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Major General Mick Ryan · Five Questions for a General

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Foreign.
• 0:03
  Speaker B: You're listening to Five Questions for a General, a production of the Modern Morses at West point. I am Dr. Charles Feint, the team lead for this podcast series which features interviews of senior military leaders conducted by specially selected and trained West Point cadet hosts. These exchanges produce timely, relevant and inspirational insights for professional development of leaders at all levels.
• 0:24
  Speaker C: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the class of 1974 recording studio and the five questions for a General Podcast. I am Henry Kay, your host and it is my pleasure to be here today with retired Major General Mick Ryan. General Ryan spent over 35 years in the Australian army and is here today to talk to us about the nature of future warfare. General, welcome to the show.
• 0:44
  Speaker A: G' day, Henry. It's great to be here. Thanks.
• 0:46
  Speaker C: General Ryan, you're the first non US General we've interviewed for this podcast. Before we go into the questions, can you briefly summarize your path into the Australian army and how the process might differ from the way we produce officers in the U.S. army?
• 0:59
  Speaker A: Yeah, I probably had a little bit of a non traditional route, but it's a great honour being the first non US General to be here. I've spent a lot of time in this country, so it's a real pleasure and a great privilege just to spend some time at West Point. It's an amazing place. I joined. I was 17 years old when I joined the army. I was brought up in a little mining town, not quite in the outback, probably on the edge, the beginning of the outback in central Queensland in northeastern Australia. I'd always wanted to be a soldier. I mean, I kind of wanted to be Indiana Jones as well, but being a soldier was probably more likely to happen. So I got accepted into our academy to do engineering, got a scholarship to go. So I went there in 1987 as a first year cadet. Did terribly. I failed every single subject in my first year, all eight. Still a record. So at the end of the year, the commander, the general in charge, pulled me into his office, said, well, not a really successful year, but I still think you'd make a good officer. So how about we send you over to Hill to Dun Troon, which was the Army Officer Training Establishment, and you spent 18 months there, become an officer, see how you go. I went, sure. I mean, I didn't have anything to do at that point. So I thought, okay, I'll give that a go. Went over, I loved it and graduated as an officer in June 1989 and stayed on ever since. I'm not sure whether if you fail, everything in your first year, you keep cadets here. But I learned from that experience a couple things. Firstly, second chances matter. And giving people second chances can change not just their lives, but the person who gives you the second chance. I mean, the general who gave me a second chance, tracked my career for the rest of his life. Caught up with him again when I was a two star. And it was very emotional, but also it taught me that failure doesn't have to be fatal. I mean, I think too many young people these days think that when you fail, it's all over. That's it. It's like, no, it's just part of life. Failure is a normal part of life. It's a normal part of being a soldier and a leader. You're going to fail. You have to build the mechanisms to learn from it and move on. Now, there's acceptable failures and there's unacceptable failures, but failing a few subjects of academics, that's an acceptable failure in my view. And as long as we're clear in armies about defining what's exc. Acceptable failure and unacceptable failure, you know, we can be very good at managing and keeping good people, even if they have a bad year.
• 3:30
  Speaker C: Yes, sir. And you talked a little bit about defining acceptable failure and unacceptable failure. How do you define that? Especially when you're managing large groups of individuals.
