CHAPTER NINE - Practice the Move - The Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand

This series has been revised and compiled into 'Map. Measure. Move. - Building Clarity for Shared Success', available in paperback, Kindle, and hardcover formats.?Feel free to continue to reference the index to all entries in the LinkedIn series, but future revisions and improvements will be made in the book!

You may already know about the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria.? You may also know that it was one of the key events leading up to the start of World War I.? But did you know that a five-minute meeting might have prevented the whole thing?

Such a meeting may not have prevented World War I.? A deep series of alliances and mutual-support agreements meant that something else would likely have ignited the conflict.? But it likely could have saved the Archduke’s life that day.

Five minutes invested.? No assassination.

This chapter begins the third part of this series and our focus on a team’s clear understanding of their next, expected move.? We’ve covered the need to build clear expectations for our destination (our map).? We’ve covered the need to build clear expectations for where we are relative to that destination (our measurements).? Now we want to build clear expectations for closing the gap between where we are and where we want to be (our move).

Each of the four chapters in this section will focus on one facet of a clear and understood move.? The story of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his potentially-preventable assassination will underscore the first of those facets.

Practice the move.

In June of 1914, the archduke and his wife travelled to the town of Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina.? Austria had recently annexed the territory and the purpose of the archduke’s visit was to inspect the acquired military forces and then preside over a museum opening.

Not everyone was thrilled with Austria’s annexation of Sarajevo and the surrounding territory.? Serbian nationalists thought that Bosnia and Herzegovina should be part of Serbia.? A particularly zealous branch of these nationalists, nicknamed “The Black Hand”, decided to make their point by killing the archduke during his visit.??

Organizing security for the visit was a challenge.? The Boznian military forces gathered for the archduke’s inspection weren’t used to protect the archduke on the route into Sarajevo and the town hall.? There were concerns in Sarajevo that a large, armed display would inflame an already delicate atmosphere.? Instead, a relatively small number of local police would protect Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s entourage as they travelled from the train station to the town hall and later to the museum.

The Black Hand saw this as their opportunity.

Six members of the Black Hand mixed in with the crowd along the route through town.? They were spaced, one after the other, so that the member with the best opportunity could kill the archduke.? The would-be assassins were young and inexperienced and to say things went poorly would be an understatement.

The first two members of the Black Hand posted along the route succumbed to nerves and failed to act.? The third member threw a small bomb at the archduke’s vehicle as the motorcade passed.? Being a pleasant, June day, the convertible top of the car was open.? The bomb bounced off the folded top behind Franz Ferdinand and his wife and landed in the street behind them.? It exploded when the next car drove over it, disabling the vehicle and seriously injuring the occupants and several spectators.

Seeing the explosion, the rest of the motorcade accelerated at full speed toward the town hall, effectively eliminating further attempts.

One of the remaining Black Hand members positioned further down the route, Gavrilo Princip, saw the remaining vehicles speed past.? He crossed the street as the crowd dispersed.? The opportunity to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand had been squandered.? ?

But this is not a story about the lack of communication and planning among the members of the Black Hand.? This anecdote is about the archduke and his entourage.? Communication and planning would become an even bigger problem for them before the day was over.

Most of your efforts won’t be matters of life and death.? But there will be times when the outcome has a significant impact on your livelihood and income.? High impact efforts become even more challenging when there are infrequent opportunities to practice under the same or similar conditions.? In these situations, you need to make sure that everyone on your team has ingrained knowledge of the plan.? That way they can best make sure that their actions will support the plan, especially when circumstances change.

You can find out whether your team has the necessary clarity on their next steps, whether there’s any resistance to creating that clarity, and how you can go about building it with the same framework we used in the first two parts of this series.

Circumstance

Resistance

Anecdote

Progress???

Circumstance

How would you know whether your team understands the next steps you’ll take together toward your destination?? Here’s a survey question you can use to see where you stand on this facet of having a clear plan.??

"I know that everyone involved with the effort is on the same page because…"

1. We have a published plan and have walked through it as a team?
2. We have a published plan?
3. We have a recurring status meeting
4. I just know
5. I don't know

Score the answers you receive from your team the same way you scored the rest of the survey questions presented in this series.? Score each answer as 5 points for “a”, 3 points for “b”, 2 points for “c”, 0 points for “d”, and 1 point for “e”.? Add up the responses and divide by the number of responses you receive.? An average closer to 5 points indicates that you’re in good shape for having a clear plan on your next steps that is understood by the whole team.? A score closer to 0 indicates that you need focus on your plan.

