Few military officers ever command international coalitions incombat operations. Fewer still do it twice. General (retired) DavidPetraeus commanded coalition forces in Iraq from February 2007 toSeptember 2008, and in Afghanistan from July 2010 to July 2011. Heserved as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency until 2012.A team from the Belfer Center of the Harvard Kennedy School,led by Emile Simpson, recently interviewed General Petraeus to obtainhis views on strategic leadership. What follows is a selection from thoseinterviews, reproduced here with permission.1Question: Can you give us an overview of your four key tasks ofstrategic leadership?Petraeus:First of all, strategic leadership is that which is exercised ata level of an organization where the individual is truly determining theazimuth for the organization. When you look at a combat theater, theoverall commander of that combat theater—Multi-National Force-Iraq,International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan—is the strategicleader who, within the confines of the policy that is approved by thePresident of the United States and/or the NATO authorities, he’s theone that is developing the direction the organization is going to go.In essence there are four tasks. Thefirstis to get the big ideas right.Thesecondis to communicate them effectively throughout the breadthand depth of the organization. Thethirdis to oversee the implementationof the big ideas. And thefourthis to determine how the big ideas needto be refined, changed, augmented, and then repeating the process overagain and again and again.Now, in my experience, getting the big ideas right isn’t somethingthat happens when you sit under the right tree and get hit on the headby Newton’s apple—a big idea fully formed or big ideas fully flushedout. My experience is big ideas result from collaboration, from study,research, analysis, having a large tent in which lots of people are engaged.Certainly the leader at the end of the day does have to make decisions,does have to settle on the big ideas; but it’s a very iterative process, orat least it has been for me over the years. And that’s the way it needs tobe approached.Communicating the big ideas is a process that takes place usingevery possible medium and opportunity. It starts with the very first dayspeech, the change of command remarks after having taken commandof the unit. In the case of Iraq, it continued with the issuance of a letter1For the full interview, see: .OFNOTEOn Strategic LeadershipAn Interview with David H. Petraeus, General (USARetired)
76Parameters45(4) Winter 2015-16I’d written to all of our soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and civiliansof the Multi-National Force in Iraq. It then went on through a meetingwith the commanders of the Multi-National Force who were all therefor the change of command. In subsequent days, I changed the missionstatement; over time we changed the entire campaign plan.
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