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>> In the aftermath of the 9-11 I quit my career as a doctor so
I could serve in the Air Force as a pilot.
And at the end of my 13 year career,
I had the opportunity to work as a dual qualified pilot and physician.
I was an operational test pilot in a nuclear bomber as well as
a flight surgeon.
And there was 11 of us in the entire Air Force at the time.
And over my service, I had the privilege and honor to work for so
many incredibly inspiring, talented, and motivating leaders.
But over that time I also saw how often our senior leaders fell short of what we
needed them to be, and that's why I'm on this stage today.
I want to improve Air Force leadership and make it the service that this nation
needs it to be, specifically, by focusing on how we improve our leaders.
To help you understand the leadership gap that I'm talking about,
I want to share with you a tale of two leaders.
One of my first commanders in one of my earliest squadrons that I joined,
two months prior to me getting there,
he had taken over that squadron after the previous commander had been fired.
There was a nuclear missile incident that had reached national attention.
And when I joined, this squadron was under intense scrutiny by the entire
Air Force and even higher up to make sure that that mistake never happened again.
And this meant working through grueling inspections and
exercises, basically simulating World War III.
And if any of us made a mistake where we decoded a nuclear message incorrectly,
or had a procedural misstep, entire base fails.
Careers are ended.
And it was during this intense period of scrutiny that my wife and
I received some difficult news.
We learned that Naomi was going to need a kidney transplant.
We didn't know when, but it was going to happen.
And that's when my commander, who's call sign was Rude.
He wasn't rude at all, just his call sign.
But I remember he came up to me one day, and
he said, Dave, listen, I heard what's going on with your wife.
I've talked to my boss, and we think it's best that you just take some time off
I know we're severely undermanned for this next inspection but
I think you need to focus on your family.
The fact that he cared so much about my family more than his career
just made me want to work ten times harder for this man.
And that's simply because he understood a very simple fact.
There's a difference between what the Air Force pays us to do and
what it asks us to do, and leadership is what makes up that difference,
leaders like Rude.
Now over the next two years, we completed all our inspections with flying colors.
We completed a successful deployment.
We also had a jet crash, and we lost several of our own.
But through all of this, I was part of a team that was so
committed to each other, their job, and their boss.
And I wouldn't trade that for anything.
Now contrast that experience with another commander that I had.
Went by the call sign of Panzer.
And when he joined our squadron his reputation already preceded him.
And I remember early on he walked up to one of the young pilots in our squadron
and he goes, hey captain?
I understand you're going to weapons school right after this six
month deployment so you might be away from your family for about an entire year.
I was just thinking, what if we just keep you back and you just go to
weapons school for six months instead of going on this deployment.
Captain looks at him up and goes well gee sir that's not a bad idea at all.
I mean, I just spent six months deployed last year.
My wife just delivered our first child three weeks ago.
Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea if I just focused on preparing for
weapons school.
Panzer looks at him again.
That's not what I wanted to hear.
When I ask you if you want to deploy, the only thing I want to from you is sir,
yes sir, I'll do whatever you want me to do for you sir!
Three days later, this pilot and
the rest of us are assembled in our squadron getting ready to deploy.
And he gets up in front of the entire squadron.
Understand we have all said goodbye to our families.
Children are still crying in the parking lot, but
he gets up to address all of us and he goes, today we're going to deploy.
We're going to do what we've been trained to do.
Now we're all thinking we're going to get one of those rousing patriotic speeches
you hear about in the movies.
Maybe this guy isn't so bad after all.
And you know what's so great about deploying?
I get to get the hell away from my wife and kids.
I don't have to go to any of my daughter's damn baseball games anymore.
Look, I mean, we're just as shocked as you are.
I mean, this is the guys that's going to lead us into combat?
Turns out this incident was really a sign of things to come.
Because the next two years, we dealt with a great deal of his malfeasance,
misconduct, and general misbehavior.
And no amount of investigations and
evidence that piled up against what he had done was going to make a difference.
