Why read PTS?
Most leadership books are written with the benefit of hindsight. The challenge for leaders is that leadership rarely happens that way.
On September 11, 2001, there was no playbook for what happened at the Pentagon. Information was incomplete, circumstances were changing by the minute, and people still had to make decisions and act.
A few years later, I faced a very different challenge while commanding a battalion during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Our mission was to build and operate the fuel distribution system that would sustain coalition operations across Iraq. The mission was larger and more complex than anticipated, resources were limited, and the plan had to continually adapt to reality.
The circumstances could hardly have been more different, but the leadership lessons were remarkably similar.
You will rarely have all the information you want. Plans will not survive unchanged. Resources will seldom be exactly what you expected. And responsibility does not disappear simply because circumstances have changed.
What matters is whether people understand the mission, whether you have built trust before the crisis arrives, whether they are empowered to exercise judgment, and whether leaders are willing to make decisions and accept responsibility for them.
Those ideas became an important part of Proud to Serve: Leadership, Responsibility and Command from 9/11 to Iraq.
I wrote the book first to preserve the stories of those who served, particularly the Soldiers and families whose contributions are too often unseen. But as publication approached, I began to recognize something else: the leadership challenges in these stories are not exclusively military.
Executives, managers, entrepreneurs, first responders, military officers, and anyone responsible for leading others eventually encounter a moment when the plan no longer fits the situation.
That is when leadership stops being a framework and becomes a responsibility.
Proud to Serve will be published September 11, 2026. Let me know if you'd like a digital ARC. shawn@proudtoserve.us
On September 11, 2001, there was no playbook for what happened at the Pentagon. Information was incomplete, circumstances were changing by the minute, and people still had to make decisions and act.
A few years later, I faced a very different challenge while commanding a battalion during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Our mission was to build and operate the fuel distribution system that would sustain coalition operations across Iraq. The mission was larger and more complex than anticipated, resources were limited, and the plan had to continually adapt to reality.
The circumstances could hardly have been more different, but the leadership lessons were remarkably similar.
You will rarely have all the information you want. Plans will not survive unchanged. Resources will seldom be exactly what you expected. And responsibility does not disappear simply because circumstances have changed.
What matters is whether people understand the mission, whether you have built trust before the crisis arrives, whether they are empowered to exercise judgment, and whether leaders are willing to make decisions and accept responsibility for them.
Those ideas became an important part of Proud to Serve: Leadership, Responsibility and Command from 9/11 to Iraq.
I wrote the book first to preserve the stories of those who served, particularly the Soldiers and families whose contributions are too often unseen. But as publication approached, I began to recognize something else: the leadership challenges in these stories are not exclusively military.
Executives, managers, entrepreneurs, first responders, military officers, and anyone responsible for leading others eventually encounter a moment when the plan no longer fits the situation.
That is when leadership stops being a framework and becomes a responsibility.
Proud to Serve will be published September 11, 2026. Let me know if you'd like a digital ARC. shawn@proudtoserve.us
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