When General George Joulwan was our Southern Command commander some years ago, he ended all of his messages with the slogan “One Team, One Fight.” He greeted you in person the same way. After a while we started smiling whenever we heard George’s slogan. But it was a good idea—worth taking to heart. It was a constant reminder to his command that everyone had to come together as a team to prosecute a fight that everyone agreed had to be won. It remains a good idea.
I tried to capture that spirit as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Chairman is an advisor and commands nothing. He works through influence and persuasion. The other members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are also advisors, but the Chiefs of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force also have large organizations to run and protect. It was important for me to understand this duality of responsibility, recognizing not only their role as service chiefs, but also their larger duty as members of the Joint Chiefs.
I worked hard to create a sense of “One Team, One Fight.” I commissioned a manual to capture this spirit. In its preface I wrote the following:
When a team takes to the field, individual specialists come together to achieve a team win. All players try to do their very best because every other player, the team, and the home town are counting on them to win.
So it is when the Armed Forces of the United States go to war. We must win every time.
Every soldier must take the battlefield believing his or her unit is the best in the world.
Every pilot must take off believing there is no one better in the sky.
Every sailor standing watch must believe there is no better ship at sea.
Every Marine must hit the beach believing that there are no better infantrymen in the world.
But they all must also believe that they are part of a team, a joint team that fights together to win.
This is our history, this is our tradition, this is our future.
Fast-forward a few years to the State Department. The State Department consists of Foreign Service officers and the specialists who support them—civil servants and the Foreign Service local nationals who support our embassies. The Foreign Service officers are the most widely known. They are our diplomats and ambassadors—elite experts. Our Civil Service consists of professional and enormously capable support personnel.
Every year we observed Foreign Service Day, a day when retired Foreign Service officers returned to the State Department for rebonding and briefings.
I wanted to penetrate the cultural and other boundaries that existed between Foreign Service and Civil Service employees. With that in mind we introduced leadership training for mid-level and senior Civil Service managers and took other steps to emphasize their importance.
As part of that effort, I decided to change Foreign Service Day to Foreign Affairs (FA) Day and to invite retired Civil Servants to attend.
Whoops. We got noise from the Foreign Service community. They felt something was being taken away from them. There were mutterings that many would not attend. We worried about the turnout, but on FA Day, the auditorium was filled with Foreign Service officers and a significant number of Civil Servants. No one’s ox got gored. And the Foreign Service realized the value of this kind of bonding. “One Team, One Fight.”
Every good leader I have known understands instinctively the need to communicate to followers a common purpose, a purpose that comes down from the leader and is internalized by the entire team. Armed with a common purpose, an organization’s various parts will strive to achieve that purpose and will not go riding off in every direction.
I have also seen many organizations that resemble nothing less than warring tribes. They usually fail.