David Novak 0:04 

Welcome to How leaders lead where every week you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world, I break down the key learning so that by the end of the episode, you'll have something simple that you can apply as you develop into a better leader. That's what this podcast is all about. Today's guest is General Ray Odierno, the former Chief of Staff of the United States Army, which is the Army's top job. He retired in 2015, as a four star general, and now does private consulting on minor little subjects like country risk and cybersecurity. Honestly, I could fill up a whole hour just introducing this guy. But there's so much good stuff in this conversation, and I want to get right to it. Now, listen, it's one thing to talk about trusting a leader in the workplace setting. But trusting a leader in the military really goes up a whole other level, where the stakes can literally be life and death. And boy, after 39 years of military service, through three tours in Iraq, Ray is absolutely a leader people trust, and he knows how to help others become trustworthy leaders, too. He believes there are three key qualities of a trustworthy leader. And we're going to dig into each one of these in this incredible conversation. We're also going to talk about the current division in our country, how to avoid toxic leadership, and so much more. So here's my conversation with my good friend, and soon to the IRS General Ray Odierno.

Ray I'm I'm so excited to learn how you lead. But first, I have to ask you, given everything that's been going on lately, you, you spent years leading our troops in Iraq and fighting terrorism. What went through your mind when you saw the insurrection on our capitol?

Ray Odierno 1:58 

Well, it was one of the most disappointing days of my life. I spent since I was 17 years old, when I entered West Point, I've spent my life dedicated to protecting the Constitution, United States, when I was sworn in, as a cadet at West Point, when I got promoted every time, every rank, I took an oath to defend, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, against all enemies, foreign and domestic. And when I saw that was something I thought I would never see in this country, and it was incredibly disappointing to me. I never thought that we would have individuals react so violently, to what is the fundamental foundation of our governmental structure.

David Novak 2:47 

You know, many are saying today that the biggest threat to our country is now domestic terrorism. How do you see it? Well, I

Ray Odierno 2:54 

think terrorism remains our biggest threat, both international and domestic. And that's one of the things that has changed. And I think because of what's going on inside of our country, we have to pay much more attention to potential domestic terrorism. And it has to do in my opinion, with the rhetoric, and the fact that people don't talk to each other, they talk at each other. We don't have dialogue anymore. We have people who take very hard positions that we take people don't listen to others that are willing to listen to others positions. And it's leading us where I found in other countries where this has happened. When people get frustrated and believe nobody's paying attention to them, they turn to violence. And I'm afraid what we saw play out here is people are turning to violence. And so we have to be able to unify and discuss these issues in a way. And we need our leaders to demonstrate that,

David Novak 3:50 

you know, when you think about the challenges we have today, and the need to focus, you know, probably even more so on domestic terrorism than in the past. What would you do as a leader to multitask, you know, to make sure that we're also not taking our eyes off the foreign threats that are out there, because they're still there?

Ray Odierno 4:08 

Yes, we have systems in place to do that. So as the chief, in order to deal with domestic terrorism, it's a multi layered solution. And it's got to start you got to be connected from local government, to state government, to federal government. And you have to be connected with your intel collection, you have to be connected with your information sharing. And you have to really understand that and work very closely together in order to defeat domestic terrorism. In addition to that we have to have and maintain our systems that we have abroad, and collecting information and, and building relationships and maintaining relationships with our partners. And one of the things I think we have to be able to do is rebuild some of those relationships with our partners to ensure we're able to share all the information necessary to sustain our protection against international terror.

David Novak 5:00 

Were you surprised ray that we actually had a peaceful inauguration and there weren't additional riots?

Ray Odierno 5:05 

No, I knew that once that had happened, that the protection that would be placed around the Washington DC and the capitol that there, the inauguration would go off. But I think there's still threats out there. And I think we cannot say, well, we got through the inauguration, everything's fine, I think we have to stay very, very alert. And we have to make sure that we're ready for another potential incident. That could be happened at some state capitol or in Washington, DC,

David Novak 5:37 

what do you think we should be doing to reinforce the fact that the army should be apolitical?

Ray Odierno 5:43 

I think it's in the basic training of everything we do within the military. You know, again, as I mentioned earlier, we all take an oath of office, and we take an oath to protect the Constitution support, defend the Constitution, I state. And that's the basis of who we are, it's apolitical. It doesn't matter who the president is, it doesn't matter what party is in power, we we take an oath to the Constitution. And we have to make sure that people realize this, we're not saying you can't have your own individual views. But when you put that uniform on, and when you're representing this nation, it's absolutely critical that you understand that we're here to support the Constitution of the United States. That's what we're here for. And that's what we've taken our oath for. And so we have to continue to talk about that we have to train our leaders in that. And we have to train all our soldiers in the importance of that. That's what makes us special. And that's what that's why people look at us and favor. And we have such high favorability ratings is because we maintain our a political illness. It's so key to the success of our country.

