while sleep deprived and hungry; it was not originally written to be a business-focused book. To appreciate the message and lessons learned, you really need to have endured ranger school. Third, the Seals book, in our opinion, is more applicable to leading small teams composed of elite individuals, rather than large, complex organizations with employees of all levels of ability. And it focuses much more on leadership and teamwork, rather than strategy.
Santamaria: Fred
Smith is a tremendous individual and business leader who embodies the
highest standards of integrity. The very fact that he made the time
to speak with us - realize that he runs a 200,000-person, multi-billion
dollar, global organization - is a testament to the old saying that
"Marines look out for one-another." His modest, down-to-earth
demeanor and good ol' boy accent would never reveal his stature as a
business leader. I remember thinking, "I want to be like that man,"
after speaking with him. We spent the better
part of an hour discussing how he applied the lessons he learned as
a Marine officer to the company he built, FedEx, over the past 30 years;
in fact, he explicitly stated that he never could have done what he
did had he not served in the Marines. Among the most notable lessons:
leadership by example, taking care of your people, and leadership
development, which we believe are crucial to inspiring the intangibles
- trust, integrity, unselfishness, and initiative - that
hold the maneuver organization together. Interestingly, one of the first things he did at FedEx was sit down and record those lessons learned in written form. These writings became the FedEx Manager's Guide, which has been a mainstay for all FedEx managers for decades. The Manager's Guide is noteworthy because through the written word, Mr. Smith has been able to establish a common culture and leadership philosophy across his global organization. The importance that all FedEx managers ascribe to it is impressive; it is the de-facto authority on leadership-related issues at the company. And from it came one of the most compelling quotes on leadership that I have seen in a long time: "Being a good leader is hard. It takes the utmost self-discipline, self-appraisal, and self-improvement to control those traits of self-interest that are natural to all humans but destructive to group leadership."
Santamaria: I know such victories are possible. Take for example, IBM's System 360 computer. In the mid-1960s, IBM created a computer whose architecture, functionality, and after-sales support were so comprehensive and compelling that competitors, such as GE and CDC, exited the market for business and scientific computing because they knew that attempting to match IBM's offering would be hopelessly futile. There are, no doubt, numerous other instances in business that are similar to IBM's experience here.
Santamaria: The
genius and timelessness of Sun Tzu's work cannot be emphasized enough.
At the risk of appearing 2,500 years "late to the party,"
I wholeheartedly acknowledge that the seven guiding principles that
we highlight in The Marine Corps Way are very reminiscent of
his writings. In our book, we identify The Art of War as the
origin of the theory of maneuver warfare. And over the years, the greatest
"maneuverists" have studied both The Art of War and
each other's battlefield accomplishments; thus, there has been a gradual
evolution in the theory of maneuver warfare that has accelerated over
the past 60-70 years and reached its pinnacle in the Marine Corps' modern
approach strategy and tactics. Whether these lessons are natural or universal, I am not sure. I would instead contend that they are intuitive to the greatest strategists - generals and CEOs. Effectively, what we have endeavored to do is disaggregate that which is intuitive to generals and CEOs into a systematic problem-solving approach that "the rest of us" can clearly grasp and then apply.
Santamaria: If
your organization - be it a 4-person R&D team, mid-sized sales organization,
or entire corporation - lacks Tao, then the leader must make the decision
to make a full commitment to embracing it. Otherwise, don't bother.
The leader must demonstrate - not display - his/her genuine concern
for the well being of the members of the organization through actions,
not words. When the members of the organization begin to see compelling
examples of the leader's Tao, only then will they model their behavior
after that of the leader and do things to better each other and the
organization as a whole.
Santamaria: As
to whether we are moving away from the values mentioned in the question
above, I cannot generalize. I will say that I see such decisions in
poorly managed companies, and it sickens me. But there are plenty of
well-managed companies out there where these values are at the core
of the company's culture and moral fiber; FedEx and Southwest Airlines
are two great examples. Look carefully at
the values you mention and then go back to the quote I extracted from
the FedEx Manager's Guide incorporated into the answer to question
3. I would argue that, while extremely difficult, overcoming one's own
self-interest is quintessential to successful leadership. Where this
mindset is pervasive in an organization, that organization will distinguish
itself from its competitors and reap the corresponding benefits. I am so convinced
of this that I have started a change management firm solely focused
on implementing our book's ideas in actual companies with the aim of
moving them back toward "such values." [End of interview]
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