Lessons From Eisenhower and Churchill on Strategic Leadership
Ric Kosiba, Ph.D.
President, Bay Bridge Decision Technologies
A Big, Big Operation
On the morning of D-Day, June 6, 1944, as the greatest seaborne invasion in all of history was taking place in Normandy, France, its two most tireless planners, Dwight Eisenhower and Winston Churchill curiously found themselves with nothing to do. Churchill slept in that morning; Eisenhower chain-smoked waiting for news all by himself.
They had been working for this day for years. Churchill was a tireless micromanager and idea generator- he even developed the first conceptual engineering design of the “Mullberries” the floating and ingenious artificial harbors that would allow the Allies to bring their tanks and ammunition into Normandy on the days following the invasion. He had Okayed the “practice invasion” at Dieppe two years earlier, simply to develop knowledge about the challenges they would face later in Normandy, at the cost of four thousand men.
Eisenhower was less a warrior than he was a planner and logistician - he had never led troops in combat. He had risen to his post of “Supreme Allied Commander in Europe” through good staff and planning work for George Marshall, the General of the Army.
They were both tremendous leaders, (Churchill is among the greatest inspirational leaders in all of human history- “we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds…”), and both knew a huge part of their job was strategy and logistics. For the D-Day invasion, their main task was to get the right number of soldiers to the right place at the right time with the right tools and the right support. Sound familiar?
But on D-Day, they were absolutely powerless. And bored.
Call Center Planning is Just Like Planning for the Invasion of France
Okay, I know that planning for a contact center is not the same as planning for the invasion of France during a world war, but I also know there are lessons to be gained from great (planning) struggles. I love history, and feel that the best books on business and leadership are always history books. Plus this section header was fun to write.
Again, their process was to ensure that they had the right number of resources at the right place at the right time, given their expectations of enemy strength and readiness. Their planning process was a decision-making process, a resource planning decision-making process. On the day of the invasion, the planners would be powerless.
Similarly, our contact center planning process is also all about decision-making. It is all about resource management and setting priorities. It is about planning for unexpected occurrences.
So what did Eisenhower do, and what should you do?
Have a Plan: While it is a semi-truth that in all endeavors plans are obsolete the moment they are placed into effect, the other truth is that they also often work the way they were intended. While during D-Day, paratroopers were dropped far from the planned landing zones, they also had their desired effect: the paralyzing of the German invasion response.
Similarly, your contact centers may be wracked with unintended call volume, and had you prepared for unintended volumes by, say, coordinating cross training or developing a partnership with a safety valve outsourcer, your operation would still meet its objectives.
Get Data and Analyze: Eisenhower’s planning process was designed to make sure that all contingencies were considered and taken into account. There were teams of thousands of soldiers and civilians and spies who worked on gathering data and analyzing all aspects of the proposed invasion. They gathered intelligence and forecasted enemy troop strengths and fortification readiness. They sent soldiers to the landing beaches to get soil samples to make sure tanks could maneuver there (although they missed the near-impregnable hedgerows a mile or so inland).
Your data tells volumes; cleaning and gathering your data, and developing intelligence from your data will yield tremendous dividends. Data, by itself, is interesting, but analysis of data is critical to success.
Make Planning a Strategic Exercise: D-Day was far from our first invasion against the Germans. Churchill had the penultimate strategic vision; he defended German incursions into Africa and the Middle East for resource protection reasons, he invested heavily in the British Fleet (before the war), and invested into the development of radar.
The overall strategy: strategic bombing, developing several “second fronts” to stretch the German Army thin, deception and intelligence gathering, protecting vital resources far from the battlefield (e.g. Africa), developing a resource stream (from the geographically protected US) was part of a long term strategy to drive to the ultimate goal, victory (and freedom). His view was strategic.
What are your goals? How do you align your resources (what functions and skills) to serve which strategic purposes? How do you compensate your phone agents? When should you hire? What service standards do you run and why? What technologies do you invest in?
Good Strategy Improves The Tactical Situation: Strategic bombing made fuel and other important German resources rarer. Strategic bombing reduced the German Luftwaffe to a defensive air force. To the soldiers on the ground at the moment of combat, the sound of an airplane meant instant fear or instant relief, depending on whether you were German or Allied.