David Novak 6:48 

Great. Were you surprised that Trump's words about a rigged election and taking the fight to the Capitol would carry so much weight? I'm a little surprised at

Ray Odierno 6:59 

the violent nature of what happened from his remarks. But the one thing I'll say is I go back to what I said a little bit earlier, the problem we're having in this country is the rhetoric is so negative. And people don't have lost trust with each other. And so what we're having is an overreaction to comments. And people think they're disenfranchised. And now they turn to violence. And we've seen it on all spectrums of the political spectrum, all spectrums of the of our political spectrum, with the riots we had earlier this year, in our, around the country. Now, these riots we've had in Washington, DC. And so again, as I said before, I believe it's up to our leaders now, to show an example, that we have to work together, we have to have some bipartisanship, we have to listen to each other, not just talk past each other, just not yell at each other and get angry right away and don't listen to other people's positions. Because that's what's driving people watching this. And it's driving them to that they have to do something that's even more, I can have more impact, because they believe people are listening. And I think it's important we do that. The President has a challenge the President has to be able to if you did a great job in a speech and unifying the country trying to is comments that he wants to unify the country. And it's important that he follows through on that and listens to all sides. You know, one of the things I've learned and leading is understanding the why, why is this happening? And you got to figure out why is this happening? And then you got to go after that. If you just ignore why it happened. It can you can make it much worse. And so if we continue to have this, this, these discussions that, that our people aren't listening to each other, and they're arguing with each other, and they're so negative and name calling and all these other things going on. Potential is we can make it worse.

David Novak 8:52 

You know, I used to work for PepsiCo, and one of my mentors was the late Wayne Callaway was chairman. And, you know, I met with him every quarter. And he had his spectacular office and you looked out at these PepsiCo Sculpture Gardens, which are, you know, renowned. And I said, Gee, Wang, what's it? What's it like to be the CEO of a company like this? Look out and see what you see every day? And he said to me, he said, Well, David, you got to be very careful what you say. One day, I said the grass was a little brown. He said, The next day they were plowing the fields. And it just reminded me of the power of the words of the leader. Was there ever a time where you said something and you saw that there were unintended consequences

Ray Odierno 9:36 

all the time. And the problem I had both as the chief of staff, the army, and as when I was the overall commander in Iraq, I tell everyone, you have so many different audiences listening to you. You know, so when I was the commander in Iraq, you know, I'd be when I do a press conference, and I'd say things you know, my troops would hear one thing I always used to laugh is that whenever I did a press conference, So every day, every afternoon, I met with the President of Iraq, and he would critique my press conference. And he would tell me everything I said, wrong that he didn't agree with, and the press conference. And then you know, of course, Washington would have a view of what I said. So people have different viewpoints and agendas when you're talking. And if they don't hear what they want, and has unintended consequences, and so you have to be very careful to know that many people looking at what you're saying, and they will take your words to us in very different ways. And so it's absolutely true with any leader. And again, in that example, you said, I always had to be careful, as the chief that when I said something, how would that got interpreted? You know, I might mean it as a joke, or I might mean it as something completely different. Somebody takes it and puts out a policy. So it's executing something that was absolutely not what I intended. And that's happened a couple of times as well. So I

David Novak 10:59 

think leaders should be very careful what they say and not think out loud. You know, Trump, he claimed that two of his biggest accomplishments were rebuilding the military and revamping the Veterans Administration. How do you see it?

Ray Odierno 11:16 

Well, I think talking to the people that are there now that we've gotten to like the term rebuild, I wouldn't say rebuild, restore the best military in the world. But but he did provide them the resources to do some things that we had not been able to do for a while. And that is really sniffily improve some of the air readiness areas that we had, and more importantly, invest in future systems. Invest, give us the dollar, so we can invest in developing our systems that will help us to stay competitive with China and Russia, as we move forward. So So I do agree that he did that with his budgets that he put forward. And all I've read about the Veterans Administration is we made great strides there and the confidence level is much better than it was. So I think he did make some improvements in those areas. I think it's recognized that he did that. Now, he counterbalance that by some of the things, his words and other things that he said, which probably had an impact on our safety and security. But, but in those two instances, I do believe it's for the most part correct.

David Novak 12:20 

Now going forward, which everybody in our country definitely wants to do. What do you see is President Biden's biggest challenge for the military? And if you were the Army Chief of Staff today, how would you go about working with them to make it happen?

Ray Odierno 12:34 

Yeah, well, first, I had a chance to work with President Biden when he was vice president very closely. But the first thing I would tell him is, internationally, we need to rebuild our relationships. We can't do this alone. We don't want to do it alone. We need assistance. And so I think we have to make sure that we reinvigorate our NATO relationship, I think we need to reinvigorate some of our relationships in the Middle East, I think we need to reinvigorate some of our relationships in the Pacific. And so So I think it's important that that he takes that on right away. You know, I tell everybody, there's three tools you have as president, you have diplomacy, economic policy, and military capability that you have at your fingertips to use. And I would advise him that he needs to have a synchronized, coordinated effort between those three, as we deal with the problems that we face, they can't be independent of each other, can have an economic policy, it's independent of your diplomatic efforts and your military policies, they got to be intertwined, where we build a strategy that allows us to be very successful in dealing with all of our really important partner. So that'd be number one. And secondly, I would say is that he has to you make sure you maintain our readiness to respond. Our military, I always really, I believe the reason we have a military, we spend money on our military, number one, we want to deter others from from doing things that we don't want them to do. And if we start to look weak, our deterrence levels go down. So I would, I would strongly encourage you to make sure we maintain the capacity and capabilities to continue to deter those out there that want to want to gain power and do harm to others.

David Novak 14:27 

I probably shouldn't ask this, but I ask it anyway, there's a there's a lot of great generals, like yourself, who went into politics, became president united states and had a huge impact on our countries. Is that something you've ever considered doing?

Ray Odierno 14:43 

Well, a few years ago, some people came to me and asked me if I would be interested in doing that. And I think well, the sad part as I thought about it, actually, I realized that I could Get through the political process. Because I'm not far enough to the right or far enough to the left, in order to meet the criteria to probably make it through the, the parties, I'm in the middle, you know, all we probably right center is by where I'd categorize myself. And that's one of the sad parts today is somebody who wants to be worked together be bipartisan, it's hard to get nominated from your party. Because you've got to, you've got to kind of go to the far right or left. So as I calculated that, I felt like it'd be very difficult today to, to do that.

