Management | INSYNC Management Solutions

Principles of War

Karl Von Clausewitz (1780-1831) was a Prussian who fought in the Russian Army in the early 19^th century and rose to the rank of General. He started his military training at the age of 12 as a member of the officers’ corps of the Prussian Army and witness some of the most decisive European battles of the times. He was a renowned German military leader and strategist and documented his theories and observations from the battlefields into what is now referred to as the 9 Principles of War.

These 9 principles, or variations thereof, have become standard doctrine for most military forces and are taught to military leaders at all levels. They have endured significant changes in the way war is waged and are as relevant today as on the battlefield at the advent of firearms and artillery.

It’s not too difficult to draw a comparison between Clausewitz and the modern business theorist, Peter Drucker who established many of the guiding principles of modern business management and leadership. Whilst comparing business to battle is a long bow to draw, there are some very similar challenges faced by leaders in the board room as on the battlefield.

Here are the 9 Principles of War as composed by Clausewitz and modified to provide some context for business. See if you can draw a comparison between your workplace and leadership challenges and how they may be used to help you lead your troops to success.

Objective. In battle, the objective is the feature that must be seized, captured, or destroyed. It is the purpose of the mission and the reason for the battle. It is vital that the commander has a clear understanding of the objective and communicates it effectively to every officer and soldier in his command in order to take the objective. The development of clear objectives is equally important in business as is the need to communicate them to all staff in a clear and concise manner. In the business context, the objective is often written as a mission or purpose statement. It’s important that the objective is achievable and than everyone in the organisation is clear about their part to play in capturing the objective.

Offensive. The offensive is the strategy executed to achieve the objective. It should be the most decisive way to seize, capture or destroy the objective. There are often many simultaneous battles waged within the ‘theatre of war’, so it is critical that all troops understand their freedoms and constraints and the limits of exploitation to prevent blue-on-blue clashes or interference with other missions. In business, you must also develop an effective strategy and execute that strategy decisively without overreaching.

Mass. Mass refers to the employment of your full combat power on to the objective rather than just the concentration of forces at a set time and place. This is referred to as synchronisation and is a more holistic approach to the use of force than to converge troops onto the objective. This reduces the exposure of your troops to enemy fire and allows you to achieve more decisive results. In business be careful not to concentrate all your effort on one sector of the market. Where you do focus your efforts, use the breath of your entire organisational capability to secure the victory rather than concentrating the effort of one branch.

Economy of Force. In contrast to the use of mass, economy of force is the offset needed to conserve combat capability. These two principles must be employed in balance to prevent the premature reduction or loss of combat power. Ensure you know how much of your business resources you can afford to dedicate to taking your objective and what your limit of exploitation is. In other words, know when to hold back, stop or even redeploy your efforts.

Manoeuvre. Manoeuvre is the shaping of the battlefield by the deployment and redeployment of troops and military equipment in relation to the enemy, for the purpose of gaining advantage over the objective. Manoeuvre is used to exploit enemy weaknesses, preserve own troops’ freedom of action, and direct firepower for best effect. Being flexible and able to pivot is critical to business in the modern world. Ensure your business is prepared to embrace change and that manoeuvre is core to your long-term business strategy.

Unity of Command. The decisive action necessary for the achievement of the objective requires all troops to fight under the direction of a single commander. This is not to say that there is only one leader responsible for directing forces, but rather there is one commander who is the ultimate decision-maker and executor of the mission. All other leaders and followers must support the commander’s intent if the objective is to be taken. This can be very challenging in the current business climate. The adoption of Servant Leadership as the dominant approach to leading and juggling decentralised command or “employee empowerment”, doesn’t remove the responsibility of the leader to issue clear directions or subordinate leaders and employees from following them.

Security. The best defence is a good offence, but never forget to maintain security as it enhances your freedom of action. You must identify your vulnerabilities and mitigate enemy attacks before they can disrupt your operations. Security is developed from the market intelligence you gather, and the surveillance of your competition. It allows you to anticipate their actions and manoeuvre to counter their disruption of the market or impact on your business.

