NEURON SECRET SEVEN

The Principle of Wisdom: Patience and dependability are the cornerstones of great leadership.

When Sean O'Keefe was born in Monterey, California, in 1956, his parents, like most, had visions of grandeur for their son. As Sean matured, he never gave much heed to those visions, but they found him all the same. Sean's mother and father hailed from New Orleans and persuaded him to attend Loyola University after he graduated from high school. Sean earned a Bachelor of Arts degree and then pursued a Masters of Public Administration at Syracuse University one year later. Unsure of what his next steps should be, he decided to let the gentle waters of fate guide him toward his destiny.

“I recall a great book written by James Stavridis called The Accidental Admiral,” said Sean. “I may write a book one day called The Accidental Public Servant.”

In post graduate school, Sean was “accidentally” selected to the inaugural class of the Presidential Management Intern Program and later served as a budget analyst for the Department of the Navy. That accidentally led to a stint with the U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations staff for eight years, which later earned him a promotion to staff director of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee.

In 1989, John Tower was President George H. W. Bush's selection for Secretary of Defense, but for the first time in three decades, the Senate rejected the president's nomination. Instead, Dick Cheney got the nod and immediately initiated a search for a Senate staff veteran. Sean was “accidentally” on the radar screen and so accepted the opportunity to serve as the Comptroller and CFO for the Department of Defense. Following a New York Times profile about his sharp cost‐cutting, Sean earned the title of the “Grim Reaper.”

Said Sean, “Secretary Cheney's Deputy Secretary, Don Atwood, was selected from the ranks of the business community after serving as vice chairman for General Motors. Atwood brought a management efficiency agenda to our organization to streamline overhead costs. Some people didn't like the fact that I had been selected as the ‘point man’ for Secretary Atwood's agenda, but it offered me a pragmatic education on what it takes to implement change management in a large organization.”

Sean was later praised for his heavy hand in managing finances for the 1991 Gulf War and, along with Atwood, for encouraging U.S. allies to hand over large sums to cover the war expenses. Over $54 billion of the $61 billion expended for U.S. forces was covered by allied contributions. Sean's demeanor as “one tough hombre” again placed his name in the hat when a serious incident caused a big shakeup at the highest levels of the U.S. Navy.

In September 1991, during the 35th Tailhook Association symposium in Las Vegas, Nevada, over 4,000 men and women attended a two‐day debriefing on U.S. Navy and Marine Corps aviation operations. Active military, reservists, and retired personnel gathered in Sin City to eat, drink, and review the success of the air campaigns completed during Operation Desert Storm in Iraq.

Flying for the Navy or Marine Corps is a risky business. If you don't get shot down, your engine could fail, you could get sucked into your wingman's draft, miss the deck during a carrier landing, or just make one tiny mistake. Any of these misfortunes could be your last. Adrenaline and egos run high, as might be expected. Letting off some steam is considered commonplace. Unfortunately, during those two days under a bright Nevada sun, the vented steam fogged far too many windows.

Reports later surfaced, along with incriminating photos, documenting inappropriate behavior. When Tailhook Association President Captain Rick Ludwig returned to the aircraft carrier USS Midway in Seattle, he met with his air wing commanders and flag officers to discuss what had happened at the event. Later, 83 women and seven men came forward and filed claims of sexual harassment. Making matters worse, they claimed that several flag officers had been aware of the activities but did nothing.

“The report took over ten months to complete and failed to produce any substantial conclusions,” said Sean. “That obviously was not acceptable.”

The resulting report, completed by the Naval Investigative Service, blamed only low‐ranking enlisted men for the bad conduct and absolved the flag officers. Barbara S. Pope, assistant secretary of the Navy, refused to accept the findings. She stormed into the office of Secretary of the Navy H. Lawrence Garrett III and threatened to resign and go public if he did not “do another report and look at what we needed to do about accountability and responsibility and the larger issues at hand.”

“Garrett elected to do another investigation to be conducted by the Defense Inspector General,” said Sean. “The next Tailhook report was far more damaging and was released months after Garrett's resignation in June 1992. On a Friday I was comptroller and CFO of the Defense Department. By Monday, when I was selected to relieve Garrett, I was Acting Secretary of the Navy.”

Quite by accident, Sean O'Keefe stepped into Garrett's shoes and subsequently went public with the new Tailhook report in September 1992, when it was issued by the Defense Inspector General.