David Novak 15:34 

You've taken on a lot of difficult challenges before this may be the time to do it. So I hope you reconsider. You know, generally, we first met just after you retired from the Army, and you were kind enough to come to Louisville, Kentucky, where my family was hosting the courage and honor Invitational at Valhalla on behalf of the Folds of Honor, which provides scholarships for kids and spouses of fallen and disabled service members. And I remember you giving just a fantastic speech and you're a hell of a speaker, and has that always come natural to you?

Ray Odierno 16:12 

No, absolutely not. And, in fact, I've grown into that. And, you know, I was one of these people who had to speak, I'd worry about it a lot. And I would over prepare. And when I first started, I came over too much as a rote speaker, I spoke, kind of read some of it and but over time, I learned that you just speak from your heart, I tended, you know, I always told myself I know more than the audience does about the subject I'm talking about. And once I overcame that, it enabled me to open myself up, which allowed me to have the ability to really get my message across in a much better way. And ways that people appreciated and liked a lot better. So I grew into that absolutely was not something that comes natural.

David Novak 16:57 

Yeah, little time and grade really helps. And so I want to get to how you got to where you are today. But But first of all, can you just tell us a little bit about what an Army Chief of Staff does? It's the top job in the army would you do?

Ray Odierno 17:12 

Well, I equate it to a CEO of a company. And really what you do is you're responsible, really for three things. One is you're responsible for Manning and equipping the army to make sure they have the manpower necessary, they have the right equipment. The second thing is you're responsible for readiness, to make sure that the equipment is ready to make sure that the people are ready to do their jobs on a moment's notice. You know, and so we always call kind of three legs of the stool. And the third thing is to decide how you invest in research and development for the future. So how do you then develop acquisition programs that allow you to be prepared for whatever future surprises are out there, and that we stay ahead in that kind of development. So it's an incredibly broad, but incredibly interesting job. And when you're in what you have to remember is in the army, or in 140 different countries around the world. And you have to do the all those things, while you're maintaining readiness and deploying soldiers all the time. And to me, it's really, incredibly difficult, but fun, and rewarding job.

David Novak 18:26 

What was your favorite part of that job?

Ray Odierno 18:29 

Always being with soldiers. I mean, you know, just, I got to visit soldiers in Asia and Middle East. And, you know, and so I got to see how proud they are of what they've accomplished and that they're so and what's important to them as being part of something that's bigger than themselves. And that, so we're not having a bad day. I always think about I gotta go visit soldiers, because it makes me feel a lot better about what's going on.

David Novak 18:54 

I always felt that way about getting out in the field, you know, I'd go into restaurants and talk to the people, you know, yeah. Now, you went to West Point. Yeah. What did you learn about yourself there? Well,

Ray Odierno 19:05 

well, first, I learned about resiliency, I miss West points a little different than it was when I went in the early 70s. And back then the thought process was they tear you down, and then they build you back up into the person they want you to be today. It's more, we're gonna take what you have and make you a better person. So we went the tearing down part was incredibly difficult. And what I've learned is I learned a mental and physical toughness, I didn't realize I probably had, I also realized I could be resilient when things weren't going well. I could do do things that I didn't think I could ever do. And the other thing is, is the what they try to do is they make you manage your time because they overwhelm you with academics, military training, athletic endeavors, because everybody has to do all three of those and Every minute of every day thinking, in fact, you really need about 30 hours or 42 hours to do what they ask you to do in a 24 hour days, you got to figure that out. You got to prioritize. You know, and so what I've learned is about prioritization, prioritizing what's important, what's not, and it really helped me. And I also learned a lot about leading by example, and, and trying to do the right thing all the time.

David Novak 20:23 

Generally, I was gonna ask you about that stereotype of the military tearing you down and build you back up? Do you think we need more of that today? Or do you think we've moved in the right direction? Are we gone too far?

Ray Odierno 20:35 

I think it depends. I think, I think one of the things we've learned, actually, why was chief with the millennial generation, who actually I found to be very brave and do all the same things previous generations had done. But when they came into the army, they were different. For example, they didn't know how to communicate with each other. They could text with each other, they could send emails to each other. But we found that wasn't a lot of face to face verbal exchange. And so one of the things we had to do is really focus on that, and focus programs to kind of get them re re reinvigorate reinvigorated into doing face to face meetings, face to face interaction, building relationships, face to face. And so it's it. So it's things like that you kind of have to kind of tear down certain things and build up certain things. But I think today, the kids are so smart, they are so much smarter than they were when we were younger, that you got to take what they have and build on that. Because really, that's what we want. And what I found over time is we want that diversity of thought. We want that diversity of personality. It makes us a better organization.

David Novak 21:46 

When did you get your first command? General? And did you have anxieties about being a new leader? And how do you overcome?

Ray Odierno 21:55 

Yeah, so I mean, the first time I commanded was in 1981. At Fort Bragg, North Carolina, I was a cat I was a young captain, I've been in the Army five years, I was a company a battery commander, slash company commander, commanded by 150 soldiers. And yeah, it was it was first you say, Okay, can I do this? You know, you've kind of been trained, you've been a lieutenant where you have a tune leader and kind of work for somebody and you watched? Watch them do it. But when you actually get in the position, is can you do it? And? And how do you go about doing it. And what I always felt one of my strengths was my ability to observe, and my ability to take tidbits good and bad, from what I've seen, and then apply those. And so I think over time that helped me to do that, as I got my first command,

David Novak 22:48 

you know, general, how would you describe the Army's culture when you became Chief of Staff? And what changes did you make to it?

