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After each campaign or training exercise, the staff would rigorously examine itself and its performance.
Colleen holdi g me i n the team freezes an portant resource and atrophy's my purpose unless we agree i am to operate alone and untethered.
this is the conversation with val. What does he want
whT does he see as my value and co tribution to the whole. Now it is unclear
They were judged by the results of their actions, not on how those results were achieved.
The German general staff should serve as the organizational model for any group that aims at mobility and strategic depth.
First, the staff’s structure was fluid, allowing its leaders to adapt it to their own needs.
Finally, rather than issuing rigid orders, the staff embraced the mission command, the Auftragstaktik
Involve them in a cause, a crusade against a hated enemy. Make them see their survival as tied to the success of the army as a whole.
Make both rewards and punishments rare but meaningful. Remember: a motivated army can work wonders, making up for any lack of material resources.
At the same time, by necessity, we try to disguise our selfishness, making our motives look altruistic or disinterested.
Our inveterate selfishness and our ability to disguise it are problems for you as a leader.
Morale is contagious: put people in a cohesive, animated group and they naturally catch that spirit. If they rebel or revert to selfish behavior, they are easily isolated. You must establish this dynamic the minute you become the group’s leader; it can only come from the top—that is, from you.
The ability to create the right group dynamic, to maintain the collective spirit, is known in military language as “man management.”
Step 3: Lead from the front.
keep your soldiers busy, acting for a purpose, moving in a direction. Do not make them wait for the next attack; propelling them forward will excite them and make them hungry for battle.
Step 5: Play to their emotions. The best way to motivate people is not through reason but through emotion. Humans, however, are naturally defensive, and if you begin with an appeal to their emotions—some histrionic harangue—they will see you as manipulative and will recoil.
An emotional appeal needs a setup: lower their defenses, and make them bond as a group, by putting on a show, entertaining them, telling a story. Now they have less control over their emotions and you can approach them more directly, moving them easily from laughter to anger or hatred.
Step 6: Mix harshness and kindness. The key to man management is a balance of punishment and reward.
Anger and punishment should be equally rare; instead your harshness should take the form of setting very high standards that few can reach. Make your soldiers compete to please you.
It is wise to start out with easy battles that they can win, building up their confidence.
Create symbols and slogans that fit the myth. Your soldiers will want to belong.
Allow grumblers and the chronically disaffected any leeway at all and they will spread disquiet and even panic throughout the group. As fast as you can, you must isolate them and get rid of them.
To command influence in the world, you need a power base, and here human beings—a devoted army of followers—are more valuable than money.
Personal example is the best way to set the proper tone and build morale. When your people see your devotion to the cause, they ingest your spirit of energy and self-sacrifice.
Oratory and eloquent pleas only irritate and insult us; we see right through them. Motivation is subtler than that. By advancing indirectly, setting up your emotional appeal, you will get inside instead of just scratching the surface.
Teenagers will often strike a pose that is simultaneously rebellious and lackadaisical. It’s a way of staying in place: trying harder brings more risk of failure, which they cannot handle, so they lower their expectations, finding nobility in slacking off and mediocrity. Losing hurts less when they embrace it.
Announcing intentions and making demands will leave people defensive and feeling like children. Like Lombardi, play the wily parent. Ask more of them. Expect them to work like adults. Quietly alter the spirit with which things are done. Emphasize efficiency: anybody can be efficient (it isn’t a question of talent), efficiency breeds success, and success raises morale. Once the spirit and personality of the group start to shift, everything else will fall into place.
Understand: once people know what pleases you and what angers you, they turn into trained poodles, working to charm you with apparent good behavior. Keep them in suspense: make them think of you constantly and want to please you but never know just how to do it. Once they are in the trap, you will have a magnetic pull over them. Motivation will become automatic.
To fight in a defensive manner is not a sign of weakness; it is the height of strategic wisdom, a powerful style of waging war. Its requirements are simple: First, you must make the most of your resources, fighting with perfect economy and engaging only in battles that are necessary. Second, you must know how and when to retreat, luring an aggressive enemy into an imprudent attack. Then, waiting patiently for his moment of exhaustion, launch a vicious counterattack.
By seeming weaker than you are, you can draw the enemy into an ill-advised attack; by seeming stronger than you are—perhaps through an occasional act that is reckless and bold—you can deter the enemy from attacking you. In defensive warfare you are essentially leveraging your weaknesses and limitations into power and victory.
You must know your limits and pick your battles carefully. Consider the hidden costs of a war: time lost, political goodwill squandered, an embittered enemy bent on revenge. Sometimes it is better to wait, to undermine your enemies covertly rather than hitting them straight on.
If battle cannot be avoided, get them to fight on your terms. Aim at their weaknesses; make the war expensive for them and cheap for you. Fighting with perfect economy, you can outlast even the most powerful foe.
Understand: the more you want the prize, the more you must compensate by examining what getting it will take. Look beyond the obvious costs and think about the intangible ones: the goodwill you may squander by waging war, the fury of the loser if you win, the time that winning may take, your debt to your allies.
you must first assess their weak points: internal political problems, low morale, shaky finances, overly centralized control, their leader’s megalomania. While carefully keeping your own weaknesses out of the fray and preserving your strength for the long haul, hit their Achilles’ heel again and again. Having their weaknesses exposed and preyed upon will demoralize them, and, as they tire, new weaknesses will open up.
As Pablo Picasso said, Even if you are wealthy, act poor. The poor are more inventive, and often have more fun, because they value what they have and know their limits. Sometimes in strategy you have to ignore your greater strength and force yourself to get the maximum out of the minimum.
Dreaming first of what you want and then trying to find the means to reach it is a recipe for exhaustion, waste, and defeat.
Perfect economy means finding a golden mean, a level at which your blows count but do not wear you out. Overeconomizing will wear you out more, for the war will drag on, its costs growing, without your ever being able to deliver a knockout punch.
Make your counterattacks swift and sudden—like