Articles
Failing to Leave
By Dylan Warnick Sitting in my car in the office parking lot at 0500 while on leave, a simple but striking thought hits me: I’m actively failing. It’s rare that we get this realization in the moment of failure; usually it arrives after the...
The Vital Role of Family Teams at the Platoon Sergeant Level
By William H. “Bill” Powers and Billy A. Way I didn’t fully understand the power of family readiness until the day one of my best Soldiers walked into my office, closed the door, and quietly said, “Sergeant, I’m not sure I can do this anymore.”...
Finite Wars in Infinite Struggles: Rethinking How America Fights
Why the United States keeps winning battles and losing wars, and what James Carse’s game theory reveals about its strategic mindset. By Catherine R. Cline America has a habit of winning its way into defeat. From the jungles of Vietnam to the...
Ep 189- Leading an Institution Bigger Than Yourself with Chancellor Lee Roberts
Send us Fan Mail Lee Roberts, Chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, joins Joe to discuss leadership, service, and what it takes to lead a large and complex institution. Joe and Chancellor Roberts discuss the experiences...
Ep 188-Learning to Lead Before You’re Ready with Michael Eck
Michael Eck, author of Strike Season, joins Joe to tell the remarkable true story of a high school football team that suddenly found itself without coaches in the middle of a championship season. When a teachers’ strike pulled the coaching staff...
Ep 187- Are People Born with Charisma? With Olivia Fox Cabane
Send us Fan Mail Olivia Fox Cabane, author of the international bestseller The Charisma Myth, joins Joe to explore the science and practice of charisma—what it really is, why the biggest myths about it persist, and how anyone can deliberately...
Ep 186- The Afghanistan Episode with General Scott Miller
Send us Fan Mail On the fifth anniversary of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, General (Ret.) Scott Miller, the final commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, joins Joe for a candid conversation about the war, its ending, and what we...
The Permission Problem: Judgment After the Uniform
By Eric R. Mace, Ed.D. At two in the morning, the hallway floors at 8th & I looked worse than when we started. A few of us had been assigned to wax them before morning inspection. The Marine Barracks in Washington, D.C., is built on precision:...
When Institutions Collide: The Military, the Media, and the Pursuit of Truth
By Joe Byerly Two attorneys stand in front of a judge and jury. They each plead their case. The defense addresses evidence the prosecution omitted, evidence that might cast doubt on the guilt of their client. The prosecution pushes back against the...
What Does the Chaplain Do?
By Benjamin Hockman “What does a chaplain do?” It was a question I had not really thought much about through the course of my military career up until then. It may have occurred to me, but if it did, it was too low on my list of priorities to...
My Daily Circle of Reading
By Joe Byerly Each morning, the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy got up and read his notebook of personally-curated passages from his favorite books (he later published this as A Calendar of Wisdom). In his diary, he wrote, “I felt that I...
What Books Taught Me About Life in 2025
By Joe Byerly Since 2017, I’ve spent the final month of each year reflecting on the books I read over the previous twelve months. Without fail, a set of themes and lessons emerges from what initially feels like a random stack of titles and genres....
Four Reasons to Write a Book Review
by Caleb Miller Have you ever met someone with a goal to write a certain number of words a week? How much quality content are they actually producing? Have you ever met anyone with a goal to read a certain number of pages a day or books...
Following White Rabbits
By Joe Byerly Even though we have more information at our fingertips than ever before, it’s getting easier to get stuck in echo chambers. News outlets cater to their “brand” of audience. Algorithms serve us content based on our browsing histories....
Are You Ready for the Siege?
By Joe Byerly Have you ever been in a very stressful situation? I’m not talking about getting stuck at a red light with two minutes to park and make it to an important meeting stressful. I mean the kind of stress that feels like you’re...
From Books to Battlefields: The Enduring Legacy of MajGen William F Mullen (USMC)
By Jeff Horn, Jr. “I prioritize self-development because I never want to look back and say, ‘I lost some of my Marines because I could not outthink the enemy.’” – Major General William F Mullen I met Major General (MajGen) William F. Mullen in a...
What Life (and Books) Taught Me in 2024
By Joe Byerly Since 2017, I’ve been compiling an annual reading list of the books I’ve finished each year. As the year winds down, I take time to reflect on what I’ve learned. For me, reading isn’t about getting smarter—it’s about living better....
The Command Sergeant Major of U.S. Army Special Operations Command Recommends these 5 books for your Christmas Stocking
By Command Sergeant Major JoAnn Naumann I am busy. But every day, I make time to read. For me, my dedicated time is early morning before anything else competes for my attention. I also read on flights and on lazy weekends. Most nights, you...
Three Football Books On Leadership
“There is no substitute for victory.” -General Douglas MacArthur “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” -Vince Lombardi While baseball is America’s pastime, football is America’s game. Since the beginnings of American Football, the...
Understanding Weapons of Math Destruction: A Critical Analysis of Algorithmic Impact
by John Geracitano In the book Weapons of Math Destruction, author Cathy O’Neil critically examines mathematical models and machine learning (ML) algorithms. Leveraging her expertise in mathematics and her experience in the financial industry,...
