Fifteen

Issue date: 5/17/07 Section: MIT Sloan News

Dear Sloanies,
The Class of ‘07 is soon embarking on an exciting odyssey of post-Sloan career, while the ‘08ers are itching to prove their intellectual mettle during their soon-to-start summer internships. At this critical moment, we all are very thankful to Admiral Thad W. Allen, Commandant US Coast Guard, Class of 1989 Sloan Fellows, for sharing his valuable leadership insights with us. The entire editorial staff of Fifteen is honored by the Admiral’s generosity in agreeing for this interview.

The Commandant of the US Coast Guard is the highest ranking member of the US Coast Guard. He is the only four-star Admiral of the Coast Guard, and was appointed for a four year term by the President of the United States upon confirmation of the US Senate. He is assisted by a Vice-Commandant, two Assistant Commandants/Area Commanders and a Chief of Staff, all of whom are three-star Vice Admirals. Unlike the Commandant of the Marine Corps, the Coast Guard Commandant is not a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He reports to the President, the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Secretary of Defense.

I hope you would enjoy this interview and also emulate these leadership values in your career.

We are about to enter a new phase in our careers after graduating from Sloan.

As we assume higher responsibilities, we will be expected to successfully lead our organizations through adversity. What leadership traits should we aspire to cultivate while at Sloan?

Leadership is both skill and art. At the heart it is a combination of enabling your people to succeed and making good decisions with imperfect information. It is thinking right and acting right. I am a strong believer in developing mental models as a context for decision making. I am also a strong believer that every organizational success is based on the success of my people. Always assume that you don’t know enough and have a thirst to learn and be curious about everything that impacts your professional life. THEN, learn to sort the “important many” from the “precious few” as to how you should act, learn, and acquire more knowledge. Continually fight the “tyranny of the present” and act with “strategic intent” in your work, career, and family life.

Key traits or characteristics for successful leadership include:  

1. Intelligence … but that alone doesn’t guarantee success.
2. The ability to “speak truth to power.” If someone can’t walk into my office and tell me the truth, I should quit or fire them.
3. Interpersonal skills that indicate that other people are more important that you are. We achieve larger goals though the ability to organize human effort in new ways that transcend traditional organizational structures and focus our collective energies on a higher purpose.
4. A sense of humor and the ability to laugh at yourself. People that are carrying “baggage” and dealing with their own issues can’t help others or lead their organizations effectively.

My favorite definition of leadership is the ability to reconcile opportunity and competency. What constitutes an opportunity (threat, vulnerability, or risk) and what defines the competencies needed to exploit it or react to it is the greatest challenge of your generation.

You are most well known for your widely-praised leadership directing the Federal response to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in the Gulf Coast region. As the twenty-third Commandant of the United States Coast Guard and a directly report of the President, the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Secretary of Defense, you are one of the most important leaders of the U.S. How did your time at Sloan shape your leadership principles?

First, the cohort group at Sloan provides an incredible reservoir of experience, talent, and leadership. I learned from my classmates. Second, my exposure while at Sloan to senior leaders in industry and government transcended class room theory and brought insights that are only passed on through personal interaction. Seeing leaders act like leaders is the best education. Finally, the single course that impacted me in terms of personal leadership skill was “Choice Points: Readings in Power and Responsibility.” This very simple class was based on a reading list of classical and modern literature that posed ethical and moral issues, such as the role of the Captain in Melville’s “Billy Budd” or Sophocles’ “Antigone.” Our class discussed one text each week in depth. This was the best class room experience I ever had.

Fast forward 15 years in a typical Sloan alum's post-Sloan career to a hypothetical situation: As the CEO of a Fortune 500 corporation, he has just learned that a major and unprecedented crisis has struck his organization. What would you do, if you were in his place, during the first hour of learning about this crisis?

First, I would want to bring together key members of my organization who can bring their years of experience, expertise and perspective to put toward the issue at hand. That is precisely what I did when I was asked by the Secretary of Homeland Security and the President in response to hurricane Katrina. I immediately assembled a handful of people I knew and trusted to get the job done, no matter how difficult. I refer to these folks affectionately as “dogs that hunt.”

Acquiring and sorting information efficiently and effectively is one of the most important critical success factors during a crisis, and every organization (private or public) needs to have a system in place to facilitate information flow and decision making. In the Coast Guard, we use the Incident Command System (ICS) to help us do that. Once you’ve collected the information you need, you then must share that information rapidly and widely with those people that need it so they can respond and react accordingly, both inside and outside the organization. To do that effectively, you need to establish trusting relationships with your stakeholders long before the crisis ever occurs.

Finally, in the first hour of learning about the crisis I would make a few key decisions on how the organization would initially respond to it and issue a strong formal public statement that would help define the circumstances & conditions of the crisis along with a clear way forward in how the organization would act. In the early stages of a crisis, there may be no clear solution. What should be clear to everyone, however, is the manner in which the organization’s senior leadership intends to conduct themselves in balancing competing interests, assuming responsibility where appropriate, and seeking a final resolution that restores order, does no further harm and retains the public’s confidence. During a major crisis, there is absolutely no substitute for maintaining public confidence and credibility through transparency of information.

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