Ray Odierno 22:56 

Well, it was a time of significant transition. So in 2011, we were just now we had been in Iraq for eight years, we've been in Afghanistan for 10 years, we've been an army at war, for the longest period of time, are heading towards longest periods of time, in our nation's history. And we are now just starting to look at what would come after that. And so that was the biggest transition, because I had I had, I had captains and even with some young majors, who had never been in a peacetime army, they always been at war. And so what they didn't understand is how to maintain and sustain readiness inside an army. That's not at war. And so we had to really adjust and adapt what they did, in order for them to understand one of the things you have to do to train your unit to be prepared for a variety of missions, because you never know which one you're gonna get to do, instead of just focused on one very specific mission. The other thing is, there's a lot of social change going on during this time. When I took over as Chief of Staff, about six months later, was the discussion or maybe not even that long. The discussion about ending Don't Ask, Don't Tell in the military. People don't know what that is. That was we had a policy of Don't Ask, Don't Tell for homosexuals and others in the army. So if you didn't talk about it, you could do it. But if you if we found out about it, we throw you out of the army. And so there was a lot of big discussions about that. But one of the things I fell over time was actually we were asking soldiers to, to not live up to our Army values, which is about honesty and integrity. So we were telling them that you couldn't be honest and you couldn't have integrity on who you were, if you wanted to stay in the army. And to me, that became hypocritical. And and society was changing quickly. So we made the decision to open it up and it's worked out great. We never had any issue She was never problems. And I felt much better about it. Because now people didn't have to hide, they didn't have to kind of tell half truths, they could live up to what we believe is the most important Army values. And then later on the other thing, social challenge we had is opening up more and more opportunities for women. You know, we didn't allow women in combat positions when I took over as Chief. And the problem with that was is they maybe it was harder for them to get promoted to the higher positions. Because most of people 75% of people that get promoted, are in combat positions. But not only that, I found as I went around and talked about this, and this was probably more, this was more controversial than the and the Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Because there's a lot of people just feel women cannot do that. But what I found as I went around and talk to women, and men, all they wanted was the opportunity. They don't want standards lowered. They just said, If I meet the standard, I want the opportunity to do it. And to me, that sounded fair. And so for me, we really started putting programs in place to test this. So for example, I would tell you, David, that we did a test that said, put women in combat positions in a unit. Before we did that we did a survey and only 20% of the men said, we thought women could do the job. They stayed in there for six months, we did a survey. After that 80% said they thought women could do the job. And so it was very interesting as we went through all of these studies, and, and so for me, it was it was a really important decision. Because I feel what you want is the most talented people. And if we don't allow women to do this, we're eliminating 50% of the talent pool. Right? You know, and we don't and we don't want to do that.

David Novak 26:51 

Absolutely. And, you know, general, you had two tours of duty in Iraq. Can you tell us the three? Okay, well, tell us about the unique challenges you faced with each tour and how you handle it.

Ray Odierno 27:05 

So the first one was, I was the division commander 2003 to 2004, part of the initial invasion force. What was interesting for us is, I had loaded my equipment, all the equipment, or the Fourth Infantry Division on 35 ships. And they were in the Mediterranean Sea. And we were actually supposed to come south through Turkey, an attack from the north into Iraq. And about a week before we were supposed to do this, the Turkish government voted not to allow us to go through Turkey, even though they had initially agreed to let us do that. So the first challenge was, without what do we do so we had to very quickly move everything from the Mediterranean Sea and bring it all the way around to Kuwait. And we actually did one of the one things that's most proud of we did one of the fastest downloads of equipment, office ships and right into combat. So we downloaded we luckily, we had it organized and unit sets, they don't normally do that, they kind of do it to get the most out of the ship. And they got off and they went right in to the combat role. So that was one of the biggest challenges. And then the second challenge was, we you know, when very quickly, this was, you know, February, March, and then by June, we had overthrown Saddam Hussein and his government. I was north of Baghdad and, and we were told, okay, you get to go home now. I think we've done all we're gonna do we get turned over. And then about two weeks later, they came back said, Hold on a minute, we're gonna stay. There's more things, we had to scrape the transition from. What we initially thought was our job was to come in defeat the army. And then and then now we turn it into, we had to rebuild the nation and, and put into place other things. So that was a big adjustment that we had to make during that time. And oh, by the way, I was given the mission of I thought that Saddam Hussein was in my area. And so we were tracking him for six months. And finally, in December of 2003, we caught him and I quit equate it to finding a needle in a haystack. And it had to do with great work and ingenuity of soldiers, and working together with as much different groups that allowed us to understand better how he was moving what he was doing. And finally we captured him. The second time was a 2006. Right at the end in November, December 2006. The war now was not going very well. The insurgency from al Qaeda had taken hold. And frankly, there's a lot of discussion we just pull out and let it go. And I was then going to be the in charge of all ground forces in Iraq. I was the core come Andrew say a multinational quarterback commander. And when I came in in November, this was the first time I ever went into a job thinking, I don't know if I can accomplish the mission I've been given. And the strategy we were kind of doing was we were kind of staying back in our bases, we weren't really making a lot of progress. And that's when I got a visit from several senators, Senator McCain, Senator Lieberman, others. And we talked about a surge of forces. And I recommended that we have a surge of forces laid out what they would do. And what really changed everything as Secretary Gates was then taken, just took over in December, from Secretary Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense. And he came to visit us on his first day as secretary of defense with general pace, he was the Chairman of Joint Chiefs of time. And we laid out and nobody laid out the strategy in this strategy still was to pull out and go home. And I laid out a little different one that said, I think we should bring more forces in. And I walked them through why I thought that would make a difference. Because what was happening is we go in, and we defeat people, and then, and then they would just, it would only last for a couple of weeks. And we had to stay there, we needed more people to stay there. The other thing we had to do was we had to get off our big bases and get back out into the cities and living with the Iraqi people. So they would trust us. So we chain. So I briefed all this, in fact, I guess nodded. He didn't say yes or no. And then about a month later, the President and others approved that. And we went on with the search, which became very, very successful in eliminating violence.

