The business community in Estevan may be strong, but it is not without its challenges. During the Chamber of Commerce's annual general meeting, guest speaker Andrew Leslie, the retired lieutenant-general who commanded Canada's army in Afghanistan, shared his experience in adapting to the task at hand as he spoke with the roughly 150 chamber members last week.
Leslie shared two case studies with the attentive members. The first study was the successful attempt to change the army in order to deal with the conflict of the last 12 years in Afghanistan, while the second was attempting to carry those changes over into the larger structure of the army, navy, air force and support systems. That second mission, Leslie said, was a failure.
He was heavily involved in both transformations and reminded everyone of the value of failure.
"You can learn often more from failure than success because failure often forces you to be a little bit reflective."
Leslie brought forward three ideas and three elements that must work together in order to initiate change and see that it's followed through. The first was the role of the forcing function.
"You're all business folk. You all understand the requirement to make the tough calls. You all understand the value of co-operation. But a forcing function is something that is more or less universally accepted by the team as a change or an excuse for change, which will bring people together either through fear or a specific desire or profits," he said. "It is a single instance in which the normal institutional resistance to change, which most people have, can be either ameliorated or you can harness that energy and get people moving."
The second idea was the role of leadership, a skill he said in many cases is both innate as well as one that comes from experience.
"Your role in supervising change is key, but you can't do it alone. So the importance of dialogue with those whom you lead, those whom you work with, is the single most important catalyst to implementing the requirements of the forcing function."
The third and final idea was the value of co-operation.
"That may sound a little bit unusual coming from a soldier, but your modern army works on co-operation," said Leslie.
When Leslie took command he called the armed forces of the time "tribal," highly resistant to change and peacekeeping centric, which left it unprepared for the conflict it was about to engage in as the focus shifted to Afghanistan.
"It was very isolated from you, and that was not through your choice but through our inclination. We tended to be withdrawn, live in clusters around our bases and you never saw us," said Leslie, who noted recruiting numbers were dropping.
The forcing function in this case was the war in Afghanistan.
"Specifically, it was the shedding of blood, which caused all of us to pay a great deal more attention to what was going on than ever in the past," he said.
"When I first went to Kandahar in 2003, there were about 150 Americans on the airfield, bodies still littering the runway and burning aircraft. That turned by 2010 into a base with 45,000 people from 25 different nations, where it was much like Babylon. There were 30 to 40 languages being spoken."
In 2006, Leslie became chief of the land staff, commander of the army, as the Canadian forces moved from Kabul to Kandahar.
"It was much akin to entering into uncontrolled, absolute chaos. We were relatively unprepared for the transition from Kabul, which was advanced peacekeeping and still very dangerous, into the killing fields of Kandahar," said Leslie. "We were ill-equipped. We weren't terribly well-trained for what we were about to face, and we had a really difficult time understanding that mélange of cultural dynamics."
He said the group was in danger of losing sight of what they were supposed to do: create security.
"We were getting overly mesmerized on the killing, and our soldiers were dying in large numbers. For a couple of very grim months, we were suffering 10 killed and 200 wounded a week with a force deployed of about 3,000."
It was deaths of Canadian soldiers that marked the forcing function. It was suddenly clear to Leslie and others in the army that things had to change.
"Quite frankly, we had a bunch of great folk, middle-aged males, set in their ways, who couldn't handle the transition and the demands of the deployment cycles and constraints and pressures they were facing."
He said those unwilling or unable to adapt ultimately had to move on or be repositioned to other duties.
"The forcing function acted as a unifier because blood was being spilt. It also served to attract your attention. As a result of your attention, all the political parties in Ottawa were suddenly riveted on the fact that their citizens were dying overseas in significant numbers."
The attention of the nation, he said, was turned toward re-equipping, rebuilding and reorganizing the armed forces.
After a very difficult couple of years in 2006 and 2007 where a lot of people were moved very quickly up the ladder and others were moved aside, the military was changing very quickly. More often than not, said Leslie, the people now commanding tank squadrons, gun troops, rifle companies and engineer regiments were women, who he said "are more adaptive to some of the nuances of what's going on in contemporary operating environments."
He said the most important thing the upper echelons started doing was listening to the troops, because it was their lives being risked.
"They wanted to get the job done, and they reminded us what it is we're really supposed to be there to do. 'Oh, we'll fight, absolutely. We're very good at it, especially at night.' But that was only a tool to achieve the conditions that we wanted to get done."
Achieving those conditions acted as a unifier for all the various factions of the army, which didn't have a history of co-operation.
He said the whole system kicked into gear with almost universal acceptance across the country to give the military what they needed.
"It's not sustainable, and it's not meant to be sustainable, but for that particular period, the response from the nation was magnificent."
Part of what made the Canadian outfit so dedicated was that the army no longer had to send soldiers. Service in Afghanistan was volunteer only.
"It was my right-hand guy who said, 'why don't we make it competitive?'" said Leslie, whose daughter had to compete twice to serve in Afghanistan, making it the second time. "That was fairly-well represented in the morale and mood of the troops, who were fully engaged in the activity. Because it was competitive and because it was by choice, it means that when we had folks overseas who didn't want to be there, we sent them home right away. We had pure volunteers who were dedicated to the task at hand and willing to embrace change."
The innovative approach to service, which no other country chose to implement, worked very well, Leslie said.
"It was a really tough fight. It was unexpectedly difficult and unexpectedly bloody. The good news is that your citizens responded to the challenge, they adopted the forcing function, and the way in which they conducted themselves as a result of their upbringing, their culture, was very balanced, was very inclusive of other points of view. Those young folk never lost sight of the fact that fighting was not the objective."
In 2006 and 2007 he said they were in danger of losing the purpose of why they went to Afghanistan, and it was the younger members of the operation that "brought us back online," and returned focus to creating security conditions.
As Leslie was charged with transforming the Canadian forces, the desire to welcome change waned. Able to instill changes in army operations in the face of soldiers dying, there was much less stomach for further change with no immediate challenge.
"It's mainly middle management in any structures that are going to be the most resistant to change. The CEO can have the vision and the front-line workers can buy into it, but it's that strata of middle management that requires the most care.
"We were motivated in part by concern for the lives being lost and those wounded and also fear, fear of failure. But with the larger constructs, there was no accepted universal forcing function, lack of co-operative spirit. The leadership I think was good, but absent those other two pillars of the stool, it went nowhere. The most unfortunate result of all is right now the armed forces is going through a particularly grim time and it need not have been so nor does it need to be so."
Leslie encouraged the business leaders in attendance to approach the problems of the area, namely growth, with open minds and innovation.
"What a great series of problems you have, and I mean that seriously. You're dealing with growth," said Leslie. "You're dealing with more people, with more energy, with more money flowing into your community. Now you've got to catch up with the infrastructure requirements to sustain yourselves and move up to the next level.
"You're here because you have a sense of duty, a sense of community, and you have chosen to give to your community, not to compensate them, not to make your life better, but to make the collective whole a better place in which to raise your families. You are responding, like thousands of other Canadian communities are doing, to the contemporary challenges of how it is you're going to improve your society. This is grassroots domestic politics with no party affiliation. It's you all dedicating your time to make your fellow citizens' lives better."
With a reason to grow, strong leadership and the co-operation of the entire community, the process of moving forward can make it an exciting time in the city.
