VICTORY Principles: Leadership Lessons from D-Day by Colonel Leonard Kloeber, Jr.

The requirement for having a clear vision of the future is generally recognized as a universal element of effective leadership. Without a clear vision of the future it is impossible for the leader to know where he or she is going, much less convincing their team to follow them. Followers expect that their leaders will not only have a clear vision, but that they communicate it to them before they are willing to embark with them on a risky journey into the future. So how does a leader establish a vision of for the future? It may be as simple as one, two, three.

While nothing is ever as easy as it sounds, a concept can be elegantly simple even though it takes a skilled performance to make it look easy. Such is the case of defining a leader’s vision in three simple steps:

Step 1:  Describe your current state. This step requires that you are brutally honest about the current state of affairs for you and your organization, even if things are not very rosy.  You need to be honest about your people, resources, problems, strengths and weaknesses.  You will also need to assess your operating environment both internally and externally.  Once you have an accurate current appraisal of your situation, then you can move ahead to the next step.

Step 2:  Describe your future state. This should be a more pleasant part of the exercise because you are generally describing a more hopeful future for your organization and your people.  It is the time to think about your goals and outcomes.  What would things be like if you could wave your magic wand to shape your organization in the future?  Be sure to get into details just as you did in the first step, but don’t feel constrained by the current state of affairs.

Step 3:  Define “close-the-gap” strategies. Now you will need to think creatively.  Answer the basic question:  “How do you intend to get from point A to point B, from the current to the future state?”  You may have several strategies, but you should tie them together under a “grand strategy” or a concept.  The supporting strategies can define more specific approaches to certain aspects of your concept.  Individual strategies can be further refined into tactics.  These are more discreet steps to take for the immediate future.  One aspect of your strategic approach may be to gather the right resources and capabilities.  These are usually defined in two broad categories:  people and resources.  Getting the right people on board who have the right skills is often one of the first steps that a leader must take to move ahead.  This cuts to the core of the leadership challenge.  Although leaders have the overall responsibility for the success of their organization, they need to have the right team of people around them to make sure that everything that needs to get done actually does get done.  Picking the right people is a key leadership responsibility.  Likewise, making sure that the people have the necessary resources is also a key leader responsibility.  These are often some of the first “close-the-gap” strategies, but the basic requirement in this step is to articulate the strategies and actions necessary to guide the team into the future.

So this is a simple, three-step process for defining the leader’s vision:  1) describe the current state, 2) describe the future state, and 3) define the close-the-gap strategies. The process can be more complex or take more time depending on the individual situation.  Some leader’s find themselves in dire circumstances and don’t have the luxury of time to get lots of input to forge ahead.  If this is the case, a leader may make a personal reconnaissance of the situation and get input from just a few key people before deciding what to do.  In other circumstances, a leader might have more time because things don’t seem so desperate.  In these cases leaders will often bring more people into the discussions over an extended period of time.  For example, the leader might even designate several teams of people, one for each of the steps.  This could be the same people or a mix of different people who are hand-picked by the leader for their expertise in a particular aspect of the discussion.  How this gets done will be determined in part by the leadership style of the leader.  Nevertheless, these are all just variations of the same, simple three step process.  So if you become the leader of an organization or team, think about using this three step process to come up with your vision.  It could be as easy as one, two, three.  Best wishes in seeing your future success!

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COL. Leonard Kloeber, Jr. Author

At seven minutes after midnight on June 6th 1944, the gliders cut loose from their Halifax bomber tow-planes and began their silent descent into Normandy. The first three gliders made controlled crash landings at sixtteen minutes after midnight in the narrow strip of land between the two bridges and came to rest within meters of the bridge over the Caen Canal. They had achieved complete surprise, but with the hard landings, the occupants of the gliders were temporarily stunned. They quickly recovered, and as they had practiced on numerous occasions, they regrouped and jumped into action to overwhelm the few sentries on the bridge. Major Howard established his command post and pushed his men forward into the nearby villages of Benouville and Le Port to set up road blocks on key junctions to defend against an expected counter-attack. Within less than 20 minutes they had achieved one of their primary objectives in seizing the Canal Bridge, but at a high cost: all three platoon leaders and several of the non-commissioned officers were casualties. Now it was up to junior leaders to complete the rest of the mission – “hold until relieved.”

