Intellectual Agility - The Dilapidated Tomato Paste Factory
Google’s definition of ‘agility’ is the “ability to move quickly and easily; the ability to think and understand quickly.” That’s a great definition, but if you want to take it to the next level, there has to be more than just moving or thinking quickly. You have to recognize opportunity and quickly take advantage of it, and if it is not there, create it. In other words, I would modify Google’s definition of ‘agility’ as “the ability to recognize opportunity and to quickly move to take advantage of it. And when opportunity is not there, the ability to create it.” That’s what I call “Intellectual Agility,” and let me illustrate what that looks like.
I have been fortunate in my life to work with incredibly talented subordinates, and like thoroughbred horses, all they ever needed was someone to point them in the right direction and let them go. When I was commanding Multi-National Division North in Iraq in 2008-9, I learned tons from my battalion commanders, one of which was Dave Hodne, who commanded the 3rd Squadron, 4th U.S. Calvary Regiment near Balad, Iraq. Dave is still in the Army and now commands the 4th Infantry Division in Colorado Springs, Colorado. But the lesson I learned from him was “intellectual agility” and how it is best applied in the midst of a crisis.
One of the more contentious areas in Iraq during the well-known “Surge” was north of Baghdad in Sal a Din province, which was heavy Sunni and the home province of the former Iraq dictator Saddam Hussain. Iraq was in a war with itself as the radical Sunni wing led by Jordanian-born Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi bombed and destroyed the holy Shi’ite Al-Askari Mosque in the Iraqi city of Samarra, located in the Sal a Din province. The Al-Askari Mosque is one of the most important Shia shrines in the world, which was built in 944, and its bombing was designed to create a violent sectarian conflict between the Sunni and Shi’a sects.
Samarra is just outside the U.S. base called Balad. Besides the ongoing conflicts among the ethnic sects, U.S. forces also became the target of this huge outbreak of violence, even to the point that this area became one of the most volatile areas in all of Iraq.
Given that background, Lieutenant Colonel Dave Hodne led his battalion into this quagmire with the mission of defeating the insurgent elements, enable and support Iraqi security forces, and to assist the fledgling local government build its legitimacy among the local population. A daunting mission for sure, but Colonel Hodne used his intellect to think his way out of the quagmire that continued to plague this part of Iraq for several years now.
His approach was different. Previous commanders in Iraq prosecuted the war with a heavy hand – meaning their main effort was to mass combat power at what the commanders felt was the decisive point, only to create collateral damage which had significant unintended consequences that polarized the Iraqi population and caused attacks on coalition forces.
So rather than using massed combat power to achieve his mission, Colonel Hodne began thinking of novel ways to address this problem. He built a relationship with two wealthy Iraqi’s and convinced them to pool their money to create an Iraqi bank and loan money out to small local businesses that needed the capital to build or rebuild their businesses. This was very risky, as banks in the Iraqi economy did not exist under the Saddam regime, and there was undoubtedly a lot of doubt Hodne had to overcome and a lot of trust that he had to build in order to make this work. But Hodne had an effective interpersonal skill set to build the trust necessary to get this bank off the ground. Sure enough, these two wealthy Iraqi’s started to loan their money out.
One of the first loans went to a dilapidated tomato paste factory that had been inoperable for several years. The owner took out a loan, purchased the replacement parts, and got his factory up and running again.
This was big news because now that the factory was working, there was a market for farmers to bring their products to. This part of Iraq was agrarian, and if you know anything about farming in Mesopotamia Iraq, it requires irrigation from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. And if you’re going to get the water out of the river, you have to get it into the canals, and then out of the canals and into the fields. Which means, the irrigation infrastructure must be operational. But the problem was that four years of war took a toll on the infrastructure; the electrical grid which ran the pumps was inoperable, and the canals were broken and full of silt.
In Iraq, running and maintaining the irrigation infrastructure is the government’s responsibility, and the local farmers put pressure on the local government to get the canals repaired and the electrical grid up and running again. When the local farmers started to put pressure on the government to make the necessary repairs, the government responded and began to repair both the canals and the electrical grid. Soon enough, the pumps started pumping, and water started flowing out of the river and into the canals and out of the canals and into the fields. And now that the irrigation system was working, the farmers started growing tomatoes again.
This was exceptionally important for another reason. Besides getting the water back into the farmer’s fields, the local population started to put their confidence back into the local government because the government was able to deliver and to provide the essential services the population demanded. And in fighting an insurgency, getting the local government to become legitimate in the eyes of the population is critical for a successful counterinsurgency strategy.
Now that the farmers were growing the tomatoes, they were putting them in the back of their Toyota pick-up trucks and bringing them over to the tomato paste factory waiting in line to drop off their product. The tomato factory was built adjacent to the main highway between Baghdad and Mosul that also traversed downtown Balad. Because there were so many trucks stacked up waiting to drop off their tomatoes, it created a traffic jam on the highway, causing another problem that demanded a solution.
So, some entrepreneurial Iraqi found a way to solve that problem by plowing out a parking lot adjacent to the factory, where all the trucks were stacked up waiting their turn. And because they were waiting a while, another entrepreneurial Iraqi built a snack bar to sell food to the farmers, and another built a small hotel for those that were waiting overnight. (The attached photo is this hotel’s construction). The next thing that happened was another entrepreneurial Iraqi opened a store that made the cans for the tomato paste, and another started a labeling factory to make labels for the cans. And before you know it, an industry was reborn, young men, many who were previously part of the insurgency, were now employed, and the government had gained the confidence of the population. But more importantly, Balad, which had previously been one of the most volatile areas in all Iraq, was now one the more peaceful and a model for other cities in dealing with their insurgencies.
In order to build these relationships, Hodne and his team had to understand the culture and the natural hierarchy of order. Then when pressure was placed in certain areas, he had to understand the second, third and fourth order effects. The battlefield was complex, and the greatest weapon on the battlefield was the six inches between their ears, the intellectual understanding of the complexity of this battlefield.
The case of the dilapidated tomato paste factory illustrates what can happen when a leader invokes character strengths that make up knowledge and wisdom to solve a very complex problem. Hodne could have just followed the lead of previous commanders in the region and try to defeat the enemy by force. Instead, he demonstrated intellectual agility to attain his military objective. He used creativity in developing a plan to obtain the buy-in of local Iraqi leaders by giving them a loan. He showed perspective by understanding the culture and history of that part of Iraq and its people. And he employed open-mindedness in working with others – Americans and local Iraqi’s alike – to implement this program. The net result, attributable in no small measure to Hodne’s intellect – was a significant reduction of hostilities and loss of life and empowerment of the local government.[1]
[1] This story and its lessons are taken from: The Character Edge; Leading and Winning with Integrity, LTG(Ret) Robert Caslen and Dr. Michael Matthews, St. Martin’s Press, 2020; Chapter 3 “Strengths of the Head” p 53-58