• 3:37
  Speaker A: Yeah, well, it's what good leaders do, in my view. You have to do that as a leader. You know, when I was a brigade commander, I sat down with my. I had seven battalions and I sat down with them. I said, we're going to talk about what is acceptable failure in training. I mean, there's a whole lot of unacceptable behaviour, particularly when it comes to behaviour, and we need to have that. I mean, there's no debate about that. But when it comes to performance and those kind of things, you need to have conversations about what's acceptable and unacceptable in failure and how you learn from things. And I sat down and talked through the safety regime. So for us, we're subject to workplace health and safety legislation. You're probably subject to something similar. I said, you know, the way we do that is, you know, we don't have it to avoid risk, we have it to maximize risk safely. And a lot of my battalion commanders went, oh, don't know about that, boss. I said, that's exactly what it's for. If you're not maximising risk safety, you're not getting good value for money, you're not teaching people to take risk, you're not teaching people to make decisions in adversity And I even got the WHS experts who were very painful, but got them in and they said, no, no, you're interpreting exactly how it's supposed to be interpreted. So that's how you kind of have those conversations around failure. But your own way of dealing with people has to nurture what's acceptable, what's not, how you deal with failures. You know, when I was a battalion commander, I had a young officer who got done for drinking and driving, but when you dug into it, he wasn't driving. He got drunk, decided he couldn't drive and decided to crash in his car instead of driving it. Well, unfortunately, in Australia, if you do that and have the keys in your pocket, it's the same thing. So he got an administrative warning, he didn't turn up for that, so he was late for that. So that was two strikes. So I got him in and said, listen, mate, this ain't looking good for you, but you're a good officer, you've got two strikes, don't get a third one. And he's gone on and done really well. So it's about when do people deserve second chances? What's an acceptable failure? And sometimes it's judgment, sometimes there's rules. But I think it's something that as a leader, you've really got to think about and be very honest about about your views on.
• 5:48
  Speaker C: Yes, sir. You mentioned a point about maximizing risk safely. And I'm interested. When an army transitions from a peacetime army to a war fighting army, our officers have different risk tolerances. And how do you transition and flip that switch?
• 6:00
  Speaker A: Well, you've got to take a lot of risk in training, you know, maximise risk safely, particularly do lots of live fire training. I mean, I had a brigade where we were constantly doing live fire battle runs and it would be mechanised live fire, combined arms with tanks, artillery, mortars, F18s coming in, the whole lot. And it's complex, but you've got to train for the complex, train for the hardest stuff. And, you know, I remember one battle run, we ran over an old shell and it blew a track off an M113. And they radioed in and said, anyone hurt, they go up. I said, keep going, there's no reason to stop. If no one's hurt, keep going, because that's what you do. So they're the kind of little calls that a commander has to take and to take risk and kind of build, resil and build that intellectual armour for people for that transition. But transitioning is hard. That is A form of adapting between peace and war is a different kind of adaptation to adapting in war. It's a change in mindset and culture.
• 7:00
  Speaker C: Yes, sir. So, speaking on the. And continuing on the theme of transition, you've spoken extensively on the future of warfare, especially in your book, War Transformed. Some have argued that while the character of war changes over time, its nature remains the same. What's one truth about war that hasn't changed and one thing you believe most militaries still misunderstand?
• 7:20
  Speaker A: Well, I think the truth that hasn't changed, and it's something that's at the heart of West Point, is the need for good leadership that has never changed. Good leaders get results. Good organisations are built on good leadership and good development of the people. And that is, I think, an enduring part of warfare that has not changed over 5,000 years. That's why we study Alexander, right, Or we study Hannibal, or we study any number of the great leaders through history, because their leadership had a profound impact on their people and the results in a battle or in a war. So I think it's one of those enduring truths. It's why we all invest in these kind of officer development, officer leadership training institutions, because we. It is the difference between a good and a bad army. Now, I think sometimes we focus on things that may not be as important, but largely, I think institutions like this and Duntroon and Sandhurst have kept to a certain core set of competencies about what makes a good army leader. And I think the test is that generally civilian institutions copy us. You know, modern management theory emerged out of U.S. army from World War II. We didn't copy it from them, they copied it from us. I think generally military institutions are innovators when it comes to good leadership because we are the ones who face the most difficult, dangerous and profoundly impactful circumstances. So we have to be innovative when it comes to leadership methods, leadership development. And I think generally military institutions in particular armies are at the leading edge of leadership theory and practice.
• 9:09
  Speaker C: Yes, sir. And my next question was going to be, do you believe that leadership can be developed and what's the best way for an organization to take in a diverse set of people coming in, such as from the US population or Australian population, and develop those individuals into leaders?
