Seven little-discussed day-to-day issues that consume a manager's time- from The Splendid and The Vile

Erik Larson’s?The Splendid and The Vile?tells the story of Churchill’s first tough year as Prime Minister. France fell in his second month in office, a devastating invasion seemed imminent, and bombs fell nightly.

The book uniquely covers the day-to-day life of Churchill, his family, and a few people in his inner circle.

I soon realized that the intimate day-to-day accounts also meant that the book, almost by accident, showed some insight into what it’s like to be a manager and what little-discussed things consume your time.

Churchill couldn’t have been in a bigger leadership role on a bigger stage. And, yet, he had to deal with the same issues that all managers deal with. These issues matched my experience at?Opex Analytics.

Here they are:

One, the main audience for your message isn’t always the people you are talking to.

In Churchill’s mind, the only thing that could tip the scales was getting the support of Roosevelt and the American public. That support wasn’t a sure thing when he became Prime Minister.

So, when he gave important speeches to the people or Parliament, he had to ensure that the message would play well in America.

This is not always obvious. His speeches to the British people were about as important as you could imagine, with constant bombing and the threat of an invasion. It was hard enough to figure out what to say to the British people. But, he also needed the message to resonate in America too.

I’ve seen this on smaller scales when talking to our company, doing a sales call, or doing a webinar. There were always other audiences that we were talking to. This adds a lot of prep time.

Two, it is a fine line between motivating people with the urgency of the situation and discouraging them because things look hopeless.

Churchill spent a lot of time walking this fine line when communicating with Roosevelt.

He needed to describe the urgency of the situation and why he desperately needed the support of the U.S.

But, if the message seemed hopeless, Roosevelt might decide that sending help would only be wasted.

Three, you need to work hard to keep good people working on critical operational details (jobs that they may not find interesting).

When Churchill took office, he realized that Britain needed to increase their production of airplanes. He appointed his friend to be responsible for this critical job.

His friend increased production rapidly but didn’t like the job. The job required a lot of fighting the bureaucracy.

Churchill had to work hard to keep his friend in this job.

Four, some seemingly easy and vital data will prove frustratingly tricky to get

Churchill knew there was some data he wouldn’t get: Would Germany invade? Or, how big was its air force?

On the other hand, you would think it would be easy to count their own aircraft. They had some data showing 8,500 aircraft but couldn’t find 3,500 of these. They appointed someone to dig deeper, but he got no closer.

Sometimes, seemingly easy-to-collect data will elude you.

Five, you’ll pursue ideas that you think should work, but others don’t seem to be trying to make them work.

Be ready to have bad ideas that you think are good ideas. And, you’ll likely blame others for not giving it the proper attention.

One example from the book was floating mines (like land mines). Floating mines with parachutes would be dropped from a high altitude and act as a barrier for enemy bombers.

All the early tests failed. Churchill kept pushing and blaming a lack of priority.

This could waste a lot of time. But Churchill minimized the damage by allowing many other ideas to be pursued. I wonder if he pushed hard on this idea to motivate others to work even harder on their ideas.

Six, you?will?get bogged down in issues that seem trivial.

These kinds of issues annoyed me. I wondered why I was working on what seemed to be a trivial issue when there were more pressing things to do. But, sometimes, I couldn’t avoid it.

Churchill seemed to be pulled into these too.

A system had been set up where church bells would only ring if an invasion was detected. By Christmas, Britain had been bombed for months, and leadership worried about morale. Someone proposed that they make an exception and allow the church bells to ring on Christmas. This would spread some cheer. Of course, it could also confuse people. So, in the middle of managing hundreds of other issues, the leadership team had to debate about whether they should ring the bells or not.

Seven, be ready to be let down when it is all over.

No matter how sweet the result, how much you can look back with pride, or how hard the struggle. You’ll be sad for it to end.

The Epilog makes this point with two stories.

First, Churchill’s daughter-in-law felt sadness as the war ended. She had always wanted peace, but she had spent her adult life in wartime. She was nervous about the changes that would come.

Second, Churchill was voted out of office shortly after the war. When he was moving out, his daughter reported that he looked “disheartened” and that he said that there was “no work— nothing to do.” This is someone who worked without a break and could claim to have saved a good portion of the world from tyranny. And, even he had these feelings of a letdown.

Having been through four acquisitions, I couldn’t avoid the human feeling of sadness when leaving behind what you are used to.

There is more to say from this book. I’ll cover his stamina and writing philosophy in other posts.