The famous Charge of the Light Brigade
is a useful study
Author: Tal Newhart Let’s look at the famous “Charge of the Light Brigade.” It happened on October 25, 1854 during the Crimean War with the British fighting the Russians. The disaster happened for the same reason a lot of businesses fail: bad communication brought upon by a lethal collection of inflated egos. In an act that appeared to be of unfathomable stupidity the British Lieutenant-General the Earl of Cardigan ordered his light brigade to attack the Russian artillery positions (the “light” was because they were lightly armed, as opposed to the “heavy brigade”). Success was impossible. The charge was through a narrow valley a mile and a quarter long. Russian guns were at the end of the valley and gunners were on both sides, forming a death box. In fact some of Cardigan’s men did manage to get through to the guns, but were then surrounded by the Russian troops. When they turned to retreat they were easy targets. The whole thing took about 20 minutes and cost about a third of his force. And of course there is the Tennyson poem to remind everybody about it forever (sort of like our modern press…). But what really went wrong and why is it vaguely familiar if you regularly read the Wall Street Journal? Well, there was a sequence of careless—and completely avoidable—mistakes. And they all came down to poor corpcraft. A successful attack was hopeless. That was obvious—as is almost always the case in war (and business), success or failure is decided before the battle. And again, as in business, after the “First Stupid Mistake” was made, management suddenly couldn’t get anything right and the situation (and shareholder value) disintegrated with shocking speed. In a nutshell this is the famous story of The Charge of the Light Brigade. It’s amazing that generally intelligent commanders, which these gentlemen were, could make such foolish mistakes. But, just as in the corporate world, that happens. The real problem is that a single minor mistake can set off what around here we call a “negative cascade” (as opposed to a positive cascade which is what you and your shareholders want). A negative cascade is simple: think dominos. Big expensive ones. But here’s the detail and it is easy to compare this to something you’ve probably observed or personally experienced: Lord Raglan, the commander (a.k.a. the Boss here), looked across a broad landscape, and from his high vantage point on a hill could see the enemy (the competition) in the distance trying to remove some captured English cannons. Since captured cannons were a metric of victory or defeat in a battle this was a bad thing. Raglan sent down another in a sequence of orders to Lieutenant-General the Earl of Lucan—who was in a position 600 feet lower in elevation and didn’t have the same view—to recover the cannons “immediate” [sic]. The order was given to another officer’s aide-de-camp, Captain Edward Nolan, for delivery—Captain Nolan was chosen because he was an accomplished horseman and would take a speedy, more direct route down to Lucan. He did this, probably loving it, because he was a known showoff. So Nolan delivered the order to Lucan to attack and regain the cannons. Reading the order Lord Lucan was justifiably baffled and reasonably asked for clarification because he couldn’t actually see any cannons. Nolan, eager to see some ‘real cavalry action’, arrogantly waved his arm in the general direction of the Russian front and snapped “There, my Lord, is your enemy. There are your guns.” Nolan repeated that the order was to attack immediately then trotted off to talk to another officer. Lord Lucan, flawed by pride, and always at odds with the arrogant Nolan (Nolan had authored books on cavalry tactics and made sure everybody knew it), failed to ask Nolan for further clarification. Note: Like Lord Raglan, Captain Nolan had seen the location of the cannons that were obscured from Lucan’s view because of the topography. But Nolan didn’t point to where the cannons were—he merely swept his arm across the landscape in the general direction of the Russians. The cascade now accelerates towards doom. Lord Lucan rode over to the commander of the Light Brigade, the Earl of Cardigan (and his trusty horse Ronald). Lucan and Cardigan hated each other (Cardigan had been married to Lucan's youngest sister but was now separated from her) and, again, there was no useful discussion. Lucan simply ordered Cardigan to attack ‘down the valley’. Cardigan pointed out the fact there were numerous enemy positions in the vicinity to which Lord Lucan simply replied Cardigan should take the ride at moderate speed so as not to exhaust the horses (good news for Ronald). Lucan would follow up with the Heavy Brigade. The cascade continues. So off they rode into “The Valley of Death”. Twenty minutes later it was over. Nolan died dramatically in the charge, ostensibly trying to ride forward to warn Cardigan he was headed in the wrong direction (some historians disagree with this interpretation—nobody argues he was the first to die). Lucan, seeing what was happening to the Light Brigade in front, turned the Heavy Brigade around uttering the famous line: “They shall not have the heavy.” The high level military history view says that the attack was a perfect misapplication of the sound strategy of applying superior force at a position of an enemy’s weakness (e.g. your competition, see the Southwest Airlines interpretation of last March 4th). But that’s the easy way out. What happened was that the functional CEO (Lord Raglan) made a mistake. The mistake, foolish in itself, compounded itself through a sequence of unquestioning levels of management (accelerating the negative cascade). In the final analysis it was Cardigan who took the most heat because he led the actual charge straight into the cannon battery. Cardigan, of course, blamed Lucan. And Lucan, of course, blamed the dead Nolan for the vagueness of delivery of the orders. Nothing’s changed. This happens with poor management all the time. It all sounds uncomfortably familiar doesn’t it? How many Boards and executive committees behave the same way? Let’s take a look at this via a few very broad strokes:
So off they rode into “a mile long jaw of death.” The real tragedy here is how senseless it all was. The biggest root in the failure matrix was simply poor communication. The same thing happens on Boards of Directors. Things often don’t happen like they should because the Board doesn’t function as a proper, fluid team (and this has nothing to do with Sarbanes-Oxley, that’s a downstream consideration). Remember, in business the cannons are always there, somewhere. But there’s no reason to ride into them.
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