Going to War in a Time of Peace

I visited the ambitious and on-the-ball East Cheshire Chamber of Commerce on Thursday to listen to a talk by Bob Stewart, he of commanding the UK's Nato contingent in the Bosnia horror affair back in the early 90s fame.

Now, to be totally honest, I am usually deeply uneasy about using military langague in business for the risk that a winning at all costs mentality creeps in and that anyone who is not right there with you is automatically the enemy.

It's a bit like sport - the military is another one of those areas which seems as if it might have close links to business practice and we can quite easily slide across high performance practices and the business world will be all the better and all the higher performing.

But it's not quite as simple as that - in relation to both sport and the military, the world of commerce is a more complex arena entirely and the games that we play in business need to be much more long termist.

However, Col Bob was a refreshing and pleasant surprise to me. He didn't talk about violence - in fact, he spoke mainly about avoiding violence and about humanitarianism. That's more my kind of business ethics.

The key useful messages for me were in the planning. The army has a simple starting point of establishing a Mission Analysis, asking very precisely what needs to be done, what tasks this takes and, thirdly, what constraints and resources bear on these tasks.

Following this step there comes relentless action, always under review.

Listening to Col Bob was like someone else reciting back at me the kind of blogs I have been writing the last couple of weeks about committed action and a constant refocus on the necessary tasks - and a mindset that simply moves from one successfully achieved target to another.

I liked it. I can let the military way into my thinking now, so long as I keep violence out. The entire mission approach assumes a dynamic of constant action and constant commitment. It simply doesn't allow any other options into the equation. Our job is to get things done and part of that job is to make sure that we choose the right things.................and so it goes round.

The talk reminded me of something an inspriational acquaintance of mine often says. Malcolm McClean, a creative problem solver and consultant, who runs the Bearhunt organisation, talks about the requirement necessary in order to build up enterprises as a case of "Going to war in a time of peace".

Col Bob has now better explained for me what Malcolm means.

- author Malcolm Evans is a corporate culture specialist.