Surprise. You should always attack your enemy at a time and place of your choosing when he is least prepared or able to defend or counter-attack. Surprise and the swift application of mass can upset the enemy’s momentum and shift the balance of power in your favour. Innovation and speed to market are two effective ways to use the principle of surprise in a business context.

Simplicity. Your battle plans must be clear, concise, and complete, leaving no doubt in the minds of your troops as to what needs to be done to take the objective. The development of simple plans is not easy and requires the removal of uncertainty and complexity through wargaming and other similar techniques. In the same way, your business plan must be clear and easily understood by everyone in your organisation. Developing simple plans helps to overcome the inertia that prevents the effective execution of so many business plans.

True Resilience

A lot has been written about the need for leaders to be resilient, and for good reason. Leadership is hard and the business world and life, in general, can be brutal and unforgiving, but what does it really mean to be resilient? Websters’ dictionary defines resilience as:

the capability of a strained body to recover its size and shape after deformation caused especially by compressive stress; and
an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change.

Both of these definitions are predicated on reacting to some force, misfortune, or change that has impacted the object, in this case the leader, and the object’s ability to recover and adapt to the force or change.

Despite not having a thick hide or razor-sharp claws and teeth, humans have adapted to natural forces and changes for thousands of years and survived to become the dominant species on the planet.

This has been due, in part, to our large brains, our endurance, and our reliance on our social networks, our tribes. It was also because we were able to evolve and adapt to the harsh climate and environment. Since the origins of mankind, our evolution has aligned perfectly with Darwin’s theory of evolution which states that all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural selection of small, inherited variations that increase the individual’s ability to compete, survive, and reproduce.

It’s our ability to endure physical and emotional stress and to incrementally adapt to it, that has allowed us to evolve and succeed as a species. In essence, our evolution and survival has really been a case of “what didn’t kill us, truly did make us stronger”. 

Resilience is a critical ability needed by all leaders in order to deal with the myriad of forces that impact them on a daily basis.

So why is it some leaders seem to be more resilient than others? What’s their secret?

Well, it might just be that the need to be resilient has been over-stated, as it is far better to build your capacity and strength to deal with these forces and changes at the time and not be impacted in a way that takes you down resulting in needing to get back up. Leaders need to be mentally, physically, and spiritually tough. They need to be able to take a punch and keep punching back. Applying the current guidance, resilience would be the equivalent of being a boxer who gets knocked down and gets back up and continues this cycle until he can’t get back up anymore.

It’s far better to spend time learning how to anticipate the punches, and training to develop your physical strength and mental toughness so you don’t get knocked down at all.

How we respond to modern forces and changes and the stresses they thrust upon us, impact how our bodies cope with the release of stress hormones. The primary hormonal mediators of the stress response, glucocorticoids and catecholamines, have both protective and damaging effects on the body. In the short term, glucocorticoids promote the conversion of protein and lipids to usable carbohydrates. Glucocorticoids also act on the brain to increase appetite for food and to increase locomotor activity and food seeking behaviour (Leibowitz and Hoebel 1997). This can adversely affect regulating behaviours that control energy input and expenditure.

Glucocorticoids can be an essential source of energy if you need to run a kilometre to evade a predator but will likely have negative health effects if the stress is caused by a business deadline that has you stuck behind your keyboard eating junk food and drinking soft drink or coffee, for hours on end.

Being inactive whilst having chronically elevated levels of glucocorticoids can interfere with the action of insulin and reduce glucose uptake causing insulin levels to increase. The combination of elevated levels of insulin and glucocorticoids cause an increase in body fat deposits and can cause the formation of atherosclerotic plaques in the coronary arteries (Brindley and Rolland 1989).

So how do we train ourselves to be better able to deal with stress and be more resilient?

Sports science has embraced and used incremental physical stress (exertion) as a means of adapting the body to ever increasing loads or effort. This exertion has a neurological impact on the body through the nervous system but does not result in the sort of anxiety disorders, depressive illness, hostile and aggressive states, substance abuse, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), cardiovascular disease (CVD) and other systemic disorders related to mental stress. This is an important distinction as stress is stress, regardless of whether it is physical or mental.

So why doesn’t physical stress cause illness? Well it can and it does; however, the brain will generally not allow the body to accept more physical stress than it’s comfortable dealing with, as a safeguard to prevent injury.