Resistance

Why don’t teams always conduct a tabletop exercise for what they plan to do?? One resistance you might encounter is that there’s no time.? Remember though, a tabletop exercise won’t take much time when everyone knows what to do.? If everyone doesn’t know what to do, you’ve traded a little time now to prevent a much bigger loss of time or money (or something even worse) in the future.

Another resistance you might encounter is that team members or leaders perceive a tabletop exercise as though they are being audited or singled out.? You can prevent anyone from feeling singled out by making sure that the walkthrough involves the whole team.? Everyone on the team wants their teammates to be prepared and, ultimately, successful.

Anecdote

You can share the story of Archduke Ferdinand’s assassination with your team to underscore the need for a table-top exercise or walkthrough.? You can also ask them a question.

Have any of them ever faced a situation where the following were true?

• The event for which they were preparing most likely wouldn’t occur
• If the event did occur, the impact could be fatal
• They were unable to create the actual conditions and practice what they’d do

Hopefully everyone raises a hand.? If someone doesn’t raise a hand ask them if they’ve ever been in a fire drill at school or at work.

That’s all a tabletop exercise is.

Progress

When you and your teammates need more clarity about what’s expected for the next steps toward your destination and you’ve built support for getting it, have a tabletop exercise.? Get together in front of a whiteboard and make three columns.

“What”

“Who”

“How they know”

Each row underneath the headings begins with a thing which needs to be done; the “what”.? Is there disagreement about the items or their order?? Good.? This is your opportunity to clear that up.

Populate the next column with the accountable person; the “who”.? You’ll clear up any misunderstandings about the individual who will make sure that particular thing gets done at the proper point in the sequence.

The last column, “how they know”, is a reference to where someone can look to understand how the step will be performed.

Take a picture or publish it in some other way.? And then take a minute to pat yourselves on the back.? You’ve just completed your tabletop exercise.

Has the exercise improved the team’s clarity about your next step together?? Administer the survey question again and find out.

The remainder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s visit to Sarajevo in June of 1914 was a situation which would have benefitted from a tabletop exercise.? The event for which they were planning, a rapid departure from Sarajevo under threat of assassination, wasn’t something they had encountered all that often.? They did just have an experience with attempted assassination on the way in to town, but this was different.? The stakes were certainly high, especially for the archduke or anyone near him.? There was no time to construct a model of the roads through town and run through different scenarios.

The leaders of the motorcade and the archduke sat in the Sarajevo Town Hall and decided what to do next.? If you remember, there were two purposes for Franz Ferdinand’s visit.? The first was to check on the status of the military assets acquired in the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.? The second purpose was to open a museum.? In light of the bombing, the museum visit was scrapped.? The archduke and his wife would leave town immediately.? They would stop by the hospital to check on those injured in the bombing and then proceed directly to the train station for the trip back to Austria.

This meant a change in the motorcade plans.? Instead of turning up toward the museum after leaving the town hall, the motorcade would retrace the route along the Miljacka River that they had taken earlier in the day.

It would have been an excellent time to gather the members of the motorcade and ensure that everyone understood the change in plans and the revised route.? A map could be placed on a table or improvised from available objects and a literal tabletop could be performed to ensure that everyone knew the expectations.

But time was limited.? Instead, a member of the party was instructed to go outside and notify the motorcade drivers gathered there of the new route out of Sarajevo.? For some reason, the message wasn’t made clear.

As the archduke’s entourage drove back out along the river, the first two cars took the right turn for the original route to the museum.? The driver of the archduke’s car, third in the procession, followed them.? Someone in the car yelled at him that he should be heading directly to the hospital along the riverside route.? The driver stopped and attempted to reverse the vehicle back around the corner.? In doing so, he stalled the convertible and came to a stop directly in front of a man leaning against the wall of a delicatessen.? The man?? Gavrilo Princip, one of the members of the Black Hand, who had crossed the road from his original position after the original, failed assassination attempt.

Gavrilo Princip walked up to the stalled car and stepped on the sideboard.? He shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife at point-blank range, killing them both.

Takeaways

• A brief tabletop exercise can confirm that team members know what’s expected
• Address resistance to a tabletop exercise by pointing out that it won’t take long if everyone already knows what do do
• A tabletop exercise can be performed without the logistics or expense of recreating the actual scenario