About Author Jeffrey J. Engle
Whether he is protecting his platoon from ambush on a dusty road outside Baghdad as a young army sergeant, taking out high-value terrorist targets as a member of the elite special operations community, crushing a jiujitsu opponent to win a Pan-American Championship title, or strategizing about how to block hackers from attacking critical American infrastructure systems, Jeffrey J. Engle’s fighting style is best characterized as unconventional. Cool. Calculated. Gritty. And totally disconcerting to his adversaries.
During his military career, Engle earned two Bronze Star Medals, the Purple Heart, the Meritorious Service Medal, the Army Commendation Medal for Valor, the Combat Action Badge, and the Military Freefall Parachutists Badge in addition to being selected as one of the youngest members of the world’s most elite fighting unit. Following his medical retirement from special operations, Engle continued his fight to protect the country. Through his work with the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, he oversaw emergency management and mass warning/notification systems following terrorist attacks, school shootings, and the like. He devised and coordinated training exercises at the national level to prepare for attacks with weapons of mass destruction and responded to the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone, writing a book on disease emergence from the Asia-Pacific region.
Engle was then tapped to create and lead Conquest Cyber to help protect critical American assets from ongoing cyberattacks using the philosophies and tactics he learned in special ops. A graduate of Virginia Tech, where he earned a master’s degree in political science, Engle has also earned a cybersecurity certificate from Harvard University. His hobbies include flying, diving, and deep-sea fishing.
From David Henshall’s Foreword to All the War They Want
Since our first meeting, Jeff has been quite busy building a rapidly growing company in the most dynamic and critical part of the technology landscape—cybersecurity. Over the past few years, he and I have had the chance to golf, fish, and just talk about life and business, finding many common interests both personally and professionally. One common thread has been the critical importance and challenges of building and leading successful teams, whether in the military, the public sector, or the private sector. People are an organization's most valuable asset and the foundation for building sustainable value. How teams are built and led is not a science but an art based on personal experiences. After watching how Jeff has built and led his team, inspired by his service in special ops—and how he strives to rally all of us to his critical cause of defending America in cyberspace—I believe him to be an artist of the highest order. Unconventional, creative, a rule breaker in the best sense of the term—that's Jeff Engle. He's the kind of forward-thinking problem solver we business leaders would do well to emulate in this dynamic tech-driven age.
That's why this book is so timely and important, and it is why Jeff was the perfect person to write it. He has fashioned a modern, counterintuitive, highly effective leadership formula that gets results—even when the business battlefield is littered with land mines and attacks are incoming from all directions.
We very much need Jeff’s fresh approach to team building and management right now. Think about it: Today's conventional corporate management theory was constructed on a practical basis from lessons learned by the military during World War II, leading to a command-and-control hierarchy for coordination across large, distributed organizations. Strategy and objectives are defined at the top of the pyramid, while tasks are cascaded down through the levels to be implemented according to established policy. The model, though proven to scale throughout the twentieth century, is slow and unempowering for most.
We’ve moved beyond that now. The incredible era in which we live is often described as the Imagination Age, characterized by the interconnection of systems and devices, the transparency of information, artificial intelligence, and other innovations. In theory, technology should now augment human capabilities to achieve an unprecedented increase in prosperity and output, but that is not what always happens. For example, corporate productivity in the aggregate has been decelerating for years. At the same time, technology is challenging the benefits of scale and the traditional command-and-control structure, thus reducing barriers to entry, changing the nature of competition, and posing entirely new challenges to our economic, physical, and digital security. Addressing these threats requires us to consider a new operating model for future competitiveness.
That's where Jeff comes in. As I read this book, I was intrigued by how he uses a window into the current cyber warfare landscape, as well as his own experiences as a special operator, to outline a modern, practical formula for management and organizational success. In the special ops world in which he used to function, failure to execute could be fatal. In the cyber realm in which he operates today, failure to execute isn't measured as a customer who is temporarily disappointed but rather one who may be facing an existential threat to their business. Thus, he is uniquely qualified to define and champion a model for how the most impactful teams can be built, organized, and engaged. His conclusions are born from real-life combat experience, not simple theory.
Cyber is one of the very few industries in which military analogies are completely appropriate. The war is real, the stakes are incredibly high, and we are arguably in danger of losing. As Jeff says, for many of our adversaries, “hacking" is just a business—a business unconstrained by traditional rules or regulations. Defending and winning in the cyber arena requires an approach with unprecedented speed and flexibility, which is unnatural for most organizations. Yet knowing what it takes to redefine the rules and challenge conventional wisdom to ensure success is applicable across almost every industry and business.
Business leaders today are fighting a war across multiple fronts: for talent, customers, market share, and so many other resources. Most will lose if they fail to assemble the right team. How the team is selected—and how it operates as a unit—will define the outcome of the organization. When properly deployed, this process becomes an organization's enduring culture, allowing the system to expand and succeed beyond the influence of any single leader.
All the War They Want demonstrates this approach in action, from the physical battlefield to the wars being fought in the virtual world. Jeff illustrates how unconventional, elite organizations are built through a rigorous self-selection process, how leaders can enable versus merely manage, and how the most powerful accountability is cultural—because it is voluntary, proactive, and based on heart. As Jeff so eloquently explains in the pages ahead, when your team knows that they are doing cool stuff that makes an impact alongside people they like, then you will have created an unstoppable force.
David Henshall
Former president and CEO of Citrix Systems
All the War They Want | Introduction
The truth is that our adversaries are laying the groundwork right now to make chaos and destruction a reality in America. All around the world, our enemies are launching probing attacks against us in cyberspace to prepare for just such an event. Their overarching goal: undermine our ability to project global power by disabling the critical infrastructure (i.e., the systems and assets such as food and agriculture, water, communication, healthcare, energy, our financial and defense sectors, to name only a few) essential to maintaining our American way of life. Since this war is being waged in cyberspace, most people don’t even realize it’s happening ... or if they do, they don’t appreciate the scale and the fury of what we’re up against. Thankfully there are people who do.
I know them well. I have had the good fortune to learn from them, fought alongside them, and counted them among friends. Because of that, my role in this is simple—to marshal the greatest of us to take on support to the highest value targets and build capability and capacity for everyone else. The objective? Once again enjoy a competitive edge against those who would do us harm and seek to undermine our way of life. It is not a noble sacrifice to do what is necessary, especially when it is what you are trained to do.
