It Worked for Me

Colin Powell, a retired four-star general who served as National Security Advisor, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Secretary of State, draws on decades of military and government experience to present lessons about leadership and life. The book is organized into six freestanding parts, with chapters built around stories, anecdotes, and principles accumulated across his career. He offers no formal conclusions or recommendations, framing the material as observations that worked for him.

The book opens with the origin of Powell's Thirteen Rules, first published in 1989 when Parade magazine profiled him after he took command of the Army's Forces Command (FORSCOM). A secretary urged the journalist to ask about snippets of paper tucked under the glass on Powell's desk, and the thirteen quotes and aphorisms he read aloud appeared in a sidebar that circulated worldwide over the following two decades. Powell devotes the first section to explaining each rule. Rule 1, "It ain't as bad as you think. It will look better in the morning," reflects his commitment to optimism, illustrated by a scene from the film The Hustler in which pool player Minnesota Fats rallies after appearing defeated. Rule 2, "Get mad, then get over it," draws on his contentious relationship with French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin, who blindsided Powell in January 2003 by publicly attacking the U.S. position on Iraq. Powell chose restraint over enmity, and France later supported six consecutive UN resolutions on Iraq; de Villepin also personally helped resolve a crisis in Haiti by arranging a destination for ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Rule 6, "Don't let adverse facts stand in the way of a good decision," highlights the role of informed instinct, illustrated by General Eisenhower's D-Day gamble and Powell's own 1989 decision during a Philippine coup attempt, when he ordered jets to demonstrate "extreme hostile intent" rather than bomb a base, keeping planes grounded without casualties. Other rules caution against tying ego to position, urge leaders to check small things and share credit, and stress kindness and vision. Rule 13, "Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier," closes the section with a story from Korea, where Powell's exhausted battalion turned a 20-mile march into a qualifying forced march for the Expert Infantryman's Badge, an Army skills qualification, arriving at camp singing cadence in the middle of the night.

Part II, "Know Yourself, Be Yourself," traces Powell's work ethic to his Jamaican immigrant parents and to Jay Sickser, a Russian Jewish immigrant toy store owner in the Bronx who hired teenage Powell for 50 cents an hour. Sickser later told Powell he was "too good to just be a schlepper" and urged him to get an education. Powell describes summer jobs with the Teamsters union, including integrating a Pepsi bottling machine crew by requesting a position beyond porter, and argues that nearly all work is noble and that doing one's best can lead to unforeseen advancement. He warns against leaders who generate unnecessary work through compulsive hours, crediting Frank Carlucci, a former Secretary of Defense, and President Reagan as mentors who modeled reasonable work habits. Additional chapters stress kindness as a leadership tool, the importance of positioning oneself for maximum influence, and evaluating subordinates for future potential rather than past performance alone.

Part III, "Take Care of the Troops," addresses how leaders should know, respect, and serve their followers. Powell describes having two junior Mexico desk officers brief President George W. Bush before his first foreign trip without rehearsal or senior intervention. The briefing succeeded, and word spread through the State Department that the new Secretary trusted his people. He distinguishes between mere obedience and the deeper commitment that comes from mutual respect, and draws on a documentary about adolescent male elephants isolated without adults, who became violent until older males were introduced and order was restored. He applies the lesson to human communities, arguing that children need nurturing, structure, and belonging, and that mentors can rescue those who lack family support.

Part IV, "Fast Times in the Digital World," describes Powell's effort to modernize the State Department, which in 2001 relied on antiquated Wang computers, incompatible networks, and desks that mostly lacked Internet access. He secured congressional funding for over 44,000 new computers and placed an Internet-connected machine on every desk within two years. Powell argues that changing institutional "brainware," how people think and work, proves harder than installing hardware. He presents four rules for intelligence staffs: Tell me what you know, tell me what you don't know, then tell me what you think, and always distinguish which from which. He illustrates the danger of withheld information with his 2003 UN speech, where the CIA failed to disclose that its single source for claims about biological production vans, a figure nicknamed Curveball, was considered unreliable. He stresses early notification of problems, citing the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, where photographs documenting prisoner abuse were available to Pentagon leaders for months but never elevated to senior leadership until CBS's 60 Minutes broadcast them.

Part V, "Getting to 150 Percent," covers management principles and organizational culture. Powell lists standing guidance for new aides, including never acting on unclear instructions and guarding against the "General Wants" syndrome, where casual remarks by a leader trigger expensive actions. He describes the After-Action Review (AAR) process developed at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California, where every action is recorded for analysis focused on learning, not grading. At the State Department, Powell applied the AAR method after Congressman Henry Waxman challenged an annual terrorism report, discovering significant errors and earning Waxman's public praise after submitting corrections. Powell also recounts how President Reagan taught him about delegation: During an Oval Office briefing on an interagency dispute, Reagan ignored the presentation and remarked on squirrels eating nuts in the Rose Garden, signaling that problems the National Security Advisor was hired to solve should not reach the President's desk.

Part VI, "Reflections," addresses major events and personal experiences. Powell clarifies that the Powell Doctrine, which emerged from the 1989 Panama invasion and 1991 Desert Storm, exists in no military manual. He prefers "decisive force" over "overwhelming force," arguing the goal is a successful outcome. He notes that the 2001 Afghanistan and 2003 Iraq invasions succeeded initially but lacked clear follow-on objectives, requiring years and surge forces to reverse deteriorating conditions. In "The Pottery Barn Rule," Powell recounts his August 2002 meeting with President Bush, where he argued that military victory in Iraq would leave the United States responsible for governing the country. After Baghdad fell in April 2003, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Ambassador L. Paul Bremer deviated from the approved plan by disbanding the Iraqi army and purging members of the Baath party, Saddam Hussein's ruling political organization, down to schoolteachers. These decisions surprised Powell, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, and the President, and fueled the insurgency.

Powell's account of his February 5, 2003, UN speech on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction is the book's most personal reckoning with failure. He describes discovering that the draft prepared by Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Scooter Libby, was unusable and relocating to CIA headquarters to rebuild the presentation from the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), the formal U.S. intelligence community assessment, working four days and nights with CIA Director George Tenet. Powell rejected assertions pushed by the Vice President about links between Iraq and the September 11 attacks. No weapons of mass destruction were found after the invasion. He acknowledges the speech as "a blot" on his record and sets out guidelines for handling failure: Own it, learn from it, and move on.

The remaining chapters offer lighter reflections, including a comic-opera diplomatic crisis over a tiny uninhabited island off Morocco's coast that Powell resolved by phone, youth exchange programs whose most lasting impressions came from small American kindnesses, and his post-government speaking career. In "The Gift of a Good Start," Powell describes his education at the City College of New York (CCNY), where his Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) grades were folded into his overall average to push him barely above a 2.0 for graduation. He discusses founding the America's Promise Alliance in 1997 to mobilize the country around five promises to children: caring adults, safe places, healthy starts, effective education, and opportunities to serve.

The afterword returns to the book's central theme. Powell quotes Admiral Hyman Rickover: "Organizations don't get things done. Plans and programs don't get things done. Only people get things done." He concludes that leadership is not about any individual leader but about the people encountered along the way.