On the other side of the narrow strip between the canal and the Orne River, two of the gliders landed near their bridge, but the other mistakenly landed over two kilometers away. Despite the loss of one third of their strength, the remaining two platoons succeeded in seizing the river bridge. With the bridges secure, the engineers were disarming the explosives that were set by the Germans, Dr. Vaughn was setting up his aide station, an d Major Howard’s radio operator was sending the success signal: “Ham and Jam” onto higher headquarters. Then, just before 0100 hours, the paratroops of the British 6^th Airborne began to drop from the sky. One of their battalions had the mission to join Major Howard’s D Company at the bridges. Like all the paratroopers that night, they were scattered and mis-dropped away from their intended drop zones. Nevertheless, the battalion commander, decided to proceed to the bridges even though he had only gathered about one third of his force. Isolated groups of paratroopers would infiltrate into the British lines throughout the night.

Meanwhile the Germans were preparing to counter-attack as they were trained to do. Their experienced commanders knew that it was best to launch an immediate attack before the British could set up a defense. One of the regimental commanders from the 21^st Panzer Division, Colonel Von Luck,  put his men on alert in the vicinity of Caen, but could not proceed without orders. The German high command had maintained tight control on all their armored formations and most even required approval from Hitler himself before they could be employed.  Approval would be slow to come; however, small advance panzer elements were near the vicinity of the canal bridge, and they started a probing attack. Although they were not exactly sure of the situation a few tanks and infantry in self-propelled vehicles slowly clanked toward the bridges. As they proceeded, one of the British sergeants positioned himself with a PAIT gun, a crude anti-tank weapon. Sergeant Thorton courageously waited until he had a good shot and was able to knock the lead tank out of action. Fearing that the British had additional anti-tank capabilities, the Germans decided to hold off until they could get a better picture of the situation in daylight; nevertheless, they kept up infantry probes and their snipers engaged targets in and around the bridge. Realizing the importance of the bridges, the Germans mounted other attacks throughout the night including using a river gunboat and frogmen. Again using only the light weapons they had brought with them and some of the German weapons that they had captured, the British held off these advances throughout the night and into the morning.

At around 0730, the British 3^rd Infantry Division accompanied by Commandos began landing on Sword Beach. As they proceed inland, they met more determined resistance at prepared strong-points. The 21^st Panzer had finally been ordered into the battle and was proceeding in the direction of the beach. Further counterattacks on the bridgehead took their toll, but the glider men and the paratroops held on. Then at about 1300 hours, they heard the sound of bagpipes. It was bagpiper, Bill Millin, leading the way for Lord Lovat’s British Commandos who were bringing with them British armor and heavy weapons. With their arrival, Major Howard could now say that he had fully accomplished his mission; however the price in causalities was heavy. History now remembers this action as the Battle of Pegasus Bridge and the bridge was so named in honor of the Pegasus insignia of the British Airborne.

Here is a link to a Google map of the bridge today:  Google Map Pegasus

Original Pegasus Bridge

All great leaders are defined by the quality of their decisions. Although leaders can delegate, postpone, or otherwise defer decisions, ultimately there are some things that only the leader can decide. As President Harry Truman famously said, “the buck stops here.” He realized that ultimately, he needed to take responsibility and make decisions on the critical issues facing the nation. Likewise, leaders of any organization must also make key decisions and take the responsibility for their outcomes. This philosophy may sound simple, but it doesn’t mean that it is easy. Often leaders must make decisions with scant information.  More often than not, there are no clear cut choices among several viable options, and the leader gets conflicting advice about which option to choose. So how can leaders make timely decisions and maximize their chances of making the “right” decision? They rely on a decision making model to help them. Consider the example of the AIME decision making model:

A: Assess the Situation. Whenever they are faced with a decision, leaders assess the situation. This can either be a quick “estimate of the situation” or a more detailed analysis depending on the amount of time available. Regardless, they always assess the situation by considering relevant facts that bear on the problem. Experienced leaders will know intuitively which facts to look at and quickly assess the situation. Experienced emergency room doctors do this all the time. While they seem to easily make quick decisions, in fact, they begin by assessing the patient’s condition by looking at the appropriate vital signs or test results. The reason that they can move quickly to a decision is because of their experience – they have likely seen a similar situation before that they can relate to their present situation.   Less experienced leaders (or doctors) will need to get help from trusted colleagues to make their assessment; nevertheless, they must begin the process by looking at the relevant facts.

