Gandalf: Examining a leader

This week’s chapter is called “The Bridge of Khazad-Dum.”  The Fellowship, guided by Gandalf, has been travelling through the mines of Moria, trying to get to the other side.  The previous chapter ended with the Fellowship leaving the main hall and entering a chamber containing the tomb Balin (Gimli’s cousin and a companion of Bilbo on his earlier adventure).  This chapter opens with the Fellowship paying their respects.  When they are done, Boromir asks what their next move is.  Gandalf says:  “Back to the hall – but our visit has not been in vain.  I now know where we are [and how to get out of the mines].”

No sooner has Gandalf spoken than the Fellowship hears the sound of horns and drums.  Gandalf looks out the door and reports that there are a great many orcs coming down the hall, as well as a cave troll.  He suggests the Fellowship flees through the door on the other side of the room.  There are too many orcs for them to all take on.

Gandalf is the Fellowship’s guide, but in modern business terms we might call him the “problem solver.”  Difficult circumstances arise, and he provides the solution.  He doesn’t explain every detail;  It doesn’t matter how tall the cave troll is, what matters is: RUN!  Given a problem, he can solve it.  In this way, Gandalf is a tactician.

However, tactics is low-level thinking.  Tactics will get you from point A to point B, but what if you need to get to point H?  Point B may not be the best route, and in fact may be off the track entirely.  Point B solves the problem of Point A, but doesn't necessarily get you any closer to Point H.

Let’s return to our text.  Gandalf’s plan seems reasonable.  Orcs and trolls are charging towards the Fellowship.  They cannot defeat them, but maybe they can escape the pursuit.  But Aragorn raises an objection, “The passage on this side plunges straight down a stair: it plainly does not lead back toward the hall... It is no good flying blindly this way with the pursuit just behind.”

Retreat doesn’t help the Fellowship if it ends up lost deeper into the mines.  Gandalf is thinking only of the immediate crisis: Escape.  Aragorn, however, is thinking strategically.  If tactics is how you solve problems, strategy is what guides those choices.  What’s the long-term goal?  The Fellowship needs to get to Mordor, which means escaping the mines.  Gandalf has just said he knows where they are and how to get out, and yet in the panic of the moment he tells them to go down the door opposite the direction he originally designated.  While addressing an urgent situation, Gandalf loses sight of the important task.

It would be like a homeless shelter deciding it can only properly house 500 individuals, but then housing 800 because those at the door felt bad turning anyone away.  It’s understandable, noble, and (importantly) hard to criticize.  Who is going to say those 300 people need to stay outside?  But what if 500 was the limit for health and safety reasons?  Disease can now spread through the shelter like wildfire.  This is a time when the strategy (help as many people as possible) is undercut by poor tactical decisions (let an additional 300 people in, which overwhelms the system). 

I spent this past week at a Moishe House leadership retreat in Southern California.  It was remarkable.  The purpose was largely to understand and develop our own leadership, but we also had a lot of discussions that can be broken down into this kind of tactical and strategic thinking.  The long-term goal, the overarching purpose of Moishe House is to provide meaningful Jewish experiences for young adults around the world by supporting leaders in theirs 20s and 30s as they create vibrant home-based Jewish communities for themselves and their peers.  But how is this done?

Moishe House is made up of many community houses spread across the world.  Every house has the same goal, but each house serves a unique community.  Therefore, in order to achieve this goal, each House needs to use different tactics.  They need different events and different forms of outreach.  For example there are three houses in San Francisco.  One is very hippy and ‘granola.’  My first event we went on a hike and someone made homemade smoothies.  We did some meditation in the forest.  It was pretty much what you’d expect from even a passing understanding of SF culture.  It was why I had chosen that house over, say, the Russian house, also in SF, which caters to young Jews who speak Russian and want to enjoy Russian culture.  That’s not to say there’s no overlap, but clearly each House seeks to attract a different demographic.  As such, their events and outreach (tactics) will be different.  But the goal remains the same.

Moishe House knows there is no one type of event young Jews like.  They know handing events down to each house 'from on high' and telling them to run those events would be met with limited, if any success.  So instead they’ve adopted the strategy of letting each house run their own events based on what the community would like.  The goal is to give young Jews meaningful experiences and communities.  The strategy is letting the houses come up with their own events.  Whatever events they choose are the tactics.

What is Gandalf’s strategy?  We know his tactics, and we know his goal.  But what are his guiding principles?  Moishe House’s guiding principle is that the community houses will be better able to create relevant events than the head honchos at capital M capital H Moishe House.  What guides Gandalf?  Examining past actions in our text does not help much.  He tells Frodo to go to Rivendell (because, tactically, the Shire is not a safe place for the Ring) but once there all that happens is Elrond calls a council and forms the Fellowship.  Getting to Rivendell (or even Mordor!) is not strategy - that is a goal.  No soccer team’s strategy is “score points.”  That’s just the goal (GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLL).  The question at hand is how and why that way.  It is like the underpants gnomes of South Park.  Gandalf cannot explain phase 2.

Later in this very chapter, in fact, the short-sightedness of Gandalf is demonstrated yet again.  After fleeing down the stairs (the doorway to the hall collapses in the fight and so they have no choice), they come near the exit of the mines.  Gandalf peers out into a chasm and sees a great fire on the other side.  He says, “If we had come by the main road down from the upper halls, we should have been trapped here.”  As in: If we had followed my original plan, we would have been trapped.

It doesn’t matter that Gandalf’s new plan (retreating down the stairs) actually works.  This is not how a good leader operates.  Apparently, Gandalf has just been hoping this would all work out.  How would you feel if you learned your supervisor at work was operating like this?  It would be very disheartening.  Everyone is depending on Gandalf to guide them to Mordor, but it seems like his approach is “I’m surprised that worked, too!”  The text is not providing a good model of leadership.  This is not an approach that we should bring into our lives.

So what do we make of this?  What can we learn?  I think this is one of those times when the text teaches us through what is absent.  To find the lesson, we must find what is missing.

We’re not all leaders in the typical way.  We don’t necessarily have employees or followers.  But we all have a mission to accomplish.  We all want, as the underpants gnomes say, “profit.”  Whether that be money or friends or time or joy or success, we want something.  And hopefully we, like Gandalf, have the tools.  But I hope, ultimately, we can rise above Gandalf’s example and be intentional and thoughtful in our approach.  I hope, when we step back and examine our journey, we can see a purpose behind every tactical decision.  It is good to have a friend like Aragorn, able to challenge our actions when they seem at odds with the very goals we’re trying to accomplish.  It is better yet to have a voice like that in our head, checking us when our immediate tactics appear to undercut our long-term strategy.