The 15th Principle - Place Common Interest First

This last checklist precept  is expressed in our oft-used phrases of "servant" or "selfless" leadership...

To mark the moment of surrender of April 9, 1865 by the south during the civil war, General Ulysses S. Grant ordered a follow-up ceremony for April 12, with more than 4,000 union solders to be lined up at attention on one side of a field.  Robert E. Lee's defeated infantry units were then to march onto the field to place their regimental flags and firearms at the foot of a Union officer in charge.  For the honor of orchestrating the event Grant designated Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain.

As the first Confederate brigade approached Union forces at the field on April 12, four years to the date since the Rebel firing on Fort Sumter, Chamberlain ordered a bugle call that told Union solders to "carry arms" -- a posture of respect in which soldiers hold the musket in their right hand with the muzzle perpendicular to their shoulders.  Both Union and Confederate soldiers understood its meaning, since their military traditions had emanated from the same sources.

A Southern general riding near the front of the Confederate forces, John B. Gordon, appreciated the respectful signal that Chamberlain's soldiers displayed toward the Rebel soldiers on their day of ignominy, and Gordon ordered the same posture to be returned by his own troops.  As described by Chamberlain himself, "Gordon, at the head of the marching column, riding with heavy spirit and downcast face, catches the sound of the shifting arms, looks up, and taking the meaning," instructed "his successive brigades to pass with the same position."

The incident became known as a "salute returning a salute," a moment remembered for years by those who witnessed or heard of it, and one that implied reconciliation.  Some of Chamberlains fellow officers were angered by witnessing such a fraternal act after fighting the same soldiers on so many killing fields.  And for Chamberlain himself, it was a matter of saluting those who had tried to kill him only two weeks earlier.

For President Abraham Lincoln, the South's capitulation at Appomattox constituted not only an ending point for the armed rebellion but also a starting point for national reconciliation.  Even for him, however, the road to reunification was a bitter pill given the Union's grievous losses on the battlefields.  Events would take a horrible personal turn just two days after Chamberlain's salute to the Rebel army as the president and his wife watched a performance at Ford's Theater in Washington.

For both sides, though, gestures of reconciliation were more important than the hostilities that remained.  The latter were natural, the former learned, and Chamberlain's moment at the conclusion of the Civil War serves to remind us of the vital importance of a final Leader's Checklist principle: Placing common mission ahead of personal interest or animosity, especially when it seems least natural to do so.   This last checklist precept  is expressed in our oft-used phrases of "servant" or "selfless" leadership, and it is well captured in a U.S. Marine Corps dictum: "The officer eats last."

ACTION POINT: In setting strategy, communicating vision, and reaching decisions, common purpose comes first, personal self-interest last.

Failure to Face the Problem

If the challenge is not defined, it is difficult or impossible to assess the quality of the strategy.
A strategy is a way through a difficulty, an approach to overcoming an obstacle, a response to a challenge. If the challenge is not defined, it is difficult or impossible to assess the quality of the strategy. And, if you cannot assess that, you cannot reject a bad strategy or improve a good one.


International Harvester learned about this element of bad strategy the hard way. In July 1979, the company’s strategic and financial planners produced a thick sheaf of paper titled “Corporate Strategic Plan: International Harvester.” It was an amalgam of five separate strategic plans, each created by one of the operating divisions.

The strategic plan did not lack for texture and detail. Looking, for example, within the agricultural-equipment group—International Harvester’s core, dating back to the McCormick reaper, which was a foundation of the company—there is information and discussion about each segment. The overall intent was to strengthen the dealer/distributor network and to reduce manufacturing costs. Market share in agricultural equipment was also projected to increase, from 16 percent to 20 percent.  That was typical of the overall strategy, which was to increase the company’s share in each market, cut costs in each business, and thereby ramp up revenue and profit. A summary graph, showing past and forecast profit, forms an almost perfect hockey stick, with an immediate recovery from decline followed by a steady rise.

