bestselling author and one of america's true heroes. general anthony zinni. general zinni served a distinguished career in the united states marine corps including two tours in vietnam where he was severely wounded as well as operations in the philippines, turkey, somalia, kenya, iraq, and the persian gulf. he has received 23 military service awards including the defense distinguished service he has received 23 military service awards including the defense distinguished service medal is oak leaf cluster. he's also participated in numerous presidential diplomatic missions. his latest book "leading the charge: leadership lessons from the battlefield to the board room" includes a visionary approach to leadership and challenges of the 21st century. this is a book about what future leaders must know. and they must be effective in our dynamic and rapidly changing environment so please welcome

general anthony zinni. [applause] >> first, let me say it's a true honor to be here. i really want to commend tucson and the daily star and the university for this unbelievable event. i mean, i spent all day walking around and the number of people who have come out -- the interest in reading and literature just warms my heart. and it's great to see the young people out here especially. i know many of us who are a little more senior would obviously come but to see so many young people interested in books and reading and authors and lectures, i think, says something. this book "leading the charge," came about almost unintentionally. several years ago i wrote a book called "the battle for peace," and it was a book about how the world was changing around us. ever since the collapse of the soviet union, sort of a confluence of things, a perfect storm, the soviet union collapsing, changing the power

structure, the rise of globalization, mass migrations of people seeking greater opportunity and a whole set of things that i watched for my last 10 years in the military and then 10 years out in the business world, academia and other places. and it struck me when i wrote this book, that we weren't getting it. the world was changing drastically and becoming more complex and complicated that we're missing this and we're still operating under the old ways and systems and organizations. ting under the old ways and systems in organizations. in the course of going around in the book tour for that book, with audiences like yours, and in the q&a period, review questions and comments about leadership. and it struck me because of the number and frequency of those kinds of comments and questions in the just of what people are saying is it's not just a matter of the world changing and our environment changing, our

leaders are failing us. they don't get it. and i walked away from the weeks of the above two are saying, you know, this has been impressive by just the nature in the consistency of those comments that i wanted to see if that was really more than the anecdotal information i was picking up. people really feel that way, is there a sense there is a crisis in leadership. so like a good writer, you research everything. i went online to a number of organizations that do leadership surveys and that for years, that sort of take the pulse of people not only in the united states but globally about their feelings of leadership and every aspect of society. and frankly i was shocked what i found and this was late 2008. but from 2008 on back to sate beginning of the century, continuously there's been a rise in the percentage of people that feel we have a crisis of leadership.

in 2008, 80% of americans polled said we have a crisis in leadership. and not just in political leadership or where you might expect it, you know, events might drive that sort of opinion but across-the-board. as i drilled down into the research, when they were asked about different aspects of society, the clergy, business leaders and military leaders and all others, in 2008, not one group achieved higher than 50% approval rating. and that particularly struck me personally 'cause it was the first year that military leaders dropped below that percentage. and so i went to look at globally how people felt about leadership. is it just a united states, an american phenomenon or is this the way people felt around the world. and several of the surveys i found not one political head of stated achieved above 50% approval rating by his or her constituents, their people.

and so to me it was a clear indication that there is a sense if not a factual realization that leaders are failing us. why? i wanted to understand what is happening, you know, we have created such phenomenal leaders in the world in our own nation in the past in almost every field so why is this sense out there? and not everybody could be failing. i mean, obviously there are leaders that are making it. and i particularly wanted to look in areas where the vast majority of leadership was rated very low. why do you have the one standout that seems to go against the tide and people feel are strong leaders? what makes them different? so the gist of the book was about my views or observations as to what makes good leaders today. and why other leaders are failing. and i broke it down into about 11 areas. my partner on the book about halfway through said since -- for half a century you've been a

supposed leader. why don't you throw a few of your views in here, too. so i took him up on it and i salted it a little bit with my own personal views or experiences on leadership. good and bad, trial and error over half a century. that particular part of it made me think about leadership in another way. at the same time all this was going on i was asked to teach a course at duke university at their stanford leadership center so i was preparing for the course. and i decided to look at how i was trained, if you will, or educated to be a leader. not just the experiences what did my service, you know, the military do to train and prepare me. did it work or didn't it work and what did i find out? and it caused me to look at leadership development programs in business. i'm the chairman of a board of a major company and we have a leadership program and i've been involved in several others. and how do we develop leaders now? and the other aspect i wanted to

look at is something very strange that struck me because of something i read. the history of leadership. you know, it's something we don't think about. but we really decided we needed to create leaders from the masses about the beginning of the last century. if you think about history, that's about the time monarchies and dictators and other things were beginning to fade from the world but about the beginning of the 20th century if you're democratic and has representative government and everybody is going to have a fair chance and you can rise in the ranks obviously we have to find a way to train you. it's not bloodline or a class of elites. what did we do about that? you can look at business and industry. you can look at military and other large iostitutions and their approach and the approach was interesting. in the beginning of the century we felt if you build a good character, you build a good leader. if you looked at our training early on you would see it was character-building to build

