Left, Right, Left.
During Officer Training School, we students would do anything to break the regulated monotony. It was a challenge to awaken our personalities and get away with it as we were constantly scrutinised and evaluated for our ‘officer qualities’ and ‘followership’.
Each day a different student took turns to be Course Orderly (or ‘Course Horse’). It was their job to take charge of our 24 Course members and march us about RAAF Point Cook to and from morning parade, lectures, drill, PT, and meals in the Mess. We were made up of recent university graduates in Engineering, Dentistry, Medicine, Law ( hello), Nursing and a smattering of older and wiser airmen commissioned as officers, and a few direct entrant Air Traffic Controllers and Air Defence Officers.
Like most of Officer Training School, the job of Course Horse wasn’t particularly intellectually demanding for a group of mostly university graduates. The hardest part for some was knowing our left from our right. Differentiating left from right was the foundation of moving about as a disciplined, orderly, synchronised body of troops. We used the Right Dress to form up. We had to step to the left with our left foot when given the order to ‘Stand at… EASE!’. We would be ordered to turn left or right once we’d done so. We would step off on the Left foot when ordered to ‘Quick, March!’ The Quick March would be prefaced with either ‘By the Right’ or ‘By the Left’ to indicate whether we should keep aligned with or ‘dress off’ the person on our left or right. The Course Horse would occasionally yell ‘Left! … Left! Left, Right Left!’ to set and emphasise the marching cadence of 116 steps per minute. We were ordered to left or right wheel to turn us to the left or right. If we approached an officer, we would be ordered to salute with an Eyes Right or Eyes Left depending on what side we passed them. We had to right turn when dismissed. In a way, being able to quickly process left from right was the code of conduct of marching. It was the foundation of how we moved ourselves about in unison. For most of us, our left and right was literally drilled into our subconscious by about Week Three. Most of us.
You’ve not witnessed the chaos and disruption to an orderly group from a single person mistaking their left from their right. I knew and understood and wanted this when I did what I did one chilly pre-dawn cold morning in about Week Four.
The Course Horse was literally subtly moving her left and her right hand as she stood at attention in front of us, mentally calculating whether we, in a mirror position to her, needed to be turned to the left or the right before she marched us to morning PT. At one point she slightly twisted her left shoulder to her right as she attempted to confirm the direction she needed to turn us. As one of the tallest in our Course, I was the left hand Marker, the person at the far left of the front rank. Finally she turned us to the left, and squeaked ‘Course! By the Left! Quick … March!’
We took about five steps before she realised she had to turn us out of the car park and onto the road. We, of course, had done this dozens of times before and knew which way to turn without piling into the course members’ parked cars. ‘Right…wheel!’ she croaked just in time. But it was not over. She had to decide whether to left or right wheel us to follow the road. I had other plans.
Instead of ordering us to turn left as we’d always done, and more logically because it was the road to the gym, she hesitated. As the left marker, it was up to me to help her out and start wheeling to the left independently of her order, thus taking us to where the muscle bound corporal physical training instructors waited for their morning opportunity to inflict pain on a group of officers. It was an unwritten rule that we all helped the Course Horse to look good as we knew we’d each have the job multiple times.
Not today. I was over stupidity. So instead, I broke the unwritten rule. I obeyed her. I blindly complied.
I didn’t turn. I kept obeying her last order. I kept marching straight. Which meant all 22 of us kept marching straight.
We crossed the road and over the kerb onto the grass. And kept going. The Course Horse spluttered, growing more confused with our blind compliance. I heard muted giggling around me. ‘You Bastard!’ Wayne the Electronic Engineer, who would graduate to keeping maritime patrol aircraft avionics up to hunting enemy submarines, whispered from behind me. We - that is I - kept marching. Swinging our arms. Shoulder height, front to rear. Head and eyes to the front. Perfectly. Perfectly out of control.
‘Course!…’ the Course Horse managed to croak. Then nothing. So we kept going cross country. My joke had gone uncorrected by the Course Horse way beyond what my two second anarchic compliance ‘idea’ intended back at our lines. I was ‘leading’ her and 22 compliant course mates … somewhere.
As we strode as body of men and women across the grass, I realised we were heading to the oval across from the gym. I adjusted our direction slightly. (The Order to do so if given would have been ‘Right wheel … Forward!’). I pointed us towards the lights of the gym. The Course Horse remained silent until squeaking ‘Course … Halt!’ as we arrived at the front door two minutes later.
My mischief had ‘discovered’ a short cut to the gym. Not so much discovered the short cut, as discovered that no instructor was dumb enough to be up and about at 5am to catch us. And our mute Course Horse’s inability to shout orders had not alerted anyone else on Base as to our ‘illegal’ route across the oval. Most brilliantly, the shorter route that we took every morning from then on, gained us a precious five extra minutes of sleep a night. The equivalent of five hours for exhausted officer trainees on Week Four of Officer Training School.
For my literal obedience of the Course Horse and breaking the unwritten rule, Wayne christened me ‘BLEGO’. Bastard Legal Officer.
Analogies galore.
One person can change the course of many.
Compliance with stupidity isn’t a virtue.
A bad leader can hide behind the momentum of good followers.
