Books

This page contains the resources that I have found useful in my personal and professional life. Admittedly, it is an eclectic list. It contains everything from quotes and books that I like to podcasts, videos, and slideshows.

If you don’t want to scroll through the entire list, you can click on one of the links below and filter the resources by specific category.

I will update this list as I discover new resources. If you have a resource you think I should add, please email me.

The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters by Tom Nichols by Tom Nichols


A book review by Chris L’Heureux

Current technology exposes people to massive and ever-increasing amounts of information. Nichols argues that this trove of knowledge paradoxically makes us dumber in his well-researched book. A small bit of knowledge fuels human bias giving us a false reason to believe we are experts. The Death of Expertise lays out how we got here.

Nichols, a professor at the US Naval War College, codifies something we see every day on TV talk shows and news channels: everyone is as smart as everyone else. ‘You’re wrong’ is the same as ‘You’re stupid.’ Reasoned arguments convince nobody and how we feel rules the day. Why do we all think we’re experts? We have access to massive amounts of instantaneous information, and we lack the ability to determine if it’s real or fake. We need to pause and reflect but technology imbibes us to comment without thinking. Our education system gives us an inflated sense of self. Everyone gets a trophy because bad grades aren’t good for business; top grades go to our heads. These things combine in the information space that feeds bias. Anti-vaxxers are a notable example. Despite many scientific studies to the contrary, the idea that the MMR vaccine leads to autism still exists. No doubt this problem will grow as 5G and AI make the information we look for easier to come by.

This danger in the military is greater. We flippantly talk in terms of mastery and claim ourselves experts in the fundamentals despite changing jobs every two years or less. Our personnel system values the breadth of experience and we hardly come close to hitting the 10,000-hour rule on any specific skill. Denying evidence to stay aligned with values and beliefs sounds like fighting the plan and not the enemy. How can I make the facts fit my theory? There are plenty of historical examples; the Chinese intervention in the Korean War readily comes to mind.

Nichols supplies few prescriptions. His stand-out recommendation is to develop the skill of metacognition: understanding one’s own thoughts. Studies show the less one knows about a topic, the more confident they are in their knowledge of the topic. Self-awareness might be the only way to get past this bias. But how?

Be eclectic. Get your information from various sources and perspectives. Read things that you know will piss you off and reflect. Study and be wary of bias. Take time to think. Nourish self-doubt. Question everything, especially your beliefs and cultivate someone to challenge you. This will help you realize that you do not have expert knowledge. How does the quote go? ‘The more I learn, the less I know.’ Lastly, listen to experts. That requires trust because they are not always correct. Experts have a better guess informed by their depth of knowledge.

While nothing in this book was novel, it is something to consider and worth a look to anyone who wants to better understand how we got to where we are.

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Lieutenant Colonel Christopher L’Heureux is an Armor Officer who enjoys running, sampling whiskey, and thinking about big ideas.

Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink

A fantastic read about our flawed perception of motivation. Daniel Pink lays out a convincing argument that the old ‘carrot & stick’ approach to incentives is dead wrong. While a rewards & punishment approach works for simple tasks, one needs intrinsic motivation based on autonomy, competence, and purpose to accomplish complex and creative tasks. This is because we psychologically want to direct our own lives, be better than what we are, and yearn to be part of something bigger than ourselves.

Overall a short tome that is well researched and written. I burned through this one fast and did not need to flip back and forth to follow the thesis and evidence.

A must-read for anyone who aspires to lead or motivate others where commitment is valued over compliance.

A book review by Chris L’Heureux

 

The Centurions

The Roman army’s disenfranchisement from the Republic is often used as a warning in modern civil-military relations. This story mimics the warning from a French perspective. Larteguy’s characters, archetypes with varied backgrounds, endure Indochina and captivity before engaging in the Algerian War. They experience ethical conflict and subsequent rationalization where the ends justify the means. The character of warfare changes and the characters change with it. The failure at Dien Bien Phu was a result of failing to recognize and adapt to the right kind of war. The characters understand this with reflection and adapt to the type of war they are fighting in Algeria – becoming what they fight.