leaders. it was the boy scout traits, clean, irreverent. i remember when i joined the military i had a card and i had to memorized traits. there was a platoon sergeant who will make sure you memorize this or else but this idea of building good character was the first approach to leadership and certainly there was nothing wrong with that. we want good people to be leaders. and we found out about several decades into the century there's more to it. we began to educate leaders. and we found out toward the end of this century there's a third component. and maybe the most important. and that's giving potential leaders experience. , you know, you look at the military and those of you who have served in the military you know that every couple of years we have to pack up and move. you're going to have a different experience. a different assignment. if you're promoted you're going to go to a different position and the purpose of all that is to give you a variety and a breadth of experiences to

develop the few that we're going to keep in that senior leader mode. i can tell you in my company we have an extensive leadership program which is built progressively from the junior leaders to the midlevel leaders to the senior leaders and we actually rotate them around. we have rotational positions in marketing, in finance where we try to give them that wide breadth of experience. one of the experiences we don't want to see is tall thin people. that isn't an anatomical criticism. it's people that come and do well in one area, like an engineer, and you see potential in that person that he or she could be a leader at the top level. but they say because they like what they do in one area. they're so narrowly developed they don't get that breadth of experience that you want across-the-board. so the latter part of the last century we began to emphasize this idea of experience. now, the first problem we run into how much experience can you

give people? how many different jobs and moving them around and disruptive nature of doing those sort of thing. we learned it in the military. certainly we did. you know if you haven't been in the military field exercises, computer simulations, tabletop games and actually other fields have gone into this. how can i create training environments, experiential environments that aren't real. they're temporary but i can expose you to a variety of positions. so all this came in to looking at leaders today. and what i found -- and i'm going to go through the things i thought were most significant about success and failure in leadership today, but what i found basically is that some of the traits that you would naturally think leaders should have and certainly have demonstrate in the past but do carry in the past but some need to be emphasized more and there

are certain other kinds of things or traits or characteristics or applications to leadership that are unique to this new century. and let me talk about some of them. first, i want to talk about the leader himself or herself. we have invested a lot lately in almost every field in building leaders. in the past we kind of said, you know, the good people will pop to the top. there's something natural in a leader. there's some sort of born to lead. give them enough experiences or give her enough -- different positions and you'll see it come to the top. and there's a realization that it's become much more complicated. and the breadth of knowledge and experience as i mentioned necessary to lead requires more than that. so you're seeing now more investment in what's being termed "leader development" in almost every field. and the fields are the places where you don't see that. you tend to see some of the problems. now, obviously these leader development programs are done in

a way to expose potential leaders to several things that they might not otherwise get. one of it is mentoring. it's sort of that access to senior leaders who have succeeded that offer their time, that offer relationship to a young leader that helps that leader develop. that is a sounding board. that offers advice to provide critique. critiques. if you look in business now, when we look at a young leader that maybe has something he or she needs to work on, we assign a coach. there are people who have consulting agencies that do coaching. and we very specifically select coaches for certain areas that we want these leaders to improve on. and to work on. i have a friend of mine who recently retired as the coo, the chief operating officer of the bank of new york. and i asked him, because of his, you know, 40 years in the banking business -- i said, don, what's the biggest change you've seen from the time you came in till now? he said the biggest difference is the amount of mentoring and

coaching that i had to do as a senior leader and we demanded of our senior leaders and your young up and coming leaders want it or need it. that's one aspect of the leader development program. and the other is what i mentioned try in that program where you spot a young leader with a lot of potential to give that variety of experiences. the third part maybe the most important part is to provide a means for that leader to reflect on who he or she is. when i taught my class at duke and when i've done leadership coaching and counseling, i have a little drill i put my students through. i give them a piece of paper. and i make them believe i'm going to collect a piece of paper. i have a place at the top of the paper with name. i have a line through the center of the paper. and i said there's going to be two questions i'm going to ask that you're going to answer on this paper. one on the top and one on the bottom. the first question -- you have 15 minutes to answer it. who are you?