David Novak 31:39 

This was a mission that you felt uncomfortable with at first, and then you change the name of the game, you know, yeah, you know, how did you as a leader, you know, get through go through that process of saying, hey, yeah, I got a problem. I got to turn it around. And now I got to convince these guys to do something else.

Ray Odierno 31:56 

Yeah. So what happened is, as I was preparing to go over what I learned in May, I was gonna take over in November, I made a trip in August to Iraq, I realized I've seen what was going on. And it wasn't the fault of the people in charge, they were executing the strategy they were told to execute. I just felt like we needed to strike and what I did, and I started bringing people in every week that had different thoughts. So I got a diversity of opinion on how this problem could be solved. And through that, I started to think through okay, what can we do? I talked to some of my colleagues who had just come back out of Iraq and division commanders, and asked them what they thought. So I really had a good thought, but I just didn't know if they'd allow me to do it. I knew what I wanted to do. And I knew the only way we could be successful. And that's why I'd made mentioned earlier, when I went over, I wasn't this is the first time I was unsure, when I could actually accomplish what I've been asked to do. The generals above me, I was a three star generals that time and those four star generals above me, they didn't agree with me. And, and there's two lessons out of that, first, what I told them, I just felt differently. And this is why I laid it out. But when the Secretary of Defense came over, they briefed. And then he asked me my opinion, and I gave him a different opinion. And the two the four stars above me, they allowed me to do that. And they didn't get angry with me, they didn't hold me, they didn't hold me in contempt, because I did that. You know, they allowed me to say it. And then he went back and and approved it. And it's not that easy. But it took some time, but they approved it. So that was the toughest challenge I had as leader. But I realized, Hey, listen, I felt like, in order for me look myself in the mirror every day. This is the only way I thought we could do it. And this, if this means ending my career, and I'm not going any further. That's fine. It doesn't matter to me. What matters to me is complicating the mission, and really taking care of the soldiers that are on the ground, and giving them the opportunity to be successful as well for everything they've sacrificed.

David Novak 34:00 

So what happened in the third tour? What was your big learning?

Ray Odierno 34:02 

So the third four was I was then that was that they were almost I know why you said two tours because I was there from six to eight in the one that eight to 10. So it was like a two month break. So it's almost like one continuous.

David Novak 34:15 

I'll go with three.

Ray Odierno 34:17 

And then the last one, I was the overall commander. So I was before I got promoted to four star general, I was now in charge the whole thing. But now is a different challenge, because we've been successful in the surge. And it was now about how do we transition to the next phase of the operation. And so we had to get a kind of a status of forces agreement with the Iraqis which was very difficult. I had to work with the ambassador to in order to try to achieve that. We never really got exactly what we want. And I always remember we did a VTC with President Bush and and myself in the ambassador, and we talked about it and I said well, we didn't get what we want and there's some risk and and President Bush says, Ray, what do you think? Can we make this work? And I said, we can absolutely make this work. And he goes, Okay, we'll do it. And to me, that was another time when I said, oh, boy, I hope I didn't I hope I didn't put my over my skis. But But it worked out. And it worked very, very well. But the second piece on that tour was, I did a transition of presidents. So if you remember, the lecture was in late 2008. And in 2009, President Obama came in. And I think everybody knows he had run on he's gonna pull all the troops out of Iraq immediately. And the first day of his presidency, we did a PTC with him, and we laid out

David Novak 35:45 

VTC I'm sorry, General, video, video teleconference. Okay. Okay, gotcha.

Ray Odierno 35:50 

And so kind of like a zoom. So we did a video teleconference with, with all of the leaders back in DC, the cabinet. And the President kind of asked me to give him an update with the ambassador. And where we are inside of rack, we gave it to him. He just listened, you know, he was just kind of taking in information. But I prepared for this, I knew that when we transition, we'd have to get up to speed a new president. And I listened to some of the things he said, so I tried to take into account what he was saying we had to do. And we tried to make sure we put that in our strategy. So we talked about, how can we reduce the size of our force, how we would do that over time. And we talked about that. And of course, he didn't make any decision that time we went back and forth, probably two or three different sessions. And ultimately, he asked me to myself, and the ambassador put together a paper with three different courses of action. And we did that and and submitted it. And I found out later that nobody changed a word on it usually gets changed up the chain of command. But it didn't get changed. And I recommended one course of action, because it ended up going with a different course of action. But the lesson for me as a military officer, in supporting the commander in chief president, is you got to give them options, you can't just say it's black or white. You can't just say, okay, either you do this, or I'm not going to do it, you got to give them options. So I thought the one he picked was maybe a bit more risky. But when he said to do it, we executed it. And and we went from there. So so that's kind of another lesson learned is that you can't back your bosses into a corner by saying it's either this or nothing. You know, if you're if you're a good leader, you got to provide some options for them, so they can make a choice. Because ultimately, they're the ones held accountable.