Elite military units and Special Forces know this, and invest heavily in the development of their troop’s mental toughness. They know that the mind will give in well before the body. The Navy Seals have called this the 40% Rule. This is where most ‘normal’ people will give up when physical activity seems too hard, even though they have only used 40% of their energy reserves.  It is possible to train your mind to override your natural instinct to quit and keep ‘pushing through the pain’ if you have the determination and grit to do so. This can be very dangerous and it’s critical that you honestly know your limits otherwise, you can suffer from Rhabdo-my-olysis, the breakdown of skeletal muscle commonly known as muscle-meltdown. Muscle breakdown causes the release of myoglobin into the bloodstream. Myoglobin is the protein that stores oxygen in your muscles. If you have too much myoglobin in your blood, it can cause renal failure, kidney damage, and death. This is just one example of how overstressing the body can result in very dire consequences.

But humans often and very deliberately subject themselves to high levels of physical stress we call exercise and the result, very more often than not, is an increase in physical strength, speed, endurance, or whatever physical attribute is enhanced by the specific activity undertaken. The body adapts to the activity. This is known as the SAID principle (Specific Adaption to Imposed Demands). In other words, the body adapts to whatever stress it is subjected to. The more the body is exposed to the activity, the less it is negatively impacted.

It is of course possible to overtrain and become injured. The incremental improvements to the body occur over long periods and require not only the stimulus of exercise but also the recovery provided by adequate rest and nutrition.

The mental stress endured by people working long hours under poor conditions with no ability to take a break from the stress is what causes negative health effects. Unlike exercise where you undertake a high degree of physical stress for a relatively short period, followed by rest and nutrition, people often work under very high stress loads for long periods of time and this is not good.

There are only really three things that can be done to change this. You can quit your job and find something to do that doesn’t cause you a high level of mental stress, but this is not particularly desirable or even possible for most people especially if you have invested a lot of time and effort in advancing your chosen career. The second way is to create a work environment where there is an understanding of the negative effects of stress on workers. In this scenario, the leaders in the organisation must understand the impact they have on the employee’s levels of stress and take real and positive steps to monitor and manage stress levels. The third way is to develop the mental toughness needed to be able to cope with elevated levels of stress so that over time these stress levels become normalised in the same way as incremental increases in exercise effort develops muscle.

In my experience, the best way to deal with stress in the workplace is a combination of good leadership and the development of mental toughness.

Being mentally tough and resilient is critically important so you can weather incremental forces and changes, and adapt to them over time. The way to develop your mental toughness is through exposure to periods of adversity over long spans of time. It’s also worth noting that practicing techniques for reducing stress such as meditation and mindfulness provide rest and recovery for the mind. Keeping fit through regular exercise and eating a healthy diet where you limit or abstain from coffee, soft-drink and alcohol, and definitely from smoking, will contribute to your overall health, well-being, and resilience.

I hope this has given you a different perspective on what it means to be resilient and a couple of ideas for how you can increase your personal resilience. But remember, as leaders it’s our responsibility to ensure that those we lead are kept safe from unnecessary stress and are given the opportunity to develop the mental toughness they need to cope when the conditions that cause stress are unavoidable.

Accountability

Whenever staff hear executives and leaders use the “A word”, that’s ‘accountability, they collectively become defensive and feel targeted for blame. Their shoulders drop, they look down and feel the burden of responsibility for all past, present or future business failures.

In business, the term accountability has taken on a very negative connotation because of the way it’s being used. The Oxford Dictionary defines being accountable as being:

“responsible for your decisions or actions and expected to explain them when you are asked”

The words used in this definition are very important and deliberately do not mention results or outcomes. That’s not to say that we should never be held responsible for the result of our actions and there are many examples where we should. Acting inappropriately, unethically, negligently or illegally are examples where individuals or groups must be held to account, not only for their actions but also their outcomes.

