4 Business Management Lessons from Napoleon

General at 26, then first Consul of the young French Republic, and then self-crowned Emperor of the French: Napoleon Bonaparte surely was, in the war field as well in politics, the prototype of the successful leader.

His final defeat even consists in a turning page for human history: The Vienna Congress, (convened after Waterloo and his tragic capitulation) marks the end of the “Modern Era” and the beginning of the “Contemporary Era” according to most historians.

But let’s get back on the topic: which are the useful lessons about Business We can learn from this amazing, contradictory historical character?

Well, I found four of them:

Administration

Everything in France was duly noted and passed on the Ministry in Paris. Census were taken all over the places, concerning all over the social and economic aspects: how many people, how many young boy or girls in scholar ages, average of cultivable acres for persons, how many pharmacies or drug stores and so on… A detailed top-down system with appointed administrators accountable to the central government was put in action to inform the Emperor about what were people asking for, what were they needing, fears, ambitions or moods. Making story short: Statistics. Napoleon was fond of statistic, and He wanted those to be analysed in order to help taking the best choice. Just like everyone in a market shall analyse carefully what their targets wants, their wishes, the trends.

Sense of belonging

Another great success of “le General” was to build a strong Camaraderie among his soldiers first, but also among public employees and population in general. The “Nationalism” as an ideology was taking root during that period, and Napoleon was very smart to instil the “sense of belonging” thanks to public education, military parades, civil awards. A parallelism on nowadays business it is easily found on the concept of Brand Identity Strategy, defined by Robert Aaker as “a set of processes that include the coordinated efforts of the brand strategists in: 1) developing, evaluating, and maintaining the brand identity/identities; 2) communicating the brand identity/identities to all individuals and groups (internal and external to the firms) responsible for the firm’s marketing communications.” (r. Aaker, Building Strong Brands, 1996)

Flexibility

This can actually be seen, at first glance, as a contradiction with point n.1 (Administration), but it really isn’t. Napoleon hated planification. Even on the War field, He despised plans for the future. “On s’engage, puis on voit” was one of his most famous mottos. “We go into it, and then We’ll see”. Napoleon was confident of his men. He was so after having studied carefully his point of strength and weakness, and enemy’s ones for sure. But He didn’t want any rigid strategy. The more flexible, the more suitable to change vis-à-vis the circumstances, the more effective. And, easy to link, same thing in business. Using the word of Asiyeh Attar, a Marketing Executive from UAE, “a flexible marketing strategy gives a business the opportunity to respond to changing markets, changing trends in the market, new opportunities as well as newly discovered gaps caused by lapses by competitors”

 Vertical mobility

Strictly related with the point n.2 (Sense of belonging), the ability to satisfy ambitions even of the lowest classes was one of the best tools Napoleon had for building consensus on his Empire. A research shows how approximately the 75% of the officials in the French Army originally started from the lowest rank. Thousands of people could see their goals be satisfied, becoming notables, traders, doctors despite the economic or social conditions from where they start. Needless to say, that meant thousands of voices cheering at celebrating the Emperor. I see in this a great example for team-building and to gain loyalty among the employees: a true meritocratic system that awards the efforts of any member of the crew, despite their initial ranking position. Everybody’s equal, and everybody’s can equally raise