Professional Training and The Culture of Presidential Campaign Staffs
I recently finished two posts about the cultural drivers of the presidential campaign staffs of Mr. Barack Obama and Mrs. Hillary Clinton, so for curiosity sake I was on the look out for research regarding the inner workings of Mr. John McCain’s campaign staff. I found it in another article by Jim Rutenberg and this time with Adam Nagourney in the New York Times on August 10, 2008. What struck me from this article was the reminder of how powerful an impact the professional training of a founding leader has on the culture of their organization.
Mr. McCain’s primary professional training is as a Navy attack aircraft pilot and according to the article he “preaches the need to improvise under pressure, subscribing to the military maxim that no plan survives first contact with the enemy.” This guiding belief makes sense if your work environment is driven by life and death, crisis situations. It would be important to be constantly gathering information and being comfortable with using this info to adapt plans in order to survive. It also makes sense that in non-life-threatening situations that this “shoot from the hip” spontaneity might lead to an organizational culture where it is difficult for people to easily stick to a plan and execute as a disciplined team.
Upon reading this article, the unintended consequence does seem to be playing out in the workings of McCain’s campaign staff. There are a number of examples given of a “big campaign decision” being made and the staff moving to execute and then Mr. McCain suddenly moving in a different direction and not staying on message. At the same time, there are examples given of how openness to “competing opinions,” flexibility and taking risks serves the McCain campaign staff well.
As a founding leader of an organization, understanding the impact of personal professional training on your own beliefs and how you act is important – there are strengths and weaknesses, and the key is being aware enough to test out what brings success over a broad range of situations. The ways of acting, based on your professional training may feel more comfortable, natural and other ways of acting will be more difficult. There will be the need to be mindful and muscle your way through the unfamiliar ways of acting with the help of advisors and friends.
