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Leadership and Laziness
In my latest op-ed for the local fishwrap, I tell the tale of an old German general with the mouthful of a name Kurt Gebhard Adolf Philipp Freiherr von Hammerstein-Equord. Between the world wars, he was tasked with restructuring the military, at least until he tried to kill Hitler, which got him into a spot of bother. But how he decided whom to promote and whom to fire fascinates me from a business perspective.
He divided the entire officer corps into four quadrants, which I illustrated in the chart to the right:
- Dumb and busy.
- Dumb and lazy.
- Smart and busy.
- Smart and lazy.
Since Hammerstein-Equord was a highly disciplined German officer, you would assume he’d fire those in Quadrant 2 (dumb and lazy) and promote those in Quadrant 3 (smart and busy). But you’d have it backward.
Instead, he considered Quadrant 1 (dumb and busy) to be walking disasters, and he fired nearly all of them. The Quadrant 2’s were fine if he gave them simple, repetitive tasks, and a hearty dose of Prussian boots to the hintern.
Quadrant 3 (smart and busy) seem like they would be the cream of the crop, but to Hammerstein-Equord they had … issues. These officers were always doing something, even when nothing needed to be done. Quadrant 3’s micromanaged their subordinates, created complicated new “improvement” programs, bothered their superiors with useless information, and, while they were mired in minutiae, missed the big picture. As a result, Hammerstein-Equord never promoted them to a commanding officer level.
The real stars lived in Quadrant 4. These smart and lazy officers were promoted to the highest levels of the military. They were clever enough to see what needed to be done but relaxed enough to find the easiest, most direct way to succeed. Quadrant 4’s didn’t get mired in the details, but delegated those chores to staff — and then left them alone.
Hammerstein-Equord’s quadrant is a handy tool for business, but also for politics. When I look at Washington, I see warehouse-sized offices filled with of Quadrant 1 and 3 types. Bureaucrats are usually mocked as lazy, I’m more concerned about the really ambitious ones. Always looking to create a new climate change scheme, transgender bathroom initiative, or tome of pickle regulations. And don’t get me started on energetic politicians.
A lazy leader would see a social problem and ask, “maybe the private sector should do this,” “looks like charities are handling it,” or “I’ll let my constituents figure it out for themselves.” A position of “don’t just do something, stand there” is inherently conservative.
To quote the sainted Calvin Coolidge, “When you see 10 problems rolling down the road, if you don’t do anything, nine of them will roll into a ditch before they get to you.” The key, of course, is to recognize that one serious problem and expend your energy on that.
Published in Culture, Politics
Kaiser Wilhelm II regularly interfered with the annual wargames conducted by the Imperial German Army General Staff so that he could lead a cavalry charge for the “winning” side at the end of the exercise. A staff officer (who preferred to remain anonymous because bagging on the Emperor was a bad career move) is alleged to have observed that Billy “couldn’t lead two privates over a ditch.” Very energetic. Dumber than a bag of hammers.
Trump hires good people and trusts them to do their job. He doesn’t trust congressional Republicans, but he has to let them do their job of passing his agenda, because he knows full well that he’s clueless when it comes to health care details. Some here blame him for not getting into the nitty gritty details of replacing Obamacare, but doing so would put him square in quadrant I (problem causer). With a few thousand hours of study he could at best get to quadrant III (micromanager), but the fact is that he could spend that time doing a lot more good in other areas that fit into his good deal/bad deal dichotomy. Based on Hammerstein’s method, Trump is smart to embrace his innate laziness and leave the dirty work to Ryan and McConnell. I understood this on a rudimentary level, but without the Hammerstein method I couldn’t articulate why. Thanks, Jon for the great post!
Now and then I get a patient with a bunch of incompatible IV meds that will have to be given during the night, and not enough IV lines in the patient to separate them. I’ll usually spend a few extra minutes rearranging pumps and tubing so I don’t have to spend the night hooking/unhooking IVs from the patient. A few extra minutes at the beginning of the shift, lots less work the rest of the night (and not having to wake someone up once they’ve *finally* gotten to sleep).
Had one lady ask me once why I was changing everything. I told her I was lazy, and it saved time later. She laughed, and said “I prefer to think of it as ‘efficient’.” :)
Fifteen years ago, when I was promoted to the head of my unit, I was Quadrant 3. Since then, from trial and error — i.e., day to day experience supervising my team — I have gradually come to learn the wisdom of living and working in Quadrant 4. Result? More productivity and efficiency, and, most importantly . . . incredibly reduced stress. I’m teased, in fact, for being so “Zen.”
I’ve always said the lines on the highway are for those who need them.
THE MAN WHO WAS TOO LAZY TO FAIL
The foundation of my philosophy.
Concur wholeheartedly.
One quibble:
Hammerstein-Schnitzleboy never promoted them to Command–but he did promote them to the General Staff. That was seen as a great honor and career enhancer. Ze Germans pretty much invented the staff system used today by every functionally sound and reliable top shelf military. In fact, members of the GS were authorized to sew additional red piping onto their uniform, which denoted that they were smart and industrious enough to achieve GS status in a very competitive organization.
In the US, some four-star commands figured they could do things smarter, more effectively, and more efficiently than our Bavarian brethren, and after reading bunches of books by civilian guys like Jack Welch, Lee Iacocca, and Steve Jobs, “transformed” to a new configuration called an Enterprise.
It was beautiful. It briefed well enough to woo all kinds of wonderful, wonderful congressional dollars to the endeavor. USSOUTHCOM was the pilot for this program. Then in 2010, Haiti suffered its earthquake, and the Enterprise proved woefully, abjectly, desperately inadequate.
The USSOUTHCOM Deputy Military Commander (under the Enterprise there was also a Deputy Civilian Commander, from State–no one ever explained to me how, under Title X, some State guy was legally authorized to make me suffer the slings and arrows of, uh, slings and arrows) was on the ground when the earthquake hit. LTG Keen became the JTF-Haiti Commander.
On the daily crisis VTCs, he’d holler/plead/wheedle: “Dammit, I need to talk to whoever’s running ops!!”
“–uh, I do stability…”
“–uh, I do partnership…”
“–uh, I do security…”
Bottom line, in the middle of a crisis, USSOUTHCOM re-configured the staff into a legacy (read: German General Staff-like) formation.
Then we were able to make the relief planes run on time.
*Edited: I forgot to put the link in on first push.
I remember hearing about these categories back when I was in the Air Force. As for how they apply to Washington, finding a smart/lazy politician there would be impossible.
On a related note … Larry Wall, the creator of the Perl programming language, said that the three great virtues of a programmer are laziness, impatience, and hubris. Quoting from the descriptions of these virtues in Programming Perl
‘Cept I don’t like Perl as much as I like Ruby (Matz) or Python (Guido).
It’s #3 that gets the work done.
When my daughter was little and would act up in public I could usually nip it in the bud simply by leaning down and whispering “You don’t want all these people here see you get a spanking, do you?” She may not have feared the spanking all that much, but the embarrassment – oh, my!