and, of course, students look at you like another weird professor in the room, you know, who are you. and i don't take any questions or hand-raising comments and tell me who you are and they right away diligently try to write who they are. at the end of that i stop and i say, okay, before we get into the second question, i want to tell you i'm not going to collect the papers. i'm not going to call on you to get up and say what your answer is. that question, who you are could have been answered in many different ways. there's no right or wrong. we're going to talk about it. now you're going to answer the second question at the bottom half of the paper. who am i? and you're answering this question to yourself. and they diligently write. and at the end i ask them to think about what they wrote on the top of that paper when they thought i was going to collect it. and what they wrote in the bottom if they were honest to themselves as for who they were. and we get into discussing in the class the ways you could answer this. you could describe yourself by your profession, your set of

values, your family, your interest. there's many ways. and what does it say about you and was there a difference in the top when you may be selling yourself? was that your resume or was that at the bottom if you were being honest about yourself. but these are the sorts of things that allow individuals to understand themselves better. many certainly in the military and certainly in many businesses and other areas we give personality tests, myers briggs and others. the purpose of those tests is for the individual to understand who they are. you know, what are my limitations? what are my strengths? how do i act in given circumstances? how do i think and what are my values? and i think you see in successful leaders today, a much greater sense of reflection and appreciation and a way of constantly improving themselves that they seek. continued education, the ability to modify and improve and develop their leadership style.

in the military, we have all our young leaders, officers, ncos write a philosophy of command. and now in businesses and in schools where we teach leadership, we have them write a philosophy of leadership. and we encourage them to develop a philosophy. this isn't a rubber stamp or template that everybody gets. but what is it that you want to become? what are the leadership traits, the values? how do you want to run an organization? how do you want your people to feel about you? you know, and when you write that, as i used to tell young officers and those that i've worked with at universities -- when you write that, go back and look at it. at least once a year or more. see what you've learned. have you lived up to it. could you have done better? and get feedback. again part of these leadership development programs is feedback. feedback is tough because when it's critical, it's tough to take. then the mentoring comes in you have to have sort of a safe way to receive that criticism. someone you trust.

someone that necessarily say and this isn't for score or grade. this is for you. and where that person feels comfortable in expressing i haven't done this that well. i need to improve in this area. so the first thing i would mention of the traits of the leaders that are succeeding and maybe the need for those that are not is this sense of concentrating on being a better leader, improving yourself and being part of a -- some sort of development program that continues your education and development. the second thing is a realization -- there's a chapter i have in the book called "the led" who do we lead? very few leadership books talk about those we lead. and the purpose of leadership is made up of people. today that's much more difficult for a number of reasons. the led are much more diverse and different. there's obviously diversity that we understand, what i call horizontal diversity, ethnicity,

race, a place of origin, sexual orientation. you take it. there's a whole bunch of things that you can see that make us different. and more and more a different group of led, a more diverse group of led is entering every field of endeavor and so that leader has to be sure from each person they lead who comes from a different background. besides that horizontal diversity there's what i call a vertical diversity. i'm still in the work force. i'm 66 years old going on 67, which tells you something 'cause i always thought you retired at 65. but you don't anymore. we're healthier, better, poorer and so we all have to work longer. and if you work longer the number of generations in a given organization is greater. i'm from the silent generation. prebaby boomer. you know, we were born before the baby boomers.

then you have the baby boomers and generation x and the generation y the millennial generation and another generation about the new silent generation about to enter the work force or organizations. and so you have about six generations in the work force. they were named because they're exceptionally different. you come from my generation and you're the son or daughter of the depressionary-era parents. they taught you about financial security, job security. if you're a young person today maybe not so much. you're willing to take risks, you're willing to move. and this manifests itself in many different ways. i mentioned in the book an incident of someone i know who works for a major mutual fund company. and he was tasked with coming up with the awards and incentives program for the company and he decided he would poll all the employees to say what do you want? if you do a good job and we're going to recognize you in this company, what is it that you want? what he found was the older

generation was put it in my paycheck and the younger generations were saying i want a picture with the boss, a certificate shaking hands. i want recognition which is even more important. you know, where you could count on those older employees who were settled in and wasn't ready to move in and wanted that job security and believe me i know this from the being in the business world for the last 10 years you're liable to find some young person coming in and say, boss, i'm out of here. i'm moving. why? what did we do wrong? you didn't do anything wrong. we would never have seen this from an older generation who sought security so you see this diversity from many forms and shapes and now a leader has to touch every one of those people. you know, has to communicate with them in a way that's very different. this first struck me in a job i got right after retirement. and i looked outside my hallway and i looked at all the people that were out there in the different cubicles and offices.

and i'll tell you it looked like the united nations. the bar scene or star wars. it was so different out there. and it struck me that you have to be there, a person for all seasons and have to be in touch with all these people. the third thing i think is very important today and one i think that will resonate with you is the importance of values, ethics, character, you know, moral behavior. there have been so many failures in this area. probably a lot of reasons. one is the reason we're under greater scrutiny. the ability to see everything that goes on. to get in the bowels of an organization. obviously, there's much more scrutiny. there may be more to it than that. i would hope we're not losing our sense of values and our sense of ethics. what i find now is companies are beginning to realize organizations, institutions that good ethical behavior, a strong code of conduct, a good sense of

