Life as a Formation

A special note for an ordinary moment

I.

I’m not convinced this newsletter deserves thousands of subscribers. If I were convinced, that would make me overconfident. Perhaps even arrogant. Perhaps even a prick, which may already be true for different reasons.

The world isn’t waiting for me to be convinced. There are thousands of you gathered. Here we are now, entertain us. I shall do my best.

Let’s start with a story.

The arc is familiar. The protagonist, loosely personifying Yours Truly, behaves in some way like a tit. A hack. A mug. Eventually, he gets told.

He then recognizes his folly, repents, and makes adjustments. His life improves. Goodness reclaims his world. Flowers sprout up all across the land, settled under a shimmering rainbow.

The chapter concludes, sparing his blushes before exposition of the next foible and the one after that. For this particular patsy has built his life on a mountain of foibles. Let’s double click on one.

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II.

It was about twenty years ago a good friend and work colleague of mine was trying to persuade me the benefits of networking. He kept coming at me with facts, wisdom, and sound logic.

You need people who can help you get things done, he said. You can’t go it alone in a team sport like airpower, he said. Being a gentleman of a certain vintage, he flung the word “Rolodex” at me.

I just kept showing my teeth. Snarling.

As a military captain immersed deep in the execution phase of my career, I didn’t care much for what seemed like organizational politics. Experience to that point counseled it was a double-edged phenomenon with one edge sharper than the other.

People leveraged their connections and schmoozed their way through without being the best. They were promoted because of who they knew. I saw this as diluting excellence by entrusting it to false stewards concerned mainly with their own ambitions.

I wasn’t wrong about that. Cronyism is an issue for organizations. So too is over-emphasis on political skill at the expense of character and performance.

But I was wrong to position it as half of a false dichotomy. There’s no reason someone can’t be elite at their operational craft and also be capable of connecting well and building relationships with others.

In fact, being great at what you do is necessary but insufficient if you expect to accomplish anything substantial. Life is a team sport.

In the years that followed, I learned that being the best often gets you the job you want, but you won’t succeed in that job without a strong set of relationships. People you can call and who call you. People who listen, who make you listen. People who watch your six and rely on you to watch theirs.

Wingmen multiply perspective, they deepen knowledge, they challenge assumptions. They also act as a personal and emotional backstop in the hard moments, which are a guaranteed terrain feature.

We take what Mark Twain told us as fact (most of us, anyway): travel negates ignorance and narrowness of mind. It teaches us differences in how we live, think, and feel are not only okay, but beautiful.

A network allows us to travel through the minds and hearts of others. The result is empathy, which is critical to leading, supporting, and winning in any domain.

My friend was right. Despite my grumbling, I was listening. The resulting network proved time and again that he’d been more right than even he knew.

Scott remains part of that network to this day.

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III.

My life is a formation.

Wingmen operate, learn, fight, and recover together. Shared endeavor and mutual support. No one goes solo, and we are all close enough to notice and roll in when a threat bares its fangs or an engine catches fire.

Beyond Scott’s advice, there are three additional reasons for flying life as a formation. Well, there are a thousand more, but three I will mention.

(1) When you go it alone, you pay the price, and so does your wingman.

68% of mistakes with life-altering consequences for ourselves or those we care most about happen when we choose to do something alone rather than bring teammates along.

In addition, 97% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

(2) Influence requires connection.

Great ideas trapped in your brain or shouted in the general direction of a loose gaggle of strangers have the same impact as a tree falling in the woods. No one knows, no one cares.

Sometimes, influence is key to getting things done. Those moments over the years when I’ve failed to deliver for my team share a commonality. In each case, I didn’t have influence over a support node despite being dependent on that node. Without connections, I was just another self-important schlub standing in a long queue of beggars. Each with hat in hand, awaiting their turn to be denied.

My squadron got home a week late from a deployment because our move hadn’t been properly staffed. I couldn’t rescue it because I hadn’t made it a point to know anyone on the staff who could expedite, or could at least get me an audience to push for help.

But it’s not just about getting things done. It turns out I have a genuine desire to shape opinions, to educate, and to occasionally make people feel something via the power of storytelling. The first step toward any of those objectives is connection.

No one cares what you know until they know you care.

(3) Communication is an absolute good.

Social media permanently disabled our world’s squelch dial. We inhabit a time of static. Incessant hissing and humming as hollow chatter rings out from countless and limitless beacons of shite.

