Be the dumbest person in the room.Moulton describes the default Washington posture as the opposite: most leaders want to be the smartest person in the room and resist anyone who challenges their authority or intellectual prowess. He wants the opposite. He wants to be surrounded by the smartest people he can find. The reframe has a structural consequence. A leader who needs to be smartest hires people who will not challenge them. A leader who wants to be challenged hires people who will. The downstream output of those two teams is very different, and the difference compounds across years.For senior leaders, hiring managers, and elected officials. The principle is most useful as a self-diagnostic when interviewing candidates: how does the leader feel about the smartest one in the room.
Sit down and smoke the cigarette.As a Marine officer with an Ivy League background, Moulton was on the wrong side of a class and education divide from his enlisted soldiers. Most officers would have given the eighteen-year-olds a lecture about not smoking. Moulton joined them and lit one. The act put him on equal footing with them and them on equal footing with him. Conversation became possible, and trust followed. The principle is older than the Marines. Leaders who want trust from people structurally below them have to do something visible that contradicts the hierarchy. The cigarette is one form. There are others. The shape matters less than the visible cost the leader is willing to pay.For officers, executives, and any leader managing teams with significant status differential. The technique requires the leader to identify what their team would not expect, and to do it.
A very random thing can be enough common ground to start.Moulton's reasoning is simple. People who have to work together need to develop trust. To develop trust, they have to relate to each other. To relate, they need common ground. The common ground can be very different from what either party brings to the substantive work. A coincidence of hometown, a shared hobby, a mutual acquaintance. The threshold is much lower than people think. Once a thread is established, the conversation has a foundation, and from that foundation a working relationship becomes possible. Leaders who insist on substantive alignment first usually never get to it.For negotiators, cross-functional team leaders, and elected officials working across the aisle. The technique is most useful at the opening of a relationship, when no shared work yet exists.
Find common ground in the mission, not by changing minds.Moulton's congressional partnership with conservative Republican Steve Russell of Oklahoma worked because they did not try to change each other's minds. They were both Iraq War veterans, which was the common ground. From there, they could co-sponsor unpopular positions like advocating for Syrian refugees, which neither party's base supported. The principle is operational. If you go into a working relationship determined to convince the other person of your worldview, the relationship breaks before any work gets done. If you go in looking for the patch of mission you already share, you can build from there. Persuasion is downstream of collaboration, not upstream.For political coalition-builders, bipartisan negotiators, and cross-organization leaders. The principle generalizes to corporate alliances, family businesses, and any high-stakes relationship.
We've always done it that way is the one reason that is not allowed.Moulton tells his Marine team and his congressional staff the same rule. If you believe we should be doing something differently, I want to hear your idea. There are two conditions. You have to give me a reason. The reason cannot be because that is the way we have always done it. The rule sounds simple. In practice, it is the most common reason every institution gives for not changing, and ruling it out forces the team to actually defend their existing practice on the merits. Practices that survive the test are kept. Practices that do not are revised. The discipline is what keeps the team innovating rather than ossifying.For managers, military officers, and senior leaders inheriting an established team or organization. The rule is most useful when stated explicitly and enforced visibly the first few times it is invoked.
Hire people who will push back; reject the ones who say you're the boss.Moulton's interview question for new staff is direct. How would you approach me if you disagreed with the position I was taking. The conciliatory answer (you're the boss, we do what you want) disqualifies the candidate. He hires the people who answer with a method for pushing back. The senior members of his team already know the expectation; he has to pull it out of the junior ones explicitly. The principle is that a team designed for dissent produces better thinking than a team designed for compliance, and the hiring process is where the design gets enforced. Compliance hires compound into bad decisions.For senior leaders building teams whose value depends on intellectual sharpness. The question works as a screening device when used consistently across the candidate pool.
Reinforce the standard or it lowers.The Marine maxim Moulton lives by is unsentimental. The first time you walk past someone doing something below the standard and do not correct them, you have just set a new lower standard. Establishing mission and values is the easy part. Continually reinforcing them is the discipline most leaders skip. The reinforcement is daily, granular, and often awkward. It is also the only mechanism through which a stated standard becomes the actual standard. Without it, the values document on the wall describes a place that does not exist.For senior leaders responsible for organizational culture. The principle is most useful as a daily check on the leader's own willingness to make small corrections in the moment.
Tell the truth about the nap; integrity has no exceptions.Moulton takes afternoon naps because he does not sleep much at night. His team, embarrassed, told callers he was in a meeting or on a phone call. He shut it down. Do not lie. You do not have to announce that he is snoring like a banshee. You can say he is unavailable. But integrity is one of the office's core values, and the first time you say we are committed to honesty but we can be dishonest this one time, you have set a new standard that honesty does not actually matter. The example is small. The principle is structural. Small lies are how cultures of integrity become cultures of convenience.For senior leaders and managers responsible for the small daily integrity decisions of their teams. The observation is most useful as a corrective to the assumption that low-stakes lies do not count.