I like a big challenge. That’s what motivates me. I like to be faced with a task that no one else can do—or at least do as well as I can in my own mind. On the other hand, I don’t care a hoot about small tasks, tasks that strike me as mundane or trivial (even though I also understand that the mundane may be as important as anything else; Jonas Salk must have conducted millions of mundane tests and observations to create his vaccine for polio). So I would much rather be given command of a wing in transition than a wing where things are going smoothly, and my challenge would be to make it better (without having a lot of room to make that happen). For instance, I was always happier to command a wing that was transitioning out of an old, difficult-to-maintain aircraft, like the F-4D, into a modern aircraft.

What turns my key is fear of failure in the face of a great challenge. And what causes me to go into the idle mode is to be given something to do that really doesn’t need much doing.

None of this means that I have any illusion that I am the reason the big job will get done. That’s not my function: I am a cheerleader, a mender of faint souls; I’m the one who listens to contending views of the path, the method for the use of resources or the organization of effort, and then decides which way to go.

★ These facts were not lost on Bill Creech. In the Air Force, commands are doled out very selectively, and most higher officers get only one of them in their entire life. But Creech kept moving Horner: two wings, two air divisions, and an air defense weapons center—all command billets. Then, after two years on staff, he spent five and a half years commanding regular forces, and spent the last few years of his career as a unified commander.

As a commander, you only get things done through other people. You lead people, you manage things. And if you can’t lead, you command. You order people to do what you want. Sometimes I had to order people; sometimes I just didn’t have time to go through all the niceties that leadership demands and had to lay a little leather on somebody. But leadership is best.

When you lead, you have to create an environment where the leader is the chief server. That is to say, he is the one who makes it possible for everyone else to do their jobs. He provides the backup and the support. I saw command as an inverted pyramid. I was the lowest guy in the food chain and the airman was the highest guy in the food chain, and it was my job to make sure I was working for all those people as much as possible.