Guiding Principles

Since I was a young child I dreamed of righting wrongs and being a part of something greater than myself. This led to me exploring the military at 17 and enlisting at 18. I am blessed to serve with many mentors who taught me some of the lessons below. While there are differences in generations, there is often something to learn from those who come before and after us!

“It is not enough to think about doing the right thing, or even intend to do the right thing: we have to actually do it.”

Kernels of Wisdom

Military

Servant Style Leadership: Servant leadership is a leadership style that prioritizes the needs and well-being of others, with the aim of helping them grow and succeed. The leader serves and empowers their followers, fostering trust, collaboration, and mutual respect. Characteristics of a servant leader include empathy, humility, active listening, and ethical behavior.

Creating

First Principles Thinking: First principles thinking is a problem-solving approach that involves breaking down complex problems into fundamental principles and building up innovative solutions from there. It involves questioning assumptions and conventions to gain a deeper understanding of a problem and develop more creative solutions.

Think: What is the endstate, what is the base function of an object?

Influencing

Change Behaviors at Scale: Incentives are Everything!

The military uses incentives such as bonuses, promotions, education benefits, special pay, awards and decorations, time off, and career opportunities to motivate and reward service members.

To produce innovation consider the creation of large postive reinforcements for successful innovation. (Profit sharing, cash bonuses for patents, large promotions) Use large negative incentive for not trying to innovate at all (Termination, or Firing). Create small negative incentives for failure. (Overtime, or work crunch)

Tragedy of the Commons

An example of the necessity of incentives is a situation in which individuals, acting in their own self-interest, deplete or degrade a shared resource that is finite, such as a fishery, grazing land, or water source. Each individual seeks to maximize their own benefit from the resource, but if too many people exploit it, the resource can become depleted or degraded, leading to a loss of benefits for everyone. The tragedy of the commons is a classic example of market failure, where individual incentives do not align with the collective good.

Purpose in Life

Everywhere we see people seeking pleasure, wealth, and a good reputation. But while each of these has some value, none of them can occupy the place of the chief good for which humanity should aim. To be an ultimate end, an act must be self-sufficient and final, “that which is always desirable in itself and never for the sake of something else” (Nicomachean Ethics, 1097a30-34), and it must be attainable by man. Aristotle claims that nearly everyone would agree that happiness is the end which meets all these requirements. It is easy enough to see that we desire money, pleasure, and honor only because we believe that these goods will make us happy. It seems that all other goods are a means towards obtaining happiness, while happiness is always an end in itself. -Aristotle

Aristotle’s theory: the link between the concepts of happiness and virtue. Aristotle tells us that the most important factor in the effort to achieve happiness is to have a good moral character — what he calls “complete virtue.” But being virtuous is not a passive state: one must act in accordance with virtue. Nor is it enough to have a few virtues; rather one must strive to possess all of them.

In conclusion, according to Aristotle, what is happiness? • Happiness is the ultimate end and purpose of human existence • Happiness is not pleasure, nor is it virtue. It is the exercise of virtue. • Happiness cannot be achieved until the end of one’s life. Hence it is a goal and not a temporary state. • Happiness is the perfection of human nature. Since man is a rational animal, human happiness depends on the exercise of his reason. • Happiness depends on acquiring a moral character, where one displays the virtues of courage, generosity, justice, friendship, and citizenship in one’s life. These virtues involve striking a balance or “mean” between an excess and a deficiency. • Happiness requires intellectual contemplation, for this is the ultimate realization of our rational capacities

So many of our mind-boggling discussions of morality all of a sudden become clearer and easier if you stop asking “What’s right? What’s wrong?” and start asking "Who should exercise what virtue?"