Lesson of the Week
I met 1SG McKenna during my deployment with the Special Operations Joint Task Force - Afghanistan. My job was sustainment, keeping our forces supplied across the country. Fuel, equipment, the logistics that nobody sees but everybody needs.
The base in Kabul was small. Too small for significant fuel storage. And with a pretty decent consumption rate, I was running a tight operation. At any given time, the base had about 14 days of fuel. I could only send one truck at a time. That truck could only download fuel when they had 4 days left... show up at 5 days and it wouldn't fit. Show up at 3 days and we were in trouble.
That's a 24-hour error window. In Kabul. In 2015.
1SG McKenna ran security for that small camp. And he ran it like a Green Beret (because he was one) with strict procedures, clear standards, and zero tolerance for shortcuts.
Every vehicle approaching that gate was a potential threat.
One evening, a fuel truck arrived late. The front gate was already closed for the night.
I pushed back. Hard.
I told 1SG McKenna they needed to download that fuel. That the truck couldn't just sit outside the wire, it was costing us money by the hour. That we needed that fuel inside.
He refused.
His security forces couldn't properly inspect the vehicle at that hour. The procedures existed for a reason. The gate stayed closed. The truck had to find somewhere else to go for the night.
I was frustrated. I had logistics leadership to answer to. And here was this 1SG, who he once described his job as running an "Adult Day Care" for his unit, a line so perfectly him that the guys had it made into a t-shirt, holding up my operation over procedure.
But it was his call. And I had to deal with the aftermath.
A few weeks later, on August 7, 2015, a suicide vehicle-borne IED detonated at the gates of the base.
Then the complex ambush began.
1SG McKenna picked up a rifle from his desk and ran toward the sound of the guns. He directed and led a quick reaction force to the breach, rallying his personnel, seizing control of the gates, preventing the attackers from pushing further into the compound.
He gave everything to protect the people on that base.
First Sergeant Peter Andrew McKenna Jr. was killed in action that day. He was later awarded the Silver Star for his actions.
I've thought about that fuel truck argument many times since August 7, 2015.
He had identified a risk I had dismissed. He had planned for it. He had built procedures around it. And when that risk materialized, in the most violent and chaotic way possible, he was ready.
I wasn't thinking about risk management that night I pushed him to open the gate. I was thinking about logistics metrics and my next conversation with leadership.
He was thinking about what comes through the gate when you stop checking.
The 2026 PMI Pulse of the Profession puts it plainly: complexity is a source of risk; risks are consequences of complexity.
In Kabul, in 2015, at a small coalition base with 14 days of fuel and a one-truck supply chain, the complexity was real. And the consequences of that complexity weren't budget overruns or missed milestones.
They were human lives.
1SG McKenna understood that better than anyone on that base. He lived it in every procedure, every closed gate, every standard he refused to compromise... even when a frustrated logistics officer was telling him to.
I learned more about risk management from that argument than from any framework I've studied since.
In honor of 1SG McKenna and every service member we remember today.
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