Failing to Leave
By Dylan Warnick Sitting in my car in the office parking lot at 0500 while on leave, a simple but striking thought hits me: I’m actively failing. It’s rare that we get this realization in the moment of failure; usually it arrives after the...
The Vital Role of Family Teams at the Platoon Sergeant Level
By William H. “Bill” Powers and Billy A. Way I didn’t fully understand the power of family readiness until the day one of my best Soldiers walked into my office, closed the door, and quietly said, “Sergeant, I’m not sure I can do this anymore.”...
Finite Wars in Infinite Struggles: Rethinking How America Fights
Why the United States keeps winning battles and losing wars, and what James Carse’s game theory reveals about its strategic mindset. By Catherine R. Cline America has a habit of winning its way into defeat. From the jungles of Vietnam to the...
The Permission Problem: Judgment After the Uniform
By Eric R. Mace, Ed.D. At two in the morning, the hallway floors at 8th & I looked worse than when we started. A few of us had been assigned to wax them before morning inspection. The Marine Barracks in Washington, D.C., is built on precision:...
When Institutions Collide: The Military, the Media, and the Pursuit of Truth
By Joe Byerly Two attorneys stand in front of a judge and jury. They each plead their case. The defense addresses evidence the prosecution omitted, evidence that might cast doubt on the guilt of their client. The prosecution pushes back against the...
What Does the Chaplain Do?
By Benjamin Hockman “What does a chaplain do?” It was a question I had not really thought much about through the course of my military career up until then. It may have occurred to me, but if it did, it was too low on my list of priorities to...
Leadership in the Furnace: What Cancer Taught Me About Leading Others
By COL Ron Sprang Nearly three decades in the Army has taught me how to prepare for uncertainty. I trained for combat, deployed to war, commanded organizations, and learned to make decisions when lives and missions—not profits or promotions—were at...
Innovation Is a Command Problem
by LTC Yu-Sheng (Dave) Chen Military organizations operate with finite money, time, manpower, equipment, and leader attention. Picture those resources as a single pie. Every slice allocated to one priority inevitably comes at the expense of...
Teach Junior Officers How to Negotiate
By Jason Ruggieri A Coast Guard Boarding Team just denied entry of two million dollars’ worth of marijuana into the United States from an intercepted go-fast vessel somewhere in the Caribbean. As the flames from the sinking go-fast vessel faded...
Watchfulness and Industry: How a Revolutionary War General Conquered Imposter Syndrome
By Tanner Cook In the summer of 1775, a Rhode Island Quaker named Nathanael Greene experienced one of the most dizzying career leaps in military history. With no military experience of any kind, this career businessman was suddenly promoted from...
The Narrative Fallacy: Challenging Army Myths
by George Fust Every organization has institutional narratives. These taglines go beyond best practices, they are embedded in the soul of the organization and passed from generation to generation. Sometimes these phrases, often framed as advice,...
The Value of Introspection: Letting Yourself Teach Yourself
by Michael Moffeit We have all been there, hastily scribbling notes into our notebooks (mostly green and mostly government-issued), trying to capture some notes or to-do lists. We attempt to record pearls of wisdom from our raters, senior raters,...
Should You Go to SAMS? Yes.
by Garrett Chandler Most of the stories they tell you about being a School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS) planner are true. You will likely be thrown right into being the lead planner for something immediately, or, as in my case, on the third...
Why Write in the Age of AI?
By Tim Devine Outsourcing your writing to AI is tantalizing because of its sudden ubiquity. Despite the convenience, there’s a hidden cost when you transfer your agency as a writer. It robs you of crucial cognitive development. Composing your...
Why Do I Keep My Notebooks?
Photo courtesy of Jay Ireland, who also keeps ALL of his notebooks! by David J. Vowell A few years ago, I worked in the operations center (S3) of the Air Traffic Control organization in the Aviation Center of Excellence in Fort Novosel, AL. This...
What I Learned as an Inaugural Harding Fellow—and Why You Should Apply
By Emily Lopez No crap, there I was—a newly promoted Major, just two weeks shy of graduating with my Master’s degree from the National Defense University. The next logical step was clear—Civil Affair Company Command. Then came the plot twist: an...
Leaders, Stop Creating Chaos! Your Words Carry Weight!
By Joe Byerly One of the toughest challenges for leaders—especially as they rise to senior levels—is learning when to shut up. I don’t say that flippantly. Okay, maybe a little. But what I really mean is that a single question, offhand comment, or...
Just Write! A Message to Junior Officers and NCOs
by Mike Everett Army senior leaders want to hear what you have to say. You don’t have to take my word for it–General Randy George, the Army Chief of Staff, has been very clear about his call for Army leaders to put pen to paper. The Harding...
What Are My Options? How to Speak Commander
By LTC Terron Wharton Five years ago, as a battalion S3, I watched a frustrated company commander struggle to brief my battalion commander. Unfortunately, this had become a trend for this particular company commander. Later that day, I brought him...
Effective Communication
By Jeff Farmer Are you an effective communicator? Can you communicate your direction, vision, and how to overcome hurdles to meet your objectives? In my experience, intentional leadership is the bedrock of building trust within an organization,...
Podcast
Listen to our latest episode.
Store
Support our work.
Get Involved
Learn how to partner with us.
Lead with the best version of yourself.
Sign up for our emails.