Basically, up the chain, the swept it under the rug and made it go away.
Those two years, really rather uneventful.
But we, as a squadron were left completely broken,
demoralized, doing the bare minimum to get through each day and
counting the days that we're going to be able to get out of this unit.
I wish there was a better ending to this story, but
the fact of the matter is, Rude, my earlier commander,
his career plateaued, he's no longer in the Air Force.
Panzer is in line to be a general in the US Air Force today.
Why does this matter to anyone here?
Well, the US Air Force is in a serious crisis right now,
that affects our national security.
Pilots are getting out of the Air Force as soon as their committment's up.
There are cockpits going unfilled right now and
it poses a serious threat to our security.
We're not able to do our mission anymore.
Most people aren't aware of this fact.
And what I've watched is the Air Force talk about how
we need to pay the pilots more.
Change a deployment schedule.
And that's missing the heart of the matter here.
Pilots aren't quitting their jobs.
They're quitting their bosses,
bosses who don't care about their people as much as they care about their
own promotion, bosses who won't speak truth to power, bosses like Panzer.
I've had the great opportunity to spend the last year at business school at
Stanford.
And I've looked over how we can fix this problem.
I've looked at the private sector, looked at the HR practices and
the talent management strategies that I think will make a difference.
And three of the top things that I think the Air Force can do to really make it
into what this nation needs it to be are, hiring a professional search firm,
360 evaluations, and neuropsychiatric evaluations.
And let me explain what I'm talking about.
Hire a professional search firm that can come in and
identify exactly what kind of leader you need, what kind of skills,
characteristics and experiences these leaders should have.
And once you've built your target you can just work backwards from there and
develop a set of promotion criteria that can identify, develop, and
select those specific leaders.
Right now, in my opinion, we have an arbitrary gauntlet of promotion
criteria designed to see who wants to be promoted the most instead of having
promotion criteria developed to see what kind of leaders we need the most.
Number two, 360 evaluations, we've all done this in business school.
And a lot of companies, this is standard operating procedure.
I would argue that the people at the bottom
of the chain are often in the best position to identify the best leaders.
Look, I think we can all agree.
Anyone can look good for the priest on Sunday morning, it's how you act on
Saturday night that tells me really what kind of person you are.
And third, neuropsychiatric testing, now this one really caught me off guard.
I didn't realize that so many companies were already doing this to make sure that
they identified and promoted the best leader.
Turns out Army Special Forces and Navy SEALs already employ neropsychiatric
testing to pick through all of their recruits.
You can be the biggest, fastest, strongest recruit in Navy SEAL training.
But if your test comes back showing narcissistic or
sociopathic tendencies, you're done, you're out.
Special Forces don't tolerate people they can't trust, neither should the Air Force.
Conveniently, the Air Force has all this data for every one of its pilots.
I and everyone else spent five hours taking this IQ test and
personality test before we can go to pilot training.
It's just that they only revisit those results in the event that one of us has
a head injury and we need to be cleared before we can fly again.
So professional search firms, 360 evaluations, and neuropsychiatric testing.
That's what I think would make a real difference, and
this is pretty standard in the private sector.
So why aren't we moving the needle on this in the military if things
are getting so bad?
Well I've talked to military leaders, political
scientists, and famous authors on this topic and they all agree.
This is a growing problem and something needs to be done about this.
But the only thing that's going to fix it is an attack on the scale of Pearl Harbor.
What, why do we need to sacrifice blood and
treasure to get an organization to embrace true leadership?
I'm not asking for $1 billion and I'm not asking to send a Tesla Roadster to Mars.
>> [LAUGH] >> It's simple
standard private sector HR practices.
But I will admit, it is difficult.
The three things that any organization is going to need to embrace to implement
these decisions and these actions are first, have the strength
to look in the mirror and embrace the uncomfortable truth staring back at you.
Two, discipline, have the discipline
to take action before you've run out of all other options.
And finally moral clarity,
have the moral clarity to put purpose above promotion.
Thank you.
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