“Picking up the pieces from Tailhook became a tough leadership challenge,” said Sean. “Ultimately, I had to make some difficult and serious change management decisions that scuttled or damaged the careers of many naval aviators and several flag officers. Some people didn't like me very much after that, but it was important to demonstrate the naval service commitment and dedication to doing the right thing.”

In the wake of the Tailhook incident, the Naval Investigative Service also took a hit. The organization was refocused to the primary task of investigating criminal behavior and received a name change to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, or NCIS, which spurred one of the most popular shows on television.

President George H. W. Bush appointed Sean O'Keefe as permanent secretary of the Navy, whereupon his Grim Reaper reputation once again came to the forefront. With the Cold War now over, Sean oversaw the requirement to “draw down” Navy and Marine Corps forces and reframe the strategy of naval services to complement the Department of Defense's pragmatic long‐term plan. Sean faced difficult choices and strong political winds that pressed him to compromise his integrity. He never did.

“A leader's most important principle must be integrity,” said Sean. “You must demonstrate that you intend to live by the same rules you impose on others. If your integrity is compromised even once, it might never be regained.”

Sean's reputation for unwavering integrity and dependability later led to his “accidental” selection as NASA administrator (CEO) just three months after 9/11. Many questioned his appointment as he did not have a technology, engineering, or scientific background.

“I was typecast as a bean counter,” said Sean, “not a rocket scientist. But what prompted my reassignment from the White House staff as OMB Deputy Director was a financial management challenge at NASA. The commander's intent that President Bush communicated to me was to control costs and run the agency more efficiently.”

Sean accomplished that goal by eliminating a $5 billion overrun the administration had inherited for the International Space Station. Construction of the station had been undertaken by a consortium of 16 nations to build the largest laboratory in space, one module at a time. A little over a year later, when the space station obstacles were finally under control, Sean faced one of the most difficult and disheartening challenges of his career—the loss of the space shuttle Columbia.

“We'd prepared for the STS‐107 mission for months,” Sean said. “Commander Rick Husband was an Air Force colonel and a brilliant mechanical engineer. His pilot, Bill McCool, was an experienced Navy commander who had finished at the top of his class at the Naval Academy and flight school. The onboard crew consisted of two Navy captain medical specialists, an Air Force lieutenant colonel as payload commander, an Israeli Air Force colonel who was a legendary pilot in his country, and an Indian‐American veteran astronaut aerospace engineer. This was one of the finest crews NASA had ever assembled. They worked hard and trained hard and should never have died on that mission.”

STS‐107 was NASA's 113th Space Shuttle mission. Originally, it had been scheduled for launch almost 12 months before Sean O'Keefe assumed command of NASA, but technical issues and scheduling challenges had caused several delays.

On January 16, 2003, on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral, three clustered rocket engines thundered and roared and hurled the Space Shuttle Columbia toward the stars. Eighty‐two seconds after liftoff, a suitcase‐size chunk of foam broke free from an external tank and smacked into the Columbia's left wing. The hit damaged the craft's thermal protection coating. The Columbia Accident Investigation Board determined that more than two weeks after liftoff, when the space shuttle re‐entered the intense heat of the earth's atmosphere, the damaged leading‐edge section of the left wing channeled the hot gases to enter and ripple through the shuttle orbiter. This caused the Columbia to break apart just minutes before the scheduled landing. All seven crew members perished in the disaster.

“I've dealt with several hardships during my career,” Sean said. “None were more difficult than delivering the news to the families of the crew after the accident. However, their reaction was awe inspiring. In the midst of the deepest remorse and pain that anyone can endure, they requested that we find out what happened, fix the problems, and rededicate ourselves to the dream of space exploration that their loved ones had died for. Their request became the mantra my team and I lived by every day thereafter.”

Sean and his team were forced to make forward‐thinking decisions, especially regarding the dependability of the current platforms. One of these was to place the Space Shuttle program on a two‐year hiatus while they poured through data, ran simulations, and designed new safety measures, procedures, and materials to prevent future mishaps. During that time, he learned a lot about team leadership.

“First and foremost,” said Sean, “I learned how important it is to embrace my responsibility to lead my team by example. I needed to be consistent and dependable, as well as accountable. I couldn't ask my team to be responsible and make tough decisions if I wasn't willing to do the same. After the Columbia accident, everyone was painfully reminded that our decisions and actions could cost lives. We had to hold each other accountable to a much higher standard and think about the long‐term big picture.”

