PART II ORGANIZATIONAL (TEAM) WARFARE

You may have brilliant ideas, you may be able to invent unbeatable strategies—but if the group that you lead, and that you depend on to execute your plans, is unresponsive and uncreative, and if its members always put their personal agendas first, your ideas will mean nothing. You must learn the lesson of war: it is the structure of the army—the chain of command and the relationship of the parts to the whole—that will give your strategies force.

The primary goal in war is to build speed and mobility into the very structure of your army. That means having a single authority on top, avoiding the hesitancy and confusion of divided leadership. It means giving soldiers a sense of the overall goal to be accomplished and the latitude to take action to meet that goal; instead of reacting like automatons, they are able to respond to events in the field. Finally, it means motivating soldiers, creating an overall esprit de corps that gives them irresistible momentum. With forces organized in this manner, a general can adapt to circumstances faster than the enemy can, gaining a decided advantage.

This military model is extremely adaptable to any group. It has one simple requirement: before formulating a strategy or taking action, understand the structure of your group. You can always change it and redesign it to fit your purposes. The following three chapters will help you focus on this critical issue and give you strategic options—possible organizational models to follow, as well as disastrous mistakes to avoid.

5 AVOID THE SNARES OF GROUPTHINK: THE COMMAND-AND-CONTROL STRATEGY

The problem in leading any group is that people inevitably have their own agendas. You have to create a chain of command in which they do not feel constrained by your influence yet follow your lead. Create a sense of participation, but do not fall into groupthink—the irrationality of collective decision making.

6 SEGMENT YOUR FORCES: THE CONTROLLED-CHAOS STRATEGY

The critical elements in war are speed and adaptability—the ability to move and make decisions faster than the enemy. Break your forces into independent groups that can operate on their own. Make your forces elusive and unstoppable by infusing them with the spirit of the campaign, giving them a mission to accomplish, and then letting them run.

7 TRANSFORM YOUR WAR INTO A CRUSADE: MORALE STRATEGIES

The secret to motivating people and maintaining their morale is to get them to think less about themselves and more about the group. Involve them in a cause, a crusade against a hated enemy. Make them see their survival as tied to the success of the army as a whole.