“I’d like France to have two armies: one for display, with lovely guns, tanks, little soldiers, fanfares, staffs, distinguished and doddering generals, and dear little regimental officers who would be deeply concerned with the general’s piles: an army that would be shown for a modest fee on every fairground in the country. The other would be the real one, composed entirely of young enthusiasts in camouflage battledress, who would not be put on display but from whom impossible efforts would be demanded and to whom all sorts of tricks would be taught. That’s the army in which I should like to fight.”

A quick and easy read, Larteguy was a reporter during this period and this novel clearly shows his experience. There is much to unpack in this narrative from an ethical and moral standpoint.

A book review by Chris L’Heureux

Your Best Year Ever: A 5-Step Plan for Achieving Your Most Important Goals by Michael Hyatt

It’s that time of year again—when some of us ponder our new year’s resolutions, determined that this time we will PT more, read more, spend more quality time with our families, and never eat fast food again. And, depending on our level of discipline, some of us may stick with those resolutions for days or even weeks. Few of us, though, manage to adhere to them for an entire journey around the sun. Maybe, just maybe, you’re reading this laughing because you’ve already broken one of your 2020 resolutions. If so, no worries. It’s time to start over again and ensure you meet one goal by resolving to finish reading this short article.

Recently, Field Grade Leader held a timely series of Facebook and online book club sessions to discuss a book that promises to help us actually stick to our resolutions: Michael Hyatt’s Your Best Year Ever: A 5-Step Plan for Achieving Your Most Important Goals. Hyatt offers many reasons why we fail to meet our goals. First, our goals are too vague. Saying you are going to run 20 miles a week leaves too many loopholes for not running 20 miles. A better goal should explain how you will meet your goal, such as “Run at 0500 every weekday for 45 minutes.” Goals are also easier to achieve when one considers the motivations behind them, which helps you sustain them. It is also helpful to figure out triggers that help you avoid stumbling blocks. It’s easier to go running at 5 am if you’ve already set out everything you’ll need.

But you might fail at your goals, and that’s okay. Hyatt actually encourages us to embrace regret rather than trying to put failures firmly in the past because our past failures provide us with wisdom as to how we can improve. At that point it is important to figure out why you failed—was it because you were not specific enough about how to accomplish your goal? Because you did not identify obstacles in your way and figure out how to circumvent them? Or did you just set a goal you truly weren’t motivated to meet? If so, there is nothing wrong with going back to the drawing board.

Goal setting also should be a process that occurs throughout the year. In fact, you’d be better off if you spent a bit of time one day per week preparing for the week ahead and 5-15 minutes each day planning for your day at the beginning and assessing where you’ve been at the end. An easy way to do this is to use a daily planner geared toward goals, whether it is Hyatt’s or another. You can also use Hyatt’s template with Evernote.

Building in accountability also helps us meet our goals. So does the right mindset, which is where you can help as leaders. The main thing that gets in the way of us achieving our own goals is attitude and the beliefs we hold about ourselves, each other, and the world. Hyatt suggests moving beyond a “scarcity” mindset to one of “abundance.” People with scarcity mindsets tend to see a kind of zero-sum world and thus have more pessimism about the future. People with abundant mindsets, by contrast, tend to be more optimistic, open, and selfless. It is that positivity that is critical to meeting your goals, which should stretch you and entail some risk of failure.

As a leader, you can help others around you to reframe their negative beliefs (example: I’ll never pass the ACFT!) into something far more positive like, “I’ve overcome some major adversity in the last year, and I know I can do I again with the ACFT.”

It also can be as simple as taking a moment to be grateful. Gratitude will help reorient your mindset (again, the recommended planners have a spot that let you do that to make it easier than it sounds) because it can “amplify everything good in our lives.” Start off your day when you walk into work by telling someone why you appreciate them. It will do more to energize you and the recipient than coffee, and it will set a positive tone that will be contagious. (You won’t know until you try it, will you?)

Now that you have some goals to set better goals for yourself and hopefully help others do the same, how do you go about implementing this vision as a leader?

  • As mentioned already, many in the Army are currently worried about passing the ACFT. Sit down with your soldiers and identify their greatest concerns about the test and help them identify measurable goals that can help them start down a path to success.
  • Most people don’t have it all together, even when they seem to be outward successes. In part, that is because they are out of balance. They may, for example, invest too much in their careers and not in their families. Help those you lead discover where they need to improve their balance. Reveal your own vulnerabilities. It’s okay—it will help others mature while embracing one of the Army’s newest leadership principles of humility and empathy. Take Hyatt’s quick online assessment over lunch with a group you work with then discuss it. Did the results surprise you? Were they similar to the rest of the group’s? How can each of you support each other in developing a goal in your weakest area? And, best of all, how will you reward yourself when you meet your goal?
  • Set up a poster board at work with people’s names, a goal, and a tracker so people can showcase their path to improvement. Go all out and even buy a package of star stickers to use.