doing things not just legally -- that's the minimum. but ethically and morally is good business. and the demand and the anger from the customers and the people that want this and are appalled by what they see now are really making this important. i sit on a number of boards of directors, and i have since i retired. and now each board of director has an ethics committee that is responsible that this happens. and this has become important to be a success in business. you know, there's only three ways people get canned if they're leaders. one is they're incompetent. they can't get the job done. the other is they misbehaved personally and then the third is that somehow they don't treat their people well. so -- i mean, if you think about it, everybody that we have fired or has had to quit under pressure or gone was either because they couldn't get the job done. they lacked that sense of personal behavior and

accountability that was expected of them or? in some way they mistreated the people they're responsible for. those are the three reasons why people fail in a leadership position or responsibility. i notice in new leaders today that they think differently. they now have to deal, as i said at the beginning of this talk, with very complicated and complex issues and problems. the world has exploded around them. you get a problem or an issue every 5 seconds it's delivered to your doorstep. and by the time the problems come to the top they're not easy ones 'cause they are all resolved by the leaders below you. how do you dissect an issue or a problem? now in our universities and in the military, we're actually teaching how to think. you know, we break it down into three areas, critical thinking which is basically the ability to analyze a problem. break it down into its parts. and then put it back together. synthesize it in a way that's useful. that allows you to approach it.

systems-thinking which allows you to look at the issue or the problem and how it fits overall and everything that's going on in a very complex system or systems of thinking and then finally creative thinking. how to think creatively about solutions or resolutions to these problems. i was in iraq november a year ago. and i was there at the request of general odierno and ambassador crocker. we were doing an objective set of eyes on their plans for how they were going to operate in the turnover. and while i was going around to the different cities and towns in the military organizations, our other government organizations, the iraqi organizations, t÷n9+ga"ñ reallys something that struck me more than anything else. as i was sitting in general odierno's headquarters i told him -- you know, i can close my eyes and listen to these briefs and i wouldn't know i was in the military headquarters. you monitor the date palm harvest and you open up the recreational swimming pools.

you know, you have these groups that connect to the tribes and work with resolving their disputes. there were very few military things they had down pat. it was all these things dealing with the economy, with the social structure and the political structure in iraq. w and he kind of smiled at me. general petraeus had started that. dave petraeus would go around and say, you know, we can do the military piece, security piece. if nobody else else is improving the lives of the iraqi people, if we're not turning this around and demonstrating hope and he took it upon himself to change it. creating things that i believe along with the surge of the troops that get all attention, maybe more importantly begin to turn things around.ñt that ability to see outside your normal paradigm or your normal box that you operate in. and that kind of creative thinking, that kind of open-mindedness, i think is extremely valuable and where you see the exception to the rule today especially in industries

and in places where the norm is failure or mediocrity. the other part is how decisions are made. you know, we now work on training leaders how to make decisions. how to take that analytical process and to work it into the ability to arrive at the right decision. to find the problem. get it done. there are three kinds of decision-makers in my view. the first -- these are good decision-makers. the first is the analytical decision maker who needs time, work hard at breaking things down, analyzing the parts and putting them back together, leading to the right decision. the second is the recognition of the decision maker. that leader has been around long enough and has a lot of successes and experience can begin to see patterns of trends. and the third,g3dz the rare one the intuitive decision maker that haswñ developed it and see to have almost a sixth sense that can make these calls right off the bat. when i talk to my students about this, i talk in terms of

quarterbacks in the nfl. that rookie quarterback who just drafted, that has the clipboard and headphones that's the analytical decision matter. he's learning how to analyze and listening to the assistant coaches and plotting every play when the quarterback comes off the field he's listening to the decision with the coach. he's now the starter. he can walk out on that field and read the defense very quickly. he can sense the momentum in the game. he does things because he sees patterns and then the third joe montana, danfs'ñ marino, a coupf good italian kids from pennsylvania. they are the intuitive decision-makers. they have developed that skill where something innately they possess they can see it and sense it in a way no one else can and can't be coached to that level but bring it about. another important factor is a lost trait or art. the ability to think strategically. one of the greatest cries i hear

is where are the marshals, george marshall? you know, you think about the end of the cold war -- i mean, the end of world war ii, it is beginning of the cold war, harry truman, george marshall, arthur vandenberg, republicans and democrats, different views of things decided we're entering a new phase. we have just come from this huge success. we were the victors, a major superpower, if not the only one at that time. and yet they foresaw a future, a different world and the need to operate differently. they did things that in our history up to that point and since then were truly remarkable. first of all, a republican congress a democratic administration working together, which is truly phenomenal if we think about it today. secondly, they reorganized government. 1947 national security act, the last time we had a major reorganization of government. they joined nato, created it. george washington, thomas jefferson had to be rolling over. we joined an entangling alliance

in europe. they created the world banks, the national security council, structures and organizations to face a new world. along with kennan and others they created a strategic view of how we had to deal with threats that would come out from communism and elsewhere, deterrence and containment. it doesn't happen anymore. we don't have this future orientation. if you want to make a lot of money, go in the business of being a strategic consultant. helping companies, organizations develop their strategies. this art is lost. i have a personal theory why. because if you look at our young people you see they're doing two things. communicating and receiving information. there's no processing that goes on. they are constantly on cell phones, blackberries, at the computer. and they're constantly assessing flood of information and communicating with their pals. is any processing going on? that mentality now is seeping through those generations.

