The Cipher Brief’s new Friday column, ‘Cipher Select’ talks with retired Command Sergeant Major (CSM) Rob Lively, who spent 28 years in the U.S. Army, where he was part of a special operations unit based at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina.
In Lively's first interview post-retirement, Cipher Select Executive Editor Brad Christian talked with Lively about current issues facing the SOF community and America's capacity for reaching full potential, whether in the military, private sector or in the increasingly-important mission for Americans to be well briefed.
The Cipher Brief: Let me start by asking for your perspective on a string of recent incidents overseas involving U.S. SOF personnel allegedly committing crimes involving the deaths of other U.S. SOF and former SOF individuals. In 2017, there was the death of a Green Beret Staff Sergeant in Mali, and most recently, on New Year's Eve in Iraq, there was another instance where, a former green beret, who was working as a contractor, was involved in an altercation resulting in his death, and now we have current SOF members who are under investigation. I've talked to a number of folks about this issue, and they say that the realities are that we've been at war for 18 plus years, special operations have been the vanguard of that effort, since day one. They’ve been continuously deployed. The health of the force is an ongoing concern obviously that many folks have and continue to look at.
As you read these stories, what are you most focused on, and what would you be focused on, if this was your problem to fix?
Lively: I would reference an Einstein quote, where he said, "If I had a difficult problem to solve, I would spend 55 minutes analyzing the problem, and about 5 minutes coming up with the solution." By that I mean, when you have incidents like these, first reports are usually incorrect. And so, we have investigations. And the point of the investigation is to bring all of the facts together. The thing that does not help in an investigation, is not letting the process work. I have observed and seen this process many times. And that is what has to happen in these particular situations, so that you can ascertain what really happened, and then what corrective measures are needed immediately, but also strategically for the organization. When I see those different investigations come up, the thing I think about first is, the most vital thing to any organization, and that’s it’s culture. The senior leaders of an organization sustain and maintain that culture.
You don't know if you have a cultural issue when incidents like these occur, but they force organizations and leaders, rightfully so, to take an organizational assessment, and take a hard look to see if there are in fact signs of any sort of degradation in a culture.
Lastly, I would say, people volunteer for special operations. I spent 25 years in special operations, and when I first came in, in 1995, there weren't the mechanisms to take care of people holistically; that is emotionally, physically, spiritually and psychologically. And there was also no war, no continual fight. So, being a pre-9/11 person in the military, and a post 9/11 person in the military, I've seen special operations assess that they needed these systems and functions, and services for families, and for service members, and they built them, and they invested a tremendous amount of money to build them.
In my tenure as a CSM of my organization on Ft. Bragg, we accepted that this war, this fight against terrorism is generational. It's generational to our enemy, therefore it is generational to us. You can't deny that, so you have to build the structure and the mechanisms, and the processes, not only to function as an organization with continual deployments, but also have those processes and structure in place to take care of people in perpetuity.
We actually have people whose sons are serving in special operations, and the fathers were serving in special operations when I got there. So, it is generational. But you're dealing with human beings, and I’ll add that no selection process is perfect. It may be excellent, it may be outstanding, but it’s still human beings selecting human beings, serving with human beings, and you're always going to have some sort of human error in all of these situations. So, we try to minimize it, and we try to take care of people.
Do I see these overseas incidents as a red flag? Do I see this as degradation of the force? Do I see this as fatigue of the force? I would tell you special operations organizations aren't going to break. The question was always, "Hey, so at what point do we deploy so much that we break the organization?" And I would say, "We're never going to break the organization because there's so many great people within the organization.” But there are some people, who are going to voluntarily withdraw. There are some people, who are going to have issues, and problems, and from my experience, broadly across special operations, those are an extremely small number of cases.
These things need to be addressed, they need to be taken seriously, they need to be strategically messaged. But, do I see it as a degradation in special operations? I don't, because I think there are phenomenal leaders like General Tony Thomas and CSM Patrick McCauley, at the helm, down in Tampa. I know both of them, very well, both personally and professionally, and they have taken care of their command exceptionally well.
The Cipher Brief: You're walking us through the arc of how these support mechanisms for SOF were created, which is really useful in understanding how SOCOM, as an organization, has grown.
