The classic military strategist, Karl Von Clausewitz, speaks
of the necessity of focus in war. For him, the thing to do is determine the
single most basic source of the enemy’s power and then apply all of one’s
resources to the destruction of that source. Everything else becomes second to
the destruction of the enemy in one single rapid action. If we want an image to
represent this approach, we might think of a wedge being driven into a block of
wood. The goal is to apply enough resources to split the wood in one blow. When
this is accomplished, the enemy is broken and obliged to submit to the victor’s
will. This approach works very well for a few things. Mostly, it works for
splitting wood. It might, might, work
well in war when leaving a wake of carnage and destruction is an acceptable
route to your goal, but it is a terrible way to do almost anything else.
When we
speak of leading organizations, we need to make some adjustments to Clausewitz.
We all ultimately rely on other humans to help us achieve our goals. The person
who experiences life at the end of the wedge – the one who is labeled as an
obstacle – and subsequently feels the crush of the leader’s unrelenting will,
never actually goes away. These humans do not die. They do not disappear. In
many instances they continue to live in the same region and continue to work,
perhaps even in the same field, as they did before. The leader has exerted
enormous resources on an objective which is little more than a mirage.
A few years ago I worked for the
subsidiary of a large corporation. Our small branch received a new leader who
applied the Clausewitz approach to some staff members he found lacking. They
were shown the door. The problem was that these people had been born and raised
in the town where the entire corporation was based. They had friends and family
to support them. They quickly found other work and were successful. Fast-forward
three years and two of the dismissed individuals had become extremely
successful, to the point of being appointed to the board of the corporation.
Guess what then happened to Colonel Von Clausewitz?
No, if we want an image for leading
an organization, smashing a wedge into wood isn’t it. Perhaps a better image is
an automobile driving along the highway. Certainly, an automobile was made to
move forward. To allow it to sit still is to rob it of its purpose, but as it
moves forward it must deal with the realities of physics. It experiences
friction as it pushes through the atmosphere, and the harder it pushes the more
friction it encounters. In other words, the harder the car pushes, the harder
the world pushes back. The automobile needs power to overcome this friction. It
needs an engine and that engine needs fuel. The faster the automobile wants to
go, the larger the engine it needs and the more fuel it will consume. The range
is vast. There are few cars on the road which cannot reach 90 mph, but they can
typically drive amazingly long distances before they exhaust their fuel. Only a
handful can surpass 210 mph and these elite automobiles are wedge-shaped
machines with massive engines that exhaust their fuel in a matter of minutes.
Clausewitz would be proud.
As leaders, what kind of a car do
we want to be driving? The answer lies in understanding the dynamics of
friction and fuel and the myth of power. Let me propose to you that people are the
resistance we encounter in the world. They are also the fuel which drives the
engine of our organization. The harder we slam into one, the more we exhaust
the other. We want to move sufficiently slowly so as to preserve our fuel and
encounter minimal resistance. However, this approach literally doesn’t get us anywhere.
We are left piddling about on a side street while only marginally getting
closer to our goal. We need to find the ideal speed to responsibly use our
resources while still making progress. Science tells us that speed is somewhere
around 55 mph. Not exactly inspiring, but I think we can push that number up a
bit if we acknowledge that friction doesn’t have to be a bad thing. In fact,
friction is good. Friction says that our organization has presented something
new and unfamiliar to the world and the world is reacting to it. Is not that a
large part of our goal? However, where we fail is when we view friction as the
enemy. We believe it, and the people who cause it, must be conquered and
eliminated. This is a lie. Unlike an automobile, it is possible for an
organization to turn friction into fuel. . . if we aren’t moving too quickly.
When a person comes into contact
with our organization, when they slam into the front grill of our car and go
sliding along the body, we have a moment of contact in which to show them who
we are. We can tell them why we are pushing through their space, where we are
going, and what we are all about. If our cause is worthy, we have the chance to
convert that person to fuel. Obviously, we can’t turn every opponent into an
employee, but we can build relationships and partnerships. We can convince
others that our travel is a benefit to all. We can show them that they have a
place in our journey. At the very least, we can do our best to make sure that
the next time we encounter their resistance they don’t bring friends. But we
cannot do anything if we are moving at full speed. If we put achieving the goal
above people we will never achieve the goal, because people are the thing which
will get us there and people are the thing which will ultimately stop us. With
this in mind, it is obvious that we only need enough power to cause these
encounters to happen. Anything more is a waste. In fact, the pursuit of power
and manipulation of systems to obtain power is another mirage. It does nothing
for us and its application will work against us. A large engine exhausts our
fuel and makes it more difficult to get more.
Leadership isn’t the ability to
make and follow a plan. Anyone can do that. I teach people how to do that.
Leadership is the ability to bring others along for the journey. It is the
ability to move the organization forward while keeping the tank full. So, yes.
By all means, move forward. But don’t move forward resenting friction. Look for
it. Welcome it. The one questioning you is not an opponent to be conquered. She
is not an annoyance to be dismissed. He may be the very person you need to
accomplish the next step of the journey, but that does not happen if the leader
does not take the time to listen, hear, know, and communicate. Certainly, you
can ignore this. You can move forward as fast as possible pushing aside every
objection and individual in pursuit of the goal. In the end, you will find
yourself sitting alone in a cloud of smoke by the side of the highway wondering
if you should have been a lumberjack.
