Leadership, Management and Command: Rethinking D-Day [Hardcover]

It is difficult to believe that this book has remained unreviewed for so long. It is a seminal contribution to the literature on leadership, and the distinction of that capacity from management. It deserves to be read and debated across so many spectra of organizations, politics and decision making.

The book analyses the D-Day invasion in 1944. There is a masterful detail of the information available. This demands careful study and belies a superficial read and commentary. It is accompanied by analyses of the processes and the understanding of the personalities of the major actors involved, Eisenhower, Bradley, Patton, Montgomery, Tedder and others.

But there is so much more than this. This is an analysis of the contributions of individual actors, soldiers, right down to the level of the infantryman, the destroyer captains, the beachmasters; all of those brave and dedicated, and sometimes not so ideologically dedicated, people, who gave their lives to the success of the invasion, who made things work when the strategic planning had gone awry, as it inevitably did, after the exchange of the first shots.

The distinction made between management and command and the essentials of leadership in the heat of battle and invasion, resonates so much with the state of politics and the management of change in modern society. There have been so many trite comparisons made between the management of modern corporations and firms and the leadership of soldiers in battle. The literature on strategic planning is replete with the analogy between the management of the regiment and of the firm and the company, the university, the school, etc. This loses sight of the differences between command and direction in battle (and the tedium of the preparation for war) and the day to day management of organizations in mundane society. It could lead the reader to think that the metaphor of battle does not really apply to the modern organization, or at least to consider the manifest differences.

But this volume goes a whole step further. It enables one to see a different way to understand management, and more importantly leadership. The distinction is made between tame problems, critical problems and wicked problems, which require the engagement of skills in management and command, but more importantly in leadership. We are led to see the vital role that the real leader, the person able to see that problems cannot be understood or analyzed from the perspective of the past, can enable change and lead, not simply manage. And the management, or leadership, of the "wicked" problem, the intractable, complex and perhaps unsolvable problem, may need to be addressed by the person at the "coal face", the person who has to see the problem that is immediately "there' and is not necessarily the person who has been appointed "to be in charge" . People may be thrust into the "wicked" problem and solve it, or at least arrive at an optimal solution, even if they were not expecting it or were not specifically trained for it. The destroyer captains off the coast of Normandy in June 1944 may have taken leadership of the wicked problem of imminent disaster, emanating from the German artillery and may thereby have advanced the invasion in a manner not foreseen by the strategic managers in London or Washington.

And there are other delights in this text.

The author's analysis of the training and performance of German troops, both officers and other ranks, before and for World War II, showing their preparation for and ability to adapt to change and volatile situations, as against the authoritarian and rigid preparation of soldiers in the allies, throws a whole new light on an understanding of the behavior of the armies in that conflict. It requires a resolution of dissonance about what many have understood about the differences between the Axis and Allied armies. The thinking of the like of Tarantino and his "inglorious basterds" needs a quiet re-think.

It also demonstrates an ability to throw open the analysis of group performance under stress and so many other issues and problems.

This book deserves attention, comment, analysis, criticism and debate. It is worthy of celebrity.