If you have other ideas, please share them on the Facebook or twitter feed!

Other resources from Hyatt other than the book include a podcast and a free downloadable template to focus on accomplishing three things each day here.

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Heather Venable is an assistant professor of military and security studies at the U.S. Air Command and Staff College and teaches in the Department of Airpower. She has written a forthcoming book entitled How the Few Became the Proud: Crafting the Marine Corps Mystique, 1874-1918. The views expressed are the author’s alone and do not represent the official position of the U.S. Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

Operation Retrospect

Making Sense of It All: A Modern Soldiers’ Post-War Reflections

A Guest Post by Captain Christopher C. Little

War is a visceral byproduct of failed diplomacy and does not discriminate against either side. War is a strategic entity, one that begs for existence in the tactical realm. This article will examine a former Army infantryman’s perspective while operating at the tactical level during the conflict in Iraq. The book includes leadership lessons learned through deep self-reflection of the author’s own performance in the less than ideal conditions of intense combat.

Bounce: The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice by Matthew Syed

**This book review is provided by Daniel Von Benken. It focuses on how to apply Syed’s work to the domain of military expertise: training for and fighting wars.

Synopsis: In Bounce, Syed makes a strong and thought-provoking argument that purposeful practice and a growth mindset are the keys to developing expertise. Bounce builds on Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000-hour rule, an idea familiar to military leaders that expertise requires 10,000 hours of work and not just talent. Syed provides greater context surrounding expertise and how experts are created. He delivers his message in three parts. First, he debunks the myth that natural talent is the key for the most successful people. Second, he investigates the psychology of performance and its interaction with proficiency. He closes with a deep study of purposeful practice and psychology, considering whether alternative conditions for expertise like genetics or geographic disposition enable success. In the end, he crowns purposeful practice and a growth mindset as king. Examples of purposeful practice and a growth mindset are examined below.

Syed uses familiar stories and an accessible writing style, a quality allowing the reader to move quickly through the book. For the military leader, the book’s first two sections drive home the lesson that talent isn’t a natural trait, it is earned. Focus your reflection on the first two sections, and re-read if able. Syed’s third section adds credence to the book’s thesis, but most likely leaves the door open for future dialogue.

Applications for a Military Leader: Syed offers three salient points benefitting leaders responsible for training an organization.

  1. Take a quality approach to training. Make training meaningful and resource it properly. The book references a time when Syed’s table tennis coach changed his practice routine and challenged him with a longer table and multiple balls. This forced him to make cognitive and physical adaptations to his game, leading to enormous performance gains in future matches. To a military professional, one could imagine a unique approach to a stress shoot on a rifle range, or even as I have recently seen, a virtual-constructed Fire Support Coordination Exercise. Syed’s training philosophy nests well with the training outcomes we expect in the military: developing Soldiers and leaders able to adapt their physical and cognitive approaches to increasingly demanding conditions in order to maximize performance (e.g., gaining every tactical advantage possible).
  2. Evoke a growth mindset. Syed details a psychological study showing students who are rewarded for effort instead of talent choose harder tasks and show greater growth over iterations of problem sets. A military professional who sets conditions where failure in training is accepted and hard work is appreciated, evokes a growth mindset in a unit. Leaders could challenge their units to the edge of their capabilities in training, an approach consistent with the current Army vision of training to operate in the challenging conditions envisioned for future warfare. Additionally, resilience-trained professionals on military installations would provide a great resource for practical and creative approaches structuring training to evoke a growth mindset.
  3. “Sets and Reps” as a key contributor to mastery. Being good takes time. Artillery sections require multiple repetitions at emplacement; distribution platoons require repetitions at rearm, refuel, resupply and survey point operations to gain efficiency; infantry companies require combined arms live fire repetitions to mass combat power at the decisive point. Leaders invest time into Soldiers and protect time for key trainers within an organization. Senior leaders at all echelons stress the importance of protecting time for leaders to train their personnel. Emphasis on Sergeant’s time is a great example of how senior leaders in tactical formations make that commitment.