The problem with all this was that the plan didn’t even mention Harvester’s grossly inefficient production facilities, especially in its agricultural-equipment business, or the fact that Harvester had the worst labor relations in US industry. As a result, the company’s profit margin had been about one-half of its competitors’ for a long time. As a corporation, International Harvester’s main problem was its inefficient work organization—a problem that would not be solved by investing in new equipment or pressing managers to increase market share. By cutting administrative overhead, Harvester boosted reported profits for a year or two. But following a disastrous six-month strike, the company quickly began to collapse. It sold off various businesses—including its agricultural-equipment business, to Tenneco. The truck division, renamed Navistar, is today a leading maker of heavy trucks and engines.

ACTION POINT:  If you fail to identify and analyze the obstacles, you don't have a strategy.  Instead, you have a stretch goal or a budget or a list of things you wish would happen.

The Hallmarks of Bad Strategy

...a growing profusion of bad strategy...


The term bad strategy was coined by Richard Rumelt in 2007 at a Washington, DC, seminar on national-security strategy. His role was to provide a business and corporate-strategy perspective. The participants expected, that his remarks would detail the seriousness and growing competence with which business strategy was created. Using words and slides, He told the group that many businesses did have powerful, effective strategies.

But he also saw a growing profusion of bad strategy. In the process, he created a list of the key hallmarks of bad strategy to four points:

• the failure to face the challenge
• mistaking goals for strategy
• bad strategic objectives
• fluff.

ACTION POINT: Know what bad strategy consists of and avoid it.

The Perils of Bad Strategy II

Each of these elements is, of course, an important part of human life. But, by themselves, they are not substitutes for the hard work of strategy.


Bad strategy ignores the power of choice and focus, trying instead to accommodate a multitude of conflicting demands and interests. Like a quarterback whose only advice to his teammates is “let’s win,” bad strategy covers up its failure to guide by embracing the language of broad goals, ambition, vision, and values. Each of these elements is, of course, an important part of human life. But, by themselves, they are not substitutes for the hard work of strategy.


Make no mistake: the creeping spread of bad strategy affects us all. Heavy with goals and slogans, governments have become less and less able to solve problems. Corporate boards sign off on strategic plans that are little more than wishful thinking. The US education system is rich with targets and standards but poor at comprehending and countering the sources of underperformance. The only remedy is we must demand good strategy.

ACTION POINT: Understand that strategy is more than slogans, broad goals and raw ambition.

The Perils of Bad Strategy

Bad strategy abounds, says UCLA management professor Richard Rumelt.  Senior executives who can spot it  stand a much better chance of creating good strategies.

Horatio Nelson had a problem. The British admiral’s fleet was outnumbered at Trafalgar by an armada of French and Spanish ships that Napoleon had ordered to disrupt Britain’s commerce and pre-pare for a cross-channel invasion. The prevailing tactics in 1805 were for the two opposing fleets to stay in line, firing broadsides at each other. But Nelson had a strategic insight into how to deal with being outnumbered. He broke the British fleet into two columns and drove them at the Franco-Spanish fleet, hitting its line perpendicularly.

The lead British ships took a great risk, but Nelson judged that the less-trained Franco Spanish gunners would not be able to compensate for the heavy swell that day and that the enemy fleet, with its coherence  lost, would be no match for the more experienced British captains and gunners in the ensuing melee. He was proved right: the French and Spanish lost 22 ships, two-thirds of their fleet. The British lost none.

Nelson’s victory is a classic example of good strategy, which almost always looks this simple and obvious in retrospect. It does not pop out of some strategic-management tool, matrix, triangle, or fill-in-the-blanks scheme. Instead, a talented leader has identified the one or two critical issues in a situation—the pivot points that can multiply the effectiveness of effort—and then focused and concentrated action and resources on them.

ACTION POINT: A good strategy does more than urge us forward toward a goal or vision; it honestly acknowledges the challenges we face  and provides an approach to overcoming them.