and there's so much information to be processed. there's so much communication that goes on. you know, how are you going to take time to stop and think and say where am i? where am i headed? where do i want to be? 10 years? how am i going to get there? it is amazing how many organizations and businesses just operate day-to-day and don't have that future orientation that we used to have. i think another part of successful leadership is mastering the organizations. you know, the oldo'n bureaucra organization that has survived, unfortunately, to this day particularly in government is so outdated, so ponderous, so bureaucratic and so bloated that you can be left in the dust. when you look at a structure and organization that is a black and wired diagram. block at the top boss, two blocks at the bottom subboss, and sub-sub boss and christmas trees. that organization doesn't work anymore. if you see successful companies

out there they're flattened, streamlined. they're structured much differently. they have multiple lines of authority and communication. and they morph and change when the environment demands it. you go back to generations like mine, we don't like change. we want to know who the boss is. clean lines of command. it just doesn't happen anywhere anymore. in the course of writing this book, i ran into an individual who was on the board of a software company. upand coming doing very successfully. run by a group of very young people. he said their organization was in a large factory. an old warehouse. no partitions, no walls. all their furniture was on wheels. the desks, the filing cabinets and every day they came in they decided how they should structure for the current contract or the current mission or whatever. and they loved it. they moved around. they adjusted and turned things into reporting structures that was very different from the day before, the week before.

you do that to my generation we kind of have sparks out our era. you know, we don't like that kind of change. but look at our own government. look at this bloated bureaucracy that's tough to get things done. to get decisions made. it's an arcane piece of structure that's probably a century out of date to be able to deal with the problems and the speed and the necessity and the speed to get things done out there. it is the speed. and this is brought by technology. you know, all of us now have to carry around something like this. i got two of them. i don't ever use them. you know, my company gives them to me and they get pissed off because i don't answer the phone or text back or whatever. i fly out -- i go to the gate and everybody is there banging away on some piece of electronic hardware or talking into it. and the people scared me in the beginning before i realized this thing in they're.

when you get on the air plane they give you all the instructions and a piece in the magazine about what goes on -- which mode -- i don't know. and then when the plane lands, when i landed flight 877 people pop these things out and talk. more people knew they landed than they knew pearl harbor was attacked. and i break my own and pretend i'm talking to somebody. i want somebody knows i'm landing in tucson too. these are people who operate with this stuff. and this stuff is dominating our world. it doesn't matter whether it's good or bad. it's reality. you know, when i left command, u.s. central command 10 years ago, i had forces in hawaii, the west coast of the united states, the east coast of the united states, all the way over to the persian gulf and pakistan. now, when i had to communicate with them we had these video teleconferencing and everything. you lost that sort of personal touch.

ion which time zone they were in and if they're awake and we're trying to run a large military organization over that span of time and space. and all the electronic assistance and aids to do that, which makes everything move faster. you know, we're fighting a bunch of guys that live in caves that have throw-away cell phones and operate off the internet. and can maximize their use of these things. the speed at which then it's demanded to make decisions and analyze problems is greater. the environment we're in as i said at the beginning has changed and grown. i was talking to a group of people that were food distributors from the midwest in the united states. and i was talking about how the environment has changed. everybody's world is expanding. you don't do anything now whether it's your private life or your business or your occupation in a small contained piece of geography. and after i had described all

this, i had an individual come up to me who had inherited his food distribution company from his father who inherited it from his grandfather. he said, you know, when i first took over this company, you could draw a circle around parts of three states in the middle of the united states. that was my world. my business world. my suppliers, my distributors, my customers all right there. he said today i get food supply from all over the world. i have customers all over the world. he said if you go online to place an order with my company, i have an outfit that's in bangalore, india that processing all that sort of thing. all the world makes him worry about a drought somewhere in the world, the political situation in the world, the economy around the world and a vast communication system he has to operate. he exploded like we all are. globalization, the borders are coming down. tom friedman said the world is plant. -- flat. the world is shrinking.