In contact centers, the investment into long range planning also improves the tactical situation “on the ground”. By developing accurate long range plans, you set the stage for the tactical day-of situation. By developing a living and regular (say monthly?) strategic decision making process, you almost casually react to any substantial systematic changes as they reveal themselves. Your budget plan becomes a living, breathing, and improving document. And the days of being surprised by service blow-ups are minimized- you see them weeks and months in advance, and react automatically.
Training: Many historians feel much of the war was won through great small group leadership and not by great generalship; that in World War 2, the real battle was won by the Allies’ marvelous lieutenants and non-commissioned officers. When you think about it, while this may be true, the great generals impacted this aspect of army leadership through training the platoon and company leaders in the years leading to the invasion. The generals, through their strategic vision of how an American soldier was to think, created the small group leadership that may have really won the war.
Similarly, training our tacticians, our supervisors and workforce managers, giving them the skills and empowering them to make their own decisions are key to our own victory. An historic example: Hitler did not allow anyone but himself to release the armor that may have defeated the Normandy invasion (Who would have ever thought that you’d read the name Hitler in a call center article?). Hence, nobody released the Tiger Tanks until the invasion was already a success for the Allied Armies. In the US Army, decision-making was less top-down, and all officers had the power of initiative throughout the war.
Strategic Resource Optimization and Trade-Off Analysis: Both Winston Churchill and you have had to make resource allocation trade-offs- you simply do not have an endless supply of resources. Deciding what to build in is a strategic problem. Trade-offs around what skills to develop in human resources is a strategic problem for both the allied armies and your call center. You may have had to develop trade-off analysis between service and resource costs required to get you through your busy season.
Simulation and What-If: To develop likely enemy response to their plans, the Allied officers “practiced” with war-games, where Allied officers took the role of the German enemy and tried to beat the invaders using crude battle “simulations.” They used these analytics to develop their war plan, troop strength and the invasion plan.
The same technology, discrete-event simulation model is available to us in an automated and much improved form. We can use this technology to respond to different (battle) scenarios and to develop the trade-off analysis that is so important to optimizing the business.
Look, I know that our goals are to run a great call center network, and Churchill’s goal was to save the world for humankind, and I know that I may have stretched this analogy way too far, but history is a great place to learn about solving great problems. Go ahead and drop that business book, Blink (in a blink), and pick up a great history book. Try Guns of August and learn about decision-making!
Ric Kosiba is a charter member of SWPP and co-founder and President of Bay Bridge Decision Technologies. He can be reached at EDK@BayBridgeTech.com or (410) 224-9883.
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New Research on the Impact of Social Media and Online Recommendations submitted by Diane Berenbaum
Marketing is no longer in a company’s control. Organizations have much less influence on their brand perception due to the multitude of ways customers can share their viewpoints online. According to Melanie Ingrey, research director of Nielsen’s online division, the number of consumers engaging with companies via social media is up from 23% in 2008 to 38% in 2009.
And what they are saying is not always very positive.
With social media, customers can speak their minds and say how they really feel about your products and services. And they are taking advantage of it: Research shows that 1 in 5 people lash out negatively about a brand or product online.
How much can a negative comment hurt? A lot more than you might think*:
· Nearly half of consumers report that they always or often use an online posting or blog to get others’ opinions about a company’s customer service reputation. And they put greater credence to the negative reviews than the positive ones (57% and 48% respectively).
· 78% of those online trust recommendations from complete strangers more than they do the company’s marketing efforts.
· One negative review or comment on Twitter, YouTube or Facebook can cost a company about 30 customers. Each comment on these sites reaches an average of 45 people; and two-thirds of these individuals would either avoid the brand or stop doing business entirely with a company with a bad review.
Customer expectations for service quality are rising…they reward the ones who deliver and damage the reputation of those who don’t. Organizations need to recognize that the quality of every single interaction is more crucial than ever before. Now is the time to create a culture where consistently exceptional service is the norm. Your brand and reputation are at stake.
*Sources
Euro RSCG Worlwide
Convergys Corporation
American Express Global Customer Service Barometer