somewhere within 100 days (and getting things done)

………. if your efforts suck … the universe will configure around your suckedness …

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“Happiness makes time move too fast.

Unhappiness makes time move too slow.

Yet, time, is indifferent to what you want and moves the same pace all the time.”

Me

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‘How long do projects take’ and ‘is that enough time to get something done’ are possibly the most discussed topics in business conference rooms around the world. “More time” is possibly the most used phrase in those meeting rooms. Which gets me to “100” and what was known as Napoleon’s Hundred Days campaign to point out how much shit can be done in 100 days as well as how precarious effective doing can be.

Oh. First. History. After kicking the crap out of almost every country and general for over a decade or so Napoleon abdicates his throne and on May 4, 1814 Napoleon is exiled to an island no sane person had ever heard of <Elba>. After kicking around on this miserable little island for a while Napoleon realizes that retirement ain’t as cracked up as people made it out to be and in February 1815 he says “the heck with retirement … I miss the whole leadership thing <that I was pretty darn good at>” and scrams off the island.

March 1, 1815: Escapes Elba, Napoleon returns in South France

March 7, 1815: Napoleon rallies the French army

March 20, 1815: King of France, Louis XVIII flees, Napoleon takes control, begins “Hundred Days” campaign.

What happened in the 100 days <the cliff notes version>:

napoleon Jourdan and prisonersNapoleon did what he always did when he was in trouble and what he was <frankly> great at, he went on the offensive. With his newly raised army of around 75000 troops, he attacked Belgium, where the British and Prussian armies were camped. His hope was that he could separately destroy these armies before the Russians and Austrians arrived. The British army was commanded by the Duke of Wellington and the Prussian army was commanded by Marshal Gebhard Blucher. The French army engaged the Prussians first at Ligny, on June 16, 1815. The battle was either a slight win for Napoleon or just relatively indecisive <although imminently winnable by Napoleon should a domino or two fallen his way> and both sides regrouped.

Napoleon decided next to attack the English, then at Waterloo, a village near Brussels.

On June 18 1815, the British and the Prussians defeated Napoleon. The British/Prussian victory signaled the end of a more-than-ten- year period filled with war <and a boatload of Napoleon victories>. At Waterloo, Napoleon had 72,000 troops, Wellington commanded 68,000 troops, and Blucher 45,000 <this becomes relevant later when I point out that “they” had more resources than “he”>. Suffice it to say there were a boatload of good and iffy decisions made by both sides, but maybe the biggest was because the ground was muddy on the day of the battle Napoleon made the critical decision of waiting for the ground to dry before attacking Wellington’s forces in the afternoon. This delay allowed Blucher’s forces to reach Waterloo in time to make a difference in the outcome of the battle. While the French made assault after assault on the British, they were slow to make progress, and Blucher’s Prussians advanced against the French army’s eastern flank.

Marshal Ney, one of Napoleon’s best commanders <called ‘the bravest of the brave’ although, in general, he wasn’t the most thoughtful general>, orchestrated a combined attack of soldiers and artillery, and came very close to breaking Wellington’s line. However, Napoleon could not reinforce Ney’s attack, since he was forced to divert a large number of troops from fighting the British, including his crack Imperial Guard, in order to face the Prussians.

Now. Second. Let me try and make several points relevant to business and projects.

100 days.

A shitload can happen in 100 days if you know what you are doing, are a good leader and have a great support <management> team. In fact you can gather almost 100,000 personnel and the materials needed to sustain them and move them hundreds of miles and get them to perform at the highest level if you really have your shit together.

My first point. 100 days is a lifetime if you use it well. Businesses can dither around and make excuses, but if you cannot get something done in 100 days you should probably be looking for some other business to conduct. If someone <Napoleon> can swing almost 100,000 men into action and in a span of three or four days of battle at the end of 100 days almost win a victory when outnumbered and outresourced, it seems pretty logical that we in business can certainly make a widget in 100 days.

My second point. 100 days doesn’t have a huge margin for error when doing something big and important.

Everything has to happen fairly efficiently and everyone has to be aligned. It helps when you have a tried & true team in place. The right people at the right place at the right time. Not just the workers,  but the management too.

In today’s business this is the trickiest.

100 days is a lifetime if you have the right team.

100 days and you can still have victory <not just show up or ‘get it done’> if you have the right team.

100 days never seems like enough if you lose … ponder that … because I see too many times when it doesn’t end well that a business will sit around and say “if we only had more time!” and suggest 100 days was not enough.