However, in business we need our people to feel comfortable and empowered to extend themselves, try new approaches, be innovative, and take appropriate risks. No one is going to do this if their leaders hold them accountable for the outcome when things go wrong. There are many factors that affect results and outcomes that are completely outside the control of the individual; thus, leaders should only hold their staff accountable for those things that are in their control. To coin a military phrase, this is because “the enemy has a say in your plan”. If outcomes were guaranteed and forgone conclusions, every business would be equally successful. What we want from our staff is that they perform their duties in a manner that maximizes the likelihood of success and reduces the risk of failure.

Leaders need to be very clear with their staff about exactly what they mean when they tell them that they are accountable. Doing this correctly sets clear expectations and builds trust.

“People perform at their best when they feel at their best”

Daniel Goleman

Being accountable means doing what’s right to the best of your ability. It means treating others with respect, being of good character, being loyal to your organization, your leadership and your colleagues, and living according to your values and those of the organization. It means making well informed decisions and preforming actions based on those decisions. These are the non-negotiable accountable items. If you do these well, the chance of the outcome being positive is greatly improved, but if not successful, it is clear that you did everything you could and that’s all you could be expected to do.

The message leaders should tell their staff is that being accountable is about being of good character, being loyal, and doing what’s right. It’s about making informed decisions and acting accordingly and it’s about living your values. These are the things you are accountable for.

The 7 Ps

You may have heard the old saying, proper prior planning prevents piss poor performance or some similar variant of the “7 Ps”. Well, here’s my take on how to make sure you are prepared to handle anything using 7 “P” words.

Planning

“Failing to plan is planning to fail”. All planning falls into two basic categories, simple and complex. But, regardless of how simple or complex the plan needs to be, all good plans consist of the same core components. These components, in their simplest form, are the “who, what, where, when, how, and how much”, needed to satisfy all requirements and achieve the outcome, commonly referred to as the objective. If you want to dive deeper into the planning process, check out our posts on Immediate Action Plans and the Planning Process.

Perspective

During the development of the plan, it’s crucial to understand why the objective is important and who it’s important to? Often the plan will form part of a larger strategy. In the military, we give consideration to what’s known as the “Commanders Intent 1Up and 2Up”. This allows you to develop your plan with the wider organisational context in mind rather than in a vacuum as is so often the case.

When drafting the plan, you must possess the requisite foresight to ensure the plan starts with the end in mind and the objective is central and remains the primary focus. There is an old saying, “the surgery was a great success, but the patient died”. Not understanding the wider context that connects the plan to the bigger picture may mean the objective of the plan is achieved, but the execution and delivery don’t align with the organisation’s values or ethical standards, or it may negatively impact broader organisational objectives. Understanding the Commander’s Intent means you can remain flexible and manoeuvre and change the plan to meet strategic objectives.

Performance

Dwight D. Eisenhower once said, “Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable”. What’s meant by this is that the process of researching, developing, testing, and executing the plan is where the value lays. The plan itself is like a map and is something to follow and keeps you on track for the objective, but the dogmatic execution of the plan itself is not the objective of the plan. The desired outcome is the objective. The measure of the success of the plan is never how Ridgely you were able to stick to the plan, but rather how successfully you were able to achieve the desired outcome. If the planning process was done properly, the two should align, but to quote the famous philosopher Iron Mike Tyson “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth”. The execution of the plan, sustainment of momentum, and focus on the objective are the key aspects that need to be monitored and controlled.

Persuasion

Plans are written for people. Good plans contain all the information needed to achieve the objective and are written in a way that is easy to understand. These plans are simple in their format, logical in their structure, and consistent in their content. The aim of any plan is to enable those executing it to have no doubt about the activities needed to achieve the desired outcome. But this is only half of what makes a good plan!

All plans need to be approved by someone in your organisation who understands the outcome needed but has probably not been involved in the planning process. Your plan needs to clearly demonstrate and communicate its strengths to this person ultimately responsible for signing it off.

Patience

Most plans are too ambitious and those responsible for drafting them almost always underestimate how long they will take to write and how long they will take to execute. Executing the wrong plan, or a poorly developed plan will result in the corresponding outcome. Not all plans need the same depth of planning, nor will you always have the luxury of all the time you need to fully research and develop every aspect of the plan. Having a planning process for the development of simple and complex plans is the best way to mitigate the risk of being caught in the ‘planning fog of war’.

