Thoughtful Warriors

In 2006 General David Petraeus drafted a “guidance” manual for conducting counterinsurgency in Iraq. Gen. Petraeus had gained a painful sense of how under prepared the US forces had been to take on this unconventional foe, and how high the price had been, in blood and money, of having to devise tactics on the fly.

Petraeus seized on an opportunity to think -- about how the war has been waged and how it should have been and set out to distill those lessons and others that could have been learned -- but weren't -- in Vietnam, in Bosnia, in Afghanistan, and elsewhere into a new Army field manual for counterinsurgency warfare, or COIN, the first such doctrine for soldiers in the field in 20 years.

Counterinsurgency warfare is, as the Petraeus draft describes it, "war at the graduate level," where every unit commander must be a kind of "strategic lieutenant" calibrating the right balance between soldiers' killing power and the exercise of restraint that can turn potential enemies into allies.

Success in fighting insurgents requires an artful balancing of raw military might with ground-level smarts -- it does no good to take the territory but lose the support of the people who live there. "The doctrine is crucial and much needed. Guys in the field are clamoring for it. It recognizes that counterinsurgency is now the norm. This is a new mind-set -- the Army is really changing," says Major Sean Davis.

“You can’t kill your way out of an insurgency,” says Patraeus. So, his new approach is focused on building relationships and winning over the Iraqi people, including insurgents. “Walk… Stop by, don’t drive by,” says Petraeus. He has moved soldiers out of their megabases and into small outposts deep inside once alien and hostile neighborhoods. Although this strategy is counter intuitive to the old school of soldiering, this approach is showing signs of success.

Part of this new strategy is to give officers greater leeway to make decisions than their predecessors. Petraeus says, “There is not only a tolerance for initiative and independent action, there is encouragement.”

His approach is a good example of flexible adaptive leadership in the midst of an entrenched, rigid organization, the military. In his guidance manual Petraeus emphasizes the need for leadership and soldiers to develop relationships within the Iraqi community. His approach of getting soldiers out from behind fortified walls is not unlike the need for emotionally intelligent corporate leaderships need to get out from the ivory tower. Create alliances, distinguish between reconcilables and irreconcilables, while moving towards reconciliation and understanding. If our military can embrace and find success with this strategy so can our organizational leaders and their teams.