Issue #4, November 2023

What Place Forgiveness In Strategy?

It may seem like an unusual perspective to take in discussing strategy, but what place does forgiveness have in the life of the leader? A lot. And current events point to how anger, violence and the impulse for revenge and retaliation create - from a pragmatic point of view - entirely chaotic results and "unintended" consequences that damn every endeavour.

It was coincidental that before Remembrance Day last week, my wife and I had just visited the National ANZAC Centre (Memorial) in Albany, Western Australia.

The memorial stands above King George Sound, the launching point for the convoys of ANZAC soldiers headed to Gallipoli during World War I.

30,000 men were enlisted, transported across Australia, equipped and shipped off to the war front in the first convoy alone. It was an immense logistics effort that all occurred from announcement of war to shipping in just 6 weeks! The New Zealanders had a similar effectiveness.

I can well concur with the meaning of the quote, "Amateurs talk strategy. Professionals talk logistics" (attributed to everyone from Napoleon Bonaparte to Gen. Omar Bradley, Historian B.H. Liddel Hart and even a variation by Sun Tzu). In the time that it takes us in modern circles to organise a committee to discuss the framework for the exploratory group to agree the terms of reference of the defence council, the war would have already been won by the other side!

But walking through the stories of the individuals and families - and the artefacts of warfare - at the ANZAC Centre, one is struck by the utter brutality of that war. It's no wonder that servicemen and women returned not ever wanting to talk about what occurred. It's sobering to think through the violence committed.

So, it is a wonder then that the A/NZ governments and the Turkish government did something astonishing in the wake of that war: they both set up commemorations to not glorify the act of war itself, but to commemorate the bravery of others and the establishment of a relationship that looked back to the past with horror and forward to the future with forgiveness.

It's a modern miracle. That miracle was continued with the acts of forgiveness for the atrocities of World War II, out of which was born much of what we consider the modern world, wherein nations and peoples cooperate and intermingle despite their histories.

If you look at it from a purely pragmatic point of view, it was certainly a winning strategy. It also more importantly was the superior moral take on those histories. Framing it another way: doing right is a good strategy in the end.

I well understand the impulse towards grievance that extends back throughout history. I grew up a part of the Ukrainian diaspora community in Western Australia. I was always hearing about the Russians. The grievances with the Russians did not merely extend through Communism - which was an absolute blight on humanity - but going back hundreds of years, nay, a thousand to when one could identify who was "the original" nation of Rus.

It didn't just end there, of course. There were recounts over hundreds of years' worth of alliances that were or were not honoured, shifting borders, oppressed populations, wars and so on. And they were never to be forgotten.

People want to dismiss those histories. They can't be dismissed. Millions of Ukrainians were killed by the communists.

But forgiveness can be extended. And that is the only way to get rid of the hatred that drives violence between individuals, families, groups and nations.

On a far more mundane level, we all make mistakes every day. Forgiveness is necessary from us towards others and from them towards us, if we're honest.

And that's good strategy.

On Hamas-Israel

This brings us to the current new conflict and violence in Gaza/Israel.

I'll not comment on the politics, histories, rights and wrongs or even directly on the atrocities. When I was an undergrad, my English prof assigned a research paper on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in which we were to recommend some solutions. We spent weeks researching the histories, watching debates, investigating the causes and dynamics. It fit well with my later International Studies and the University's goals to train people for the realities of a global society.

It was around 1990-1991. Over thirty years ago. I was in my very early 20s and at that point had to throw up my hands in attempting to analyse a convoluted, chaotic mess of a situation with ancient hatreds extending back thousands of years.

In response, I chose to write a satire for my essay. A la Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal", I proposed that the solution be to warn the population of the entire area to evacuate, following which the UN could then conduct a tactical thermonuclear strike to make the land unviable for ownership or conflict for the next thousand years. The idea behind the satire, of course, was to point out the insanity of the continuing violent arguments over the land.

It was with horror last week that I saw this scenario touted when I read that an Israeli MP, in a media interview, commented that a nuclear strike against the Gaza strip should be considered a viable tactical option. He was serious.

It is my hope that far wiser and cooler heads will prevail and that peace - or at least the absence of war - will be restored.

From The Front Lines

Hopefully, you're not dealing with such life-threatening situations, but what place anger in your leadership and workplace?

A highly admired executive leader that I was coaching some years ago had a significant problem with anger. It had been at the root of relationship breakdown and business troubles. His anger was part of his "mojo" and, to his mind, his reputation. It was how he "motivated" and moved people to work and to "get things done!"

When he engaged me, he took me around to a number of his people and openly said, "This is Peter. He's helping me to be a better person." That was his attitude, which yielded results.

Over the months of working with me and concurrently with a counsellor for finer problems, he came to overcome his anger - a lifelong part of his character.

At one point he said to me, astonished, "Peter, I never knew how to define myself without my anger. It was a part of who I am. I couldn't be me without it and I couldn't imagine myself without it. But now I don't have it and I realise, I'm still me. I'm myself. Just minus the anger."

It certainly changed his life for the better.

BECAUSE I'M SO SMART, CLEARLY (a story exhibiting my natural brilliance)

A client was telling me about a safety incident on-site. One of his people had partially sunk a forklift in a soakwell that wasn't mapped on the plans of a new site, but where the employee never should have been in the first place - under the eaves of the staff room where he'd taken the forklift on a shortcut to get to his meal!

We commiserated and laughed in retrospect at the stupidity of the personnel. Thankfully, no one was hurt. We also planned out some of the safety "reactivations" that had to occur to prevent this kind of lax attitude, not to mention the hours and hassle of restoring the forklift and repairing the soakwell and surrounding area, etc. etc. etc.

I didn't have the heart to tell him at the time that when I was a young 20-something I sank a John Deere riding lawnmower while working landscaping at my University in Texas.

I was working solo and had taken the lawnmower onto the side of the hill aslope the bridge over the lake. I'd seen my supervisor do it before and thought I would repeat the efficient feat. Despite the fact that he'd instructed us specifically never to do that.

And on that fresh, dewy grass, my mower slid despite all alarmed efforts on my part - straight into the lake.

My boss was, as the saying now famously goes in Australia, "Not happy, Jan!"

(Given his anger, I think there was definitely some need for forgiveness.)

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