Achieving that higher standard was met with a great deal of criticism in January 2004, when Sean was forced to make another difficult decision. He canceled the Space Shuttle mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope, which was to be its last before the service life of the telescope expired. Sean reasoned that with the dust still settling on the Columbia failure and the investigation board admonishing him to defer shuttle operations until NASA could “prove that it's safe,” the risk was too great as only a few of Accident Investigation Board recommendations had been completed. If the shuttle was damaged in any way, there was no means to rescue the crew without risking a mid‐space orbit intercept with another shuttle, which had never been done.

The Hubble telescope operates at an altitude nearly 100 miles higher than the International Space Station, so a safe haven rendezvous was not an option. However, time was running out for Hubble. Engineering team experts had determined that the telescope had no more than a few more years of life left if the servicing mission wasn't conducted immediately. A decision needed to be rendered by early 2004 to avoid Hubble's demise. Some agreed with Sean, but many others led by a group of astronomers did not. They felt that the Hubble's contribution to science trumped the risks.

Sean announced his resignation from NASA on December 13, 2004. Seven months later, the Space Shuttle Discovery launched from Pad 39B to commence mission STS‐114 to the International Space Station while demonstrating the new safety protocols devised after the Columbia tragedy. The Discovery's crew returned safely to earth less than two weeks later. In May 2009, six years after the loss of Columbia, the Hubble engineering estimates proved to be wrong. More than five years after the telescope was predicted to cease operations, a final mission approved by Sean's successor was launched to repair Hubble and extend its service life. Other than short flights to support completion of the International Space Station, this was the last mission ever conducted by a space shuttle.

“After I left NASA,” Sean said, “I thought my life would be easier. Little did I know that I was jumping from the frying pad into another fire.”

Sean became chancellor of Louisiana State University on February 21, 2005. Six months later, he was “accidently” and literally tossed into the middle of a hurricane. The infamous gale named Katrina swept through the Gulf of Mexico and caused what became known as the world's costliest natural disaster and one of the five deadliest hurricanes in U.S. history. In all, more than 1,200 people died during the storm and subsequent floods. Total costs were estimated at north of $100 billion.

Katrina began her reign of terror by rearing her ugly head over the Bahamas on August 23. She roared eastward toward Florida and earned the official title of “hurricane” when she hit landfall at Hallandale Beach. Warm Gulf of Mexico waters propelled Katrina to a category five. By the time she assaulted Louisiana on August 29, she'd lost a little steam and had been downgraded to a category three. Still, the damage was severe. Katrina wreaked havoc across the Gulf from Florida to Texas, causing levee failures and 90 percent flooding in Mississippi beachfront cities. Casino barges and small boats rammed into buildings while the storm overturned cars and uprooted houses and damaged buildings.

In New Orleans, Katrina caused more than 50 breaches in the city's hurricane surge protection structures, resulting in massive loss of life. More than 80 percent of the area remained flooded for weeks. Those who survived ran from the calamity, but most had nowhere to go.

“We were in shock,” said Sean. “The area near LSU had been hit hard, but not nearly as hard as New Orleans. They were only 80 miles away, but they were right on the water and breaches in the inner city canal walls caused flooding in most of the metropolitan‐area neighborhoods. Thousands died, and many more were now homeless. I knew we had to do something to help the survivors.”

With most hospitals closed after power went out in the 150‐mile radius around New Orleans, Sean decided that LSU should open its doors, and its heart, to anyone in the area that needed shelter. He organized teams and instructed them to turn LSU into what was later referred to as the largest acute‐care field hospital established in a contingency in the nation's history.

“We turned the basketball arena into a thousand‐bed MASH unit,” Sean said. “We housed doctors and medical professionals from around the region and the country who came to the campus to assist the diaspora from New Orleans. There was no power anywhere else, but we had a cogeneration facility and emergency generators. People were stifling in the 90‐degree heat and suffering severe dehydration.”

Sean also had to deal with lots of misinformation. Rumors spread that the area wasn't safe due to reported incidents of rioting, looting, and shootings in the city of Baton Rouge. The claims proved to be false, but they frightened people away. Many of those people needed help and might perish if not properly treated or cared for. Sean immediately organized a town hall–style meeting in the community and did what all great leaders who exhibit unwavering integrity should do. He took full responsibility for his part.