Athena Rising: How and Why Men Should Mentor Women by Brad Johnson and David Smith

As a female in the Army with almost 13 years under my belt, I was a bit skeptical when I started into Athena Rising: How and Why Men Should Mentor Women by W. Brad Johnson, PhD and David Smith, PhD. What could two men (Navy at that) tell me that hadn’t been figured out already? As it turns out, quite a bit.

Although the book makes broad generalizations about both sexes, its casual dialogue of men speaking to men seems to be an effective way for the information to be considered and accepted. For balance, the author strongly represents the female voice through interviews with successful women lucky enough to have a strong and deliberate mentor with the additional benefit of what males should consider (what perception are we presenting by spending so much time together? Can we have an after-work meeting at a bar, or does the mentee need to get home to their family? Am I mentoring males and females within similar limits?).

The book highlights some points men may not consider but women are strongly aware of. It cannot answer those questions but creates an opportunity to have a candid discussion with constructive feedback which could greatly benefit both parties. Questions such as, but not limited to, how is she being perceived at work? Women walk a fine line between pushover and b***, whereas men generally get the benefit of being regarded as strong leaders. How do you present yourself in a male-dominated world with the unending need to prove yourself on a daily basis? How will changing her last name after marriage affect the social capital in which she has invested so much throughout her career? And the age old question, what does “business casual” mean for a female in the military?

Athena Rising offers a good framework of how to begin and sustain a mentor/mentee relationship. Simply fulfilling military requirements of counseling subordinates provides teaching and coaching opportunities. Mentoring, on the other hand, is an enduring relationship to meet, talk and listen, advocate, and create opportunities for the future. It provides a platform for candid feedback on performance, job progression and even the opportunity an outside voice can offer a perspective to regain balance on a frustrating situation. These relationships last longer than a duty station, even across the services.

If you are in search of a mentor or a mentee, this book offers a good set of perspectives to begin to shape how you want to mentor or be mentored.

Many of Athena Rising’spoints are solid ideas to create a formal mentoring program within the unit. This would lose the individuality and focus that a mentor/mentee relationship requires to be successful in the long term. Consider the varying degrees of success in our sponsorship programs. It always comes back to the people. Be selective, be supportive, and have high expectations.

MAJ Katie Werback, PE, PMP, is an Engineer officer and serves as the 130th Engineer Brigade S3 Plans officer in Schofield Barracks, HI, prior to entering her KD position. She previously attended CGSC and has a construction background between EAB units and USACE. Find her on LinkedIn HERE 

The Military Leader by Andrew Steadman

As a leader, you know that developing leaders is crucial to your team’s success. You also know that when life gets busy, meaningful leader development activities take a back seat to the swarm of everyday tasks. Who has time to discuss—let alone research and refine—quality content that will make a real difference? Andrew Steadman has lived this frustration and wrote The Military Leader to give leaders straightforward, highly relevant, inspirational leader development insight they can use to grow themselves and their teams. The Military Leader is your leader development program when you don’t have time for one.

Radical Inclusion by Ori Brafman and Martin Dempsey

In this work, former Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff Martin Dempsey and Ori Brafman provide insight for today’s leaders, either military or civilian. The book provides a solid description of the current environment, where true and false information circumnavigates the globe at 4G speeds. In these conditions, centralization will often fail given the inability to comprehend so many feeds of exponentially stale knowledge. To compensate for this environment, today’s leaders must employ a unifying narrative and trust a distributed network to provide relevant feedback and make timely decisions. Sound familiar? As you read the book you can almost smell the mission command exuding from Dempsey’s pores as he interprets the philosophy for a broader audience. This book is perfect for any leader who wants to gain a deeper understanding of mission command from a unique perspective.

Like War by Peter Singer and Emerson Brooking

In this work, Peter Singer and Emerson Brooking provide a frightening description of social media as a weapon system. The book provides numerous case studies showing the results of social media in conflict, including the rise of ISIS and Russian actions in Crimea. In today’s world, sources like Facebook and Twitter provide a constant stream of true and questionable information, shaping our realities and worldview. These vignettes all solidify the fact that social media and rapid information flow will continue to shape how we fight wars in the future. This book is for any leader who may step foot onto a future battlefield.