Accidental admiral . Guest what a great question at a certain level all of our lives, you can choose to steer a particular course but the sea will come, the wind will come and you will go in a different direction. It comes from a period in my career when i was a four star admiral just finishing up at us Southern Command in charge of all military activities south of the United States and i was very hopeful in going to the pacific as commander of us Pacific Command which is a senior position, robert gates, called me up and said forget about the specific we are going to send you to nato so i became the first and thus far the only admiral, supreme allied commander in nato and it was an accident that did that. From the nato perspective i was be accidental admiral who became the supreme allied commander. Host the navy was an accident as well. Guest somewhat. I grew up in a marine corps family. My father fought in korea and vietnam. I grew up in that environment and went to Quantico High School just south of washington dc and went to the Naval Academy thinking i was going to be marine corps officer. After my first year in annapolis the navy sends everybody on a cruise so we go out on a ship, i went on a beautiful cruise in san diego and went on a ship in the evening, backed away from the p are late in the day, got up there and the sun was setting and i looked out on all that ocean and light and i was like st. Paul in the road to damascus, just wanted to be a sailor and be in ships. I went home and told my dad about it and my mom, shirley and they were hoping i was going to be a marine but they got over it years later, my dad said that came out okay. Host you almost left the navy after five years. I did. Graduated from annapolis and went to see for five years, in san diego and then went to mayport, florida where i am coming to you from today, my hometown, my inlaws, captain bob hall, at the end of that 5year period i was on an aircraft carrier, destroyer and aircraft carrier. At the end of those five years i could launch a missile. I was a capable mariner but i couldnt launch an idea. The navy stepped in, couldnt refuse and ended up going to the Fletcher School of law, graduate school of international relations, that is when i began to shift the focus of my career from exclusively focusing on maritime operations, mariner is part of my life and career but it came out of my time at fletcher in the early 1980s. As commander of nato in 20092013, you say in the accidental admiral a sailor takes command at nato you wrote 250,000 years to teach yourself, not others. Indeed, i felt as though a big part of my job as supreme allied commander of nato is to take ideas and move them across this enormous command. At the time there were 28 nations in nato, today there are 30, 3 million people, almost all volunteers, 4 million in reserves, 28,000 military aircraft, 800 oceangoing ships, very big command and i felt part of my job was communication of key ideas, the strategy so i spent a lot of time writing for my own benefit because for the benefit of those in the command. One of the chapters is about the plateau. What is that . The chateau is the official residence of supreme allied commander of nato. It is a beautiful french chateau which is on 26 acres, maintained and financed by the belgian government located in the south of brussels. It is a lovely place to live and is a Strategic Communication platform where supreme allied commander will post a dinner for all the heads of state and government of the nato alliance, he will host senior military officers around the alliance, partners, allies, friends, one of the most memorable dinners my wife laura and i held was for my opposite number in the russian federation, the Supreme Commander of the Russian Military whose name was nikolai makarov. We are both 5 inches 5 foot 5 inches tall, used to joke to secretary gates, my boss, who would call me after meeting him and say how did the meeting go and i would say it was great, we saw everything i to i which we did at our towering 5 foot 5 inch height but it is an example of the fact that we need to engage not only with those who are on our team, if we succeed in creating Real Security we have to engage with those with whom we have disagreement. All that occurred in the chateau. Host you write throughout my time as nato Strategic Commander i was often asked what kept me awake at night, my simple one word answer to what really kept me awake may surprise you and that is convergence. Guest indeed. What i am particularly concerned about as i looked around in those years was 10 years ago i was concerned about afghanistan, libya, the balkans, piracy, Cyber Security but would increasingly concerned me was the potential of convergence between groups in impeccable to the United States, terrorist organizations and the proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Those are two extremes of threats and it is kind of like ghostbusters, you never want to let the streams cross so i worried a lot in those years about al qaeda funding its way to a nuclear demise. We should be continuing to be concerned not just about al qaeda but the islamic state, boca from in nigeria, our shabab in eastern africa, these groups try to find ways to obtain weapons of mass distraction. I worry a lot about convergence. Over the last we 10 years, what has added to that concern, cyber and Cyber Security because these groups are becoming more and more adept at using the tools of our offensive cyber capability to go after our finances, our infrastructure, our medical establishment, all quite vulnerable so to the context of ten years ago when i was focused on extremist organizations and Nuclear Weapons today i am equally concerned about cyber and cyber tools in the hands of such organizations and rogue states