“I told everyone that we were going to start our meeting by denouncing the false rumors. I then apologized to the community for compounding the confusion. I hadn't verified the rumors before permitting the LSU communications team to advise the campus about the situation. It was my responsibility and the buck stopped with me. From now on, we would double our efforts to keep everyone properly informed and work closely with local law enforcement. I then asked everyone to join in the effort to support those who had come to our campus for shelter and treatment.”

Sean and his staff worked around the clock for weeks to ensure uprooted and hurt residents were sheltered and cared for. In all, thousands of refugees were taken in and taken care of by hundreds of volunteers, all working under Sean's leadership.

In October 2009, Sean O'Keefe accidentally accepted an offer to become the CEO of EADS North America—the U.S. subsidiary of the aerospace giant now known as Airbus Group. He leveraged his bean‐counter expertise and Washington connections to help EADS compete with Boeing to secure a $35 billion U.S. Air Force contract for aerial refueling tanker aircraft. In the midst of that campaign, a different type of aircraft almost took his life and that of his teenage son.

In August 2010, Sean and his son were on a fishing trip near the central coast of Alaska. They were flying in a seaplane near Aleknagik when the plane went down. Alaska's Senator Ted Stevens and four others aboard died in the crash. Nearly eighteen hours after the accident, a team of Air National Guard, Coast Guard, and local medical emergency personnel found the aircraft and arrived at the crash site. It was a miracle that Sean, his son, and two others survived the ordeal.

Apparently, higher powers were not yet finished with Sean. His successes at EADS gained him a seat as chairman of the board in January 2011, but he stepped down just three years later due to lingering issues with the injuries he'd sustained in the 2010 airplane crash. He now speaks publicly on the topic of leadership and teaches at his graduate school alma mater, Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.

“The advice I often express to current and aspiring leaders is that making wise decisions requires diverse input,” said Sean. “It's important to listen to other points of view that may be fundamentally different from your own. When you open your mind to other perspectives, solutions, and courses of action, even if you don't initially agree with them, you can begin to expand your thinking and your long‐term sagacity. You can begin to see opportunities that you might have overlooked. By inviting different views, you also encourage your team to think outside of what's commonly accepted, and in doing so, they might just astound you. Gaining leadership wisdom does not happen overnight. It is a lifelong pursuit.”

PRAGMA LOVE

Sean O'Keefe's experience and wisdom set the stage for the Seventh Neuron Secret: The Principle of Wisdom: Patience and dependability are the cornerstones of great leadership.

We talked earlier about Dr. James Kavanaugh's view that becoming who and what we desire requires “long‐game” thinking. We can't stroll onto the golf course after taking our first lesson and expect to hit below 60. The ancient Greeks called this pragma, a long‐term, mature form of love. To explain this type of love, they used examples of couples who have been in committed relationships for many years, who share a deep understanding of and affection for each other. Such an abiding love is only possible when both partners demonstrate a high degree of integrity, trust, and dependability.

This rational form of love appeals to our logical brain, as verified by the word pragmatic, which is a derivative of pragma. Team members, guided by consistent examples exhibited by their leaders, can realize this form of love and respect for each other only if they are willing to make compromises, set aside egos, and demonstrate a high degree of tolerance, understanding, and long‐term patience.

Erich Fromm, a renowned psychoanalyst, once commented that people often emphasize falling in love when they should be learning how to “stand in love.” Although making the right selection up front is critical, in relationships and with members of our team, we often see couples and leaders adopt a “happily ever after” mentality. Despite what we've been programmed to believe from reading kids' books, happily ever after is more fairy tale than reality. There is no such thing on a consistent basis unless we make the effort to give more love than we receive. More than a third of first‐time marriages end up in divorce court after less than a decade.

Remember the adage about “Greater love hath no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends”? We learned that to lay down our lives means to generously give our time to others. If we expect to hire someone, or get into any kind of long‐term relationship with anyone, we must be willing to lay down our time and our unrealistic expectations. We must be willing to play the long game. Only in this way can we develop a pragmatic form of love.

Pragma is a form of practical love based on logical reason, sense of duty, and commitment, and an alignment with mutual long‐term interests. In personal relationships, physical attraction becomes less important than individual qualities and shared compatibilities, common goals, and staying the course. It's about playing all 18 holes.

