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Still, I wanted to gain a fuller understanding of how military leadership operates and provides lessons for creative businesses. The emphases in these compelling models on self-awareness, adaptability, situational awareness, and engaging complexity show their importance to non-military leaders. Yet as Kaplan insightfully observes, the soldier-scholars like Petraeus who advanced this new approach overestimated its very sway and applicability: the COIN doctrine and approach ironically became for many a singular approach to war-making rather than one of many tools in the military leader’s kit. More specifically, and in keeping with the zeitgeist, it is a story about the challenge of ceding control and allowing for more adaptable and situational leadership. Petraeus (Photo credit: Wikipedia)Įqually a story of leadership struggling to effect change in a sprawling and tradition-bound organization. For leaders in the military and beyond, the doctrine underscores the importance of strategic decision-making, readiness planning, risk management, and situational problem-solving.ĭavid H.
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The category is, consequently, an expansive one, which can contribute to partial understanding and even the creation of a “straw man” about which selective claims can be attached. That long view, combined with the diverse military activities across so many different societies today, means that references to “military leadership” can point to a wide range of practices. Of course, thinking historically, military leadership is among the most ancient of leadership forms.
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The “salute point” at which decisions are made and where discussions or collaboration end seems to fly in the face of the openness and messiness required for creativity and innovation to flourish. Ultimately, military activities are defined, many observe, by creativity-stifling constraints and discipline. There is a lack of open-ended collaboration and reliance upon formal rather than informal authority. Military leadership is hierarchical and paternalistic, these creative leaders say. Besides illuminating the ways that effective creative leadership can be developed and sustained, one of the striking elements of these interviews has been the repeated references to military leadership – typically, as a contrast or foil to creativity-fostering leadership. Many of these leaders were previously or remain successful creatives. As part of a long-term research project examining the guiding tenets of creative leadership, Doug Guthrie and I have interviewed dozens of leaders of creative businesses.