it's a complicated world. nothing like it used to be. some small thing that happens in the remote part of the world that we've never even heard of impacts us directly. somebody burns down the rain forest, you know, somebody grows cocoa leaves or poppies or somebody decides i can't make it here i'm packing my bags and i'm coming into your neighborhood whether you like it or not -- everything now in the world is important. you can't isolate yourself from it. and if you don't understand the world you live in, you have a big problem. the successful leaders today are also great communicators. remember the robert barons and those real leaders -- they were sort of faces you might see in the newspaper or a picture of them. you didn't see them every day. up front. they stayed in some office behind the scenes. now who do you see? you see the ceo of toyota coming across the pond to sit in front

of our congress and you see the three makers of the automakers mo, larry and curly. when you see something goes wrong, all of a sudden it's the ceo or the chairman of the board, believe me having been through this, you are communicating. you want to see the leadership out there. it's not only external communication, it's internal communication. you have to be the face of the organization, the personality of the organization. leaders today cannot isolate themselves. they can't lead from behind. it has to be up-front leadership. and you have to be able now and skilled enough to communicate what the organization is. what it intends to do, who you are and that has to work inside and outside. and finally, every organization in this very complicated world, very complex world will face crisis and/or change. and i put them together 'cause change is like crisis.

and you have to be able to lead through crisis. lead through change. where leaders fail they commiserate with their own employees. they feel sorry for themselves. you know, or they try to cover it up or they day getting all the information. i can give you the list of things they will do wrong when they get smacked with a crisis or the need to change drastically and there are a million and one consultants out there that will tell them what's wrong, give them the list and they'll still do it that way. they still don't learn. when crisis hits, that's probably the most significant time a leader will manifest his or her ability to truly lead. how do we get through this? this is when everybody is looking at you. i have one question that i ask anybody i'm talking to about leadership, students or young officers or whatever. what is the one most important leadership characteristic or trait that you want in your leader?

and this is an interesting question because if the company or the organization or the unit is doing well, the answers that come back were from students that really haven't had a lot of experience in organizations and leadership. it'll come back, i want a leader that cares about his people. i want a leader that's charismatic and approachable, you know, and those are all well and good. it's strange. the first time i asked that question of a bunch of corporals and sergeants coming out of vietnam i said what did you want from your lieutenant, your officer. what is the single most important trait? and those young marines said to me, i want him to know his stuff. they didn't say stuff. they don't say stuff. the heart and soul of leadership is that you're competent. you know your stuff. i can get you through this crisis. i can lead this company or this

unit to success. i can accomplish the mission. i can bring you back home. i can make you successful. and we have too many leaders that we either select or arrive at a position that don't possess that competence. and that competence today regardless of whatever field you're in ishf extremely diffict to achieve 'cause virtually every organization, institution -- every aspect of our society has become much more complicated, complex, difficult to lead.cdz and we can't invest in leaders without the experience, the knowledge, the demonstrated performance to be able to come in and to take that organization -- that part of our society that we count on to where we want it to be. i thank you for your attention. and i'll be glad to take any questions and answers. and again, thank you for coming. [applause]

>> general zinni, i'm a vietnam veteran. i'm a catastrophic priority 1 total and permanent disabled vietnam veteran, former marine personal bodyguard for lyndon johnson. the issue that i have that i wish to bring forward in this moment to you, sir that i find to be the greatest challenge at the moral issue in our country is that for over two years, the average of 20 veterans from this war commits suicide because they cannot take the degradation of what happens to them when they go there and they come home and they see the disconnect. and so the question i pose to you, sir, is what level of leadership would you impose in this country that could assist these people because suicide in my understanding is just about one of the greatest sins that a soul can ever commit. >> thank you.

this has become an alarming problem and it's growing. and, frankly, the services in the military that have invested a lot in trying to understand it and prevent it are not as successful as they would like to be. the numbers have not gone down in the ways we would like. i think that there's several reasons why that's happened. one of the reasons is we're just now beginning -- you know, within the last maybe decade or so to acknowledge these sorts of problems. if you remember back into the world war ii era, or world war i, my father was a world war i vet, my brother in korea and cousins in world war ii. this was, you know, battle shock or -- you know, it was something that was either temporary or it was looked at as some flaw in the human being. you know, it wasn't looked at as a medical issue or a problem. only until recently did we acknowledge that the strain --

the mental strain that combat puts on individuals is so great that it could cause problems that need treatment and attention just as physical injury does. that's the first problem. the second problem is that i think this has continued to grow and maybe really we began to see it in a major way in vietnam and others. is we haven't -- we fight different kinds of wars today. this is not the good war. this is not the greatest generation's war where we were attacked. and it was clearly, you know, as you know from the arizona and the displays here, pearl harbor, the country was behind it. it was unconditional surrender, you know, everything went exactly like it was supposed to go in our image of how we, you know, take up arms and defend ourselves. and then even in the end reach down to the defeated, the germans and the japanese and rebuild a society to probably where it's never been. everything about that was noble and good and turned out in a way, you know, obviously there may have been parts not down in

