In July of 1970, I found myself standing on the parade field at West Point alongside hundreds of other young men. Seventeen years old, two weeks out of high school, and a long way from Georgia. Several months earlier, two Army football coaches had shown up at my home in Atlanta one evening, and not long after that conversation, my life changed direction entirely. I did not initially want to be a cadet or subsequently an Army officer; I wanted to get a college scholarship to play football. But that crucible forged the foundation of everything that followed.
West Point in those years was a rigid culture of compliance. You did what you were told, exactly when you were told to do it, without question or hesitation. The rules were not debated. The reasons behind them were rarely explained. You either met the standard or you were told to leave. The attrition rate in my Class (1974) was close to 40% by the time we graduated. It was a tough grind.
Thirty-three years later, I retired from the United States Army as a Division Commander. I was proud and honored to serve among the best and brightest leaders in America during my Soldier journey. Two weeks after hanging up my uniform, I became the president of a manufacturing company just before the onset of the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009. The transition was a real shock. The corporate culture I inherited was heavily compliance-based, much like my early days at West Point, and I assumed people would thus naturally emulate positive behaviors if the leadership simply told them what to do.
I was wrong.
One of my first signals came in the form of a photograph someone sent me of an employee sleeping on a wooden pallet at three o’clock in the morning. Attached was a note: “This is your culture.” It was a wake-up call. It was clear people will not give you their best effort simply because you think it is a good idea or want them to. You have to establish and nurture a culture they want to belong to. It was the end of the era of compliance.
The Shift from Compliance to Commitment
A culture of compliance relies on authority. A culture of commitment relies on belief. In a Level Five Culture of Commitment, your people are “All In.” They understand the reasons behind their work. They feel a genuine sense of belonging to the organization and its Mission. Building that environment requires deliberate Adaptive Leadership, and it starts with each of us.
The first person you have to lead is the person in the mirror.
Defining Your Personal Leadership Philosophy
This leadership journey of commitment begins with building a Personal Leadership Philosophy. It is a clear, written statement of who you are and what you represent as a leader. It includes your Personal Mission Statement, your core values, your way of doing things, and your specific commitments to the people you lead and influence.
Put it in writing. Keep it to one page. Sign it. Date it. Share it openly.
I placed a copy of my own Personal Leadership Philosophy in The Power of Being All In because I would never ask another leader to do something I am not willing to do myself. Putting your philosophy out there creates immediate accountability. Your philosophy becomes a living framework for your own behavior, and when you share it with your team, you invite them to hold you to these standards you have set. That level of transparency is one of the most powerful foundations you can build for a healthy, high-performing culture. A culture of buy-in. Belonging.
Every executive I have worked with in developing their Personal Mission Statement and Personal Leadership Philosophy has told me it was among the most revealing experiences of their personal and professional lives.
Setting the Azimuth
Once you have defined your personal philosophy (your PLP, as we love acronyms in the military), you can begin nurturing the cultural roadmap of your organization.
The first of the Big 6 Leadership Principles is to Set the Azimuth. Your azimuth is your cardinal direction as an organization, the true north that guides every decision you make.
Setting your azimuth is a leadership team discipline, not a solo exercise. It begins with a clear mission that answers three questions: “Who are we? What do we do? Why do we do it?” Next, you define your Intent, which captures your end state over a two- to three-year time horizon, the key tasks required to get there, and the purpose behind each one. Then you define your values, and here I want to be direct: do not simply list pleasant words. Define what those words mean for your specific organization. Finally, you establish the common behaviors you expect everyone to demonstrate every day, the cultural practices that bring your values to life.
An azimuth that exists only on a conference room wall is not an azimuth. Your azimuth has to be revisited regularly, discussed in meetings, and reinforced until it becomes the heartbeat of the organization. The azimuth must have metrics too. “That which is measured gets done.”
Listening with Intent
One of the most serious leadership weaknesses I have observed throughout my career is the failure to listen with the intent to understand. As Stephen Covey wrote, most of us listen with the intent to reply, not to comprehend. I was a replying listener for years, and the Army reinforced it by always emphasizing the transmitting side of communication and rarely the receiving side.
The tool that changed my approach to listening is the Backbrief. I learned from smarter people to confirm before my team leaves a meeting to execute a task, they recount what they just heard. What are the key deliverables? What are the milestones? What did you just commit to? This simple discipline confirms what they heard matches what I intended to communicate. It prevents costly rework and closes the gap between information transfer and genuine understanding. The Backbrief is a game-changer.
As one of the most practical truisms I have encountered in leadership puts it: “I don’t know what I said until you tell me what you heard.”
Bringing Values to Life
Values mean nothing if they do not translate into observable, daily behaviors. Consider respect as a value. One manufacturing company I worked with defined it as “having regard for oneself and others.” Then they translated that belief into a specific cultural behavior: doing things on time. That is how a belief becomes a standard of conduct. Values into action.
The same discipline applies to how you run meetings. I have spent considerable time in rooms with no agenda, no clear deliverables, and no accountability, and I know the cost of it. If your organization genuinely values people’s time, you start on time, you establish a clear agenda, you rotate the spokesperson role so everyone develops ownership, and you exclude people who do not need to be there. That last one takes courage, but it communicates that your team’s time and focus are worth protecting.
The Long Game
Cultural transformation is measured in years, not weeks. You will encounter resistance. People are deeply conditioned to existing patterns, and organizational buy-in occurs in stages. Some will embrace the new direction immediately. Others will wait to see whether you “walk the talk” before they commit.
The most effective way to accelerate that transition is through consistent, dedicated one-on-one developmental meetings. These are the most important meetings on a leader’s calendar, and they are almost always the first ones to get canceled. Here is where you listen with the intent to understand, where you uncover what your people actually need, and where trust is built over time. You’re investing in the development of your team, not just in transactional relationships.
All In Adaptive Leadership is an iterative process. It demands continuous refinement and the willingness to hold yourself to the same standards you set for everyone else. By building your Personal Leadership Philosophy and Setting the Azimuth for your organization, you create the foundation for a culture of commitment where everyone is All In.
That is the journey worth taking.
If you would like to dig deeper into these ideas, listen to my full conversation with Divya Parekh Here.
Enjoy the journey!
