Applying the principles of war to business leadership in times of crisis

This post is a section of a longer article I have written with my colleagues David Chinn, Martin Hirt, and Sven Smit

In a time of crisis, there is a premium on bold leadership and decisive action. And the crisis we are currently facing does seem quite war-like as the battlefront is moving fast from safeguarding our lives to safeguarding our livelihoods.

Let me acknowledge clearly that this analogy does have some limits. Our senior advisor, Robert Kehler (who served for 4 decades in the United States Air Force and in his last role served as Commander, United States Strategic Command) recently told me, "George Patton used to very famously talk about the value of audacity in a commander. There isn't any value in being audacious in a global pandemic" Maybe you could audaciously accelerate a vaccine into clinical trials but decisiveness should be tempered with the duty of care towards employees, customers, suppliers and the broader community in the face of significant uncertainty

From Sun Tzu’s Art of War in 500 BC through Napoleon’s Military Maxims and Carl Von Clausewitz’s influential essay “Principles of War,” there are many time-tested tenets that military leaders around the world have internalized. They are foundational to leading large-scale organizations in times of chaos and enormous challenge, and cover themes central to strategy and leadership today.

Strategic principles

• Select and focus on an overarching goal. To achieve an objective in a complex situation, you need a goal simple and clear enough for everybody to understand. Activities that do not promote the main goal should be paused to conserve resources.
• Maintain resilience as the crisis unfolds. That entails balancing the likelihood of losses against accomplishing critical objectives. It demands managing risk, protecting high-value assets, and focusing resources on achievable goals.
• Embrace offensive action. Such action implies a vigorous, incisive approach to exploiting opportunities.
• Inject an element of surprise and innovation. This can enable you to seize the initiative, which may be a critical precondition for success. During the current crisis, new ways of thinking, including breaking some rules, can, for example, increase healthcare providers’ treatment capacity and enable businesses to get people back to work faster or better serve customers in need.
• Accept that concentration of force on the main effort may demand economy elsewhere. This may not require the physical massing of resources, but you need to deliver sufficient fighting power to do the job at critical points and times.
• Conserve effort in order to sustain the fight. Leaders must prioritize economizing resources as they allocate them among different activities and actions.

Leadership principles

• Maintain morale. Under challenging conditions, this is crucial to success. High morale is characterized by steadfastness, courage, confidence, and sustained hope.
• Retain flexibility. To fully leverage the strength of the organization, a certain level of flexibility is needed to encourage people to think creatively and be resourceful. This can be measured by individuals’ speed of action and reaction or how quickly a commander seizes the initiative.
• Foster cooperation. Team spirit and training are fundamental to achieving objectives. Cooperation relies on three interrelated elements: mutual trust and goodwill, a common aim (or unity of purpose), and clearly divided responsibilities.

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Times of crisis are the most profound occasions for leadership. As the US entered World War I, former President Theodore Roosevelt pleaded with then-President Woodrow Wilson to let him coordinate the American response and was bitterly disappointed to be turned down, missing his chance to leave an enduring leadership legacy. “If there is not the war, you don’t get the great general; if there is not a great occasion, you don’t get a great statesman,” he said. “If Lincoln had lived in a time of peace, no one would have known his name.”

For business leaders, this is the time to show that, like great generals, they can empower their organizations to collectively rise to the occasion.

To see the full version of our article with lessons from generals go to https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/lessons-from-the-generals-decisive-action-amid-the-chaos-of-crisis