Issue No. 387 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting highlights a remarkable book on the zillions of details involved in one of the greatest war ruses of all time. It’s filled with leadership lessons and why missing even the smallest details can literally kill you. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and click here for more summer reading list nominees.
The Twin Frailties of Wishfulness and Yesmanship
D-DAY! Seventy-four years ago today, on June 6, 1944, the Allies invaded Western Europe in the largest amphibious attack in history. So here’s a summer re-run book for your lazy days of summer reading list. (Note: I first reviewed this on Sept. 9, 2010.)
And…if you’re in the Southern Hemisphere where winter just arrived, it’s the perfect book for those quiet evenings at home. The author delivers an amazing narrative of a war machine bureaucracy that—due to detailed planning—gets it done.
Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory is unlike any spy novel I’ve ever read. I’ve enjoyed all of Tom Clancy’s novels starting with The Hunt for Red October. But this is different—and better—and all true. Operation Mincemeat is painstakingly documented (details). It’s a page-turner.
In World War II, following the successful North Africa campaign, a tiny team at British Intelligence in London attempt to create the biggest ruse in war history—convincing the Germans that the Allied invasion of Europe will come through Greece and Sardinia, not Sicily. The big idea: find a corpse, build an identity, dress and drop it off the coast of Spain by submarine—and deceive the German spies in Spain into believing that the officer’s secret documents contained the invasion plans.
It’s a true thriller—and the details and insights are extraordinary. The small team in London (about 20 men and women and just five typewriters in a stuffy underground office) executed the plan with spy movie genius. Along the way, the leadership and management issues jump off the pages, including how to recognize the twin sins of “wishfulness” and “yesmanship.”
“…John Godfrey identified what he called ‘wishfulness’ and ‘yesmanship’ as the twin frailties of German intelligence. ‘If the authorities were clamouring for reports on a certain subject the German Secret Intelligence Service was not above inventing reports on what they thought probable.’ The Nazi high command, at the same time, when presented with contradictory intelligence reports, was ‘inclined to believe the one that fits in best with their own previously formed conceptions.’ If Hitler’s paranoid Wishfulness and his underlings’ craven Yesmanship could be exploited, then Operation Barclay might work: the Germans would deceive themselves.”
SPOILER ALERT! I won’t give you the all delicious details in this review, but the Allies win. How Operation Mincemeat did its part to save perhaps thousands of lives on both sides is a poignant read. For detail-oriented people—who bless others by mastering the Operations Bucket and the Systems Bucket—this true account will not disappoint.
To order this book from Amazon, click on the link below for Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory, by Ben Macintyre.
YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) Has our team ever been tempted to succumb to the twin sins of “wishfulness” and “yesmanship?”
2) The conventional wisdom is that “the Devil is in the details.” But, wait a minute—is not God into the details? Who has God gifted on our team to focus on the details?
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The Cardinal Sin of Omission
Insights from ECFA Tools and Templates for Effective Board Governance
Speaking of sins (per the twin frailties above of wishfulness and yesmanship), Ed Morgan reminded us last month that “the cardinal sin of omission by the board is the lack of yearly evaluations of the CEO against board-approved goals.” In his color commentary blog on Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom for Lesson 26 of 40: Spotting, Catching, or Exiting a Falling CEO, Ed has even more to say about dysfunctional boards!
Solution! “Tool #9: The Board’s Annual Evaluation of the Top Leader” is a 20-page resource—with an add-water-and-stir survey instrument—and is one of 22 tools in the book, ECFA Tools and Templates for Effective Board Governance: Time-Saving Solutions for Your Board, by Dan Busby and John Pearson.
The workbook includes access to all 22 downloadable templates including: the “Prime Responsibility Chart” (one-page), the “Board’s Annual Self-Assessment Survey,” the “CEO Monthly Dashboard Report,” and the "Rolling 3-Year Strategic Plan Placemat" and more. When you use all 22 of these time-saving solutions, you'll wonder why you didn't discover them sooner. To order from Amazon, click here for ECFA Tools and Templates for Effective Board Governance: Time-Saving Solutions for Your Board, by Dan Busby and John Pearson.
For more resources, visit the Board Bucket webpage.
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