A robust planning process will allow you to focus your effort on developing the content of the plan rather than on how to draft it. Having a planning process is effectively having a plan for how to develop a plan and will save you an enormous amount of time when you are given the responsibility to develop a plan at short notice. Having the knowledge that planning and the execution of the plan will take a lot longer than thought, it’s important that you don’t rush into solution mode. You need to spend the time needed to understand the situation, develop courses of action, analyse courses of action, and make a decision on the best way forward before drafting the plan.

Persistence

The best plans are those that are simple to understand and easy to execute. But even a bad plan can be made to work if the objective is clear and is led by a leader who has the drive and determination to see it through to the end. No plan, no matter how well researched and drafted, will be effective without a dedicated and effective leader in charge. A key planning consideration is flexibility, and a good leader will be able to modify the plan on the fly whilst maintaining focus on the objective.

Poise

The execution of a plan needs to be such that everyone involved has confidence in the plan and the leader’s ability to make it work. The leader needs to be intimately familiar with the plan and must be able to anticipate issues and constantly adjust the plan to achieve the outcome. An often-made statement is to “make a plan and stick to it”. Whilst this is somewhat apt, a better statement is “make the right plan and stick to it”. The role of the leader is to execute the right plan and in doing so it’s the leader’s responsibility to confidently inform all those involved of any changes needed to keep the plan on track. The leader must use critical thinking and logic to drive his decisions and must not allow emotion to cloud his judgment. The leader must believe in the plan and demonstrate an unwavering resolve to achieve the desired outcome. This belief in the plan will be contagious and coupled with the leader’s energy will create a sense of team spirit and momentum.

Group Think

Have you ever experienced a situation where you have been part of a well-intentioned group of people who have made an irrational or sub-optimal decision because you felt the need to conform to what you thought the group wanted or because not conforming seemed wrong or impossible? You may have succumbed to what’s known as Group Think.

Group Think can cause individuals to go against their personal beliefs and form a consensus with the group. This can be caused by a compelling narrative or a specific agenda as is often seen in both left-wing socialist organisations such as universities and many businesses today, to alt-right-wing supremacist groups.

Group Think is not new and can be traced back to the earliest times in human evolution, but it wasn’t until 1971 when Irving Janis published an article on the subject in a prominent psychological journal, that the phenomenon was properly characterised and given the term “Group Think”. Janis’s research found that decisions made by groups, particularly under stressful conditions, tended to be based on a desire for harmony rather than on critical thinking.

Individuals often reframe from expressing their true thoughts and tend to be more ‘agreeable’ and less likely to express doubts or exercise their better judgment. The desire for harmony, fear of criticism, and avoidance of conflict lead to conformance with the popular narrative and can result in decisions being made that seem reasonable but are ethically and morally questionable.

Group Think plays out across the full spectrum of society from dogmatic political and religious ideology, school bullies, fanatical sports fans, and organisations that implement policies to conform with current business and social trends.

Group Think also extends to those who accept group decisions by not objecting to them. This can be as subtle as walking past someone being bullied and doing nothing, or agreeing with a poor decision in order to be seen as loyal to a friend, spouse, boss, or organisation. To paraphrase Jack Welch, today’s lack of candor is the dirty little secret of business.

When Group Think is prevalent, the group tends to act in solidarity and can ostracise those who are not part of the group or who think differently. At an organisational level, Group Think can lead to poor decision making and is synonymous with operating in an “Echo Chamber”. The impacts of decisions made as a result of Group Think can be significant and range from common business decisions like ‘positive discrimination’ or ‘minority balancing’ to social policy or even riots and war.

It’s up to leaders to develop, support, and even demand open, honest, and frank discourse as a means to prevent Group Think from tainting their decision-making process. The next time you are in a meeting really think about the topic being discussed and have the courage and conviction to state your views without fear and with the knowledge that others are probably thinking the same thing but aren’t prepared to speak up. If you don’t feel you can do this, you should reconsider if you are part of an organisation that values you, your experience, and your input.

