Like many people I found myself in a buying panic on Black Friday. I havered over some wireless headphones, or a VR headset for the PS4 I don't have time to play, or an Amazon Echo but somehow couldn't bring myself to make a decision. In the end my Amazon basket contained only one item: Heinz Guderian's Panzer Leader. So I bought that and was left with faintly unsatisfied with my Black Friday efforts.
I shouldn't have been. Although a little dry, this is a really superb book on disruptive leadership in a time of colossal social and technological change. Although perhaps not so well known (seems that great strategists tend to be less popular than charismatic characters, see Montgomery vs Slim, Patton vs Abrams), Guderian was a revolutionary. He invented Blitzkrieg, amongst other things. A couple of ideas have particularly caught my attention in the early chapters, which I thought worth sharing.
1. Organising disruptive capabilities
One of Guderian's key realizations during the 1920s and 1930s was that rather than supporting the infantry, tanks should be massed together as a breakthrough weapon. His main argument is that eventually a countermeasure will be found for any new invention so whilst that invention is in the ascendancy it shouldn't be frittered away to prop up the competitiveness of the previous generation (in this case, infantry and cavalry). He was to be proved right. Even though France and Britain had many times more tanks than Germany and their machines were also individually superior, they deployed them piecemeal and were defeated in detail. Their new technology was forced to act with the constraints of the old.
It made me realize that businesses do this all the time with new technology and cultures. Revolutionary capabilities like AI are frittered away in innovation programs sitting around the old business. Digital divisions are saddled with old skool Marketing and IT as soon as it's possible to do so, thus destroying their speed of operation and innovativeness. No doubt there needs to be a transition into the mainstream at some point, but while they are still differentiating, new technologies and ideas should be kept separate to maximize their effectiveness. The rest of the organization should adapt to support.
2. The 'operational' sphere
We're all familiar with the concept of tactics - ploys effected in near real time to iteratively impact the local situation. Strategies are definitely more blurred. Getting away from the semantics of 'strategy is what you do', the reality is that the term is used to define sweeping, long term positional changes as well as relatively short term decision making. I've lost count of the number of times I've been invited to 'strategy' sessions for the next quarter of business at an account or even for a competitive pitch.
The German Army apparently didn't think this way. They had a third domain of action, which roughly translates as 'operational'. These are theatre-level ventures that ultimately impact the realization of the strategy but are decided on in near real time, like a tactic. So they are reactive, but also supportive of strategy.
I think this is interesting. We often think of 'operations' as the processes that combine forces and materials to create products and services. They are the opposite of reactive, being planned, well understood and regimented. In the business world, the equivalent of Guderian's operational domain would be reacting to acquire a smaller competitor as its economics begin to fail, or doubling down on a new product or market mid-cycle. My experience is that most corporates are fairly bad at this kind of thing as there's a disconnect between the intent of their strategy and the actions of their corporate development/ acquisitions group. Furthermore, most organizations lack a significant strategic reserve. Budgeting is a process where everyone asks for the maximum and then the business argues until every penny is allocated. The ability to react to opportunities at a corporate (as opposed to a BU) level is generally limited.
Maybe that needs to change. Everyone seems to accept that the pace of change is unique (reading Panzer Leader suggests that we know nothing about pace of change!), and yet we set our organizations up to react on an annual cycle. In hindsight that seems crazy.
So there we are. Two interesting things to come out of Black Friday...
"Alexa: what's the German for 'operational'?"
I shouldn't have been. Although a little dry, this is a really superb book on disruptive leadership in a time of colossal social and technological change. Although perhaps not so well known (seems that great strategists tend to be less popular than charismatic characters, see Montgomery vs Slim, Patton vs Abrams), Guderian was a revolutionary. He invented Blitzkrieg, amongst other things. A couple of ideas have particularly caught my attention in the early chapters, which I thought worth sharing.
1. Organising disruptive capabilities
One of Guderian's key realizations during the 1920s and 1930s was that rather than supporting the infantry, tanks should be massed together as a breakthrough weapon. His main argument is that eventually a countermeasure will be found for any new invention so whilst that invention is in the ascendancy it shouldn't be frittered away to prop up the competitiveness of the previous generation (in this case, infantry and cavalry). He was to be proved right. Even though France and Britain had many times more tanks than Germany and their machines were also individually superior, they deployed them piecemeal and were defeated in detail. Their new technology was forced to act with the constraints of the old.
It made me realize that businesses do this all the time with new technology and cultures. Revolutionary capabilities like AI are frittered away in innovation programs sitting around the old business. Digital divisions are saddled with old skool Marketing and IT as soon as it's possible to do so, thus destroying their speed of operation and innovativeness. No doubt there needs to be a transition into the mainstream at some point, but while they are still differentiating, new technologies and ideas should be kept separate to maximize their effectiveness. The rest of the organization should adapt to support.
2. The 'operational' sphere
We're all familiar with the concept of tactics - ploys effected in near real time to iteratively impact the local situation. Strategies are definitely more blurred. Getting away from the semantics of 'strategy is what you do', the reality is that the term is used to define sweeping, long term positional changes as well as relatively short term decision making. I've lost count of the number of times I've been invited to 'strategy' sessions for the next quarter of business at an account or even for a competitive pitch.
The German Army apparently didn't think this way. They had a third domain of action, which roughly translates as 'operational'. These are theatre-level ventures that ultimately impact the realization of the strategy but are decided on in near real time, like a tactic. So they are reactive, but also supportive of strategy.
I think this is interesting. We often think of 'operations' as the processes that combine forces and materials to create products and services. They are the opposite of reactive, being planned, well understood and regimented. In the business world, the equivalent of Guderian's operational domain would be reacting to acquire a smaller competitor as its economics begin to fail, or doubling down on a new product or market mid-cycle. My experience is that most corporates are fairly bad at this kind of thing as there's a disconnect between the intent of their strategy and the actions of their corporate development/ acquisitions group. Furthermore, most organizations lack a significant strategic reserve. Budgeting is a process where everyone asks for the maximum and then the business argues until every penny is allocated. The ability to react to opportunities at a corporate (as opposed to a BU) level is generally limited.
Maybe that needs to change. Everyone seems to accept that the pace of change is unique (reading Panzer Leader suggests that we know nothing about pace of change!), and yet we set our organizations up to react on an annual cycle. In hindsight that seems crazy.
So there we are. Two interesting things to come out of Black Friday...
"Alexa: what's the German for 'operational'?"
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