Pragma love was far more prevalent than eros love when arranged marriages were more common. Modern non‐arranged relationships usually begin with an abundance of ludus or eros love and mature over time into a combination of philia and pragma love. In some relationships, eros and ludus are lost and may be replaced by pragma. Some believe this is a bad thing, but for many couples who have marriages that last for decades, the initial raging fires slowly subside, but the embers remain warm and comfortable for decades. They have grown to know and love each other deeply. They are now more companions and best friends than passionate lovers. Their initial physical passion has matured into an undying mental and spiritual one.

For leaders, this form of love is about trusting, praising, and depending upon your people. Also, letting them know you are committed to them and you expect the same level of commitment in return. If you want them to hang with you long term, and exhibit undying loyalty, you must show them pragma. Since it's logical, the best way to express this is via emails, written and signed letters, award certificates or plaques, on a team presentation slide, etc. Also, it's best to use facts, numbers, details, graphs, and charts. For example, in a presentation or email, you might say, “Fred, thank you for helping our sales team achieve an average 79 percent social selling index on LinkedIn last quarter.”

This approach does many things. It speaks to Fred's logical brain, it clearly defines the expectation in quantified terms, and it lets Fred know that his leader is paying attention and using metrics to track and reward desired behaviors.

TRUST EQUALS DOLLARS

In a recent Harvard Business Review article titled “The Neuroscience of Trust,” Dr. Zak discussed how business leaders struggle with building a culture of trust. He cited a 2016 global CEO survey by Pricewaterhouse Coopers wherein 55 percent of CEOs stated that a lack of trust is a threat to their firm's growth.

We discussed earlier how Dr. Zak conducted a series of experiments and determined that an increase in oxytocin in individuals also reduced their instinctual fear about trusting someone. This is a significant finding because people who work for companies where trust is high as compared to low have 74 percent less stress, 106 percent more work energy, 50 percent higher productivity, 76 percent more engagement, and 40 percent less burnout.

Leaders who are not raising two eyebrows after reading the last paragraph are probably burnt out because they work at a low‐trust company. If employees are 50 percent more productive because you, as a leader, created a culture of trust, how might that impact your revenue? Your profits? Your market share? Your stock performance?

How can you raise the oxytocin levels in your employees and foster an atmosphere of trust? Read the chapter in this book entitled The Eighth Secret.

PRAGMA TEAM RECRUITING

For leaders who are involved in the hiring process (and most are), as well as human resources and recruiting professionals, focusing on pragma more than eros can be invaluable. We may really like that guy we just interviewed. He has a friendly and warm personality. Others on the team also like him. He's smooth and charming and dresses sharp. We're attracted to him, so we hire him.

Then we start to see his warts, the ones we ignored earlier. We liked him, so we turned a blind eye. We didn't take the appropriate time to dig deep enough to determine if he was the best pragmatic choice. We let our emotional brain make the decision and told our logical brain to take a vacation. We allowed someone's effervescent personality to override our principles.

Conversely, we may sometimes get too logical. I've frequently seen CEOs in small start‐ups hire executives with MBAs from Harvard or Stanford who have impressive titles at large, name‐brand firms. Venture capitalists, who sit on the board, often push these CEOs to find such candidates. They look good on paper, and everyone's egos get stroked when the guy says yes. Once onboard, these individuals are like fish out of water.

Most are not used to rolling up their sleeves and hunting for customers or clawing for industry recognition. They've come from an environment where they had dozens of subordinates who were doing most of the “street” work. They had admins and budgets and ongoing business. Starting from scratch is a foreign and difficult concept. When both they and their hiring leader finally realize that it's just not working, months have gone by and opportunities have been lost.

Leaders and recruiters can find greater hiring success by adopting a more pragmatic approach, in similar fashion to an arranged marriage. By focusing on how someone may be the best long‐term fit, rather than an ego‐stroking, “we look good for hiring them” short‐term win, we lower our odds of failure. How does this person's long‐term goals, their passion and purpose in life, and their ability to be a great team player fit with our current team? Once the pink cloud has evaporated and we're no longer as attracted to their glittering white teeth, will they be someone that everyone on the team can have a long‐term pragma relationship with?

Once employees are hired, companies should invest in continuous training to improve skills, confidence, and retention. With engagement and retention dropping like the stock market during a crash, it's surprising that the average company only invests in about 30 hours per year of training for each employee. The result is that over a third believe their lack of training is hurting their productivity.

