Engineer Memoirs
A:
That's right.
Q:
And I wonder if you would describe or give us some insight into how he operated, his
approach to problems.
A:
The first thing you have to recognize is that he was an extraordinarily innovative
person. He also was very astute about people. His method of operation focused very
much on the question of relations among people and the fact that it was key to get
people's support. For that reason, he would approach problems from the point of view
of what could be done differently from what was being done.
He wasn't one of these guys who believed, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." He used to
say that, but that isn't the way he operated.
Q:
He fixed it a lot.
A:
His approach to problems was always to look for a different way of doing things. He
could be persuaded--and I often sought to persuade him--that a different way of doing
things would not necessarily be better and that, unless you were convinced it was
better, it was preferable not to put people through the drill of trying something new.
But his bias was the opposite of that. His bias was to try new things, see how they
worked out. Then if they didn't work out, to try something else. This was his innovative
nature.
Q:
Kind of experimental.
A:
Experimental. Now something that will never be proved one way or the other is
whether the net benefit of this experimental approach outweighed the cost in effort.
There is no way to sit down and say, "If we hadn't tried all these new things and had
just plugged away, would we have been further along than having tried the new
things?" There is no way to evaluate that cost. Different people have different
personalities and different approaches.
There is absolutely no question that a lot of his innovative ideas were a very important
contribution to the Corps of Engineers. I personally think, as far as the water project
review is concerned, that the way he handled his relations with President Carter was an
important factor in the Corps coming through that exercise as well as it did.
I give myself credit for handling the actual work of conducting the review. He gave me
a completely free hand in that, counted on me to do it, left me to do it. He and I talked
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