Discipline will set you free

Motivation is fantastic. Motivation is the thing that gets you out of bed in the morning. It gets you to the front door and inspires you to open the door to look outside. But then you discover it’s raining and your motivation wavers. You think, I’m not giving up, but I’m not going out! I’ll just start tomorrow. The next day your alarm goes off, you get out of bed, get dressed, and go to the front door. You open the door and it’s raining again, and you think to yourself wow, two days in a row, I need a better plan. You go back inside and convince yourself that tomorrow will be the day. Then the next day you get up and go to the door and this time it’s freezing cold, so, you think I don’t have the right gear to go outside and do this. I’d love to do it and I really want to, but it’s just so cold.

This is the problem with relying solely on motivation. Motivation will get you out of bed and to the door but it falters easily, leaving you standing looking into the cold, wet abyss. What motivation won’t do is force you to take your first step outside and every other step after that. It won’t make you commit to taking real action and achieving real results. That takes commitment and it takes discipline.

Motivation is great at inspiring you and getting you to the door, but it’s like eating sugar for energy. Its effect dissipates quickly and leaves you feeling empty and needing more. Discipline, on the other hand, gives you the sustained energy and power to continue through the pain, doubt, and difficulty. Despite the hardship, discipline is the driving force, when your motivation fades. Discipline will see you through the pain and allow you to ‘just do it’, to quote the Nike ad.

Discipline is the driving force that underpins the success of whatever you want to achieve, and the good news is discipline is something you can develop. Discipline comes from being able to create a vision of where you want to go, a plan for how you want to get there, and having the will to execute the plan. Most people fail because they don’t have a plan or the will to execute it and try to use motivation to inspire action. This is unsustainable and will lead to failure unless it transmutes into discipline. Motivation is just your vision! Everything else is self-discipline.

Discipline has an amazing, almost illogical way of setting you free. Developing discipline normally results in establishing systems, processes, and routines. Your discipline drives you to stick to your routine and refine your systems and processes until they become habitual. Forming good habits will help you to focus and get stuff done. Being disciplined and forming good habits doesn’t mean being dogmatic or refusing to evolve or change your habits over time. On the contrary, being disciplined means always searching for ways to be more effective and efficient to make sure the discipline you apply is appropriate to achieve the outcome you desire. Process is important but purpose is king.

Developing discipline requires mental toughness. It means being serious about what you want, really serious. It also means being committed. You must be serious and committed if you really want to achieve your desired goals. Your desire to succeed must outweigh all your other desires such as pleasure and comfort, like going back to bed on a cold, wet morning. According to Tony Robbins, there are only two motivating factors in life. Pleasure and pain. The pleasure derived from achieving your goals must outweigh the pain endured in attaining them, otherwise, you will quit and won’t succeed.

There are also different types of discipline. The best discipline is self-discipline. Self-discipline is the discipline you place upon yourself that makes you do the things you need to do with no external pressure. It’s your drive, your ambition, your focus, and your commitment to succeed.

Then there’s group discipline. Group discipline is a form of discipline where someone, normally a leader, commander, or manager, enforces discipline through the threat of some sort of reprisal. It also manifests in the form of individuals not wanting to let down the leader or the group they are a part of. Group discipline results from individuals demonstrating their self-discipline in a group setting to achieve a common outcome, goal, or mission. Group discipline is used to great effect by organisations like the military and sporting teams where the mission must come first and failure is not an option.

Then there’s a third type of discipline which is generally negative and is dealt out to people as a form of punishment. This can take the form of correcting poor form, preventing someone from doing something they shouldn’t, or being punished for doing something unlawful or foolish.

Performance management can be considered a type of discipline especially when there are consequences for underperformance. This discipline takes the form of correcting a problem to bring the person back in line with expectations. Discipline also extends to the legal system in the form of laws that if broken will result in punishment. The mere threat of punishment for breaking laws is enough to ensure most people maintain the expected level of discipline or acceptable standard.

As a leader, it’s important to understand all three types of discipline so you can develop self-discipline in yourself and your staff, apply group discipline to your team and enforce rules and the law when necessary.

So, while motivation may get you out of bed in the morning, it’s discipline that will help you drive results and achieve your goals. Discipline will save you time, reduce uncertainty and risk, and improve your overall performance. Discipline will help you focus and take control, allowing you to achieve your goals every time, unlike motivation which will fade in and out and only return limited success.

