HBR.ORG OCTOBER 2012 REPRINT R1210G What Ever Happened To Accountability? When leaders don’t fire underperforming executives, they send a bad message to the whole organization. Case in point: the U.S. Army by Thomas E. Ricks FOR ARTICLE REPRINTs call 800-988-0886 or 617-783-7500, OR VISIT HBR.ORG WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO ACCOUNTABILITY? ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ When leaders don’t fire underperforming executives, they send a bad message to the whole organization. Case in point: the U.S. Army by Thomas E. Ricks f you’re looking for management lessons from outside the halls of corporations, you could do worse than to study the United States IArmy. That master of management teaching Peter Drucker often turned to the military of his adopted nation for inspiration, especially on matters of leadership. Take, for example, this advice from his 1967 book The Effective Executive: It is the duty of the executive to remove ruthlessly anyone—and especially any manager—who consistently fails to perform with high distinction. To let such a man stay on corrupts the others. It is grossly unfair to the whole organization. It is grossly unfair to his subordinates who are deprived by their superior’s inadequacy of opportunities for achievement and recogni- tion. Above all, it is senseless cruelty to the man himself. He knows that HEN WEBSTER P he is inadequate whether he admits it to himself or not. ›› HY: STE P PHOTOGRA COPyright © 2012 HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL PUBLISHING CORPORATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. October 2012 Harvard Business Review 2 WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO ACCOUNTABILITY? The first example Drucker cited of such wise sonal.” He was distant even with his commander in practice came not from the business world of the chief, President Franklin Roosevelt. He made a point 1960s but from the army of the 1940s. Its leader, Gen- of not laughing at the president’s jokes and was clear eral George C. Marshall, he wrote, “insisted that a In the spring that he preferred not to be addressed by his first general officer be immediately relieved if found less of 1939, name. He didn’t visit Roosevelt’s home in Hyde Park, than outstanding.” New York, until the day of FDR’s funeral. Ironically, by the time Drucker was writing, the even before When Marshall is remembered nowadays, it is army had lost the practice of swift relief that Mar- becoming more often for his role in establishing the Marshall shall had enforced so vigorously. With regard to tal- Plan, which revived the economies of post–World ent management, it was already beginning to teach a chief of staff, War II Europe, than for his role in the preceding war. different kind of lesson—a cautionary tale. To study George C. Yet he was unwavering, even fierce, in doing what the change in the army across the two decades from needed to be done to win that war. He stands as an World War II to Vietnam is to learn how a culture of Marshall extreme example of leading not by being charming high standards and accountability can deteriorate. had devised or charismatic but by setting standards. And to review the extended story of its past six de- Few overhauls are as sweeping as the one Mar- cades is to comprehend an even deeper moral: When a plan to shall oversaw: the creation of the American super- standards are not rigorously upheld and inadequate remove power military, the globe-spanning mechanized performance is allowed to endure in leadership force that we have come to take for granted over ranks, the effect is not only to rob an enterprise of scores of the past seven decades. On the day in 1939 that he some of its potential. It is to lose the standards them- officers he became chief of staff, the U.S. Army was a small, selves and let the most important capabilities of weak force of about 190,000 men—“not even a leadership succumb to atrophy. considered third-rate military power,” as he later wrote in an ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ official Pentagon report. Of the nine infantry divi- deadwood. sions the army had on paper, only three were at di- The Right People in the Right Jobs visional strength, while six were actually weak bri- n General Marshall’s day, perhaps it was easier gades. Six years later, when he stepped down, the to agree on a clear notion of what constituted army numbered almost 8 million soldiers and had Isuccess in the leadership of the armed forces. It 40 divisions in the European theater and another 21 may have been a more straightforward exercise to in the Pacific. consider whether one general was driving toward As transformational leaders tend to do, Marshall that goal more or less effectively than others. That began by focusing on people. He truly was ruthless may in fact be why a man as understated as Marshall, in getting the right people in the right jobs—and the reticent to the point of seeming almost colorless, wrong people out of them. When Brigadier General was able to rise to the level he did. He was a classic Charles Bundel insisted that the army’s training transformational leader—an unlikely figure of quiet manuals could not all be updated in three or four resolve who can reinvigorate and redirect a com- months and instead would require 18, Marshall pany or an institution. Consider Marshall’s low-key twice asked him to reconsider that statement. demeanor on September 1, 1939, the day that World “It can’t be done,” Bundel repeated. War II began in Europe. That same day he formally “I’m sorry, then you are relieved,” Marshall replied. ascended to chief of staff of the army—a far more im- In the spring of 1939, even before becoming portant position then than it is now, partly because chief of staff, Marshall had devised a plan to remove it included the army air force. “Things look very dis- scores of officers he considered deadwood. By his turbing in the world this morning,” he commented estimate, he eliminated some 600 officers before drily in a note that day to George Patton’s wife. Even the United States entered the war, in December 1941. after the war, and his obvious success, he lived on a Another wave of firings came just after the attack on OT modest government salary and turned down lavish Pearl Harbor, with the top naval, army, and air com- P HIL offers from publishers who wanted him to write his manders for the Pacific removed. A year later the P memoirs. commander of one of the first divisions to fight the Certainly George Marshall was not a political ani- Japanese was fired. So, too, was the senior tactical mal or a Washington courtier. One subordinate, Gen- commander of the first American divisions to fight LLUSTRATION: CHRIS LLUSTRATION: eral Albert Wedemeyer, called him “coolly imper- the Germans in Africa. I 3 Harvard Business Review October 2012 FOR ARTICLE REPRINTs call 800-988-0886 or 617-783-7500, OR VISIT HBR.ORG Idea in Brief Business leaders often look to the Relief of command, commonplace in A great general, like a great CEO, armed forces for lessons in leadership. the World War II era, is now a rare provides a high-level strategic vision The U.S. Army teaches a big one about event. By failing to fire generals who of what to do as well as tactical guid- the need to uphold performance stan- perform without distinction, the army ance on how to do it. Leaders without dards in an organization’s uppermost seriously undermines accountability. that strength fail to appreciate the ranks. Unfortunately, it teaches that Even worse, its leadership capabilities distinction between winning battles seem to have eroded over time. and the more difficult work of winning lesson in the negative. wars—a problem that became evident in the deserts of Iraq and Afghanistan. Those removed were replaced by younger, more ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ vigorous officers, such as Dwight D. Eisenhower, who as late as 1940 was still a lieutenant colonel serving “Can’t Execute My Future as the executive officer of an infantry regiment. Mar- Plans with Present Leaders” shall put the new men through a series of tests. At ust five years after World War II ended, as the each level those who faltered were shunted aside. army found itself fighting in Korea, it seemed First, each man had to be given command of a unit. J to have lost that adaptability. Twice in 1950 The next question was whether he would be allowed, the same force that had taken on the Nazis and the once the unit was trained, to take it overseas and Japanese empire was driven down the Korean pen- into combat. Then, once in the fight, a commander insula by poorly equipped peasant armies. First, in had a few months in which to succeed, be killed or the summer, it was harried south by North Korean wounded, or be replaced. Of the 155 officers allowed forces; then, in late autumn, it was surprised by the to command army divisions in combat in the war, 16 Chinese army. were relieved for cause. Yet Marshall’s policy of swift Lieutenant General Matthew Ridgway, another relief had a forgiving aspect: The removals were not of Marshall’s protégés, was dispatched at the end of necessarily career-ending. Indeed, five of the re- 1950 to try to turn the war around. On his first morn- lieved division commanders were given other divi- ing in Korea, the hawkeyed Ridgway climbed into the sions to lead in combat later in the war.