• 9:21
  Speaker A: Well, generally, most good military institutions have an ethos of leaders aren't born, they're made. Now, there are certain people who come with more raw material than others. I mean, that's how you select cadets here, right? They have more raw material than other people. But generally, the theory of the case for military institutions is good leaders are made. And that's why we have leadership doctrine, which tells us what are the kind of characteristics we select for and the characteristics we seek to hone and enhance and develop in our people. So good leadership leaders are made and then developed. So you don't just make them here. You've got to have an ongoing developmental pathway from cadet to four star. And it never stops. You don't get to a point where you've stopped learning as a leader, you're always learning. And I guarantee you, when you've had other generals in here, might be General Petraeus or General Dempsey, they'll say they're probably still learning about different elements of leadership. And like me, you reflect back on different experiences and go, you know, I wish I knew as a major what I learned as a commanding officer, as a lieutenant colonel and all these kind of things. So it's a journey, but it is a developmental thing. It's not something you come fully formed with.
• 10:34
  Speaker C: Yes, sir. And then especially when you get up in the senior ranks, what percentage of this development is self driven as opposed to being driven by the organisation?
• 10:41
  Speaker A: Yeah, more of it is you spend less time in the schoolhouse, the more senior you get. And that's unfortunate because school houses provide a distance between you and all the other distractions. So you can reflect on the important things, whether it's leadership, strategy, civil military relations that are important to senior leaders. But, you know, the discipline of self learning is extraordinarily important. You know, General Rand Riper, a Marine Corps general, wrote in 82, when he was at Leavenworth going to Command and Staff College, that the discipline of self learning is inherent in the profession of arms. And I believe that. So it's something that we need to ensure places like West Point, Duntroon, other academies that we're imbuing with cadets, this understanding and desire to be curious about our profession, to be humble intellectually and to want to continue their learning. And a lot of that is just from the discipline of reading.
• 11:40
  Speaker C: You've had a broad range of experiences from leading troops in Iraq to advising on national strategy. What's the most defining leadership lesson that you've learned in your career?
• 11:50
  Speaker A: I think the most important thing is you got to set the example. If you're a leader and you're telling people, I need you to complete this run in this time, you better be able to do it yourself. If you're a leader and you expect people to behave a certain way or lead to a certain standard, you've Got to be doing that yourself. There's no hiding as a leader. You're seen people model their behaviors after you. So setting the right kind of example is extraordinarily important. The old saying, what the boss is interested in fascinates everyone else. Well, that is just the nature of our institution. So if you understand that, you should ensure you are setting the right kind of behaviours, setting the right kind of environment and cultures within an organisation and leading by example is just so important.
• 12:40
  Speaker C: Yes, sir. So going back and actually continuing in the vein of leadership development, in an article published right here on the Modern War Institute, you emphasize the importance of intellectual development across all ranks within the military. What's the cost, operationally and morally, when militaries neglect exercising their minds?
• 12:57
  Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, we need soldiers with strong minds, strong hearts and strong bodies. I mean, soldiering is about the intellectual, the physical and the moral elements. And you've got to get all those in the right balance. And you need officers and soldiers, NCOs, who are all part of developing all three elements. I think the cost is the book Blackhearts. That's what happens. The cost is the Australian Special forces who murdered 35 civilians out of combat. What happens when good armies don't pay attention to all three of those elements? When leadership is not properly focused on the accountabilities that they hold? The responsibility of taking human life, which only we as soldiers have in any society, no one else has, that authority conveys huge responsibilities upon us. We may be subject to unlimited liability, but we have huge responsibilities to ensure that we take life in a way that is in accordance with how our society would see it and how your mum and dad would like to see it exercised. They understand what you're doing, but they want to see it done responsibly. I think it speaks well largely of our respective armies that we have not generally done these things. And when we have, whether it's My Lai or our Special Forces, we've investigated it, we've publicly called it out. And while we may not have always prosecuted these people in the way they should be, we've held ourselves accountable. And that's what a professional military institution does. And it's extraordinarily important because killing is a huge responsibility.