David Novak 37:46 

You know, generally you were faced with a lot of budget cuts in that, you know, that's not a in any business. It's not good when your budget gets cut. And you know, you have to kind of go back to your troops and say, here's what we got to do. How did you motivate your troops once you once you had to make those tough calls?

Ray Odierno 38:02 

Well, it was hard. So yeah, three months into my time as chief was 25% budget cut in the army, we were told, we had to say that's a huge budget cut 25%. And I told you that it's kind of three legs of the stool, it's manpower, which is about 60% of your budget. And then you have readiness, and sustainment. And then you have r&d, and procurement, securing new systems r&d. That's where the money is. That's, that's and so you have to decide where you want to take a cut. And where do you want to take some risk. And there was a lot of people in Washington at the time that really want us to slash the size of the Army, almost by two thirds. And frankly, I just didn't agree with it. And so what I had to do was first I had to make sure that he understood what we were being told to do. And we did some rigorous analysis on, you know, what risks can we take in sustainment? What risks can we take in r&d? What ways can we take in manpower, and we went through several iterations and had to come up with some sort of a plan. And oh, by the way, we were still engaged in Iraq, we were still engaged in Afghanistan, we were actually starting to be engaged in Eastern Europe, to Korea, so nothing was really stopping. So we still had to do everything with with potential large budget cuts. And that was my worry about manpower cuts, because you wouldn't be able to do all those things that we're doing with the manpower cuts they were asking for. So I tried to come up again with several course of action that would allow me to take some manpower cuts, but not all. And what I did is I phased it over five year period, and to be honest, when I left because when I left was about a year before the election. I told my staff when I left I said when I developed the strategy of five years of cuts I said we will never get to the fifth year because the weather the weather we because we knew we're gonna get a new president who was after President Obama's second term. So I said, no matter who the new president is, I believe that they're gonna realize they can't continue to reduce the size of the Army, because things were starting to boil up all over again, in different places around the world. And the assumptions that were made by some were just bad assumptions. And so I predicted that if we can make it to the election, I think things will change. And that's exactly what happened. So I took some mitigation there, I mitigated some risks by understanding the political environment, and understanding the operational environment, and what we were going to have to deal with. And so I didn't make drastic cuts, I made smaller cuts every year that we could recover from if we had to. So that's kind of how we went about doing that we took some risk in r&d, which I didn't really like. And I think we paid the price for that for a couple years, because we weren't investing in the type of things we needed to be investing in. But I felt it was more important because we couldn't lose the manpower because it's so hard to recruit manpower in the army. You just can't bring in sergeants you just can't bring in majors and Lieutenant Colonel's and colonels, you got to develop them. So if you caught on, it's 10 years to recover. But that's how we went through that process.

David Novak 41:13 

So basically, you you developed a plan to you follow the order, but you did it in the best possible way you thought you could that would protect our country? Yes. How much time did you spend, you know, strategizing, and envisioning the future needs of the army?

Ray Odierno 41:29 

A lot. One of the things that I found out when I came in is I felt like we were too focused on the here and now. And rightfully so we've been involved in Iraq and Afghanistan for 10 years. And it was our sole focus, and it took up so much of our resources. But I felt like we weren't thinking about 10 years from now, 15 years from now. So what I did is I established the Strategic Initiatives group, where I bought in 20, people they have, you had to apply. I bought and 20 people, military and civilians who had certain capabilities that would think through for me future problems. And, you know, for example, one of the things I gave him was urban warfare, so I felt like the future is gonna have to be a lot. Because the cities are getting bigger and bigger and more people in all the cities around the world. How would we deal with that, as a military was one thing? What is the type of strike capability do we need, as our technology because for so, so they would then think through this, they would do projects, and they've come to me with recommendations on where the army needs to go. So I felt like we had to start thinking more and more in the future. As a leader in my mind, you have you really have two responsibilities. One is the here and now. And it's whether you're a business leader or a military leader, are you taking care of your soldiers, your people? Are you taking care of your customers, your stockholders, whatever? And then secondly, are you looking to the future and I make sure the company can sustain this, or the army can sustain their responsibilities over time, and sometimes we get too dragged into the current. I don't think enough about the future.

David Novak 43:12 

What's a coaching session like with Ray Odierno?

