Since June 6th I have been reading Antony Beevor’s D-Day; The Battle for Normandy. It is a magnificent book which I highly recommended. So many of its interesting, horrifying, and inspiring details remain relevant to our modern world, unfortunately. Two themes relevant to our modern digitizing world have however stuck out to me in particular - chaos and courage.
Operation Overlord was and still is the largest military endeavor ever undertaken. The planning took years and was subjected to intense military and political stress testing. And yet from the early hours of D-Day so much went wrong. In the subsequent months of fighting, up until the moment the Allies pushed the Germans back beyond Saint-Lo, Caen, and Avranches, and the route to Paris opened up, chaos reigned with terrible consequences.
Yet, chaos was expected and accepted. What was not expected, and never tolerated was the absence of courage. Everything is going to go terribly wrong, but you - a person, a Brigade, a Corps, an Army - have to move forward into the line of fire.
This courage amidst chaos is why 80 years later we still commemorate the Greatest Generation, and all those who have served their country.
Courage is something that is sadly reduced in the far lower stakes commercial battles many of us are engaged in today. Now the emphasis amongst the managerial class is on planning, and planning, and more planning. On meetings, and meetings, and more meetings. On coordination and consensus building and risk mitigation. On reporting and reorgs and reviews.
Ask yourself, when was the last time you saw someone in your organization take a brave decision? When was the last time you took a brave decision?
Of course, the digital transformation we are undergoing currently bares no comparison with the horrors of 1939 to 1945. There are though huge risks involved; personal, corporate, financial, societal risks. In the fog of corporate war courage is required.
Today, much of the corporate world stands frozen as GenAI opens up a new front. Planning has gone into overdrive. What few are saying however is that the next stage of digitization is going to be chaotic and what will be required above all is courage. Now, chaos is the great sin of the managerial class and courage is a rumor to those focussed on their country club membership or simply their mortgage.
Many in the MBA class remember Supreme Allied Commander Eisenhower’s famous quote “plans are useless but planning is essential”. It’s time to recall he also said, “Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you're a thousand miles from the corn field”. And, “History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid”. For “care of freedom”, substitute “a future”.
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