The Balancing Act of Leadership

This blog post was written by?Rick Kennedy, partner and former president of Hodgson Russ LLP , in April 2022 as part of our?52 Weeks of Leadership Program.

Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book “The Bomber Mafia” illustrates a significant leadership challenge: reconciling or finding balance points among competing forces, interests, values, imperatives, and realities. “Bomber Mafia” is the name given to a group of US Army Air Corp Generals responsible for waging the United States’ aerial campaign in World War II.?

The Bomber Mafia’s principal imperative was to end the war as quickly as possible to minimize death, suffering, destruction, and societal and economic disruption. That overarching goal was to be achieved while acting consistent with our purported national values. Namely that we would conduct aerial warfare in a moral fashion by attacking only strategic targets and not civilian targets. That proposition is internally in conflict with itself. The purported purpose of strategic bombing is to destroy the enemy’s ability to wage war. The reality is that strategic bombing results in the indirect killing of civilians dependent on the important “strategic” targets of basic infrastructure. A reality we see every night on the evening news now broadcast from Ukraine.

In addition, the Generals were left to reconcile or balance those moral imperatives with practical realities. Specifically, the realities of the then-existing technology were that bombers would be required to fly during the day, at low altitudes, at slow speeds, and straight at targets to have any chance of performing their “precision bombing” mission. ?The resulting reality was that the US Army Air Corp suffered enormous losses of men and equipment while very ineffectively delivering ordinances on their intended targets.?

I do not wish to explore the historical accuracy of Gladwell’s book, nor the moral implications of decisions made by the Bomber Mafia. Instead, I call the book to your attention as a striking illustration of the challenge facing leaders required to reconcile or find balance points between powerful valid, but competing forces, interests, values, imperatives, and realities.

Learn more about the University at Buffalo School of Management’s?Center for?Leadership and Organizational Effectiveness.