January, 2000 - Volume 4, Number 4

Learning from the U.S. Civil War

With a better appreciation for the past, we might build a better future by learning from what worked. In Leadership Lessons from the Civil War, Tom Wheeler draws on battlefield visits and a career in telecommunications to discern what the Civil War generals can tell us about competition in the contemporary combat zone.

A protagonist in Tom Stoppard's Travesties declares, "War is capitalism with the gloves off," and Wheeler extends the point: "The history of military endeavor continues to be important for the lessons its teaches, especially the lessons about leadership. On the battlefield a leader's decisions take on a white-hot intensity, played out in full public view, with clear-cut winners and losers."

Among the teachings that Wheeler discovers in those white-hot decisions:

Avoid avoiding failure: Union General George B. McClellan waged what became known as the "Peninsula Campaign" in 1862 with such caution that he was soon rebuffed by a far smaller force under the command of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Lee often made high-stakes gambles, and Wheeler finds modern parallel in Coca-Cola's former CEO, Roberto Goizueta, who offered, "If you take risks, you may still fail. If you do not take risks, you will surely fail."

Come back from setback: Northern commander Ulysses S. Grant launched an assault on the south's Fort Donelson in 1862, but the attack failed, and his naval commander and field officers counseled withdrawal. Grant instead struck again, and the confederate commander surrendered his 17,000 soldiers. A modern analogue: The tenacity of Jerry Levin when he launched Home Box Office in the early 1970s. Levin overcame opposition and resistance from all quarters, even from his parent Time, Inc. In 1973, HBO had fewer than 13,000 subscribers. In 1992, Levin became chief executive of Time Warner (and in January, 2000 CEO of AOL Time Warner).

Transcend yesterday's tactics: On July 3, 1863, Robert E. Lee sent 15,000 southern troops in tight-packed lines across an open field to attack an entrenched Union line at Gettysburg. Under the command of General George Pickett, the attack proved disastrous, and twenty months later Lee surrendered his army to Grant in the courthouse at Appomattox. Napoleonic tactics had worked against inaccurate muskets, but the introduction of rifle boring made such tactics lethal. A contemporary example: Netscape-founder James Barksdale — a descendent of a confederate general from Mississippi who was killed leading an assault at Gettysburg — chose to avoid direct assault on Microsoft. Rather than defining itself as an internet browser, Netscape prospered by building itself instead as an online media company (it was later acquired by AOL, now part of AOL Time Warner).

Decisiveness decides: Union General Ambrose Burnside sent his 14,000 troops to cross a narrow bridge near Antietam on September 17, 1862. A hill on the far-side was held by fewer than 500 confederates, but they decimated the far larger northern force when Burnside could not bring himself to utilize several obvious ways around the bridge. Craig McCaw began building a cellular communications business in 1982, at a time when AT&T estimated that fewer than one million cellular customers could be subscribed by 2000. But McCaw pressed his wireless vision, and in 1994 he sold McCaw Communications to AT&T for $11.5 billion.

Source: Tom Wheeler, Leadership Lessons from the Civil War: Winning Strategies for Today's Managers (New York: Doubleday, 1999). A summary of the book's lessons can be found at htttp://www.civilwarleadership.com/.

Movers & Shakespeares

A new leadership development program relies upon ancient wisdom. Executive training on leadership and change — as well as on ethics, diversity, and communications — is based upon Shakespeare's eternal truths. The Bard boom now hits the board room, compliments of Movers & Shakespeares, the creation of Kenneth and Carol Adelman. He was an arms control director for the Reagan administration, she an official for the U.S. Agency for International Development.

William Shakespeare, chosen by BBC listeners as "Man of the Millennium," has been at the top of the charts for 400 years. That constitutes a long run, or, as a Hollywood writer might put it, "Shakespeare has legs."

Granted his overall popularity, what does Shakespeare bring to the executive suite? Two assets of Shakespearean grandeur. First is his keen awareness of what makes people tick. The Bard offers as astute depictions of human nature as anyone, and business hinges upon human motives as much as any element. Knowing human nature is a catalyst for success; not caring about human motives a prescription for failure.

Second, Shakespeare tells stories. Executives, like everyone, often learn best through accounts, and the Bard surely draws people in with some of the greatest stories ever told.

Movers & Shakespeares offers training seminars that run from a morning to a week. Drawing on their extensive experience in both government and private business, Carol and Ken work closely with clients such as Northrup Grumman Corporation to customize their program around the issues facing the company.

The Adelmans select a Shakespeare play to fit the program's purpose. For leadership, they draw on Henry V; for change, Taming of the Shrew; for corporate succession, ethics, and implementation, Julius Caesar; for risk assessment and management, Merchant of Venice; and for crisis management, Hamlet.