In a world that monetizes and otherwise rewards contentless gabble, genuine communication is increasingly precious. Words and ideas with substance, or the genuine attempt at it. Thoughts that jar others to think. Engagements that build those thoughts into moments of shared learning. And as a bonus, conversations spurred elsewhere, distant from the epicenter of an article but setting off new thought quakes of their own.

Instigating communication is like striking flint and steel. Most strikes do not start a fire. Occasionally, a spark catches tinder and you get something going that people see from a distance. Like moths, they approach. Suddenly, you’ve got a fireside chat between and among people who otherwise wouldn’t have crossed paths.

But there’s a catch. You gotta love the mundane the act of striking flint on steel. The sound it makes, the solid thud of the collision. The excitement of merely playing with and handling potential energy that may never become kinetic.

Most of being a writer is striking flint on steel for its own sake.

Just over two years ago, I started this newsletter to connect. To create the opportunity for modest influence. To get people communicating. To network and trade perspectives.

But mostly just because I’m the sort of sick bastard who gets a kick out of striking flint on steel over and over again.

136 flint strikes later, I come here today for the purpose of showing gratitude. I was hoping to build a formation of readers, and today that formation has reached the 2,000 mark.

Well, actually a bit more, because I prioritized a few more flint strikes over composing this note.

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IV.

What’s special about 2,000?

It’s the last year I remember my country being at relative peace.

It’s the number of flying hours I had when I realized how little I knew.

It’s the number of flushes you get from a standard urinal cake, I learned on one of many Middle Eastern misadventures.

It’s the number of days I spent away from home in my military career, each one feeling like a year, which makes me as emotionally undead as all of my friends who did the same and more.

In this context, the figure 2,000 freights no special meaning.

It’s not some gargantuan number. Publishing houses are not blowing up my phone. I haven’t required a barge pole to beat back sponsorship offers. No servers have been harmed in the storage of this newsletter.

But it’s not nothin’. I’m incredibly grateful for it.

I bounce between being thrilled and mystified. To think a regiment’s worth of people are even remotely interested in my mirthful scribblings boggles the mind.

In my world, truth and joy run together, so let me make two confessions.

First, I do want to grow an audience and reach as many people as I can.

Second, I’m in no hurry. Organic growth and readers who want to be here are the objective.

See, this is the second time I’ve done this.

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V.

The first time I did this was a blog I started in 2013 after retiring from the US Air Force. It was almost entirely focused on that service, its direction, and the issues confronting it at a moment of budget compression twisted together with mission expansion.

In developing the now-defunct John Q. Public blog, I didn’t have much idea what I was doing, or even attempting. It was like building an aircraft while flying it.

While I can be proud of many moments in the 5-year life of that project, I made mistakes.

One of them was getting too caught up covering current events and reacting to stuff. That’s a natural consequence of focusing on the unfolding story of an important public agency at an institutional crossroads. It became more natural as contacts multiplied, lighting up my switchboard every day with new leads, new leaks, and background insights that unlocked huge opportunities to influence.

But it attracted an audience that relied upon it to be kept informed. An audience that was looking for hot takes and breaking news.

I'm not opposed to those things. Providing insight on current events can’t be totally avoided, and is part of what happens here at The Radar.

But too much participation in an amygdala-punching media cycle comes at the cost of deeper reflections and more durable insights across a broader range of subjects.

What I love about this audience is that you are here for the writing.

You engage. You share. Sometimes, you carry these articles back to your life proper and strike your own flint with them. But first and foremost, you read what is written here.

That's the real gold them there hills. The privilege of modest, footnote-level inclusion in your thoughts. When you react or comment and I get to learn from you, that’s double gold. Or platinum. Whichever is better.

This time around, it wasn’t and isn’t about hurriedly getting my mitts on the biggest megaphone I can find in some hopelessly Quixotic campaign to unilaterally melt the mile-thick polar icecaps on Planet Stupid. No amount of rage farming could achieve that, and no amount is a justifiable means to an end, especially an impossible one.

This time, it’s just about the act of expression on things that matter. Or at least matter to me, and thus appear as returns on my radar, which I then share with you to build your picture.

At the end of the day, while I enjoy access to this audience in the hopes of building mutuality and consensus on issues of leadership, organizations, management, culture, military matters, operations, and whatever else is on that radar … the real reason I'm here is simply to engage. To strike flint against steel as often as possible.

