Gettysburg

Since my wife works in the school system, we take a week for spring break. As the kids no longer live with us, we travel that week. This year we went back to Virginia and visited some of the major Civil War sites. Diane, my wife, is obviously a real trooper. The first one that we stayed at was the most iconic site of all, Gettysburg.

While I have always been interested in history, it has become more immediate to me as I have matured as a manager. History is simply the story of how people interact with each other in different situations, which is of course the practice of management. The history of conflict has always seemed to have special application to the business of projects. Both battles and projects are highly pressurized situations greatly affected by the personalities of the people involved, subject to the constraints of time and space.

While the horrible tragedy of battle and war overwhelm us, they can also provide "real life" examples of people and situations under pressure. While a forest fire or blast furnace are very different than a rusting nail, they both are examples of oxidation. One is awesome in its fury while the other goes unnoticed, but both involve the same chemistry.

At least that is what I tell myself. Perhaps it is just a little boy's excuse to spend time daydreaming about people and events so much greater than he. In any case, my wonderful wife had gotten us a room at a motel just across the road from the Lutheran Seminary. The road was not just a road, but was indeed the Chambersburg Pike. The modest ridge our motel stood on was Seminary Ridge and the equally modest ridge to the west was Herr Ridge. All names immortalized in the great crisis that was Gettysburg.

Coming out of my motel room in the morning and standing in the parking lot, I could look to the west and see down the Chambersburg Pike. A short distance across the road to the south was the cupola at the Lutheran Seminary. It didn't take a lot of imagination to seen John Buford standing up there, binoculars in hand, watching the advance brigade of Henry Heth's Division moving down the road toward him. The first day of three terrible days was beginning.

Success, or failure, at Gettysburg would pivot on different individuals at different times. But maybe none so pivotal as the actions of John Buford. Commanding a small force of ill regarded cavalry scouting in front of the Union army, he rose to the occasion by choosing to act unexpectedly. He became a hero. Many would say that the Union won the battle at Gettysburg because of John Buford. Many would say that if the Union had not won at Gettysburg, the Confederacy would have won their independence. Think about how different the world would be today.

Certainly the Union was glad that John Buford was at Gettysburg that day. Which raises the question, "Do we want John Buford's in our organizations?" The easy answer is of course we do. How can we not want strong decisive leaders in our organizations? That is, of course, an interesting point. Buford, in what might be called an operational position, had been passed over for an executive command just 6 weeks earlier. The man who was promoted over Buford was regarded by most as a weaker candidate, but considered more polished. Buford certainly had a strong record, in a branch of the Union army that had almost no one with a good record. But a more political candidate got the position of overall cavalry commander.

Indulging in a bit of post game analysis based on how I read his record, I would speculate that John Buford was an opinionated hard nosed individual. He was probably pretty sure he was right, and more than likely, ready to say so. He had strong opinions about things, and they weren't the politically correct opinions. His ideas about how to deploy cavalry proved decisive at Gettysburg, but they were not the "conventional wisdom". Also, I don't think John practiced and polished his political skills. Operating organizations tend to want people like John when the chips are down, but they can be hard to live with from day to day. They can be very uncomfortable to have around, particularly around headquarters.

Also, John did take a very large risk with his men. Under the most likely scenarios, he would have lost a lot of his men for no positive result. An objective observer at the time could probably have said that he was willfully careless with the lives of his men at Gettysburg. While we celebrate the John Buford's of the world when they are successful, someone else often pays the price when they fail.