like north korea for example. Host admiral James Stavridis, can you get isolated when you are Supreme Commander of nato . Guest of course. You have to fight every day in a job like that to break out of the cocoon that your staff will try to put you in. This is true for any leader of any sizable organization. Your staff will want to take control, will want to dictate the tempo of the organization of your day, schedule your trips, control the information coming in, control Communications Going out. That is the nature of staff. They do that because it creates order where chaos might exist and it is a commendable and natural function of staff but as a commander i would argue you have to fight against that isolation. You have to rage against the dying of the light, you have to fight to get out of that, to find sources of information, to find ways to communicate simply and truly to your organization, demand that you have a voice in your schedule, where your priorities are because lets face it, your greatest asset as a commander whether you are the supreme allied commander of nato or the ceo of exxon or president of harvard university, if you are the leader of a Large Organization your most precious asset is your time and how you locate it and prioritize has to be reflected in your time and one thing i would do as a practical point to be made in such positions, we can often think the priorities are xyz. A very good exercise every 6 months is to get out a calendar and look back at the previous 6 months and say to yourself am i prioritizing my time in alignment with my supposed to priorities of xyz and i would find occasionally, more than occasionally that i would be prioritizing with my time abc despite the fact that my stated priorities were xyz. It is crucial to break and to use your own view of what your time should be and how it should be spent and all of that means getting out of that isolation, that bubble atypical staff will try to place a leader in. Host was it easier to get out of that bubble when you are on a ship and could Wander Around on your own . Guest it was and i wrote a book about that years ago when i was in my 30s called destroyer captain lessons of a first command, a very short book, a series of excerpts from the journals i kept the first time i took command at sea. I was lucky enough to be the captain of uss barry, beautiful, brandnew army burke class guided missile destroyer and i wanted desperately to connect with my crew and on a ship like that, it is a big ship, 500 feet long, longer than a football field, has a crew of 300350 depending on the configuration but it is a small universe unto itself especially when you are out at sea and as a captain you get to decide how to use your time. Are you going to sit in your chair on the bridge surveying the beautiful ocean . Are you going to spend the time locked in your cabin doing paperwork, those are real options or are you just going to get out on foot patrol in your ship and now every one of your sales and understand what brought them to the navy. All of that is part of being a good captain and it is not only done in ships at sea. It is part of any Good Organization the desire to get out and move around, know your people. All of that contributes to Effective Mission accomplished. Host what does army burke class mean . Guest the u. S. Navy for every type of ship, destroyers, cruisers, aircraft carriers, submarines, the first ship of that type is called the class. That type is the class leader, every destroyer of that particular type bill the same as the first one, called an army burke class destroyer. I commanded be bg 52, number 52. My ward for laurier, proud sponsor got to break the champagne bottle to christen the ship, she is the sponsor of pbg one one 3, 113, 52, 113. Every one of those destroyers is called an early burke class destroyer, built on the lines of the first one. Pretty wonderful to have a ship named after you, a deep honor but a particular honor to be the lead ship in the class and that honor was bestowed on admiral burke, the greatest of our destroyer officers, the most impactful surface line, chief of naval operations, the cn oh for six years, iconic naval figure, all the ships in that class i will close on this by saying the second of the class, mine was named the barry after john barry who is not terribly wellknown. He was a revolutionary war navy captain, contemporary roughly of John Paul Jones and was a superb naval officer. Those of us who served on the barry are proud of that. We are proud my wife is proud to be the sponsor of 113, at pearl harbor, all of us who served in any of those destroyers, destroyer men and women and serve in an earlybird class destroyer. Host admiral James Stavridis, all your books contain leadership lessons and one of those lessons are combination of lessons, bold autonomy versus organizational fidelity. Guest you have to have both. Another way to put this, theres only attention for a leader in the traditions and culture of his or her organization which can collide with innovation. A good leader knows, you will hear me say this again in the course of a 2hour conversation, life is not an on and off switch, not a binary choice between simply accepting tradition or innovate constantly constantly change, false choice. Instead of thinking of it as an on and off switch. The dimmer in the or dining room that makes the lighting perfect. A good leader has to find that balance between respect for the traditions from the organization against the innovation that is necessary to keep that organization moving forward and that is one of the keys to leadership. I will give you a practical example, Winston Churchill who was the equivalent of the secretary of the navy, the British Royal navy in the early part of the Twentieth Century and he was