• 14:41
  Speaker C: Yes, sir. And with regards to this responsibility, what portion of. Is that developed within the ranks of the army? And can that be developed in the civilian sector through institutions or otherwise, or how should that. How should that intermix.
• 14:52
  Speaker A: Only we can do that. Only we can undertake the leadership development to do that. Only we can hold ourselves accountable. Now, that doesn't mean that there's not part of the civil military relationship in there. Politicians need to understand that. They need to give us lawful direction so we're not compromising that compact with our nation to act responsibly and ethically in accordance with the laws and expectations of our nation. But, you know, this is on the profession. It's our profession. It is a profession which, you know, not everyone understands. It is a old profession, and it's one that imposes profound responsibilities on the members of the profession, whether you're a soldier, an NCA, or an officer.
• 15:37
  Speaker C: Yes, sir. And in the earlier podcast you did with the Australian National University, you discussed the power of fiction and storytelling in understanding national security. What role does storytelling and strategic communication play in modern conflict? And do Western democracies take it seriously enough?
• 15:53
  Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, humans have always been storytellers. When the first cavemen sat around a fire, they weren't passing a Kindle back and forth or pointing out the latest TikTok video. They were telling stories. And that's what we've done for the large part of human existence is we've told stories. I think we've lost some of that art recently. But military institutions have always been good with studying military history, because if you haven't done it, how do you learn something? Well, you learn through the experience of others. But storing things, storytelling is accessible. A good story with good characters can pass on good messages. And well designed military fiction, which is what I'm doing my PhD on at the moment, should help develop leaders, whether it's historical or future. A good story with the right messaging can be very important as a complement, not as a replacement for, but as a complement to things like military history, reading contemporary affairs, and those kind of things.
• 16:49
  Speaker C: And sir, with regards to storytelling, how do armies and more broadly, national security, defense apparatuses need to take control of their own story and control the narrative when they're pursuing a campaign or pursuing strategic objectives?
• 17:03
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's pretty important. I mean, you have to win the war and win the story at the same time. And you have to invest in both of them. You have to invest a lot in both of them. I think we've understood that in the past. I mean, if you have a look at Franklin Roosevelt and his fireside chats, that was investing in telling the story of the war. Churchill's speeches were that. I mean, we had propaganda and all that behind it, but you had leaders that engaged their citizens in honest conversations and were telling them what was happening, importantly why it was happening. They were explaining the purpose of why things were happening. I mean, Franklin Roosevelt's famous speech after Pearl Harbour was a statement of purpose as well as intent. And that's what I think. Modern leaders don't quite do that as well. There's a reticence, to be honest with citizens sometimes and I think that's at all our detriment.
• 18:00
  Speaker C: And sir, when a leader needs to explain the purpose of a mission or an objective, especially in this era, what is the best medium for them to do it? In your opinion, especially with a younger generation that's more involved in social media and not reading print newspapers?
• 18:15
  Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I think the best thing we teach young leaders is how to give a set of orders, right? We teach them how to write them. Well, firstly we teach them how to interpret higher commander's intent. We teach them how to then write a set of orders, we teach them how to give them and then we teach them how to execute them through leadership. I still think verbal orders face to face is the best method because nothing conveys intent than looking eye to eye and saying, I want you to take that hill or I want you to destroy this, or I want you to seize that, or I want you to clear this. Doing it face to face, having an honest conversation eye to eye, I think is the best way. Now you can't always do that, unfortunately, but where you can, you should be delivering orders directly. And if you can't do it directly, you should at least be doing battlefield circulation to follow up on the orders that have been issued to check that they have and just do that eye to eye with your commanders. That is the only way you can command. You can't do it all through a phone or digits, even though they help. Leadership is about the human touch. And there's a bit of that. I mean, as a brigade commander, I used to spend a lot of time going around watching my company commanders. There's a lot of them. I think There was like 35 company commanders across the brigade and I'd sit in on their orders. Now they used to be a bit nervous about that, but for me it was about how are they conveying intent, how are they conveying purpose and how are they explaining the mission to their soldiers. And that gave me an insight into them as leaders, but it also meant I got to know them really well.