The act itself is enough. And “enough” is one of my favorite words in the English language.

But of course, writing contemplates others reading. So of course I harbor that fervent wish every time I publish.

You make that wish come true, investing your time and intellect here in my little corner of the bozosphere.

Thank You.

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VI.

There is a question that comes up occasionally.

Why is the experience here at The Radar exactly the same for paid and free subscribers? In a world where that’s true, why would anyone pay for access?

There are two reasons I don't have a paywall, and never will. I feel it's worth explaining, because some of you have chosen to sponsor my work with your hard-earned money, and you deserve to know why your experience is no different from the 98% who read for free.

First, I never want anyone to be prevented access to my work because they can't afford it. Many of us have tremendous material privilege, but most of the world doesn’t. Coming from modest and sometimes meager means, I get that. It wouldn't sit right with me if the words I'm spilling were behind a wall scalable only with a golden grappling hook.

Second, I don't believe in the application of coercive or transactional tactics to pry wallets loose. It's just not who I am.

I'm more comfortable with a different approach that emphasizes your agency.

Which is that if I want someone to pay me for my work, I need to persuade them to do so by writing well enough that they see the value and choose, on their own, to recognize it with a material contribution.

If I limit access and use teasing and baiting tactics to get you on the hook, I'm almost admitting that what I have to say isn't worth it. The work should do its own convincing. Setting money traps would make me the sort of mannerless, honorless, revenue-obsessed shithead I'm often found lamenting.

I choose instead, since I’m constantly writing about leadership, to behave as a leader should.

Leaders act on principle. They practice what they preach. There is consistency between their words and deeds, and no gap between the two.

So I choose to attempt work you find worthy, and leave the decision to you. The more individuals decide to become paid subscribers, the more writing I will be able to do by virtue of spending my time here rather than immersed in revenue-seeking actions elsewhere. If you want more, you'll be moved to invest. If not, it'll be for me to keep improving.

Either way, I appreciate you working this site into your cross-check. I don’t take it for granted.

Please keep reading. Keep reacting. Please don't refrain from sharing my work anywhere and with anyone you feel might get something from it. And please let me know if I can improve your experience.

But I will close with a different message.

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VII.

Earlier this month, an old friend of mine died in a small aircraft accident near Hinckley, Illinois. Jim Beyer was an airline pilot, a retired officer who flew and fought in multiple wars, and a proud husband, father, and grandfather. He was immensely smart, and just as humble.

Most of all, he was a pilot. He obsessed over it as a life habit. He taught others. It was his craft, his job, and the motor that moved the blood through his veins.

Jim died doing what he loved. His grandson, a passenger in the same aircraft, was thankfully unharmed. If something was going to go wrong, he couldn’t have been in better hands. I hope Jim died cognizant that his grandchild was going to be okay.

I mention Jim slipping the surly bonds and dancing the skies on laughter-silvered wings because it’s on my mind a lot these days how easily we lose perspective. How quickly we slide into hyper-obsession with things that are loud or emotive or otherwise limbically magnetic … and yet really and truly do not matter a whit.

Jim was 51. Which puts me a couple years into the overtime of his life, something I think he would want me to recognize. He was exceptional at tuning out the noise and hearing life’s signal. I think that’s an example worth heralding.

So it’s with Jim’s silent encouragement that I will continue doing my best to avoid The Radar contributing to the spiraling toxicity and hysteria of the current environment.

I’ll also say the things his loss gives me the impulse to say.

Stay safe and hug your loved ones every day.
Go to sleep at night on good terms.
Be generous with your affection.

Don’t simmer angst or resentment. Actively rinse them out of your life by dealing with whatever’s driving them. If you leave it until tomorrow, you’re betting on something that isn’t guaranteed.

Each day, I try to write something here or elsewhere which acknowledges the unmistakable tumble of our world toward Hell in a hand basket. Not so much to bemoan or even chronicle this current cycle of inexorable enshittification.

But to remind myself to live fully. To hear the ticking of the clock. To appreciate my amazing luck to still be here, and to pour one out for those who are not.

Also, to entertain myself. The fun thing about predicting the end of the world is that sooner or later, I'll be right. Even if it only ends for me.

Before it ends for you, squeeze it for all it's worth.

Thank you again for your readership. I promise to keep doing my best to earn it.

Tony is an independent writer. His focus is leadership, operations, organizations, and military affairs, but he writes about whatever he damn pleases.