Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters

by Richard P. Rumelt

The philosophy of the age, most fervently adopted by the French, was that willpower, spirit, morale, élan, and aggressiveness were the keys to success. For three years, generals flung highly motivated men at fortified machine-gun emplacements, only to see tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands, shredded to mincemeat to gain a mile of useless ground. In 1917, around the village of Passchendaele in Flanders, British general Douglas Haig planned an assault. He wanted to break through the Germans’ fortified lines and open up a path to the sea, dividing the German army. He had been advised that shelling the German fortified positions would destroy the dikes and flood the below-sea-level fields. He shelled the German fortifications anyway. The shelling broke the dikes and churned the rich soil to sticky yellow clay, a quagmire that men sank into up to their knees and bellies. It drowned tanks, horses, and the wounded.