We talked with Colonel David Maxwell recently about the growth of Special Operations since 9-11. We were talking about MARSOC in particular, which is the newest command within SOCOM, and from which, there are numerous members who are under investigation. I asked him if he thought that MARSOC had grown too quickly, or had the Marine Corps and SOCOM done a good job at managing that growth? And he said, "Well, I'm not going to say that they grew too quickly, however, they have, if you think about it, gone through, in the span of a decade, many of the same lessons that Army special forces have gone through since about the 1950's.” MARSOC has certainly come a very long way, in a short amount of time. Do you think they’ve grown too fast?
Lively: I don't think so. As a matter of fact, I was on TDY in the DC area and had the chance to talk to some of the guys that started MARSOC and hear first-hand what they were doing, and how they were thinking about it. They had examples to follow. They had all of these other special operations units, and they went to school on all of them, as they were building MARSOC. So yes, they were called into duty very quickly, because they were formed after 9/11, but they did a tremendous job of going around and asking, "What advice do you have for us? What mistakes have you made? What should we do?"
From that perspective, they had a tremendous advantage to be able to grow really quickly, and at the end of the day, it really all comes down to people. So, they built a really good selection process, and they used the lessons learned from several of the other very successful selection processes. And then they have phenomenal people, and they went after those phenomenal people in their ranks. I worked with several of the Marines who served in MARSOC, and they were outstanding Americans, and phenomenal warriors. So, I think they did a good job. They did their homework, and they selected the right people, which allowed them to kind of do exactly what Colonel Maxwell was talking about, you know, evolve quickly.
The Cipher Brief: You've recently retired from the Army. What surprised you most about the experience? What lessons learned can you share, and what advice do you have for folks who are about to do what you just did?
Lively: What surprised me the most is what a simple process it is to transition administratively out of the military. Fort Bragg has done a phenomenal job of making the transition a lockstep process. I had heard the horror stories, but I thought it was very well done, very informative, and for the most part, at the right depth. I found it to be pretty seamless.
Another thing that surprises me is the mental block that people have when they transition out of the military. So, if I work in special operations for 25 years, and I am the type of soldier that people can say, "Let me give you this asymmetrical problem in country x, take two guys with you, and go solve that problem." I like that, I enjoy that. I enjoy the ambiguity of that, and the autonomy. The same people go into the transition process out of the military and they don't look at it with the same mind set. My good friend, Scott Peltin of Tignum says, "You cannot out-perform your own mindset”, and people don’t go into transition with the right mind set." So, the skills they learn to do all of those phenomenal things, they don't translate them into the transition process. I tried to do that. I considered myself administratively transitioning out of the military, but I wanted to bring all of the things that I had learned, from one environment, to another environment. Then, I asked myself, “Where do I want to be in 24 months?” I put a mark on the wall, and, like we would with any mission or objective, I backward planned all the way up until when I submitted my retirement paperwork.
I said, "These are the things that I need to get done, and here are the people that are going to help me.” So, I think translating my mindset of special operations into that environment has made it a seamless, and exciting experience for me. You have to accept the fact that it’s time for the thing you've done for 25 years, to be over, which is bitter sweet. But life is always changing. If you're not evolving, if you're not changing, you're probably dying, and I just wanted to transition with the right mindset. So, I've been able to build some pretty interesting initiatives that I'm passionate and excited about.
The Cipher Brief: I love the way you describe the different mind-set approach, because for so long, and even now, it seems like the brand of transitioning is broadly seen as negative. But it’s really just a different mission. Bring all of the skills and experience that you've got, and a positive mind-set, and look at transitioning as a new adventure. That's great advice.
To your point about adapting, we talked recently with General Stanley McChrystal. He says that in the time we’re in, one of the key attributes of leadership is having a cat-like reaction to change and adaptability.
Lively: Yes, absolutely.
The Cipher Brief: Let's talk about what you're doing now. You mentioned previously that you're working and consulting with private sector clients. One of the areas you consult on is for executive assessment and selection. What surprises folks from the private sector the most, when they're working with Special Operations veterans?
