I spent my entire Army career as one of the “guys on the ground”. It was a charmed path that took me from Tank Platoon Leader to Scout Platoon Leader to Special Forces Detachment Commander, with each successive role moving me closer to my soldiers and further from the flagpole.
That kind of experience, especially during times of conflict, provides you a certain perspective on things. It gives you an appreciation for nuance and subtlety, for detail and variation, and for the very human aspects of the business of war. There are no abstractions on the ground.
I found a lot of pride and satisfaction in living out on the tip of the spear, of seeing things up close and personal. It was a big responsibility for a young man and one that I took seriously. It felt like the work we were doing was all that really mattered. We were the ones in the fight. We bore all of the physical risk. Of course we knew the truth about what these wars were all about, because we were on the ground - and to a combat soldier, there is no truth except the Ground Truth.
The problem, I would discover, is that the Ground Truth is not the Whole Truth.
I first started to notice this in 2004 when I was in Iraq. As a Brigade Reconnaissance Team (BRT) platoon leader I would regularly work with the brigade’s various battalions, each assigned their own Baghdad neighborhood as battle space. And I was often stunned to realize that while they all knew their areas very well, these large, sophisticated units didn’t seem to have much of an idea of what was going on just one neighborhood over, much less across the entire city or region. It was almost as if they were all fighting their own little wars, all contained within some imaginary lines that we drew on the map. I remember thinking (and probably uttering semi-respectfully), “you know that the enemy doesn’t give a damn about these battalion boundaries, right?” Way back then, I could see the limitations of the ground truth, but my youth and hubris kept me from really learning the lesson.
About ten years later, I found myself leading an awesome nonprofit organization called Team Red, White, Blue (RWB). With over 150,000 members and chapters in over 200 cities, Team RWB was all about the ground game. Our mission was to deliver local, consistent, and inclusive opportunities for Veterans to engage with their communities in positive ways. Every single week, Team RWB chapters hosted thousands of run groups, workouts, and community projects. And almost all of that was led by volunteers. These leaders knew their communities, understood the Veteran landscape, and cared deeply about their members. Their passion was undeniable and their energy was inspiring. We were crushing it. All we had to do was keep our focus on the ground and the rest would take care of itself, right?
If only it were that easy. As we’d quickly learn, small things don’t become big by accident - and as powerful as inspiration can be, it probably won’t help you make next month’s payroll. We became acutely aware of this in the spring of 2014 when, through a series of missteps, oversights, and bad breaks we almost ran out of cash and crashed our big boat of awesomeness right into the rocks! It was time to shift our focus a bit. We had to figure out a way to balance the creativity and initiative of our local chapters with more sustainable financial and operational practices. If we didn’t, the whole thing was going to fail.
So sometimes, as much as we preferred high-fives and atta-boys, we had to be the bad cop. At times we were the brand police and had to say, “we’re sorry but you cannot make custom t-shirts in pink”. Sometimes we had to be the finance police and would say, “we’re sorry but we can’t double your chapter’s budget even though the local Chevy dealer donated $10,000”. As you may imagine, none of this went over particularly well. We got a lot of pushback from hard working volunteers that were making things happen. From the staff’s perspective, we were just trying to keep the Team RWB freight train on the rails, but from the chapter’s perspective, we were putting up roadblocks. As more and more of these conversations were happening, we became concerned that the staff could go from being a source of inspiration to a wet blanket. Finally, I heard the magic words - “you guys don’t know what’s going on ON THE GROUND!”
My response: What?! How dare you! I’m a ground guy! For God’s sake, I lead my local chapter!
If there was a problem it certainly wasn’t that I didn’t appreciate what was going on at the ground level. If anything, it was that THEY didn’t appreciate what was going on at the strategic level. THEY didn’t understand all of the things we had to manage to keep the organization healthy. THEY couldn’t see the bigger picture.
And who’s fault was that? MINE.
That’s right, while I had a good (but not full) understanding of the ground truth, I had failed to consistently communicate the broad truth. It turned out that things like strategic vision and national partnerships really matter to the folks on the ground, and understanding their implications helps local leaders to make good decisions and move confidently forward.
From that point on, we started making big changes. We became much more transparent. We communicated proactively. We included key volunteer leaders on all reports to the board of directors. We started regional leadership summits, where chapter leaders would come together to share successes and challenges - and the staff would have the opportunity to share what was happening at the regional and national level. There was no more local business or national business, just leader business. And we were no longer simply pulling information from the chapters, then pushing information back. We were engaged in an ongoing dialogue.
When we started doing this, we discovered that there weren’t different versions of the truth, just different perspectives. In order to be truly successful, we had to stop debating whose truth was more true. Rather, we simply had to combine our various perspectives to paint a fuller, clearer picture of our situation.
Big, collective endeavors require us to dig into the details and really appreciate how decisions affect the lives of those closest to the problems. They also require us to zoom out, see the bigger picture and recognize the broader implications of local action. Most importantly, they require us to stop believing that any of us have a monopoly on the truth. We need to start listening with the intent to understand, speaking with the intent to inform, and cooperating with the intent to improve.
And that’s the whole truth.