Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead by Jim Mattis and Bing West

             Call Sign Chaos was an even better book than I thought it would be. Public figures’ memoirs can be pretty weak because they don’t want to offend and want to make sure they are telling their side of history. In some ways, Mattis’ book has those flaws. He almost entirely skips over his childhood and young life, more or less emerging as a battalion commander in Operation Desert Storm out of thin air. Similarly, his life ends before he joins the Trump administration, with only oblique references to that time. In some sense, that is more tactful, but as a reader I would have definitely enjoyed digging deeper into those morally difficult times. He also never dealt with his time as a member of the board of Theranos. But despite those shortcomings, the book reads like a leadership manual, with Mattis extolling the virtues of reading heavily, knowing the people who work for you, and other major leadership lessons.

            Chief among all the leadership lessons Mattis delivers in the book is to train your subordinates well, deliver clear intent to them, and to empower them to act without returning for your permission. Mattis quotes heavily from British Field Marshal Viscount Slim, who fought with General Joe Stilwell in Burma in World War Two, especially with regard to this lesson. Slim wrote that “acting without orders, in anticipation of orders, or without waiting for approval yet always within the overall intention, must become second nature in any form of warfare…. Acting without orders … yet always within the overall intention.”

            With regard to the presidents he served under, Mattis’ clear favorite is George HW Bush. He is the only president that Mattis regards as truly successful in war and foreign affairs. Of Clinton he has no comment. Of Bush 43, Mattis admired the direction he lead in, but expressed frustration that the messages he passed up the chain seemed to go unheard and that the United States was left rudderless after the initial Iraq invasion. Obama he felt was weak and too timid in the Middle East. And clearly he strongly disliked Trump, but we don’t get a lot from him about Trump.

Miscellaneous Facts:

• Mattis spent a night in jail while a student at Central Washington State College for underage drinking. That definitely seems like the sort of thing that would stop you from becoming an officer these days.
• “If you haven’t read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate, and you will be incompetent, because your personal experiences aren’t broad enough to sustain you.”
• Mattis is known as CHAOS due to a tongue-in-cheek comment made by then-Lieutenant Colonel John Toolan, who wrote it out as, “Does the Colonel Have Another Outstanding Solution?”
• Mattis closed staff meeting by insisting that someone put him on the spot with one hard question before they finished. This helped him know what kept his subordinates up at night and helped him identify weak spots in the scheme of maneuver.
• Clearly General Mattis views General Zinni as an important mentor to him, as he mentions turning to Zinni several times for advice.
• Mattis cites a conversation with then-Vice President Joe Biden in 2010 in which Biden was very insistent on withdrawal from Iraq as quickly as possible, foreshadowing the withdrawal from Afghanistan a decade later.