Britain’s, if not the Allies, best General in the Second World War
was Field Marshall Bill Slim. He led the 14th Army to ultimate
victory in the Burma campaign. His start in Burma, as a Corp Commander, was
less than auspicious. He was thrust into command in a dysfunctional Army that
was being swept aside by the then irresistible tide of Japanese conquest: Pearl
Harbor, Philippines, Dutch East Indies, Wake Island, Hong Kong, Siam, Malaya,
Singapore had all fallen and now Rangoon. The culmination of this campaign was
the longest retreat in British Military history over some of the most
forbidding terrain in the world: No roads just tracks, no supplies, but
plentiful poisonous snakes, no air cover, it was a rout of the worst kind. He
describes it all in Defeat into Victory, which, along with General US Grant’s memoirs, ranks as one of the best military memoirs ever written.
Recalling
his feelings at the time he wrote this sage piece of advice that rings through
the ages for all who would lead anything.
“The only true test of
generalship is success, and I had succeeded in nothing I had attempted....The
soldier may comfort himself with the thought that, whatever the result, he had
done his duty faithfully and steadfastly, but the commander has failed in his duty if he has not won victory - for
that is his duty. He has no other
comparable to it. He will go over in his mind the events of the campaign.
'Here' he will think, 'I went wrong; here I took counsel of my fears when I
should have been bold; there I should have waited to gather strength, not
struck piecemeal; at such a moment I failed to grasp opportunity when it was
presented to me.' He will remember the soldiers whom he sent into the attack
that failed and who did not come back. He will recall the look in the eyes of
men who trusted him. 'I have failed them,' he will say to himself, 'and I
failed my country!' He will himself for what he is - a defeated general. In a
dark hour, he will turn upon himself and question the very foundations of his
leadership and his manhood.
And then he must stop! For, if he is ever to command in
battle again, he must shake off these regrets, and stamp on them, as they claw
at his will and self-confidence. He must beat off these attacks he delivers
against himself, and cast out the doubts born of failure. Forget them, and
remember only the lessons to be learnt from defeat - they are more than from
victory.”
That is
what you, as project manager, must do every morning before you start work.
Learn from your errors and the errors of others, but shake off the fears of
failure, project an air of confidence and move the project forward. If you don’t radiate it then why should your team feel it? Why should
they follow you?
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