• 19:49
  Speaker C: And sir, when you're commanding a brigade, when you have 35 plus company commanders and you want to emphasize face to face communications, especially in an area like Iraq, that's very vast and diverse geography. How do you maintain that face to face communication and prioritize that while still prioritizing everything else coming down the stream?
• 20:06
  Speaker A: Get out of the damn office. The first thing I did when I was a brigade commander is I sat down with my staff and said, you know, this is how I think about designing operations planning and executing. It's very explicit. And I did it the same with the battalion commanders. And then it was like, don't expect to see me in the office very much. Sergeant Major, let's go. So we would do PT with a different company every morning. We were constantly cycling around. This is all basic stuff. There's no mystery here. I guarantee the vast majority of brigade commanders here are doing the same thing, but they do it because it's important. You know, if we weren't doing PT with a company, we were doing it with brigade headquarters on the brigade paragraph. So everyone could see us doing it or we'd have a pack on and we were walking the entire brigade area so they could see us together. And that me and the sertant major, you weren't getting in between us because we were like this. And I was lucky. I had the best Sarda major ever born. So, you know, those kind of things are important. It's not just about singing in order. It's just being there. Constantly circulating in social, in pt, in training, in operations. Just being there, being seen, listening, seeing what's going on. Sometimes I'd just sit on a hill for a week and watch battle run after battle run after battle run, and then go down and talk to them after each live fire battle run. And it was like, man, that was fun. It was great.
• 21:27
  Speaker C: Yes, sir. You spent a lot of time in US military schools and working with US forces. What have you found to be the greatest challenges in operating in that kind of a combined environment?
• 21:36
  Speaker A: I loved it. I mean, I. My first. Well, my first trip to America was. I was 10 years old. So I'd been coming here a while, but my first schooling here was Quantico. Started June 2001. Did command and staff college air for a year. Got picked up for school events, war fighting. So I was here June 01 to June 03. Fascinating time to live in America through 9 11, through, you know, obviously the beginning in the Afghanistan campaign, then the Iraq campaign, was here for all that. And some of my classmates got sent off to OneMef to do that. I loved it. You know, I learned a lot. It really reinvigorated my love of the profession, my love of Learning my love of reading especially the second year saw was Book a Day club. You know, that's how much you were reading. And we loved it. But it was 23 people who all felt exactly the same and were very tight. We did a lot of traveling. That group of people I've stayed in touch with, still, every time I go back to dc, we'll get together. We'd run into each other, work with each other in Baghdad, you know, defects in Ali Al Saleem in Afghanistan, in the basement of the Pentagon. You know, at one point when I was on the Joint Staff, I got asked to be the lead for supporting General Allen's confirmation. Just so happened his Chief of Staff was a classmate of mine from Quantico. And I love. It was great. I mean, General Allen, so generous with his time, didn't even blink that it was some Australian doing this. And, you know, I sat behind him when he was doing his confirmation. Hearing their experiences, you can't get anywhere else, right? And I got to observe as a kind of fence sitter, you know, General Petraeus and, you know, General McChrystal and Richard Holbrook and these kind of people, they're priceless experiences. You learn from what they're saying, what they're doing, making big decisions about.
• 23:34
  Speaker C: Towards the end of your career, sir, you commanded the Australian Defence College. What is the US equivalent of that and how do those two organizations differ?