Ray Odierno 43:16 

So my first evaluation, when I coach a leader, as always, in any leader, it's about outcome? And are you achieving the outcomes that we want you to achieve? But then the second piece, which is actually really important, is how did you achieve that outcome? And do you have I found it's so it was so easy to understand, when I walk into a unit, I can tell when a leader has empowered his subordinates, because they're when they're briefing are involved, they understand exactly what's going on, they're not afraid to say things. And it's just an open environment. It's a happy environment. And they come up with such innovative ways to solve problems. And then they go into a unit and I find a leader who Nobody's allowed to talk. Only the commander can talk. Everybody looks like they're falling asleep. They're really not, you know, they're not really happy, they're not involved. And I start questioning, you know, how well this, this unit is operating overall. So I've kind of a leader assessment that I do, but what I really look for is I look for how competent you are as a leader. You know, do you continue to learn every day? Are you keeping up with the future and what we need to do and, and you show your competence in your craft? Secondly, is are you committed? How committed is just not committed to the mission but committed to a unit committed to the people that work for you committed to the Army as a greater institution? Do you commit to those? And finally, do you operate with character? Do you treat your people with dignity and respect? Do you have integrity? Do you live that? And the other thing is team. Do you build teams Do you build strong teams? Or is all is it all about you? And so that's what I talked to them about. And I talked about how well they're doing it because what this all is, is it builds the foundation of trust. Trust is the foundation of any organization, in any good leader. And the way you build trust is through your competence, your commitment and your character. And if you show that over time, you will earn the trust that is necessary, and you need that and any, any, any leadership position, but in the military see more important because you're making life and death decisions at times. And so they gotta believe in you. And, and when they will trust you. If you make a bad decision, they're okay with that. Because they know that you're trying to do the right thing. And they understand that everybody makes mistakes. But if they don't trust you, and they believe you're, you're risk averse, and other things, and they really start to lose their their confidence. You I did a study in the army about toxic leadership. And what I thought I was gonna get back, I did it with captains, because I felt like I was how do you feel about your leadership? What I thought would come back? Well, he micromanage is he doesn't treat us right, or she does all these other things. And that came back. But you know what the number one thing was for toxic leadership, an individual who was a careerist out for himself and risk averse. They saw that as a toxic leader, because they felt like that he came before everybody else, he would make decisions that were best for the mission of the unit. And so they felt like the environment that they operated in was one that was unsafe, and would not allow them to do the things they need to do.

David Novak 46:46 

You mentioned just the difficulty of asking people to go into combat, you know, if you had to put people in harm's way, what advice did you give the soldiers on how to deal with that?

Ray Odierno 46:58 

Well, I'm not sure I ever gave many very specific advice on how to do it. But what I would tell them is, what's a fine line? What are the fine lines you have as a senior leader is, you know, I do a lot of press. And it's making sure that I try to tell the story what's going on, by still maintaining, I have lots of confidence in the young men and women that are doing the mission. And I believe in who they are and what they're doing. So there's two things about soldiers going into combat, as long as they believe they're doing it for the right reason. So Tom, one thing is, this is why we're doing this. And this is why it's really important. And you're gonna make a real difference. When you do this. The second thing is, you're the best train military unit in the world. There's no better we train you better than anybody else in the world. So you're better. But what it takes is attention to detail. And what you can't have is complacency. And so So what what I really talk about is that, so it was more about telling them, this is why it's so important. You're really good at what you do. That will limit the that'll mitigate some of the risks that you face going into combat. And that's how I intended it. Because I find if you start dwelling on Oh, yeah, we're sending into really tough situations, they start feeling sorry for themselves. They start being feeling like, well, maybe we shouldn't be doing this. So as a leader, it's up to you to keep them motivated. And understand why we're doing this. And if you do that, it'll be fine.

David Novak 48:39 

I hear exactly what you're saying here. And, you know, general, I know that your son, Tony lost his arm in combat, and how's he doing? I wanted to ask you, oh, he's

Ray Odierno 48:49 

terrific. He's doing great. He, he actually works for JP Morgan. He lives up in Connecticut, and he's doing terrific. He's my, he's my inspiration, David. I've watched him how he handled this was incredible. He never looked back. He decided early on, he's gonna make do with what happened to him. And he should do the best he can to make his life as successful. And he's gotten married. He has two kids, you know, and so you you make choices in life. His choice was, I'm not going to allow this to bother me. And I'm going to move forward and be the best man I can be. And he's an inspiration. He's been inspirational to me.

David Novak 49:31 

Do we have 1000s of veterans going into the public sector each year? You know, what should our country be doing more of to help them succeed?

Ray Odierno 49:39 

Well, all they want is an opportunity. But you can't just give them the opportunity. You got to prepare them for that opportunity. And so they can do anything. I mean, they have the traits of they show up on time. They're hardworking, they, they want to be successful. But you got to you got to prepare them for success. They won't become in the millions that they are Use people helping them to prepare and be ready to do whatever job is. So can't just say, Okay, here's a job where you go do it, you got to train them a little bit, you got to kind of help them to be prepared. And if you do that, they'll feel really more capable of doing it. What I found, as I've spent a lot of time in this area, frankly, since I've been retired, the issue is not veterans getting jobs issues, veterans keeping jobs. And normally, what happens is they pick a job, it's not the right one, which is okay. But they need somebody to help them and to either stay in the job they're in or figure out, where should they go. So what I tell companies I'd like them to do is you got to track them. So when they come in if they're not successful in the first year, so it's just something else they can do. Why? Why are they not being successful? Help them because they're good people, and they want to do the right thing. And I think if they get a little more help they can do that says all the right characteristics you want as somebody who's in part of your workforce.

David Novak 51:01 

Right? You know, this has been a fascinating conversation general. And I want to have a little fun with you with the lightning round of questions here. You know, what are three words that best describe you?

Ray Odierno 51:12 

Oh, gosh, I would say committed, competent, and tried to do everything with the highest character, but I have to say for and a team player.

David Novak 51:24 

What you get after 39 years of service, okay, what's your biggest pet peeve?

Ray Odierno 51:30 

I call it career ism. But what I mean by that, as somebody who puts himself above the unit and the mission, it just makes me angry when I run into it.

David Novak 51:40 

If you could be one person for a day besides yourself, who would it be and why?

Ray Odierno 51:44 

I always want to be a pitcher for the New York Yankees. Pretty good. Pretty. Today, it'd be Gerrit Cole, I guess.

David Novak 51:53 

That's a pretty good choice. What's your favorite general? And why?

Ray Odierno 51:58 

George Marshall? Because of what he did, he sacrificed himself for the better the country, not only as running the army during World War Two, but then becoming Secretary of State.