Lively: Well, first of all, the military taught me that I have to have certain criteria and values with things that I do. Anything that I'm going to do, I look at passion, purpose, and service. Does it meet those requirements? Because that's what I've always been about in my service. Then I look at a couple of things that I didn't always get in my service that I now have as criteria when deciding whether I do something. And that is, do I have some creative freedom? Hopefully a lot. And is it fun? And by fun, I mean am I going to be able to have the impact I want?
So, I looked at those things, and chose a few companies I'm working with, and I'm working with Matt Burke and company, to do leadership and keynote speaking. What I have found interesting is, that I don't think I bring anything new to the table, that a lot of other leaders couldn't bring, I just have a story that's unique. So few people in our country have ever served in the military, and most people don't even know someone who's serving in the military. I don’t know what the exact percentages are, but they are astonishingly low. So, I take my story and translate my lessons learned into something that can be applicable to a different audience. Accepting the fact that it's probably not rocket science, and people need to be reminded way more than they need to be educated, so I just package that and give it to them. Whether I’m in a board of directors meeting, or I'm the leadership advisor for a company, I have a lot of conversations with the people in these organizations. The military prepared me to lead, plan and use resources, manage time, work with people and build relationships.
I would say, in special operations, those skills are even more magnified. You take all of those things and put them towards the mission, and you serve with passion and intensity, because you don't want to let your brothers down, whether it's obtaining a resource for them to do their job or fighting beside them. I'm surprised that a lot of these companies don't understand that, and so if you can help them do that, they can be more successful at what they're passionate about. I get super excited to be able to honor the people that I fought and served with, by taking all of the lessons that I learned with them and translating them and giving them to people who don't know the military. That way I can represent my brothers well, and I can serve my community, and the industry and corporate America in that way, into the future.
The Cipher Brief: What haven't I asked you that’s important to this conversation?
Lively: I did a leadership keynote at a conference for a financial institution, back in the summer. The talk was heavily focused on leadership, so I didn’t really talk about the threats to America or the military. But afterwards one of the gentlemen there asked me, "What do you think the greatest threat to America is?” I've just come off of an emotional leadership talk, and had to transition quickly to threats, and immediately what came to my mind was ‘potential’.
The threat from China, the threat from Russia, our generational counter terrorism fight in the Middle East, we can do all of that. We can do all of that, and we can do all of that at the same time, if America will operate at its potential.
America is isolated somewhat from the rest of the world in terms of geography, but now, as the world has obviously flattened through technology, everything is connected. We have phones in our pocket which have a tremendous amount of information. So, the American people have to educate themselves. It’s not enough to listen only to one source of media, or only partisan media. Some say, if you don't listen to it, you're uninformed, and if you listen to it, you're misinformed, I think it was Denzel Washington who said that.
An example I’ll use is the Kurdish situation in Syria. Most people have no idea what’s really happening there. And I talk to really, really smart, intelligent, well-read people, and they don't understand any of that. And they are voting for people at all levels of government, who don't understand it either. And we decided, after World War II, that we were going to be a global force, interconnected, and hopefully control the world economically, so that World War II would never happen again. So, we're already in, we're committed. We can't go back and say, "Well, let’s see, let's close down on the 50 states here, and take care of only that." So, in order to be a player out there, it can't just be a few people smart about the issues. In a democracy, because people vote, everyone needs to continually learn and be smart about the issues.
That's why I love The Cipher Brief, because it’s non-partisan, and teaching people what's going on in the world. I had an opportunity to brief Senator Thomas Tillis. I don't think he had been on the job very long, maybe three months, and the amount of homework he did before that briefing, and what he learned, and how much he traveled in that short 90-day period, before he came to receive our briefing, I though was extremely impressive.
I think we need the American public to do more. We need our politicians to do more. This is America, and our decisions have to be thought out, strategic and well-executed, with third, fourth and fifth order effects thought about. We have to think generationally.
So, I think the biggest threat to America is not advancing its knowledge and perspective on what's going on throughout the entire world, so that our decision makers can all operate at their full potential. And secondly, I would say that if you look at how a lot of the government runs, no business would ever run that way and survive. For example, there are several ambassador positions throughout the world that are unfilled and have been for a long period of time. Ambassadors are America's representatives in those countries, and it’s critical that we have that breadth and depth to represent America internationally. I think all of these existential threats are manageable, but like any organization, we have to operate at our full potential.
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