"Visit with your predecessors from previous Administrations. They know the ropes and can help you see around some corners. Try to make original mistakes, rather than needlessly repeating theirs"
About this Quote
New leaders inherit both possibility and booby traps. Donald Rumsfeld, who served as US secretary of defense under Gerald Ford and George W. Bush, distilled a career of public service into pithy precepts often called Rumsfelds Rules. Here he urges a kind of disciplined humility: seek out predecessors, even from other parties, because they have already navigated the maze you are about to enter. They can point to blind alleys, invisible tripwires, and the second- and third-order effects that do not show up in a briefing book.
See around some corners evokes pattern recognition. Veterans have watched similar initiatives rise and fall, noted which alliances held and which broke under strain, and learned where the formal chart of authority diverges from the real one. In government, as in any large organization, constraints are path-dependent: budgets, laws, international commitments, and bureaucratic cultures narrow the feasible set. Listening to those who wrestled with the same constraints does not bind you to their choices; it sharpens your sense of what is genuinely new.
Make original mistakes balances prudence with initiative. Errors are inevitable, especially when tackling novel problems. The shame is not in failing but in wasting scarce time and political capital on reruns of avoidable failures. Original mistakes signal that you pushed into new terrain, tested assumptions, and created knowledge that others can use. Recycled mistakes signal ego, impatience, or ignorance of the institutions memory.
Rumsfeld often spoke of known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns. Conversations with predecessors can convert some unknown unknowns into known unknowns you can plan for. The advice also carries a civic virtue: crossing partisan lines to learn honors continuity of service over point-scoring.
The ideal is a leader who respects accumulated wisdom yet refuses to be captured by it. Learn the ropes, absorb the cautionary tales, then chart a course bold enough that the lessons you leave behind are new ones.
See around some corners evokes pattern recognition. Veterans have watched similar initiatives rise and fall, noted which alliances held and which broke under strain, and learned where the formal chart of authority diverges from the real one. In government, as in any large organization, constraints are path-dependent: budgets, laws, international commitments, and bureaucratic cultures narrow the feasible set. Listening to those who wrestled with the same constraints does not bind you to their choices; it sharpens your sense of what is genuinely new.
Make original mistakes balances prudence with initiative. Errors are inevitable, especially when tackling novel problems. The shame is not in failing but in wasting scarce time and political capital on reruns of avoidable failures. Original mistakes signal that you pushed into new terrain, tested assumptions, and created knowledge that others can use. Recycled mistakes signal ego, impatience, or ignorance of the institutions memory.
Rumsfeld often spoke of known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns. Conversations with predecessors can convert some unknown unknowns into known unknowns you can plan for. The advice also carries a civic virtue: crossing partisan lines to learn honors continuity of service over point-scoring.
The ideal is a leader who respects accumulated wisdom yet refuses to be captured by it. Learn the ropes, absorb the cautionary tales, then chart a course bold enough that the lessons you leave behind are new ones.
Quote Details
| Topic | Learning from Mistakes |
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