Aug.15.2008
10:28 am
by Ed Beakley
RC#21 To Lead (Part 4) Interview with a Leader – General Russ Honore
Tough Talk About Crisis Management
A GMJ Q&A with Lieutenant General Russel Honoré (retired), former commander of Joint Task Force – Katrina, who oversaw the military relief efforts after hurricanes Katrina and Rita
Crises are inevitable. Every organization will find itself in a maelstrom at some point, and fortunately, most can be contained, managed, or smoothed over. But some crises can't. Some crises are so awful that they command the attention of law enforcement, the media, and maybe even Congress…
Few people know more about leadership in crisis than Lieutenant General Russel Honoré, who retired from the Army in January 2008 after 37 years, having served as Commanding General of the U.S. First Army at Fort Gillem, Georgia. During his military career, General Honoré served in many roles in the United States and overseas, from Commanding General, 2nd Infantry Division in South Korea to his final assignment as Commander of the Standing Joint Force Headquarters, Homeland Security, U.S. Northern Command. But he will always be remembered as the "John Wayne dude"—so dubbed by New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin—who was called in to command Joint Task Force – Katrina and to coordinate the military relief efforts after hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Read the interview:
http://gmj.gallup.com/content/109291/Tough-Talk-About-Crisis-Manageme nt.aspx
Filed in Adaptive Leadership, Resilient Community | One response so far
From Dag von Lubitz
Ed,
Good of you to post the interview. I always regret that significant comments and thoughts have often limited circulation, just as in the present case. Few will know of the interview, many should. Many thoughts that Russ presented may be obvious to a senior military commander. To most civilians they are the proverbial “Greek sermon.” To academics, alone by the fact that they emerge from a military person, they are approaching an anathema.
I follow the development of crisis/emergency/disaster training at colleges and universities with a mixture of increasing curiosity and dismay. People who teach these courses have minimal (if any) experience in operational issues. Consequently, you end with a curiously pseudo-intellectual porridge of hardly any practical value, a BS or MS in “emergency management,” and subsequent employment in the field (often as the manager) with absolutely no predisposition to manage an emergency greater than a blown tire when it happens in front of a garage.
The civilian world seems to delight in disregarding what the military considered for ages the cornerstone of any complex operation – proper staff work. The civilian world does not train people in even the most elementary aspects of it, and when things happen (or even before they happen) chaos reigns supreme. Russ makes very broad hints to that deficiency, and ToL (Team of Leaders; PWH note – see previous RC posts) could, in many ways provide the bridge (assuming the civvies will see the sense in it!)
The solitary bright light here is the presence of PK Carlton at Texas A&M and his steering their homeland security program. With his illustrious past as the SGUSAF, intellect, and incisive vision he provides the example of a flag officer in the right place after retirement from active service – giving the amateurs some sense of what it all is about, how it should be managed, and run. But a solitary point of bright light is insufficient to dispel the gloom. Therefore, a great pity there are only a handful of admirals and generals who end in the world of higher education. Russ at Emory will be another one, providing they wring every molecule of his expertise out of him and imbue these into their students.
The field, in the context of disaster management and higher education, has been made artificially academic. Surely, you can make a lot of theoretical deliberation on how to fight a fighter squadron, but will that make good fighter pilots? Probably not – the manual needs to be written, and the mantra spread around, by a person who knows what he talks about – just like Boyd did with his classic. Hence, the need for the senior military officers presence in the academy (which will oppose that with the greatest of vigours and vehemence!) and not only at the military academies. It is really essential for the future – they possess the practical expertise, the wisdom, erudition, and breadth of vision that a typical narrowly specialized academic is simply incapable of having. There is also the spunk and leadership qualities that universities talk about but have absolutely no clue as to the nature of that beast.
If the next generation must learn, let them learn from the best, not from the confusing, confused, and badly enamoured in their “learned qualities” people at universities. They have their place, surely. However, myself bridging the two worlds, I see that too often they are sadly out of place, and not much is done about it, despite a solid cadre of people who really should be in charge of these departments and this type of education.
We have some of the best specialists in the world, both in the military and in other branches relevant to crisis/disaster management. After their retirement from service, you find them all over the place, but not where they ought to be – sharing their hard won expertise with the new generation of civies in whose, currently singularly inept hands, the fate of the nation is about to rest. And mind, this is the ONLY nation that provides a working glue to the rapidly fragmenting world. If the US fails in that role, if the mission of this country gets diluted to the extent it becomes inconsequential, I am the first to look for a “galaxy after the next” to be moderately safe from a massive amount of highly radioactive dust that will be known to extraterrestials as “Ex-terra nuclearis.”
Good idea, good job, and keep on distributing such thoughts to the world at large. I also think, the conference that you started organizing will be a major step in what Lagadec aptly calls “sense-making.”