• 23:41
  Speaker A: You don't have a direct equivalent. It'd be kind of like if NDU had a staff college and a West Point. That's kind of what it was. So there was an academy for the cadets, Tri Service. There was the War College, which was Command and Staff, Regular Reserve and it's a joint school. And then there was the high level 06 course, which was the same. And then I had a bunch of little schools like Language Training and International Training Centre, Joint Warfare Centre and stuff like that. So it was very diverse. When I got there, there wasn't really a curricula that kind of joined it all together. So we developed that, ran it through the service chiefs and not my curricula, it's yours. Is this what you want them to learn? Got them to sign off on it. And it was a lot of fun because my office was on top of the Command and Staff College. So every day I just walk the halls and drop in on classes and talk to the majors, the Naval Lieutenant Commanders and Air Force squadron leaders. And it was a lot of fun because at that point, as a 04, you know a lot about the military you haven't kind of got old and crunchy like some people get. And boy, they used to interrogate the heck out of me. And I loved it because that's what you should be doing as a young officer, is interrogating your leaders and asking them questions. And I really love that environment.
• 25:09
  Speaker C: Yes, sir. Earlier in the podcast, you mentioned talking about the officership requires strong minds, hearts and bodies. And I want to touch back to your previous question answer. We talked about the relationships you develop. You've developed. If you could touch a little bit about the importance of relationships and relationship building throughout your time in the army and how that's impacted your career.
• 25:27
  Speaker A: Yeah, I mean. I mean, I'll be upfront. I'm a pretty shy introvert, so it's not easy for me to walk into a crowded room of people. I really actually don't like it, so I've had to learn to pretend to like it. But I love the company of soldiers, I love the company of my fellow officers. And in brigade was where it really was a high point for me. I mean, there was lots of great experiences, company and battalion command that were fantastic on deployments. You know, I commanded my company in East Timor, my battalion in Afghanistan. So I was very lucky to not just command, but do it on operations. But brigade command kind of brings it all together. You know, you have combined arms, you have infantry, armour, artillery, engineers, the whole team. As a brigade commander, you don't have a lot of the admin and governance that you do as a commanding officer. You just focus on command and leadership, mentoring, tactics, those kind of things. And, you know, I had a great group of Bataan commanders who I loved, you know, have stayed in contact with most of them. They were regimental sergeant majors, had a really good staff that, you know, every month would come up and cook me a feed. Cause I was there without my family. So, you know, they come and look after me, bring some beers up and we'd sit down and watch the sun come up. Those relationships outside work were extraordinarily important. Cause you develop trust, you get to know each other. Cause that trust is really important when things are at their worst.
• 26:55
  Speaker C: Sir, Knowing what you know now, what advice would you give your younger self?
• 27:00
  Speaker A: I probably would say, walk around more, be more honest with people. You know, as a young officer, you're a bit scared because you're confident, but you don't know a lot. So, you know, I just say, you know, be honest with what you don't know. Get to know your NCOs even better than I did. It wasn't a question of trust, but, you know, there was still a reticence sometime as a young officer, I found. So, you know, I'd probably just say that, you know, engage even more than what you did. Jump in, be more open to the kinds of advice that you should be getting as a young officer, and be very honest about what you don't know. Because as a young officer, there's a lot you don't know. Despite the fact that institutions like West Point are magnificent at preparing us, it's preparing us for the start of the journey. It gets us to the start line. Probably being a little more humble in recognising that as a young officer would have benefited me.
• 27:53
  Speaker C: General Ryan, thank you for sharing your time with us today and for the great discussion on the future of warfare. On behalf of Colonel Pat Sullivan, the director of MWI, and Dr. Charlie Feint, the director of this podcast series, I'd like to present you with this rare and coveted MWI engraved ammo can as a token of our appreciation. Thank you for your time at West Point. I hope you enjoy your time in New York City and have safe travels back to Australia.
• 28:15
  Speaker A: Thanks a lot. It's great to be here.
• 28:20
  Speaker B: This has been an episode of Five Questions for a General, a production of the Modern War Institute of West Point. If you like what you heard today, please download, like, subscribe and share this podcast to help us reach an even larger audience. All statements in this podcast represent the personal views of the speakers and do not represent an official position of the United States Military Academy or the United States government.