Ultimately, discipline will set you free.

Fit not Fix

Good leaders leverage the strengths of those in their charge and render their weaknesses irrelevant. They ‘fit’ them to roles that suit their strengths rather than try to fix their weaknesses.

Too often leaders feel that any employee should be able to do any job that they are tasked with. This is just not right. This is the same as trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. Is it any wonder why there are so many performance issues in organisations today.

Leaders need to understand that people possess specific and unique skills that differ from person to person. Some people possess skills more appropriate to working in collaboration in large groups whilst other people possess skills more suited to working individually and on analytic tasks. Effective leaders identify individual’s skills and strengths and match those individuals with the right tasks. Ineffective leaders waste valuable time and effort trying to shape people in ways they aren’t suited.

A great sports metaphor speaks of playing to your strengths and this is the same in business. This doesn’t mean it’s OK to ignore weakness; however, believing that you will turn and individual’s weakness into their strength is false hope. It is far better to identify individual areas of strength and to further develop those than it is to expect transformational change based on an amount of ‘gap training’. As it’s rare in organisations for any effort to be based on an individual rather than a team, identifying each person’s strengths and directing them accordingly will return the best results.

Teams are only as strong as their weakest member. Having each member of the team work at their highest and best potential means engaging them in their specific areas of strength. Any perceived weakness of any of the individuals in the team should be addressed by allocating a team member who has the requisite strength in that area. While this may sound like identifying a problem and ignoring it, this is more akin to ensuring that each individual team member is employed to utilise their specific experience, knowledge, and skills to their best effect.

Planning Process

If you’ve spent time working in middle or upper management in any business, you would have participated in, or possibly led a planning session. I’m also going to bet, most of you have been involved in a planning session where it was crystal clear that the person in charge had absolutely no idea what they were doing and everything seemed made up then and there!

I hear this complaint so often I’m sharing the technique I use, and teach, for how to facilitate a planning session. I’m not talking about the simple, ad hoc ‘who, what, where, when, how, and how much’, planning sessions, although they are also problematic so follow the link to my article on developing Immediate Action Plans. I’m talking about detailed and often complex planning, necessary to effect change, implement a new initiative, or solve a “Wicked Problem“.

Whether the planning needed is very simple or extremely complex you need a process to follow; otherwise, you really don’t know what you are doing! Imagine if you had a simple, repeatable, scalable process to guide you through your planning session anytime you need to be “that person in charge”.

You’d be surprised how many organisations don’t have structured planning processes in place. Some organisations use processes such as the Observe, Orientate, Decide , Act Loop, ( OODA-loop), Multi-criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA), or even Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA).

Being a former member of the Australian Army, I’ve been trained in the use of the Military Appreciation Process (MAP), and in the years since leaving the military, I have used an adaptation of the MAP to help structure my planning. I have also taught this process to clients to help them add structure to their planning sessions.

I have included my version of the MAP based planning process in this article as a model you can use to guide you through your future planning session. This planning model is deliberately basic on the surface to make it easy to interpret and allow you to start using it straight away. With a little training, you can dive into the detail, unpack its power and use it to guide you through the development of very complex plans to address even the most difficult problems.

To employ the model, start in the centre, work your way out, and then work clockwise from blue to red, to orange, and finally green. Like most processes, this model is iterative, so when you get to the end, you may choose to continue to use the model to further refine your plans over time.

“In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”

General Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Good Follower?

There can be no leadership without followers. The problem is, some followers are better than others!

Some followers follow a leader out of necessity, such as their lives depend on it, others follow out of a genuine belief in the cause or the message, whilst some follow out of sheer curiosity! Some will refuse to follow or will be disruptive and difficult because they don’t trust or believe in the leader, or they feel they should be the leader. Aristotle said:

“He who cannot be a good follower cannot be a good leader.”

This is as true today as at any time in history. But does this mean being a follower is an experience necessary for becoming a good leader?

Many people are able to understand how their subordinates think and feel, and don’t need to experience good or bad leadership to know the difference. They possess the ability to lead well through their empathy, genuine good character, and the application of sound leadership principles. An example of this is Officer training in the military. I have seen some very good leaders who started their careers as Officer Cadets, having never followed a leader outside of the home, school, or sporting teams.