the ground but in a general sense it did. and ever since then we've been trying to repeat that. and the kinds of conflicts we found ourselves in, whether it's a vietnam -- i spent two tours there as bruce mentioned. whether it's an iraq or afghanistan or whether it's a somalia -- these aren't the same kinds of conflicts. in the war in vietnam, our soldiers did not come home to crowds that appreciated them and gave up their seats to an airplane. we couldn't wear our uniforms by the way as those of you that are vietnam veterans who might remember. we at least learned a lesson not to turn antiwar or anti a particular war to antimilitary that happened once to our shame, i think, in our culture. and we go out of our way not to let that happen. but we have to remember the kinds of conflicts today put that greater strain -- i sat at a table at an event next to a man that received the medal of

honor in world war ii. and the extraordinary heroism that this individual demonstrated as a young officer was beyond belief. and in the course of the discussion, you know, the speakers they were talking about somalia and vietnam and these other wars that had come after his time. he turned to me and he said, you know, i couldn't do that. i couldn't do what you did. meaning the young people that were out there in the audience. i said, you got to be kidding. medal of honor. he said i know who the enemy were and when we were going to fight and when we were going to stop. and he said to know that you don't know, you don't know that individual is the enemy. you don't know if there's a rear area or a front line -- you have that continuous pressure on you 24/7 of not knowing. you have that unbelievable feeling when you try to do something good and noble when it backfires against you. when someone doesn't appreciate

what your intentions are. when somebody blows someone up when you take a young person that's 17, 18, 19 years old in any war and expose them to the carnage and the brutality that some of us in this room have seen, that goes against everything a young mind has experienced and the difference between right and wrong and what should and shouldn't had been what what is correct and incorrect it all begins to blur and try to piece it and understand it and only now are we beginning to recognize this. and we're just at the embryonic stages of understanding how to treat it and prestrength. -- prevent it. we put our young soldiers, airmen, marines under tremendous pressure and expose them to things that are unbelievable, things that they could never imagine in their young lives they would see. and to try to take them from that environment within hours fly them right back and put them back into civilization, into a

family, into the, quote, normal life, that is tough for an 18, 19, 20-year-old to put all together in some cases. i think we are beginning to make the right approaches in understanding and appreciating first of all that these issues need to be dealt with in the chain of command, the leadership. this is not just a doctors or a psychiatrist problem. this is a leader's problem. they have to see that their leaders understand. their leaders want them to do well. their leaders appreciate what they're going through. because in the past to admit to something like this was unsoldierly. it was unmanly. we've at least taken that down now. maybe not in all cases but we've at least recognized that this is as much a problem as if you had a physical injury. but we have a long way to go in this.

>> i have one question of what is the one -- the one individual outcome that may be the most important in management and the success of an organization. i have worked in management in my entire life practically. and i came up with the idea that there is one overwhelming item. and interestingly enough i have not heard that word from you. and this word is stressed. unless the people working for you can trust you, you will not be able to get your ideas through even if you have great ideas. if the people working on there -- you don't trust each other, the organization won't work. and if your boss doesn't trust you, you are doomed in the organization. so i think trust is probably the most important there. i would like to hear your views on that. >> well, first of all, thank you.

and i think that's an excellent point. my question would be how do you build trust? you build it through competence, proper behavior and the right way to treat your people. that builds trust. and i think i said those were the three things that people fail in in leadership. if you accomplish them. but it begins with competence. i'm not going to trust somebody who is not competent. that person may be the nicest person in the world, may be the most honorable person in the world. you know, but you know the old saying, good old dog but can't hunt. and so number one i want that person to know what he or she is doing because the success of the organization, my personal success, the accomplishment of the mission, is going to be based on that person's confidence and competence. trust is given. and trust is only given if you earn it. and i should have used the word. i take your point. but i think the things -- i would hope the things that i mentioned, competence, moral and ethical behavior, doing the

right thing, and treating your people well are the three ways you earn that trust. >> general zinni, speaking to your point of organization, adapting to the present realities perhaps terrorists with cell phones or whatever, in terms of roman history where the roman army switched from a conventional army, fighting army in a conventional battle to doing border war-type patrols and ch nge the capabilities, do you perceive a danger of -- if the u.s. army, for example, reorganizes to optimize their structure towards terrorists that we will lose the ability to fight a conventional war with

tanks and bombers? >> i think what you're hitting on is one of the most significant problems that our military faces in -- because of the budget constraints and where you invest in other issues of how you get resources. what kind of military should we have now? one of the things i've always says you never fight the war you prepare for? you know why? you're prepared to fight so nobody wants to take on you. always -- the corollary to that is always prepare for the war you don't want to fight. when we didn't want to fight the soviets in the folded gap and exchange nuclear weapons, we prepared ourselves. we made statements of policy like first use we created a tremendous arsenal all of which, you know, is oh, my god what's happening? but it deterred the bad guy. the purpose of it was deterrence and containment. and so no one wanted to get into that. what we have now in the military is they're facing a decision.

