If anything gives insight into the character of Admiral James A. “Sandy” Winnefeld, it’s a critical decision he faced as a teenager. Unconvinced that a career in the Navy was for him, this future Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff turned down an admissions offer from the  U. S. Naval Academy.

“Now, that’s where my father went, so, for a while, I was the black sheep in my family. But I didn’t want to take a slot at the Naval Academy from some kid who wanted it more than anything in the world,” he said.

“I wanted to be happy, so I went to Georgia Tech because it was a strong school, with a great ROTC program that would help me decide.” 

That decision – and many he’s taken since then – have chartered a career defined by courage and vision, the building blocks of leadership. So we asked this highly decorated naval officer to lay out the five insights that guided him. 

Being Sandy Winnefeld, of course, he gave us six.

1. Embrace and lead change.

"This comes from something I’ve seen throughout my career: incredibly bright adults will work incredibly long hours perfecting fundamentally flawed concepts. To get beyond that, you have to challenge all assumptions, which requires creativity. And creativity is hard work. It requires a synthesis of different ideas, which, in turn requires a breadth of knowledge and, therefore, lifelong learning.

Once you do all of the things that allow you to be creative you have to go a step further and be bold. I think you’ll find that the most successful change leaders in the world are the ones who can find that creative spark or bring together people who have that creative spark, and then have the guts to go out and try it.

If I’ve had any success in that, I’d give some of the credit to Georgia Tech, because, while we’re a very good engineering school, I think we also encourage a sort of rowdy form of engineering. People on this campus are willing to try new things, to step out and fail, if necessary, and that is good training. My formative years – from 18 to 22- were spent in this environment where we were willing to take risks. We didn’t just sit there. And it was a lot of fun.

I use this philosophy all the time. I speak to every single new flag or general officer in the US Military and I tell them a lot of things. One of the things I tell them is: you don’t have a lot of time to make things happen. Don’t bide your time until you can move up and become a general or an admiral. Most of them are only there for a few years. We’re expecting you to perform, to be creative, and we can’t wait. We’re expecting you to push on us."

2. Find a framework and fundamental principles that work for you, and use them as a touchstone.

"Just before I went into the Navy Nuclear Propulsion Program I was introduced to a set of operational excellence principles that just really work. Whether on the bridge of a ship or the cockpit of a plane, you normally find that if something has gone wrong, it’s a violation of one or more of those principles. I come back to them again and again. The ones that come directly to mind are:

• Integrity If you can count on everyone in the organization to tell the truth, it will save you a heck of a lot of time trying to find out what went wrong. The key is, people need to know that they will not be punished for a sin of omission. Give people room to make mistakes and they’ll learn. It’s the sin of commission, where you knew you were doing something wrong, that needs to be harshly addressed.
• Level of knowledge You have to know your stuff. A lot of people try to muddle through without knowing their stuff. In a way this goes back to integrity.
• Informed procedural compliance Most of the rules in my business are written in blood and if you follow them you’ll usually be fine. But you also have that little ticker file in the back of your head that tells you what to do when the rules don’t cover it. That’s when you fall back on your level of knowledge to figure things out.
  • Question attitudes Don’t just look at something and admire the problem. Try to figure out what went wrong. And don’t stop with the first thing you think is wrong because it’s probably something else."

  3. Learn to express yourself.

  "It all starts with having something important to say. There is no substitute for that. Then you need to be able to think it through and organize your thoughts into something that’s interesting and flows well. You should not overlook grammar and sentence structure either. Now it’s not necessarily true that everyone who thinks clearly can also write well. They are two different skills. But I can tell you that if you don’t think clearly, your writing will reflect that. It may not be fair, but when I see that someone writes poorly, I have to assume that that person also does not think clearly."

  4. Get your hands on good people and lead them well.

  "This takes a lot of work. You have to really search hard and not take ‘no’ for an answer. When you get the best people, it makes your own work a joy. If you don’t work hard to find the right people, you’ll pay the price. Once you’ve got them, leading them involves holding them to the highest possible standards while you also take care of them and allow them to reach their full potential. Then have fun with them.

  I saw this in play the first time I had a command. I was the commander of a fighter squadron, and there was one other CO [commanding officer] - a good friend of mine - who thought like I did. We competed for the best people. Every now and then our superiors would tell us that we had to spread the best talent around, but we wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. I remember fighting very hard for a particular department head. I got him, and it was worth it. To this day, when we bring senior staff onto the Joint Chiefs staff, we work very hard to get the best people. And when they get here, we give them room to be creative, to make mistakes fast so they can learn to be empowered."

  5. Manage your time.

  "If you are going to lead an organization powerfully, you need to manage your time. By this I mean: eliminate the unnecessary so the necessary can emerge and dominate. And this particularly applies to meetings: have an agenda and stick to it. Manage the time by switching the lines of conversation and recording the actions when they have run their useful course.

  Maybe it’s just my metabolism: I cannot stand to be non-productive. It makes me restless. Like many people in other lines of work, I find that if I could clone myself, there’d still be too much work to do. So I have to push out the things that don’t matter.

  Part of managing your time means varying your activity. I get 30 days of vacation a year and I force myself to take a week every quarter. I dread it when it’s coming because I figure I’ll be swamped when I return. But, when I take that time, I always end up thinking 'This should be mandatory.'

  There’s a reason for that. When you are relaxing -- and you are not doing something that requires concentration -- your mind is still working. What’s it doing? It’s synthesizing ideas. That’s when the front of your mind has the free time to take up some of those ideas that have been in the back of your mind. That’s when creativity happens."

  6. Humility.

  Striving for humility. I really believe in that. I tell our officers that they will lead organizations that are commander-centric, but that doesn’t mean they are about the commander. The people you are leading need to know your vision and your rules, but it’s not about you.