The Be-Know-Do by Frances Hesselbein and General Eric K. Shinseki - Book Report/Review Example

The book “Be-Know-Do”, introduction by Frances Hesselbein and General Eric K. Shinseki(USA Ret foreword by Richard E. Cavanagh, incorporates the leadership qualities that should be held by anyone in a leadership position in the Army. The United States Army is one of the most efficiently run organization in the world, despite the fact that it is not run in a hierarchal manner. This book shows how the Army is run and how this particular business model can be used in the civilian world as well. The Army is an organization where everyone is trained to eventually be placed into a leadership position. Therefore, everyone is viewed as a potential leader and in trained as such. Even those who are in a leadership position currently will not always be in that position, so individuals must be able to move between the two roles quite readily. Also, once a leader begins to lose his edge and his results begin to suffer, he will be replaced. This is because since there are lives at stake, a leader cannot afford to lose the confidence of his soldiers. There is no time for loyalty towards a formerly good leader because people will die if a leader loses his effectiveness. The Army should keep the status quo in its quest to find good leadership because there is the potential for everyone to be a good leader at some point and also leaders who are not getting the desired results should not be permitted to lead in the long term. The first thing that a leader in the Army must remember is to Be. This means that this individual must hold the qualities that are becoming of a true leader. Leaders should be people who are honest, competent, and inspiring, as “Army leadership begins with what the leader must Be, the values and attributes that shape a leaders character” (Cavanagh et al, 2004, P. 9). This is because a true leader is someone who people wish to follow. If the leader does not have the values and attributes that other would wish to follow, then the leader will not be very successful. This can be applied to civilian life as well. If a manager at a store does not appear to be a very good leader, the staff will lose respect for this person and, therefore, will not follow him or her. This will cause the store as a whole to under-perform, which will negatively affect the store’s bottom line. The leader in every situation must truly “Be” a leader who people want to follow and who people believe in. If he or she is not, then the organization as a whole will not succeed. An example of this can be found in the film and book Twelve O’clock High. In this story, Colonel Keith Davenport is man who everyone seems to like and, on the surface, hold a great deal of respect for. The truth, however, is that he was not a true leader and had ultimately lost the respect of his men. His unit had poor morale because he was not leading them properly, which was causing their missions to be unsuccessful and for them to lose more men than they should have. Even though this man was well liked, he was not doing the job correctly and, therefore, was replaced. The man who replaced him Frank Savage, was a much better leader than Davenport because he knew how to “Be” a leader. He was not worried about making friends with is men, but rather was more concerned with the task at hand. Anyone who he did not feel was pulling his or her own weight was quickly send elsewhere, making his unit one of the more successful ones during this time. As time moved on, however, Savage began to lose his edge, as he grew closer to his men. This caused for him to lose the ability to be a leader because his men no longer saw the same attributes in him that they had seen before. This proves that it takes a certain type of discipline in order to be a leader and to keep the respect of an organization. Another important aspect of being a leader to is to “Know“. Those who know what they are doing are much more suitable to be leaders because those who do not know will be inclined to follow them. People will trust those who have a great deal of knowledge because the people will the knowledge will usually act in a manner that will allow for they themselves to survive. If the leader survives, so will most of the followers, which will cause for the followers to want to follow. In Twelve O’clock High, Savage seems like a very knowledgeable man and even though the majority of the soldiers do not like him, they respect his ability as a leader and still follow him. Savage is forced to discipline these men very harshly because of the mess that was left behind by Davenport. These men did not respect Davenport and, therefore, they had completely lost their direction. This is a very dangerous thing in wartime, which is why Savage had to be quick when gaining respect from them. The final thing that a leader must be capable of is to “Do”. This means that the leader’s actions must match up with his words, so that the other members of the organization do not believe that he or she is all talk. This means that the leader must be able to follow his or her own advice and act in the same manner that he would expect of his followers. In Twelve O’clock High, Savage is able to lead his men into battle and return successfully. This causes for them to have more confidence in his leadership abilities and, therefore, to gain trust in him as a leader. This causes for morale to increase, which is what made Savage such a strong leader. As the story comes to an end, however, Savage loses his leadership abilities and is unable to “Do” anymore. This eventually causes him to lose his place within the organization, as he is no longer able to lead. Another aspect of Be-Know-Do is that it shows how the leadership grid is broken down in the Army. No one is the ultimate leader, which is much different from the business world because every business has a CEO or someone who ultimately makes the decisions. In the Army, people must be able to move seamlessly between leadership roles and following roles, as these men will be placed in different roles all the time. Because of this, the Army attempts to instill leadership qualities in every single man or woman who enrolls, creating “well-trained and confident people; disciplined, cohesive; and trusted, competent leadership“ (Cavanagh et al., 2004, P. 98). This is because there is no telling when one of them will be placed in a situation where he or she will need to be a leader. Leadership is something that can be held by anyone at any time and the leaders of tomorrow can be taught by the leaders of today. This is shown in Twelve O’clock High by how the men are forced to move between these roles. At the beginning of the story, Colonel Davenport appears to be the highest ranking officer around. He, however, is soon replaced by someone else and is given a job at headquarters. While at headquarters, however, is it conceivable that he will not be a highest ranking solider there, meaning that he will be taking orders from someone else. Over the course of a day, Davenport went from being a leader to a follower. Savage, on the other hand, went from being an Operations Officer to a Commanding Officer on that same day. This shows that he must have shown some leadership capabilities in his previous role, as he was immediately trusted with the lives of these men. One of Savage’s first official duties as a Commanding Officer is to make Colonel Gately, who had been an Executive Officer, a Commanding Officer of a lower brigade. This is viewed as a demotion, although Savage must have had some confidence in Gately’s leadership abilities in order to place him in command of a group. At the end of the story, we also see how once Savage has lost his ability as a leader, he is replaced and put into a different role and someone else is brought in to replace him. This shows how the Army is constantly cycling through leaders in order to get the best results, as there is a belief that the leader is only as good as his or her last mission. Once Savage began to fail, he was replaced by someone who could do a better job, which is how results based management is supposed to work. Since there are lives at stake in the Army, there is no loyalty to people to used to do a good job and have begun to fail in recent missions. The United States Army is one of the most well run organizations in the world and much of the credit for this can go to its organizational structure. Every person who registers for the Army is trained to be a leader and a great deal of these people are eventually placed into leadership positions. Members of the Army must be able to transition between different roles quickly and effortlessly because there are a wide number of roles that they are required to fill. The film and book Twelve O’clock High shows how these different roles can be filled by a number of different people. An individual can be a leader one second and a follower the next, or vice versa, so he or she must know how to act in each situation. Many times in the business world, an individual will keep his or her job because the organization has a sense of loyalty towards that person. This, however, does not happen in the Army, as peoples’ lives are at stake. Loyalty cannot come into play in the Army because people can die if a leader has lost the respect of his troops, which is exactly what happened to both Davenport and Savage in Twelve O’clock High. This type of business model should not be changed because it is highly effective and does not allowed for anyone to become complacent with their role within the organization. Also, it allows for everyone to have an important role, which they will take pride in because there is a definite opportunity for advancement. By teaching everyone to be a leader, the Army has created an environment where there is never a shortage of leadership and, therefore, never a time when people are left wondering what they should be doing, making the Army’s model one of the most efficient in the world. Works Cited Cavanagh, Richard; Hesselbein, Frances; and Shinseki, Eric K, (2004), Be-Know-Do: Leadership the Army Way, San Francisco, Jossey-Bass. Read More