Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

How can this help me develop the culture I want?
Each year that you play soccer for Anson Dorrance, you must memorize three different literary
quotes, each handpicked to communicate a different core value. “You will be tested in front of the
team in preseason,” his memo to the team reads, “and then tested again in every player conference.
Not only do you have to memorize them, but you have to understand them. So reflect on them as
well. . . .”
By senior year, Anson’s athletes know all twelve by heart, beginning with the first core value—
We
don’t whine
—and its corresponding quote, courtesy of playwright George Bernard Shaw: “The true

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joy in life is to be a force of fortune instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and
grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.”
Verbatim memorization is a proud, centuries-old tradition at West Point. You can find the very, very
long list of songs, poems, codes, creeds, and miscellany that all first-year cadets—“plebes” in West
Point parlance—are required to memorize in a document West Point calls the Bugle Notes.
But West Point’s current superintendent, Lieutenant General Robert Caslen, is the first to point out
that words, even those committed to memory, don’t sustain a culture when they diverge from actions.
Take, for example, Schofield’s Definition of Discipline. These words, first spoken in an 1879
address to the cadets by then superintendent John Schofield, are the sort you’d expect a West Pointer
to know by heart. The passage that cadets must memorize begins: “The discipline which makes the
soldiers of a free country reliable in battle is 
not
to be gained by harsh or tyrannical treatment. On the
contrary, such treatment is far more likely to destroy than to make an army.”
Schofield goes on to say—and the cadets must memorize this, too—that the very same commands
can be issued in a way that inspires allegiance or seeds resentment. And the difference comes down
to one essential thing: respect. Respect of subordinates for their commander? No, Schofield says. The
origin of great leadership begins with the respect of the commander for his subordinates.
The irony of reciting Schofield’s uplifting words, even as you’re being yelled and screamed at by
upperclassmen, was not lost on Caslen when he committed them to memory as an eighteen-year-old
plebe in 1971. In that era, hazing was not only tolerated but encouraged. “It was the survivalists who
succeeded,” Caslen recalled. “It wasn’t so much the physical challenges as the mental toughness
required to cope with all the yelling and screaming.”
Indeed, forty years ago, 170 of the cadets who started Beast Barracks quit before it was over.
That’s 12 percent, double the proportion who dropped out of Beast by the time I came to West Point
to study grit a decade ago. Last year, attrition was down to less than 2 percent.
One explanation for this downward trend is hazing, or, rather, the lack thereof. The practice of
inflicting physical and psychological stress on first-year cadets was long considered a necessary part
of toughening up future officers. A second benefit, so the logic went, was to cull the weak, effectively
eliminating weakness in the corps by pushing out those who couldn’t handle it. Over the decades, the
list of approved hazing rituals was progressively curtailed, and in 1990, hazing was officially banned
altogether.
So, eliminating hazing might explain declining Beast attrition in the late twentieth century, but what
explains the last decade’s precipitous drop? Is West Point admissions doing a better job of selecting
for grit? From the year-to-year data on grit I’ve seen, absolutely not. The average grit scores of
incoming cadets haven’t changed since West Point began collecting them.
According to General Caslen, what’s happened at the academy is a deliberate change in culture.
“When only the survivalists succeed, that’s an