“Band of Brothers”
In their book, “The War for all the Oceans”, Roy Adkins and Leslie Adams give us a journey through the eyes of those participating in the battles for dominance of the seas during the Napoleonic Wars. Filled with firsthand accounts, the lens yields a brilliant view into and from within the players that created that history. It is a gold mine, full of insights and overflowing with unfiltered reality.
A must read chapter is “Battle of the Nile.” For me, it resonates with the importance of knowing your competition and your real estate (where you are competing), planning, innovation, and most of all, empowering your team to win. It also serves as a vivid example of how much the rigid controls of an adversary created wonderful opportunities for execution with agility and surprise. Our controls and predictability become the tools for our competition to overcome us. This is a point that September 11, 2001 made painfully clear to the world and those guardians blind and surprised.
An interesting insight is the origin of the term battleship; from line-of-battle ships. The important part of the name is the line-of-battle part. As you likely know, ships would form a tight line across from the enemy’s line and blast away until one was destroyed or retreated. It was a strategy with high consumption and high control as a business approach. It meant that bigger was better, more guns beat fewer guns, and the business model was pretty much set. Horatio Nelson thought that these paradigms of naval thinking might create an opportunity, and agile one.
I highly recommend at least a Google journey through that battle. In brief, the French were lined up for battle, just off an island in the Bay of Aboukir. With their backs protected, guns and staging were all set facing outward where the British fleet would set up for the fireworks. Night was approaching and conventional battles were fought during the day, so there was plenty of time before conflict. In brief, a group of the British fleet split off from the anticipated formation and navigated behind the French line. They did begin firing at night. The results were catastrophic for the French and legendary for the British. The successful event brought into use the term “Band of Brothers” for the fighting men (Shakespeare deserves the credit for the term. It comes from the wonderful soliloquy of Henry V on St. Crispin’s Eve before the Battle of Agincourt, another must read)
The Battle of the Nile is all about today. It is about our businesses and enterprises. It is about the proposal we are writing through this weekend. It asks us about our strategy and organization to go to market. It warns us that what made us strong yesterday makes us vulnerable tomorrow. It begs us to read Sun Tzu and to anticipate the unthinkable. It tells us not to forecast the actions of others with our own lenses and spyglasses, but look at ourselves from the outside, as customers and competitors do. It reminds us that capability in the hands of those to execute coupled with empowerment to adapt (do an OODA Loop) is essential. In fact, it is precisely what Storming Norman Schwarzkopf did in the first Gulf War.
So, do we want to get in line?