A few years ago, the management team at Symantec recognized the need to improve sales training and enablement. My team and I were brought in to solve this problem, and we spent the next year designing and creating an entirely new approach to training and enablement across all of their product lines. Their senior director of sales enablement, Matt Weaver, understood that the “old school” approach of focusing on technical product training was inadequate. Sales pros, even the “salty dogs” who'd been selling for years, needed more solution training coupled with good old fashioned sales training. Matt also knew that while the traditional sales training models used by popular sales performance companies were excellent, they were not very customized or modernized. They did not use cutting‐edge neuroscience, advanced storytelling techniques, or social‐selling tactics for LinkedIn.

While the initial investment was high, the payoff was far higher. The new programs and tools, including a Dynamic Interactive Sales Playbook™ that customized content to a prospect's profile, was rolled out to over 4,000 salespersons and 50,000 channel partners across a dozen countries. The feedback, compliments, usage, and results were higher than for any program they'd ever done. Within two quarters, virtually every salesperson had been trained. Lead conversion and closing rates shot upward and so did morale.

Said Matt Weaver, “[Their] team has been a critical partner in my team's success in driving Symantec sales transformation. We set very aggressive targets and timelines to improve the global salesforce's effectiveness and productivity. [Their] team provided us with insights, guidance, and high‐quality solutions that enabled us to realize significant gains in our sales team's ability to execute.”

Top leaders are not afraid to make appropriate investments in their most precious asset: people. As Captain Jo Dee Jacob told us, “I try to treat people like wonderful Waterford goblets that should be treasured.”

Jo Dee and leaders like her understand that they are playing the long game. To retain their best talent long term, they need to think long term, invest in their people and effective training, and practice pragma love.

THE PRAGMATIC LEADER

Pete Daly's father served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. After the war, he returned home to Chicago, Illinois, and continued to serve his country in the Naval Reserve. Pete's dad became a member of the U.S. Naval Institute (USNI)—a nonprofit professional military association established in 1873. The USNI is based in Annapolis, Maryland, and offers independent, nonpartisan forums for education and debate on national defense and security issues. The USNI publishes books and articles on naval topics via its Naval Institute Press (NIP)—the publishing company that launched Tom Clancy's breakout novel The Hunt for Red October.

Having all those Naval Institute books and magazines in his house while growing up made an impression on Pete. “I fell in love with the Navy, and with my father's encouragement, I decided to apply for a NROTC scholarship and attend the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts.”

Although he never thought that his scholarship would lead him toward a long‐term military career, Pete ended up serving as Surface Warfare Officer for over 30 years, rising to the rank of vice admiral.

One of the most valuable leadership lessons Pete learned occurred when he was a captain serving as the executive assistant to Admiral Tom Fargo, the Commander of the Pacific Fleet. During that time, the Los Angeles–class attack submarine USS Greeneville (SSN‐772) collided with the Ehime Maru—a Japanese fishery high school training ship operating near the southern coast of Oahu, Hawaii, on February 9, 2001.

The Ehime Maru carried a total of 35 passengers, including 20 crew members, 13 students, and two teachers. The ship's 74‐day voyage included a training curriculum for tuna fishing, maritime navigation, marine engineering, and oceanography.

The Greeneville departed Oahu on February 9, to conduct a demonstration of submarine capabilities for 14 VIP civilians, congresspersons, media journalists, and other important visitors onboard. As part of the demonstration, the commanding officer ordered an emergency dive followed by an emergency main ballast blow to swiftly propel the sub to the surface. When the Greenville surfaced, the submarine struck the underside of the Ehime Maru. Nine of the students and crew on the Japanese vessel lost their lives in the tragic incident. The Ehime Maru sank to the ocean floor, over 2,000 feet beneath the waves.

Pete recalled that the loss was extremely emotional for all involved, most especially for the families of those lost.

“This kind of situation could have ruined relationships between the U.S. and Japan,” said Pete. “Dealing with a tragedy of this magnitude might have been too much for even the most seasoned leader, but Admiral Fargo rose to the occasion. He understood the difference between making short‐term decisions to simply deal with the problem quickly versus taking the more difficult pragmatic path to ensure the best long‐term outcome. Having served in Japan years earlier, Admiral Fargo appreciated the Japanese culture and pursued a position of transparency to regain their trust.”

Fargo knew he needed to include the Japanese in every decision and step along the way to salvage the vessel. He invited Japanese salvage experts to work side by side with U.S. Navy experts. When senior officials in Washington, D.C., expressed skepticism at conducting a Court of Inquiry that could “turn into a circus,” Admiral Fargo insisted on one as he knew that maintaining transparency was essential. He even invited a Japanese admiral to sit with American flag officers as a member of the Court of Inquiry.

