Brandon Webb Quotes

You've got to have a vision. You've got to have a message.

When I became commander of the Joint Special Operations Task Force, I was leading thousands of individuals, from Special Forces to the broader interagency effort. I quickly realized that while we had the most best and most effective operators and small teams in the world, we were unable to scale.

A fundamental responsibility of leadership is make sure that everybody knows the mission, understands it, lives it.

A word to the wise is not sufficient if it doesn't make sense.

The clear-sighted do not rule the world, but they sustain and console it.

Sometimes, the things we think are so simple but not so easy to grasp are the things that work the best.

Leadership should be born out of the understanding of the needs of those who would be affected by it.

Management by objective works - if you know the objectives. Ninety percent of the time you don't.

It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem.

When it's foggy in the pulpit it's cloudy in the pew.

The function of combat is not merely to perpetrate violence, but to perpetrate violence on command, instantaneously and reflexively. The function of the service academies is to prepare men for leadership positions where they may someday exercise that command.

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind

Life is too short to permit of wasting any portion of it in discussion with…anyone whose conception of the underlying principles of military administration is so hazy that he can advocate such proposition seriously. A proposition of this kind would be regarded as remarkable if advanced by a state militiaman.

We need to get our heads on straight about what is strength and what is weakness.

Take ye counsel together in all matters, inasmuch as consultation is the lamp of guidance which leadeth the way, and is the bestower of understanding.

If words of command are not clear and distinct, if orders are not thoroughly understood, the general is to blame.

The operational tail will wag the intelligence dog. The top people will be forced to take up all their time in the direction of operations and will neglect intelligence.

My suggestion is that if you need someone outside your company to prepare a mission statement for you, then you really don't know what your mission is, and you probably don't have one.

It does not matter what you know about anything if you cannot communicate to your people. In that event, you are not even a failure. You're just not there.

Throughout history, the organizational evolution of the military has been inextricably linked with that of the business world.

Words are only as good as the response to those words.

I am tasked with being that voice of calm and reason and disseminating the facts as we understand and know them.

You can't have force structure without proper training, without proper equipment, without proper leadership, without proper funding to conduct exercises and perform maintenance.

It takes time for people to understand how to hold leaders accountable.

Instead of measuring military readiness in terms of overall size and numbers, we must focus on metrics of capability, particularly in technology, and positioning.