Interagency

As my buddy Mike, a Dep of State FSO, always says when we're drinking together or fighting or doing pushups or all three simultaneously... "Dude this is so Interagency".  He's obviously kidding because you'd have to be a complete tool (read: sycophantic, unimaginative, careerist) to want to hang out with someone simply for "jointness".  I hang out with him because he's one of my best friends, someone I look up to and learn from.

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army General Dempsey speaking the other day at Carnegie....

"When I go speak to groups of young colonels who are about to become general officers or admirals or executive civilians, I always get the question, you know, what’s most important?And my answer might surprise you.  I tell them: It’s relationships. I say that because how did we make progress on these issues in Iraq and Afghanistan in combining development diplomacy and defense; fundamentally we made progress as we started to build relationships with each other. And that took a couple of years, by the way.

And now I mean,  probably the first person I ever met in the State Department; I was probably a lieutenant-colonel with 22 years in the service. I’m not making that up. I mean, we had no reason – (laughter) – we had no reason to interact with each other in – back in those days, really.  So that the question I actually ask myself now is now in the world will we maintain that relationship and those personal connections as the conflicts dissipate and we all go back to our cubicles, because that’s going to happen.

You know, all of my soldiers are going to go back to Fort Hood and Fort Bragg and Fort Lewis, and all the State Department folks are going to go back to Foggy Bottom and never again shall meet, unless we do something about it. And I think – as a leader development issue, I think we owe it ourselves and our nation to do something about that. "

That's my calling right now.  I love grabbing smart people by the back of their collars and dragging them up out of their cubicles, out into a bar or a gym or out on a trail and getting them to interact with people outside their normal circles, trying to learn from them, trying to see how they view the world and why they do things a certain way.  It's a little funny that this turns out to be some strategy concept that is being wrestled with and systematized by the DOD.  Because to Mike and I its just a normal Saturday night hanging out with friends.