and you use the term "optimizing" you're going to optimize at one end and you're going to hedge at the other end. so where do you optimize and where do you hedge? if you optimize and invest in the conventional or worsened because you want to ensure you don't have to fight it. you want the capability to deter adventure by potential enemies, it's going to leave you not as prepared at the other end. and so you're going to be doomed to fight those kinds of wars. if you go back to the cold war, the way our enemies -- communists wanted to engage us was through surrogates, through insurgencies. you know, they wanted to make sure those never blossomed into a confrontation that could lead to something bigger between china, the soviet union and us in the west. so we fought them in vietnam and

latin america and south america so our enemies are going to look at where we are best and least prepared and that's a tough decision. you are not going to invest tremendous amounts of resources in something that may be as less a threat to your very existence. so i would predict that you'll probably see some major programs cut like we've just seen at the f-22 was cut. the army's future combat system was cut but we'll still preserve enough of the advantage in these areas to make sure no one gets too adventure some. we have to be careful because if you cut your advantage too close there could be a surprise in the enemy that jumps a generation or two ahead and we will handle these other kinds of conflicts, counterinsurgency, counterterrorism as best we can within the context of that kind of military. that isn't to say we won't write the doctrine. we won't do things to at least try to train, organize and equip to meet that.

but the priorities will be to the larger, more dangerous potential threats i think in the long run. but what you hit on is exactly what the secretary of defense, the chairman of joint chiefs, the service chiefs, all the combatant commanders to have face. where do you optimize and where do you hedge there's not enough resources to be all things to all people in both areas. thank you. >> general, i wanted to ask a question based upon your experience of rising to high command in the military and now being on boards of directors for 10 years about the crisis in america and business. we have the example of ceos that are paid 20 times what people on the floor are paid. due to compensation committees in boards of directors. we have the enron case where the smartest men in the room led a large company right off a cliff.

and, of course, we have our current banking crisis where the same thing happened. did you learn anything in the military that would help american business? >> yeah. certainly. and i think -- and i can speak for the companies i've been responsible for. the first thing -- let me take those individually. leadership compensation, i don't think anybody should be -- especially when it comes to the area of bonuses and other things that go on top of a salary, those things should not be given unless -- not only are they personally earned but the organization in the company has met its goals. in other words, you know, you could -- you could say well, here's tony zinni. he's the ceo of x, y, z company. well, we're on a board. we think he did a gret job and we're going to give him an 80% bonus to this amount. when the company has not met its numbers, its goals. it hasn't met its top line or the bottom line. the leader should not be compensated in a different

proportion to the success of the organization. i mean, to me that's a definition of leadership. and a lot of the excuses you hear now are that, well, he did a great job. yeah, the company didn't do so well because of other factors, the economy and all -- it doesn't matter. because again going to your other point the person on the floor is going to feel that. there's going to be layoffs, salary cuts, maybe not bonuses paid or raises. so the top and the bottom by the boards of directors, by the stockholders have to be held accountable in the same proportion. and i agree with you. the extraordinary amount of salaries and bonuses and other awards that are not rated based on the performance of the companies have gotten out of sight. the second thing, i think, which is a reality and we're going to have face and i think it's necessary is we need more regulation. we need more inspection. we need more regulatory organizations. we need a securities and exchange commission that really has teeth in it. and goes after it.

i also think -- and some industries i see this not as much as i would like. some industries are beginning to self-regulate. create regulatory agencies that are independent. that can come down on the industry and on members in the industry and that's their purpose. now, what you have to be sure is they're monitored. they're ensured not to have people in there that are some way benefit protecting or covering or not investigating. but, unfortunately, we've arrived at a position in almost every area where we need this kind of scrutiny. we do have now greater media scrutiny in all this. we do have now overall better-informed stakeholders meaning boards of directors and stockholders and others that are becoming more demanding in all this which i think is good. part of my job -- the company i'm with has a parent company that is british. but we have the american subsidiary. part of my job on the board as

an outside director is to ensure that this company not only complies with american rules and american ethical standards and regulations but is complies with our security and other things that we do. so they hold the outside directors of the board accountable. the u.s. government. i'm on a government security committee that reports to the defense security services to answer to this. now, that's kind of unique in this given structure but the idea that board members now, not just ceos but board members get held accountable, sarbanes-oxley laws that have been passed that's a good thing. because in the past you had four meetings in the year. you listened to what the president said and you voted yes and you collected your check and go home. nowadays you better have insurance because people will sue you. stockholders will sue you and that's maybe that's where we need to put the emphasis to

ensure these kinds of things that don't happen that have shocked us all. fortunately these things are coming out and it's forcing the industry to correct it. my advice to people that i talk to is, you're the ultimate controller of this. don't buy somethingóh> from a company that you don't like the way they are doing business. don'tgá  put your savings acco and your cds -- don't do business with financial organization. you have the greater power over all this. you know, put your money and your investment and bring your business to where you're satisfied that there's moral behavior. i'm getting a green sign telling me it's over. there's a big hook behind us so thank you very much. [applause] ..