It is time to add a new book from a retired general called "Risk: A User's Guide" to the list of essential documents on America's generals.
After he was removed from his command by the president, McChrystal created a consulting firm and appeared on TV to talk about war and politics. His new book is intended to be a primer for corporate leaders trying to navigate the perils of doing business in America. I am a retired four-star general who led troops into battle and I can tell you everything you need to know about managing risk.
There are a lot of lessons that could be learned from the mistakes McChrystal made. The plan to flood Afghanistan with as many as 80,000 additional U.S. soldiers was one of the errors. The kind of troops-and-money strategy that succeeded was killing lots of civilians and helping the Taliban return to power.
Stanley McChrystal has a book called Risk: A User's Guide.
The cover-up of the friendly fire killing of Pat Tillman, a football player for the Baltimore Ravens, was a less catastrophic example of McChrystal's involvement. The Rolling Stone article which conveyed the general's disdain for America's elected leaders led to his early retirement in 2010.
I am not arguing that McChrystal should stop writing about risk or not have wartime successes. A book that drew from both sides of his military career could be useful. We should be grateful that McChrystal has provided us with a much more important document instead of the book he chose to write. A generation of generals who led America into disaster after 9/11 profited from the many displays of dishonesty, ignorantness, and banality contained in "Risk".
With his new book, McChrystal becomes a whistle blower.
The truth is being fought.
Before buying a general's advice book, you should ask yourself why you are listening to this guy.
Even though the wars they have presided over have been catastrophic, America still loves its generals. More than 7,000 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq and Afghanistan since 9/11, and hundreds of thousands of civilians have been killed. The generals lied to Congress and the American public about what was happening, telling them that things were going well. The Washington Post published an award-winning series titled "At War With the Truth" in which they revealed the scale of their deception.
Outside the battlefield, their failures have occurred.
James Mattis, who commanded U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, became the first defense secretary of Donald Trump. Before joining the Trump administration, the board of directors of Theranos gave advice on "building elite teams." He received a yearly stipend of $150,000 and continued to defend Theranos even after the Wall Street Journal revealed that the company's blood-testing machines were fraudulent. In September, at the trial of the company's founder, Elizabeth Holmes, Mattis threw her under the bus, saying that he was "disappointed at the level of transparency from Ms.
Petraeus, who was the director of the CIA, was the victim of a different type of flameout. Petraeus was having an affair with his biographer and shared classified information with her. He used a shared Gmail account to communicate with her, but the tradecraft was amateur. His military aides were not allowed to be on helicopter trips in Afghanistan so that his secret girlfriend could ride along. Even though he resigned from the CIA, Petraeus still has a lucrative partnership with KKR, a private equity firm.
The annals of generals have one more item that's gone bad.
Michael Flynn, who headed the Defense Intelligence Agency and briefly served as Trump's national security adviser until it was realized that he had deceived Vice President Mike Pence about his contacts with a Russian diplomat, is not the only one. After pleading guilty to lying to the FBI, Flynn became a star of the conspiracy crowd and called for America to have one religion. His leap into the world of the crazy is not unique.
You understand the point. There is no evidence that the experience gained by generals translate into business skills. There is evidence that companies with military officers on their boards have worse outcomes than their competitors. A general can order a court-martial for disobeying orders in the military. In the corporate world, Musk is powerful, but he can't send lazy workers to prison. The skills used to organize a sales team for another round of cold calls are not what you need to lead Delta Force operators into mortal combat. The U.S. military has a culture of sexual assault and harassment that has resisted reform for decades.
Gladwell for Dummies.
McChrystal makes more money from his military service than any other U.S. general of his generation.
The Washington Post has been investigating McChrystal's service as a board member or adviser to at least 10 companies since he left the military. He was paid more than $1 million for serving on the board of just one firm, which paid $50 million to the government to settle accusations that it overcharged the Marine Corps for armored vehicles. The University of Nebraska at Lincoln and California Polytechnic State University were both where McChrystal spoke. Both are public institutions that don't have a lot of money.
The McChrystal Group has more than 50 employees and provides consulting services to corporate and government clients. Anna Butrico is an associate at McChrystal's firm and she is a co-author of "Risk", which is written in the first person. The acknowledgments section of the book gives credit to about a dozen employees who provided ideas and assistance. The book is featured on the website.
There are a few pages about Afghanistan that don't show the huge failures of McChrystal.
The book ignores or distorts the risks that failed. The disastrous war strategies in Afghanistan and Iraq are included. McChrystal claims that there are boastful passages about military missions in Iraq that are portrayed as successful, but the abundant errors made there are not mentioned. More to the point, the handful of pages about Afghanistan skate past huge failures in which McChrystal was involved. The raids were antithetical to the Afghan culture and created extraordinary political controversy. The controversy was caused by the fact that U.S. and Afghan forces killed an unconscionable number of civilians.
Much of the book is not true. It is a torrent of platitudes like this: "Fear of change is only natural, it requires the ability, willingness, and courage to dare to become something different." Knowing that transformation is inevitable, we can ensure that we are asking the right questions of ourselves and our teams to calibrate to our new reality in order to be successful in an increasingly digitized world. Teamwork is the most important factor in winning against the greatest threats.
The book moves from one bromide to another with eighth grade-level graphics, and one of its key messages is that the greatest risk to us is us. It evokes famous events and people to make points that are self-evident, with references to the Alamo, Lehman Brothers, and Martin Luther King Jr. One could imagine McChrystal's agent pitching the book as "Malcolm Gladwell for Dummies."
The annual Milken Institute Global Conference was held in Beverly Hills, Calif., on May 2, 2016 and was addressed by Stanley McChrystal, chairman of Siemens Government Technologies Inc.
Photo by Patrick T. Fallon.
You might think it is harmless. It's terrible that a retired general is making a few bucks with his West Point and Sunni Triangle wisdom. We can even enjoy a cynical laugh, if we wish, as corporate executives make bulk purchases of "Risk" and do calisthenics at dawn with Navy Seals hired by McChrystal Group. The gullible marks get what they deserve. I have to think about the soldiers and civilians I met while covering the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I think most of them are not amused by how easy it is for generals to get rich and famous. It would be viewed as an injustice by many.
The villain in this story isn't the author of the book. Americans are encouraged to swim toward available commercial opportunities and make as much money as they can without breaking the law. Maybe he doesn't need all that extra cash, but how many people would turn down the partnerships and board seats that are offered to former generals?
I think the problem is the adulation that military leaders get from media organizations. They make the fame that is not needed. Here is a partial list of outlets that gave coverage to the launch of "Risk": CNN, PBS, the Washington Post, Time magazine, Forbes, MSNBC, CBS News, Yahoo Finance, and Foreign Policy. The National Review published an article by a military veteran that was critical of a general who failed in war assessment.
