(As prepared)

Good afternoon.  I appreciate the opportunity to be here, and to share some views with such an esteemed group of Central Texas leaders

As someone who left Austin three years before AARO was founded – and returned to find a city that had grown tremendously while retaining all the things I loved about it – I want to thank and congratulate you all for helping make that happen. 

Thank you for helping make our city the envy of the nation in so many ways.

For those of you too young to remember life in 1980, at that time Austin had fewer than 350,000 residents – making it the 42^nd most populous city in the country.  Since then we’ve nearly tripled in size, and today only ten U.S. cities have more residents than we do.

In September of 1980, Whole Foods opened its first store, with 19 employees.

Dell Computer, another of our iconic Austin companies, was still four years away from being born.

Apple, on the other hand, had its first IPO in 1980 – and had you invested in Apple then, well … you could definitely afford to shop at Whole Foods.

Dell and Apple are actually great examples of how fortunes can change and change again over time.  How you can seemingly be on top one minute, then on the bottom, then on top again – if, and only if, you are able to adapt and roll with the changes swirling around you.

Austin’s growth and prosperity haven’t grown in a straight line over the last 35 years.  Our city has had its ups and downs, and while some long-time residents like to complain about all the changes, they might consider the plight of the cities who stood pat, who failed to adapt successfully over the last three and a half decades.

In 1980, Detroit was the 6^th biggest city in the U.S. by population.  Today it ranks 18^th.  Baltimore, in that same time period, has fallen from 10^th to 26^th.  Cleveland in 1980 was 18^th ; now at 48^th, it’s barely in the top 50.

So as we shift our gaze from the last 35 years to the next 35, we ought to be humble about the fact that success is always perishable – that in any endeavor, what got you here isn’t necessarily going to keep you here. 

Central Texas may be the envy of the country today, but so were Detroit, Baltimore, and Cleveland in their day.

So the question seems to be, how do we preserve and accelerate our current momentum? 

First, let’s recognize that any prediction we make about what the world is going to look like in 2050 is likely to be way off.  Casey Stengel said it pretty well, “never make predictions, especially about the future.”

Should we try to anticipate change, and get out in front of it?  Of course.  But I think it’s more important that we build organizations, communities, and mindsets that are nimble and agile, that can move and adapt as fast as the world around us.

It’s a bit of a balancing act, to be sure.  I already alluded to the minor miracle that in the thirty-plus years I was gone, Austin completely transformed itself, but also retained much – perhaps not all, but much – of the spirit, the attitude, the weirdness, that has always defined it.

I think that’s the challenge we face, as those charged with helping lead our city into the future – and really, those charged with leading anything these days.  We must adapt or perish, that’s a given.  But it’s important to note that changing times make it not less, but more important to have a set of durable guiding principles – a framework, if you will, resilient enough to apply in good times and bad.

For what it’s worth, and with the greatest respect and humility, I would like to offer a few principles that I believe fit the bill. 

First, I think it all starts with a common purpose.

It has been my great good fortune – both in my military career, and in my second career as an educator – to have never had to think very hard about why I was doing what I was doing.  It’s always been clear that I was part of something far bigger, far more important than myself.  You might say my inspiration has been baked in from day one. 

AARO certainly has common purpose in spades – who, after all, can’t get behind leveraging Austin’s great minds to assure a future even brighter than our present for this remarkable city?

But the fact is, not every organization has the luxury of a grand mission, of a deep reservoir of common purpose that inspires the troops and gives meaning to their work.

So it is incumbent on leaders to create that common purpose – to fire the imaginations of their people with big ideas, and bold bets on the future. 

Once you have established your common purpose, you need to reinforce it with constant communication.

I agree with Churchill, who called communication the difference between leadership and mere management.

To lead effectively, you must constantly communicate your intent, your vision, your respect and appreciation. 

It’s no secret that we have more communication tools at our disposal than ever before.  We email, tweet, blog, videoconference, even give speeches.  All of those practices are worthwhile.  But none of them will matter without one crucial ingredient, trust.

How can we work together to build a great future for Austin if don’t trust each other?  We can’t.  How do we gain the trust of those around us?  We earn it.  We earn it by demonstrating, day in and day out, that we are worthy of trust, and more specifically, that we understand one simple fact – it’s not about us. 

It’s never about us.  It’s about the greater good.

A while back, Pope Francis said something I really like about servant leadership.  He said, “A shepherd should smell like his sheep.”  I love that analogy.  In the military, you learn at a very young age that you should never get too far from the troops.  In some cases, that is literal.

As a three-star Admiral, I often went out on special operations missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, just so I could share the hardships and dangers with the troops.  Just so I always knew what they were having to endure because of the decisions I was making.

You can’t always be physically with the troops, but you can never lose sight of the demands that have been placed on their jobs and their lives. 

This idea doesn’t just apply to a top-down relationship either.  If you are partnering with another organization, make sure you understand their challenges, their concerns – and take them into account. 

Remembering that it’s all for the good of the flock is the first step to earning trust.

Once you have established a sense of common purpose and trust, you are ready to collaborate.   This is absolutely critical, because while there will, inevitably, be challenges we fail to anticipate, I believe there is no challenge too big for us to tackle if we pool our talents effectively.

