Page 215 - The extraordinary leader

192 • The Extraordinary Leader

Why the Marines?

Our specific interest in the Marine Corps as an example of success in
developing leaders came from several sources. In the mid-1980s, one of the
authors came to know Pat Townsend, a retired Marine officer, a writer, and a
leadership development practitioner. Townsend frequently noted that the
Marines excelled in their ability to develop leadership and that no organiza-
tion on Earth had more experience in developing leadership than the mili-
tary. He urged that serious attention be paid to what the Marines did. In
hindsight, we fear that message fell on deaf ears. It was not a time when the
military was held in high esteem. Time passed, however, and in 1998 articles
about the Marines began to appear in national publications.
Then one of the most useful pieces of original research to be produced
on the topic of leadership was conducted by a partnership of McKinsey and
Company, Inc., and The Conference Board. The objective of the research was
to understand the genesis of energized workforces, which they defined as “any
group of employees whose emotional commitment enables them to make or
deliver products or services that constitute a sustainable competitive advan-
tage for their employer.” This became a three-year effort involving a large
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research team. Organizations studied included Avon Products, First USA,
Inc., The Home Depot, Johnson Controls, KFC, Marriott International,
McKinsey and Company, Inc., Southwest Airlines, Texas Instruments, 3M,
the U.S. Marines Corps, and the Vail Resorts, to name a few.
Our interest in that research stems largely from the insights it provides
about leadership, as a key factor in producing an energized workforce. If
leadership is ultimately measured by results, then an important intervening
variable is the energized or mobilized workforce.
When asked about the merits of all the leadership development processes that
he had observed, Jon Katzenbach, the research team’s leader, unhesitatingly
replied, “In my opinion, the best leadership development process in the world
is at the U.S. Marine Corps.” Many of his insights regarding that process have
been published. Earlier, David Freedman wrote an extensive review of the
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Marines’ approach to leadership development in an article in Inc. magazine. 3
Tom Clancy wrote a book, Marine, that gave a detailed and inside view of
a Marine Expeditionary Unit. We now seek to link the insights of their
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research with our own.
It is our conclusion that the Marines have come to use several extremely
powerful leadership development practices. They arrived at this through their