David Novak 52:10 

What's something about you that few people would know?

Ray Odierno 52:13 

I was drafted in the 37th round of the Major League Baseball draft.

David Novak 52:17 

Oh, that's great. I thought it was what do you what do you get your master's in

Ray Odierno 52:22 

nuclear engineering? Oh, that's

David Novak 52:25 

what was you lived all over the world. So what was your favorite place to live?

Ray Odierno 52:31 

So it's Fort Ord California. I was a battalion commander, then Monterey Peninsula, I could never afford to live on the Monterey Peninsula. Unless I was in the army at Fort Ord California.

David Novak 52:40 

You know, I remember you sitting at our kitchen table talking to Wendy and I, and Louisville. We were having breakfast. And I remember you talking about your wife, Linda, tell us about the role her partnership has had with you and your success.

Ray Odierno 52:55 

What a lot of people don't realize is it's changing a little bit today. You know, my wife, my wife didn't work. But I put that a very different, I commanded so long and so many different positions. She took on a responsibility of ensuring that our families are taken care of. And frankly, in my last three or four jobs, I would say she was like a CEO, developing programs across the broad spectrum of the Army, and making sure that soldiers and families were taken care of. And she did this while raising a family a lot of times on our own because I was gone. incredibly strong woman capable. I couldn't have done what I've done without her. You know, I tell everybody when I was in command during combat, she attended over 500 memorial services on her own by herself. And she deals directly with every family. And she just knew how to do that. She organized women and men spouses in a way that would allow them to support soldiers and their families while we were deployed. And she did much more than that, but incredible woman.

David Novak 54:04 

That's awesome. And you know, it's great to have a partner like that. And you know, you you're an avid reader, I understand you have a reading list. What would What are you reading right now?

Ray Odierno 54:14 

Well, I'm reading a book. I don't remember the title, but it's about Churchill and the speeches he made in the US following World War Two. And it talks. It's about recognizing the Iron Curtain and what Russia is doing. And he's trying to make everyone aware of very controversial speeches, one he made in Missouri when he made in New York. Very interesting about the times and what he was trying to do. It's really a great book. I'm almost finished with it. It's very, very good.

David Novak 54:41 

I remember you telling me when we had a discussion that you're like a pattern thinker you'd like to read and then try to apply what you learned from the history of others. What you're doing.

Ray Odierno 54:51 

Yeah, there's one book. There's a book I read 450 years ago, whatever it was when I was a second lieutenant called once an eagle. I don't know if you ever heard of it. pretty famous. Split. What it's about is it's about the traces to military leaders, who grow to be colonels in the army, but to trace some who peed their career through peacetime and wartime, one is a careerist. And one is not. And I read that as a second lieutenant, and it shaped me. As I went forward, I hated the title, the individual who's curses, his name is Courtney massengill A perfect name. And for me, I always think back to that book, I was just to think back to that book, and what he came across like an A, how we should never want to come across. And I've read it three times over my life, and it's a big book. But it's just such a great book about understanding how it's important to be part of something bigger than yourself, and I just really enjoy it. Well, I'm

David Novak 55:53 

gonna get that, check it out and learn from that'd be fantastic. Well, General, thank you so much for taking the time to be with me today. It's awesome.

Ray Odierno 56:01 

And by the way, I want to tell you, and I'm not saying this, I love the book. Oh, great one.

David Novak 56:07 

Thank you.

Ray Odierno 56:08 

I love that book. And the reason is, and I actually used it, I had some people read it, I made some people read it, because it's about recognizing those who do think it's about recognition. And sometimes we have people that do have do a lousy job of recognizing what people are doing and their contributions. And that is so important, as a leader is recognizing others. And so I appreciate your writing that book,

David Novak 56:34 

I tell you, what I didn't recognize by you, is a heck of a highlight, it's a great way to have a good day. So thank you.

I don't know about you, I don't know many people that have advanced degrees in nuclear engineering, and got drafted as a pro athlete. But with Ray, you got to pull it out of it's not even close to being at the top of his resume. And he doesn't talk about the things that he did. But you know, Ray is just that kind of an extraordinary guy. And he's an extraordinary leader. And he gave us the list of three traits we need to hold ourselves accountable to, if we want to become a leader, people trust and want to follow. So let's break it down quickly. First, there's competence just being good at your craft. Second, we need commitment, showing that you really want to be part of this thing that's bigger than yourself. And finally, the really big one character that you hold yourself to doing the right thing, even when it's hard. So this week as part of your weekly personal development plan, write down those three words, competence, commitment, and character, then reflect on this past week. Can you recall specific circumstances where you showed each trade? Where are you strong? Where do you have an opportunity to improve? Keep those traits in mind and I know you're going to take your leadership skills to the next level? So do you want to know how leaders lead what we learned today is that great leaders become trustworthy by developing competence, commitment, and character. Thanks again for tuning in to another episode of how leaders lead where every Thursday you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world, I make it a point to give you something simple on each episode that you can apply to your business so that you will become the best leader you can be.

Since we heard this podcast General Ray Odierno passed away after a struggle with cancer. The general was obviously a great leader, obviously great man, and he touched so many people and made such a fantastic positive difference in so many people's lives. His legacy lives on. The thoughts that he has on leadership are timeless, the impact that he had on this world is enduring. I thank the General for his tremendous service to our country, and appreciate everything he has done to make the world a better place. This episode is dedicated to General Odierno, his loving family, and all those that had the privilege of serving under his leadership.