I have also seen some not-so-good leaders who served as soldiers before transferring to become Officers. This is not to say that it plays out one way or the other all of the time and I know many outstanding converts. However, it is likely that effective leaders who start their journey higher up the leadership ladder already possessing the foundations needed to be a good leader will climb higher.

I always stress to clients and mentees that there are no born leaders. Leaders are shaped by their environment, their experience, their conditioning, and the wisdom of their mentors. Starting out higher up the leader ladder doesn’t contradict Aristotle’s notion that you must first be a good follower.

No matter where you start your leadership journey, you will almost always be subordinate to one or more other leaders; thus, you may be a leader to some, but you will likely be a follower to others. Those who ascend directly to positions of leadership still need the ability to be good followers or at least understand what it takes to be loyal to a leader. After all, we all wear different ‘hats’ as we ascend as leaders and it is rare that anyone reports to no one! If you have empathy for those who follow you, you don’t need to spend as much time being a follower in order to become a good leader. However, if you are a leader of some and a follower of others, as most are, you need to be loyal to your leader and always strive to align your leadership of others with your “leader’s intent”.

The risk of being a long-term follower with no leadership responsibility is that it can have the unintended consequence of conditioning you to believe that you are not cut out to be a leader. Being a follower can be a comfortable existence, especially if you are led by a highly competent leader who is truly empathetic and takes care of all your needs. Prolonged periods of ‘servitude’ to such a leader may condition you to need others to make decisions for you and not allow you to develop self-belief and confidence in your ability to lead. If you can’t visualise yourself out in front, taking charge and making decisions, you probably can’t lead.

Whilst you don’t strictly need to have been a follower to be a good leader, you do need to know how to follow first. It’s comparable to being an academic such as a teacher with no real-world experience in the subjects you teach.

As you mature as a leader you will likely come to realise that Servant Leadership is arguably the most effective way to lead. Servant Leaders understand that the role of a leader is to enable and grow your followers by serving them. This is not to say that you are their servant, but rather, you take on the role of the leader who ensures your followers are given every opportunity to succeed and you clear any roadblocks for them. Your position as a leader is both a privilege and a responsibility, not a right or a reward.

Making the Least Worse Decision

Being a leader means you are going to have to make decisions. You can’t sit on the fence or allow fear or inertia to prevent you from taking action. Your decisions won’t always be correct but you must be willing to make them and you must be prepared to be wrong and accept responsibility for any consequences.

There’s an old saying; “a 90% solution on time is better than a 100% solution too late”. I tend to agree with this statement and have applied it to great effect over many years. There is another interesting fact about decisions. They’re seldom 100% correct and almost never 100% wrong. This means your decisions are likely to be praised by those who agree and ridiculed by those who don’t.

Making a decision and acting on it doesn’t mean you are right, but it does mean you must be willing to be wrong. We don’t always have all the information or time needed to make the perfect decision, so we need to learn how to commit to the ‘least worse decision‘ based on the best information available at the time.

Leaders have to be willing to make a decision and stick to it. My caveat for this is “make the RIGHT decision and stick to it”.

So how do you that?

Good decision making is a critical skill for any leader. It’s well documented that most people are not rational when it comes to making decisions and most decisions are emotionally driven and based on individuals or group biases disguised as ‘experience’. You only have to look at the current geopolitical decisions being made by leaders who are not thinking critically and are being pressured by group bias and emotion, to see how bad this problem can get.

Leaders need to hone their decision-making skills and one of the best ways to do this is through the study and application of critical thinking. I highly recommend to anyone responsible for making decisions, that they read Daniel Kahneman’s “Thinking Fast and Slow”. I also recommend “Think Smarter” by Michael Kallet as it provides some very practical ways to apply critical thinking to decision making. Leaders need to lead with less emotion and cognitive bias, and more critical thought and logic. This is the foundation of good decision making.

At the same time, leaders need to have the courage to lead and that means they must be prepared to make decisions. Collaboration is important but, in the end, if you are in charge you better be prepared to stand up and make a decision, or get out of the way and let the leader make it for you!

« Older Entries

Next Entries »