constantly wanting to innovate and drive change and therefore constantly in conflict with the admiralty. S1 point he simply heard too many times, churchill exploded and said tradition, i will give you the traditions of the navy, there is time when we have to move forward. Luckily for churchill he found somebody, sir Jackie Fisher in early Twentieth Century british admiral, the two of them for the partnership which helps move the royal navy along. Host your most recent book is called sailing true north 10 admirals and the voyage of character. What is true north . Adherence to what we broadly conceived of as moral and ethical behavior. You are trustworthy. And and you put yourself in the shoes, friends and family. You believe in things like democracy, liberty, freedom of speech, freedom of education, gender equality, racial inequality, we execute those values imperfectly but they are the right values and when taken to gather that value set plus the personal qualities i mentioned a moment ago, this is what it means to sail true north. Host in that book you write, quote, im motivated by a growing sense we are witnessing the slow death of character. Guest we are. We overshare publicly and underperform in thinking about our character, internal debate. It is not a book about leadership, it is a book about character. Those are two very different things. Leadership is a big door that swings in the world, influences others in that door of leadership swings for good or for ill. You think of Franklin Delano roosevelt, in the top five, perhaps the top two or three along with washington and lincoln. That door of leadership he exerted to get us through the great depression, through the second world war, that door of leadership was enormous and its one for good. On the other hand, think about a leader like paul part of cambodia, ruthless thug, but he was an effective leader, he could mobilize a society. It led to an awful genocide in the killing fields of cambodia, leadership is that door, big doors swing on small hinges. That small hinge, the character is the human heart. What your door of leadership is going to swing so i wanted to write a book and talk about character. We are awash in books of leadership. Just walk through the airport and you will see dozens of them in every bookstore. We are underweight in books about character, this idea of sailing true north. In the category of right wing, talking about character in the context of admirals in the sea. 10 admirals from history quebec 2500 years ago, all the way through the late Twentieth Century, admiral grace parker who dragged the navy kicking and screaming into the computer age, 10 stories of character hence the title of the book sailing true north, sailing true north 10 admirals and the voyage of character, that is the idea of the book. Host we will get into some of those in a minute but to go back to your quote about character, over sharon Attention Spans of shortens, are those comments directed at anyone in particular guest we can point to public figures today who would benefit from doing a little more reading and a little more thinking and a little more internal contemplation. To take the example into the twitter sphere in the world of twitter, and 140 characters to 270 characters. And it will make the tweets too long. A shot of espresso. And and the diet has tweeting in it, short, punchy reading, you need to be reading my view and the daily cycle, through things like reading the autonomous magazine for example which is one of the great magazines of the world. It was 200 years old, no bylines in it, and a reporter ego involved in it. It was resolutely journalistic and could detach that daily news cycle. Why would we find time, nonfiction which we talked about but i would argue, youre reading diet, physical fitness diet, dont to one exercise, a pretty prime based diet. Host what does the back of your Business Card say . Guest the back of my Business Card is blank. Should think about putting something clever back there. I will tell you a quote i like a lot that i would think about putting on the back of my Business Card which is a quote that is from arguably the greatest of modern greek writers. In his tombstone evens to the following idea, the same as the quote on his gravestone, i fear nothing, i am free. You will do what we think is right. You have that perspective that whatever we do we are only here for a brief moment or two in this world. If i were to put something on the back of my Business Card, a quote from a modern greek writer. Host Thomas Jefferson on the back of your personal Business Card. That was a famous quote by our second president , and jefferson said i cannot live without books. On the front of my Business Card is that, right down on the bottom. Host we are going to play a video from 2015 from a cspan program, from retired in a moral. You mentioned her in your most recent book sailing true north 10 admirals and the voyage of character. See if you recognize the voice. When i have been in command, you get your greatest sense of satisfaction. Some of the when youre in command, and miracles happen in every mission. And to observe that, to win the day somewhere. Did you recognize admiral howards voice . How do you give it away . That is my friends, admiral Michelle Howard, the first africanamerican to be a four star admiral in the United States navy. A little dynamo, maybe 5 feet tall. I am taller than she is. Thoughtful and kind, sales true north. I first met her when she was mentioning in the Naval Academy, to see a clay there, midsummer nights dream, part of the cast in midsummer nights dream. Really quite remarkable person, naval forces in europe, someone i have enormous respect for, hence the reason shes part of the profile in sailing true north 10 admirals and the voyage of cha