I: Implement a simple plan. After gathering information to make their decision, the next move is to formulate a simple plan. To create their plan, they will likely consider their viable options. Normally there are no more than five options.   If there are more than five, it behooves the leader to quickly eliminate all but the most viable and get to the three best options. Once the options are identified, they compare the advantages and disadvantages of each of the options. If time permits, they sometimes do a deliberate analysis using a decision matrix whereby each option is evaluated against specific “decision criteria.”   They might have someone from their staff research the details for each option and present their findings in the form of a comparative analysis which may point to one option that is clearly superior to the others. However once the analysis is completed with whatever detail is permitted due to the time constraints, the leader must choose an option and make their decision.

M: Make it happen. Once the decision is made, then the leader must communicate it to the staff and make it happen. Many leaders assume that once the decision is made and communicated that it is carried out. Don’t assume that once the communication is made, that the decision will automatically get carried out! Even in military organizations where people are accustomed to follow orders, the decisions of senior commanders will not always be carried out as intended. It is up to the senior leader or decision maker to follow up with those who are charged with implementing the decision to see if it is being implemented as intended or if there is an unanticipated problem. This is the time for leaders to “lead from the front.”   Get up front and find the problems and fix them, or fire up the people who are supposed to get the job done. Unless you are prepared to rescind or modify the decision, make sure that everyone is on board with getting it implemented. In extreme cases, this might even require firing recalcitrant team members who are obstructing rather than facilitating the decision.

E: Evaluate the decision. This is the last, but most often overlooked step in decision making. Even when leaders follow up to make sure that their decisions are carried out, they often don’t come back later to evaluate the results. Evaluation is really the key to making great decisions. Most leaders understand that they can never make great decisions all the time. Even great leaders will make a poor decision periodically, but the only way to correct that is to evaluate the results. The fact is that even a successful missile launch is off target most of the time. It is up to the guidance system to make mid-course corrections while the missile is in flight so that it gets to the intended target. In the same way, leaders have the ability to achieve their intended results by making periodic reviews of their decisions. Depending on the nature of the decision, the elapsed time before a review may vary widely; however, if everyone knows that there will be a review, they will more diligently carry it out in the first place. Further, they will be looking for signs along the way that will help to make the evaluation more effective. So, make sure to set up a time to evaluate your decisions if you are the leader.

The AIME Decision Model is a simple model to understand, but perhaps not easy to execute in practice; however, using it regularly will instill discipline into the decision making process. This will not guarantee great decisions every time, but it will dramatically increase the probability of making good decisions over the long term. As you get used to applying the model, then it will naturally become easier to use. Make a good decision today and start using the AIME Decision Model.

Leonard Kloeber is an author and consultant. He retired from the US Army Reserves as a Colonel after more than thirty years of service. He also has extensive business experience of over twenty-five years as a hands on leader in a variety of businesses large and small. Most recently he was a human resources executive for a Fortune 100 company. His book – Victory Principles, Leadership Lessons from D-Day – illustrates seven bedrock leadership principles that all successful leaders use. Find out more at: http://www.victoryprinciples.com where you can a download free summary of the Victory Principles. Contact him at info@victoryprinciples.com

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VICTORY Principles at-a-glance is a one page overview of the leadership lessons illustrated by the historic events of D-Day that I have written about in my recently published book. As the author, I wanted to provide readers with an easy-to-use reference that would summarize the core principles succinctly so they could keep it as a handy reference. Although my book is based on a World War II narrative, theme of the book is about leadership. My own experience tells me that leadership is an art and not a science. This means that there is no recipe that one can follow that will guarantee that one would become a successful, much less a great leader. However, like all other artists, leaders must work at their craft to perfect their own special style and approach given their own circumstances. Many of the now famous senior leaders during World War II had perfected their leadership skills over the two prior decades between the World Wars. Many of them often toiled in anonymity in jobs that were not very exciting, but which offered them the opportunity to practice their craft as leaders.  It was because of their experience that they were ready to assume the positions of much greater responsibility when the time came.  So if you aspire to be a successful leader, take advantage of any opportunity you have in front of you to start learning your craft.