No depth knowledge of Shakespeare is required, nor must you pull on tights. Movers & Shakespeare prepares program participants by providing advance audio tapes about the plays that will be used in the program. Video stores carry a host of Shakespeare film productions, and they provide previews as well of what is to come in the classroom.
During the program, critical scenes of a play are shown from the video or read by volunteers, and participants dissect the text and meaning. Then, participants are divided into discussion groups to relate the lessons of the Shakespearean scenes to their own company practices. The groups then report back to everybody on whether and how the company handled the situation better than King Henry V, Portia, or Claudius.

At the conclusion of the program, the Adelmans direct and emcee a short performance with volunteers from among the participants. They are costumed (still, no tights) and they read from scripts of mini-scenes. The program is serious, emphasizing that "'tis the mind which makes the body rich," but the final message of the day is one that the Bard well appreciated: "No profit grows where is no pleasure taken."

Movers & Skakespeares' webpage is at <http://www.moversandshakespeares.com>. Ken Adelman is co-author with Norman R. Augustine (former chief executive of Lockheed Martin) of Shakespeare in Charge: The Bard's Guide to Leading and Succeeding on the Business Stage (Talk Miramax Books, 1999). Additional information on the company can be found in Doreen Carvajal's, "Once More Unto Shakespeare for Lessons on Leadership" New York Times, December 22, 1999. The latter is available here.

Leading with Speed

Wharton's fourth annual conference on leadership focus this year on Leading with Speed: Developing Leaders for Fast-Moving Organizations, and it will be held at the Four Seasons Hotel in Philadelphia on May 18, 2000.

Business firms and public organizations are learning to move fast before their markets and constituencies move past them. Fast-acting leadership is increasingly essential for companies and agencies to stay ahead of the curve. The challenge is to develop leaders who can make fast and accurate decisions and can implement strategies and create change at the speed of sound if not of light. A capacity to drive a fast-moving organization and to be a quick and nimble mover is an essential skill for leadership now and in the future.

Confirmed speakers include noted management authors and speakers Noel Tichy and Ram Charan; CEOs John Ross (Deutsche Bank Americas) and Mark Walsh (VerticalNet), distinguished academics Kathleen Eisenhardt (Stanford University), Edward Zajac (Northwestern University), Lawton Burns (Wharton School), and Pat Harker (Interim Dean of the Wharton School); consultant and author William Pasmore (Delta Consulting); and writer John Byrne (Business Week). The conference also features ImprovEdge, demonstrating how improvisational theater can be used to develop creativity, build teamwork, and foster fast thinking.

The deadline for conference registration is May 15, 2000 ("early bird" registration by March 31 comes with a discount). You can register online at:
http://www-management.wharton.upenn.edu/chr/registration.htm

Continually updated information on the conference can be found at:
http://leadership.wharton.upenn.edu/l_change/conferences/conf_051800.shtml

Leadership and Management

A three-week Senior Executive Program is offered from August 13 to September 2, 2000, by the Sasin Graduate Institute of Business Administration of Thailand's Chulalongkorn University in collaboration with the Wharton School and Kellogg School. The program is intended for senior managers moving into cross-functional or general management responsibilities with strong potential for top leadership.

The program is offered in English at a resort hotel southwest of Bangkok, and it draws participants from the Asian region, including Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, and Thailand. Wharton and Kellogg faculty provide instruction in accounting, economics, finance, leadership, marketing, organizational behavior, and strategic management.

For information on the program, contact Patcharaphorn Phantarathorn at patchara@sasa.sasin.chula.ac.th and see Sasin's web site for the Senior Executive Program at http://www.sep.sasin.chula.ac.th/.

Enron Corporation's "new power facilities in the Midwest are ‘way more expensive than a rigid powerplant,' says Enron President Jeffrey K. Skilling. But they will allow the company to add or subtract power from a grid in 20 seconds flat when demand – or price – changes suddenly. Enron controls the plants from its trading floor, so that if gas prices drop by a penny and power prices go up by a dollar a megawatt hour, it can flip switches immediately to respond.

"For most companies, the only way to move that rapidly is to retool management. A popular approach is to get fast in much the same way troops prepare for battle: Plan simultaneously for a variety of possibilities. At Solutia, Monsanto's chemical spinoff, strategists do scenario planning. That is, they plan for four different short-term outcomes for each initiative, setting up predetermined ‘signposts' to indicate when it's time to take another course. This, says chief scenario strategist Mitch Pulwer, enables Solutia to abandon a strategy or alter it in hours or days."

Source: Marcia Stepanek, "How Fast is Net Fast? Business Week E.Biz, November 1, 1999, pp. EB 52-54. The article can be viewed here.