Collaboration is right in AARO’s wheelhouse, of course.  I applaud the fact that you bring together great minds and leaders from virtually every sector of our local economy, and I thank you for the courage and initiative you have shown in taking on the complex challenges that will shape our collective future.

Energy, water, health care, education, social equity, and transportation – these issues cry out for creative solutions that can only be found through collaborative engagement.

Collaboration is, I believe, the absolute key to keeping up with exponential rate of change we see in the world today.  But as I learned during my final thirteen years in the military, it’s easier said than done.

In the days and years that followed 9/11, we came to realize that we had become very good at some things that didn’t matter much anymore.  The enemy we faced in Iraq, Afghanistan, Africa, Asia and across the world had adapted more quickly and effectively to our methods of warfare than we had to theirs. 

We knew we had to change, and fast.  And that meant we had to work together – SEALS with Army Special Forces, with infantry, with logisticians, aviators, intelligence, law enforcement and the communities on the ground – in ways that had never been attempted before.  We learned to use our size, our talent and our operational diversity to achieve an unparalleled level of collaboration. 

By communicating constantly, we were able to solve problems at a speed unheard of in the past.  We often looked at our networks as a reflection of Metcalfe’s Law.  Developed by Robert Metcalfe, the law demonstrates how the addition of one single node in a telecommunication network increases the power of that network—not by a factor of one—but each node increases the effect exponentially. 

For Mecalfe’s Law to work, every person in the human network must relay as much information as they receive – in other words, contribute ideas, not just listen.  Interestingly enough, I assumed Robert Metcalfe was a historical figure who had likely passed away a hundred years ago—only to find out that Bob Metcalfe is alive and well and working at UT Austin.

Now, I realize that some of this is not exactly new.  I daresay you couldn’t find a company in Austin that doesn’t believe in collaboration, communication – in getting people out of their silos and working together as a cohesive team.

So I guess the question is, if everyone believes in it, why doesn’t it happen more often?  I can’t speak for anyone else’s organization, but in the military, it happened because, at least at first, we forced it.  It wasn’t organic.  There was no opting in or out.  As my boss former boss Stanley McChrystal said, you were either a zealot or a martyr.

A leader can insist on a culture of engagement and collaboration – can, in fact, force it until it becomes muscle memory.  But in the end, it’s got to be built on a foundation of common purpose, communication, and trust.

Leadership and Character 

And what that means, among other things, is if we don’t have men and women of character playing leadership roles in this city, this state, this nation, we will never solve the tough problems confronting us.

To be honest, I’m pretty skeptical about five point plans, or any leadership mantra that can be captured on the back of a cocktail napkin.  Anybody can reduce the art of leadership into a framework that sounds simple – but let me tell you, leadership in practice is anything but simple.

Which is probably why we don’t see more of it these days.

It’s hard to open a newspaper or business weekly without seeing at least one story about a leadership crisis somewhere.  I think we have to come to terms with the fact that as a country, we have failed to instill the basics of good leadership into our kids and young adults.  For the most part, we haven’t even tried!

I know from talking to business executives that the number one thing they’re on the lookout for are young men and women with leadership skills, who can communicate their ideas, know how to pull together a team, author a plan and execute that plan. 

I have been in the leadership business for forty years, and I believe leadership is both teachable and fungible across all fields of endeavor.

But just as the most brilliant communications will amount to nothing in the absence of trust, no amount of instruction in the art of leadership can make up for a lack of character.

People want to be led by – and they want to partner with – women and men of high character.  That may sound somewhat Pollyanna-ish, but it is not.  It was true in 1980, it’s true today, and I guarantee it will be true in 2050.

I noticed that the symbol of AARO is an armillary – an ancient astronomical tool that reminds me a bit of a sextant, the strange-looking navigational device I learned to use as a young Navy officer in the late 1970s.

The Navy taught celestial navigation for more than a century, but stopped in 1998, as satellite-enabled global positioning systems made it easy to pinpoint your location anywhere in the world within a few feet.  

There’s just one problem with GPS – no backup.  And with the rising threat of cyber attacks on just about everything, the Navy recently decided to start teaching celestial navigation again, just in case.  Because you can’t hack a sextant.

I mention this in the context of trust and character, because just as the Navy is reinstating some ancestral navigation techniques that transcend – literally, rise above – recent advances in technology, today’s incredible pace of change has made character more important than ever.

Because a person’s character transcends the chaos swirling around us – and like a sextant, it cannot be hacked.

At the end of the day, leadership is about character.  Character inspires a belief in a common purpose.  That belief, in turn, begets trust, and trust drives the collaboration we are going to need if we want Austin’s next 35 years to be even better than the last.

I, for one, have no doubt in my mind that the next 35 years are going to be phenomenal. 

Amazing, inspiring, world-changing things are within reach for our city if we create goals that are bold and worthwhile, and commit ourselves to working – shoulder to shoulder, with trust and common purpose – to achieve them.

I can’t wait to get started.

I want to thank you all again for having me, and thank AARO for all it has done to make Austin such a great place to live.  It is great to be back here, and I want you to know you can count on me and the UT System to be your enthusiastic partners.

Thank you very much.