Bullshit. It wasn’t the time. It was the team <or the system or a combination thereof>.

Which leads me to maybe my most important point.

The importance of the <management> team:

It seems rarely mentioned but Napoleon not only glimpsed victory at Waterloo … it was his to be had. I will let all the military experts tear apart the minutiae in the decisions made that day. From a business perspective the key to the loss <to me> was simple. Napoleon didn’t have his tried & true chief of staff, Marshal Berthier, on this campaign. Napoleon sorely missed the legendary Marshal Berthier as chief of staff, and Marshal Soult <his replacement> was a good, but not as good, substitute.

Oh. And there was a domino effect on the entire management team as people shifted to assume slightly new roles.

napoleon marshalsNapoleon was the master at making on field decisions and yet permitting independent decisionmaking — empowering his best to do their best. And, let’s be clear, Napoleon possibly built the greatest team outside of the 1927 New York Yankees <murderers Row>. By Waterloo several stood on the sidelines, were dead or were managing from a different role than they were accustomed to. But. Napoleon’s management team, his marshals and generals below the marshals, were the best of the best.

Now. It is possible Napoleon should have shifted his management style to accommodate the shift in the personnel, but that is speculative thinking <because if he shifted his style who knows how that would have affected everything else>.

100 days would have been nothing if the team was in place.

Whoa. So I am suggesting one person … and not even ‘the leader’ can make that big a difference?

You bet. In business this chief of staff person is:

<a> reviled by the young employees as old, conservative and an order taker for the leader,

<b> loved & hated by middle management as they love the fact this person deciphers the vague, but inspirational thinking of the leader and gives them the specifics on what to do, but hates that this person is not the most creative thinker in the room and is always bitching about why you cannot have the resources you claim you need to do the job you are being given, and

<c> appreciated by the leader because this person can decipher what you are really thinking, get people to do it and while maddeningly conservative <versus the leader> they have a tendency to stop the leader from doing something too incredibly stupid <or risky>.

This person is key to the success of a great leader and an organization. Napoleon saw things on a battlefield that no one else could ever see. He could see things before they happened. But that kind of person <as a general or in business> needs someone to coordinate and corral the incredibly talented independent thinkers & managers who will actually implement the vision. And it takes a while to learn how to decipher a truly visionary leader.

Soult was a good general, but probably a novice decipherer. In addition by shifting Soult into chief of staff all the other marshals began assuming different roles & responsibilities.

You get it. You need someone to decipher as well as you need someone to implement and in a 100 days it helps if the people who know what to do are in familiar roles.

How a leader is judged:

Yes. This matters in getting things done because, well, if you lose you are a loser and are inevitably second guessed.

Napoleon was arguably the greatest general in history <if you want to be nitpicky you could say the greatest offensive general in history>. I am probably wrong, but I struggle to think of one battle in his history that Napoleon had more resources <men & artillery> than his enemy and yet he constantly drove on the offensive … and won.

No leader has ever done more with less than Napoleon.

At Waterloo he had just won a phenomenal battle at Ligny two days before, after one of the greatest blitzkriegs ever mounted. During his lightning advance, he had managed to separate two major armies who knew he was coming, and inflict simultaneous defeats on both of them. At Waterloo two of the greatest commanders in all of history faced each other. Wellington, master of defense, was in an entrenched position that he had chosen, and counted on the arrival of Blucher. Napoleon considered the Prussians under control by Grouchy, and had von Bulow not arrived in Napoleon’s flank and rear, the French would undoubtedly have won, and we’d be reading about Napoleon’s finest victory, Ney’s brilliant attacks etc.

Oh. But he lost.

Winning and losing is often defined by the slimmest of margins. Sometimes even by chance. But most likely it is defined somewhere within the organization and how the organization, and its people, take action.

That is somewhere within the dependence upon solid visionary direction and independence to react to the situation.

101 days wouldn’t have given Napoleon a victory. It wasn’t time <or the lack of it>. It was more likely the management team <or possibly his lack of effectiveness in communicating what he wanted to a new management team>.

Napoleon is typically judged by his two historical losses … Russia and Waterloo. Geez. Can’t a great general <leader> get a break?

Answer: Nope.

Leaders typically get defined by how they end and not all the good <or not so good> done inbetween. If you want to get things done, this is the burden in doing so.

Anyway.

100 days is a good reminder of what a great leader can do in 100 days as well as how slim a margin moving quickly gives you between victory and loss. But, please, please don’t tell me something can’t get done in a 100 days.

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Written by Bruce