“That move was an act of genius,” said Pete. “Admiral Fargo had to ‘manage up’ almost as much as he had to ‘manage down.’”

Fargo insisted that the Navy needed to recover the bodies and conduct a Court of Inquiry. The Court finished in mid‐summer 2001; however, the very challenging salvage effort dragged out for many more months. Shortly after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, the government of Japan acknowledged that the United States had made a full effort on the salvage and could conclude the operation. Admiral Fargo could have accepted that communique as permission to end the salvage efforts, but he instead directed that the Navy continue. In October 2001, the Ehime Maru was brought to a shallow depth to allow divers to recover any remains. U.S. Navy and Japanese divers eventually recovered eight of the nine bodies.

“That was one of the best examples of leadership I've ever witnessed,” said Pete. “By turning a tragedy that could have caused a serious divide between two countries into an opportunity to build an even stronger bond, Admiral Fargo taught me a valuable lesson about being a pragmatic leader.”

The prime minister of Japan later telephoned Admiral Fargo to thank him personally. During the call, the prime minister said that, given the 9/11 tragedy, only the strongest friend and ally would have continued to follow through on the long‐term promise to complete the salvage.

Pete believes that transparency and trust can't be summoned in the short term. As Admiral Fargo demonstrated, a good leader must always consider the “long view.”

“Your team and your partners will sense your continued dedication and commitment,” said Pete, “so they must be genuine. If you are not genuine, you will lose your team's trust.”

Pete also believes that the best leaders clearly communicate their organization's commitment to the mission to ensure buy‐in and dedication for the long haul. Doing so reflects wisdom and a desire to build and maintain a relationship with your team built upon a patient and consistent pragma form of love.

Pete Daly continues to serve his country and fellow Navy veterans as the president of the USNI, which today has over 50,000 members worldwide.

TEN PRAGMA LEADERSHIP REVIEW POINTS

1. The Seventh Neuron Secret is The Principle of Wisdom: Patience and dependability are the cornerstones of great leadership.
2. This principle is based on the Greek work pragma, which is a mature and pragmatic “long‐game” form of love.
3. The pragma type of love is logical and connects with the logical neocortex.
4. Gaining wisdom requires patience, experience, and the willingness to listen to input from others.
5. This principle is best expressed using written words, numbers, charts, etc. and not by visual and auditory means.
6. Unlike eros love, which is about falling in love, pragma is about staying in love long term.
7. For leaders, this principle and form of love emphasizes the need to depend upon and praise the people on your team.
8. Recruiters and hiring managers should use pragma love to evaluate the long‐term team and cultural fit of candidates interviewed.
9. The Scarecrow in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz provides a good metaphorical representation and embodiment of this principle.
10. This principle can be summed up with these two words: be dependable.

THREE STEPS TO PRAGMA LEADERSHIP

1. Policy: Leaders should work with teams to create long‐term team and individual goals and metrics that not only align with the firm's performance goals, but also with Conscious Capitalism or similar tenets, and the organization's mission, passion, and purpose.
2. Procedure: Leaders should meet weekly with team members to review progress toward team and individual goals, and focus on only three primary goals and three projects or tasks for each goal. See the Neuron Decision Making chapter for an example of this.
3. Practice: Leaders should be trained, by internal or outsourced coaching experts, on best‐practice time and goal management procedures using the Pareto Principle (80/20 rule), as well as strategic processes that focus on long‐term pragmatic performance and metrics.

ONE PRAGMA LEADERSHIP EXERCISE

For this exercise, please answer the following questions:

• Am I afraid of taking a hard look at myself, and if so, why?
• Have I been open to other people's point of view?
• Do I frequently look for and admire positive traits in others?
• Have I been focused on the negative and been blind to the good around me or in me?
• How have I played the victim, and why do I continue to do so?
• Have I ever opened up and exposed my weaknesses to others I trust?
• Have I been honest with myself about my part in bad situations?
• Am I willing to play the long game and be patient?
• Am I dependable and pragmatic?

You are your own answer,

 Beyond books and seers,

    psychics or doctors

 Beyond the strength that comes

    from what you have accomplished.

Your weakness is as valuable as your strength,

Your helplessness as lovable as your charm.

—Dr. James Kavanaugh, from Quiet Waters