Can War Teach Us To Do Business?
Essential on War for Business, edited by Pritsikha Anil and extracted from the writing of the Prussian General Carl von Clausewitz, offers to bring the “key lessons from the battlefield needed to succeed in the twenty-first-century world of business.” The obvious problems with such books are that business is not war nor any other such epochal activity, business doesn’t have the same implications as war and managers are not generals. We do live in an unprecedented context, never before have businessmen been heroes. Either our definition of, or our expectation from, heroes has degraded.
Shorn of the baggage of Clausewitz’s story, the book may offer some valuable experiential learning for specific situations. Clausewitz’s original work was based on his experiences more than academic assessments, and that delivers some good ideas. For example, “firmness has at its roots the strength of a feeling in relation to the force of a single blow; staunchness in relation to a continuance of blows,” says Clauswitz on the subject of what drives the commander of armies. How would a leader go about sensing morale? The importance of ideology; the question of morality; the question of finding worthy deputies; the importance of knowledge and strategy—these questions have interesting answers in the book.
In Clausewitz’s discussion of the uses and conduct of a war, one can see the clear ideological line that extends up to the catastrophes of the First and Second World Wars. With frequent crises in markets and the tenuous nature of inefficient market environment, vitiated by concentrated power and inherited wealth, an analogy of war for business is probably the last thing we need.
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