Despite the wide range of styles and approaches of successful leaders, I truely believe that there are certain bedrock leadership principles that all leaders incorporate into their approach. Leaders who don’t follow these principles will likely never succeed to their full capability, even if they achieve some level of success.  After spending a significant part of my own career in leadership positions and observing other leaders around me, I have identified these seven principles that I believe all leaders rely upon. You can find these VICTORY Principles at-a-glance in a PDF document that you can download by searching the tool bar to the right under bonus documents or you can click on this link:

VICTORY Principles at-a-glance

There are seven bedrock leadership principles that all leaders use.  These are principles and not prescriptions.  Hence, leaders must tailor the application of the principles to their unique organization and in their own way.  Despite their unique application, these principles are the underpinnings of all successful leadership endeavors.  Here are the common treads of successful leadership:

1.      Vision: All great leaders have an inspiring vision of the future which provides direction and hope for a better day.  They are effective at communicating and building support for their vision to get everyone in their organization on board.  Effective leaders usually enlist the support of key followers to help craft their vision.  This builds trust and confidence, and also leverages the unique talents and perspectives of others within the organization.

2.      Innovation and Learning: Leaders are always looking for better ways to accomplish their objectives and they encourage people to experiment with new approaches and learn from them.  Sometimes the innovations don’t work out as planned, but good leaders will encourage their people to quickly learn from the experience and move on to try another approach.  When they find an approach that works, they quickly move to exploit their success. They avoid placing blame for failure and share the glory for success with the team.

3.      Capabilities – People and Resources: All great leaders are looking for people with the right skills to have on their team; they also know that even the best people must have the right resources to be successful.  Leaders take it upon themselves to obtain the right people and the right resources for their team.  They are the lead talent scouts and take on the responsibility to find whatever is needed to get the job done.

4.      Timely Decisions: Leaders make timely decisions so their organization can move forward.  Furthermore they have a disciplined approach to decision making that often involves the use of a decision making model.  They know that they will not always make the right decision, but by having a disciplined approach to decision making that they can increase their odds of success.  They also periodically review their decisions and make appropriate course corrections to move towards their goals.

5.      Operating Principles and Values: Great leaders know that the best way to influence their organization is through the use of operating principles and values.   Operating Principles and Values establish a framework for behavior within the organization and allow people to act in concert with the positive cultural norms.  This is how leaders empower others in the organization to take action when needed without resorting to command and control style leadership by giving orders from the top.

6.      Resilience: Leaders know that the path to success is not a straight line.   There are always obstacles along the way that must be overcome.  The skill of overcoming obstacles and pushing through resistance is called resilience.  Leaders themselves must be resilient to overcome setbacks, and they must instill this quality in their people and the organization as a whole.  The best way to do this is by example.  In times of crisis, people will look to the leader to see how they behave.  If the leader maintains their cool under fire, and pushes ahead, others will follow.  This is the principle of resilience in action.

7.      Your Team: Leaders put their team first.  They make sure that every team member knows what is expected of them; that they are trained to do their job; and that they are taken care of as individuals.  Leaders who take good care of their people know that the people will take care of them when the chips are down because they have earned their trust.  Great leaders “lead from the front.”  They go where the action is to be with their team so that they have a deep understanding of what the real issues are that their people are dealing with on a daily basis.  This creates trust, provides critical information for the leader upon which they can base their decisions, and demonstrates genuine concern for the people and the organization.

Applying these principles will not guarantee your success; however, if you fail to use them, you will not be an effective leader.  All great leaders use these principles, but also use their own leadership style to implement them.  If you observe great leaders in action, you will find them using these principles to lead their organizations to success.

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VICTORY PRINCIPLES is written in the three part format of a Staff Ride, the same technique used to train army officers.  A staff ride focuses the study of history on leadership “lessons learned” that can be applied in the future.  Part one of this book is the fascinating story of D-Day itself.  Part two describes seven timeless leadership lessons, the VICTORY PRINCIPLES.   Part three is a guide to the battlefield sites on the northern coast of France and what you would find there today.

Staff Rides were originated in the 19th century by the German army to train their general staff officers.  General staff officers studied and visited the European battlefields from the Napoleonic Wars to deduce lessons learned for the future.  The Staff Ride methodology was later adopted by the US Army prior to World War I when officers attending advance military schooling studied Civil War battles and subsequently made on-site visits.  Their visits helped to visualize and understand the lessons learned by walking the actual terrain of the battlefield.  Today, Staff Rides are still a popular teaching technique used at the US Army Command and Staff College at Ft. Leavenworth, KS. and by other military agencies.