Dissent can reveal a better way.
Alignment can lead you astray.
Astray is relative.
Authority is useless if you can’t communicate.
A bad leader always assumes people are following them.
Sometimes leadership is knowing left from right.
Compliance with stupidity can look smart.
‘Align’ comes from the Middle English word ‘to copulate’.
Think about that, boss, next time you accuse someone of not being aligned with you.
The God-shaped Hole.
They reject my God, and mock my belief.
Then plug their gods into the God-shaped hole in their soul.
Over Time.
Carefully, methodically, over time, the common law and the parliaments have built up a body of law …’ - Chief Justice Debbie Mortimer of the Federal Court of Australia
That 40km/h speed limit outside the local school?
Hundreds of years in the making.
What Matters More.
Of much less importance and likely to be quickly forgotten is the harm caused to another by necessity, accident, or error.
What matters more and will be memorable is the ‘offender’s’ choice of healing balm, and their time and care in applying it.
Lag Leaders.
They’re late adopters of the latest management fad.
Their writing and speech are riddled with stale corporate cliche and jargon.
They avoid offence and therefore the truth.
They’re lag leaders.
Make Smaller Lids.
Designers of products in bottles cleverly include caps that double as cups to pour a measure of the liquid into and use.
The larger the cup, the more product is used, and the quicker the consumer will make another purchase.
The more authority you give a person, the more they will rely on it to get things done.
The less authority - the more they will rely on persuasion, negotiation, enrolment, and creativity.
Miss-take.
It’s only a mistake - miss-take - if I don’t learn - take - anything of future value from it.
Why are You Surprised?
Why are you surprised? Shocked? Confused? Angry? Disappointed? Disorientated?
You chose Leadership. You wanted to Lead. You wanted to take people to where they otherwise wouldn’t have gone.
Did you consider and prepare for the implications?
The people in charge who heard you say: ‘Their direction they took you is wrong. Mine is right. Follow me instead!’
What made you think they’d just respond with: ‘Sure! We concede we failed! We’ll step aside and let you take over!’
The people meant to follow who heard you say: ‘You’ve followed the wrong people. You’ve wasted your time. Trust me instead!’
The virgin territory you’ve set forth upon - without a path or signs or anyone ahead beckoning you forward.
The snagging thickets of dissent, sabotage, discontent, fear, jealousy, and sheer incompetence fetter your progress and tear at your smooth, delicate follower-skin and heart, unblemished by the toil of leading.
Leadership is hard.
That’s It.
The bad boss is like a photocopy of a photo of a photocopy of a photo of a photocopy of a photo of the good boss.
With the word ‘Boss’ written beneath it.
You know it’s the boss because of the title: Boss.
You can discern the shape and indistinct outline of a shadow of what the good boss looks like.
You know it’s the boss because HR points to it and says ‘The boss said…’.
That’s it.
On Love.
The teacher handed out photocopies of Emerson’s essay ‘The Oversoul.’
The last page of the photocopy had the last page of The Oversoul, and the first page of ‘Love’.
I borrowed Emerson’s Essays from the library so I could read the rest of ‘Love’.
I can’t remember anything about The Oversoul.
Love changed my life.
Foul.
Hundreds of boys aged eleven and twelve voluntarily spend ninety minutes doing basketball drills under the scrutiny of a dozen adults.
No names - just numbers drawn in black marker on their arms and upper thighs to identify them to the coaches.
Those boys will be divided into groups of ability, culled, divided into smaller groups, culled again.
The coaches will gather at the end of each session to compare notes and shuffle names.
Lists are emailed to parents together with training timetables.
This process will take a couple of weeks of sessions.
Drill, scrutiny, divide, cull, list, drill.
Parents are not allowed to observe.
At the end of it, there will be seven teams of ten boys, ranked from those with the highest skills, to those with the least.
With a few disappointed and noisy exceptions, everyone accepts the result because the process and each boy’s skills were open.
That’s how a weekend basketball sporting competition operates.
Those same boys - along with hundreds of thousands of others - progress through successive years of school in their same cohort behind closed doors for thirteen years - educated and drilled with a programme based solely on the date they were born.
That’s how thirteen years of school preparing each boy for life operates.
Easy.
Leadership is easy.
Be technically competent in your work.
Believe in something bigger beyond where you are.
Believe another believes in something bigger beyond where they are.
Be prepared to disappoint them.
Be prepared for their disappointment in you.
Care more about the something beyond where you are and the other - than the risk of disappointment.
Act.
Leadership is easy.
The hard bit is the Leading.
By Definition.
By definition, a leader is always on the wrong side of the debate, and on the right side of history.
By definition, organisations do not create, nor tolerate, leadership.
The only people following the words and deeds of a leader in an organisation - work in HR.
And the IT person HR tasked to monitor emails.
Four Words.
Four words to say to a punter that show more authentic leadership skills than you’d learn deep diving in a five day workshop:
‘What do you think?’
Reconnaissance.
The mediocre boss either fearfully waits for problems to solve, or creates problems for others to solve.
The good boss actively and eagerly reconnoitres for both emerging problems to fend away from fettering their workers, and solutions for problems yet to arise.