By Joe Byerly
At 24 years old, Robert McNamara became Harvard Business School’s youngest assistant professor. Six years later, he joined an elite team at Ford Motor Company known as the “Whiz Kids” and helped turn the company around. Within a decade, he had risen to the top ranks, bringing a hard-nosed, data-driven approach to every problem. By 1960, he was president of the company.
McNamara was the no-nonsense generalist—the man who could manage anything. As Senator Barry Goldwater once described him, he was “an IBM machine with legs.” His myth was established.
Most myths from the past don’t fool us anymore. We know the world isn’t flat. We know the Founding Fathers weren’t marble-carved saints. We know skin color doesn’t determine intelligence. And one day, some of our own cherished ideas about the world will become myths that don’t fool our great grandchildren.
But there’s one myth that’s far harder to detect—and far more dangerous.
It’s the myth we believe about ourselves. Especially the myth of our own greatness.
Our myth tells us we’re ready, even when we lack the training or experience.
Our myth tells us we’ll do the job better than the last guy or gal, even though we have no idea what it feels like to carry that weight of leadership.
Our myth tells us we can responsibly handle power, even when we’ve never even drank from its cup.
McNamara believed his myth. So when President Kennedy tapped him to serve as Secretary of Defense at 45 years old, he brought the same confidence he’d applied in the boardroom. He believed he could bring rational order to the most irrational endeavor of all: war.
But as Christopher Coker writes in Men at War, war “is not some impersonal leviathan, but an all too human tale in which contingency, chance, and accident unfold inexorably.”
McNamara’s myth led him into a role he wasn’t prepared for. He could manage a car company. He could optimize production lines. But the business of war demanded something else—something he didn’t have. He paid for it. We paid for it. And thousands of American service members and their families paid a far greater price.
The Vietnam War cost over 58,000 American lives and, in today’s dollars, nearly one trillion.
In his 1995 memoir, Robert McNamara admitted that many of the decisions he made during the Vietnam War were “terribly wrong.” He confessed that he didn’t fully grasp the nature of the war until it was too late—and even then, he lacked the courage to challenge the president. In a 1984 deposition during a lawsuit, McNamara stated, “I did not believe it could be won militarily,” explaining that he had come to this view as early as 1966, “if not earlier,” and later suggested it might have been 1965. Yet he waited until late 1967 to fully share his doubts with President Johnson—and resigned a year later. In a 2009 article, historian Douglas Brinkley wrote that McNamara had become “a metaphor for what happens to a Cabinet officer who withholds the truth from the president.”
When our myth comes into contact with power—whether in the pursuit of it or the wielding of it—we run the risk of getting in over our heads. Just like McNamara did.
We craft stories about our character, our readiness, our destiny. These stories often start with a kernel of truth. Then they grow; layered with ambition, praise, and the carefully curated feedback of others. Over time, we begin to believe them. Not because they’re true, but because they’re useful.
What about our past failures, our faults and flaws? What about the luck and timing of it all? Or the people who were instrumental in helping us? We edit them out. They fall swiftly to the cutting room floor. As the myth takes hold, we sweep those moments aside. What remains is a neatly curated highlight reel.
And that highlight reel becomes the very thing that blinds us. It keeps us from seeing the gaps in our preparation, the cracks in our character, the lessons we still need to learn. If power pulls us, our myth pushes us—straight into failure.
We all have a myth. I have one that I tell myself and you have one too.
So it’s worth asking: What is the myth you tell about yourself? And what might that myth be preventing you from discovering?
Joe Byerly is a retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel with 20 years of service, including tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, and command of a cavalry squadron in Europe. He earned numerous prestigious awards, including multiple Legion of Merits, Bronze Stars, the Purple Heart, and General Douglas MacArthur Leadership Award. In 2013, Joe founded From the Green Notebook.
A passionate advocate for self-knowledge through reading and reflection, he authored The Leader’s 90-Day Notebook and co-authored My Green Notebook: “Know Thyself” Before Changing Jobs, a resource for leaders seeking greater self-awareness. If this post resonated with you or sparked any questions, feel free to reach out to him at Joe@fromthegreennotebook.com.
