This week will feature posts with a military theme, or perhaps better stated as what risk/BC can learn from military experience.
This post is also the second is a series on learnings from the American Civil War – inspired by my visiting several Civil War sites to mark the 150th anniversary of the start of the war.
After starting my battlefield tour at Manassas, the story moves on to Sharpeville, Maryland and the Antietam Battlefield.
More than a year after the first battle at Manassas, and only about 2 weeks after second Manassas, the two armies met again in a major battle at Antietam. This battle had two significant historical features;
- it was the first major battle fought on Northern soil, and
- It was the single bloodiest day in American military history – in total there were 23,000 casualties.
Here then is the first lesson we should be able to take away and use in our risk and BC programs.
Are you still preparing to fight the last war?
Both armies had trained to fight using infantry tactics first developed over 100 years earlier. This involved massed infantry standing in line and firing co-ordinated volleys at the other side.
It may have been effective when this was codified into ‘Best Practice’ but did not take into account recent technological changes. Particularly the development of the rifled muskets to replace smooth bore weapons – leading to more accurate fire over greater distances. Couple this with the Minie ball ammunition and you get the massive casualties experienced during the Civil War – in particular around the area in the picture above.
When knowledge is codified into ‘Best Practice’ and drilled into staff as repetative process – then that knowledge starts to decay and will eventually die.
The second lesson is around agility and adaptation.
Lee’s Confederate forces were significantly outnumbered and outgunned in this battle. They also had some terrible logistical challenges with a range of different weapons and ammunition standards to keep supplied.
Despite these liabilities Lee was able to fight the Union to a standstill, partly because of his ability to adapt his plans and move his forces to re-organise and counter each Union attack.
There is little point in blindly following a plan that is not applicable to the event as it unfolds.
Finally, it is not enough to simply “bounce back” or win the battle. A resilient entity will position itself to exploit any opportunities that arise from the disruption.
At Antietam the North had significant numerical advantage and did not commit all their forces to the battle – so they had fresh reserves. The battle is considered a Union history, rather than a draw, as Lee and his army abandoned the field and retreated back into Virginia.
But the Union commander, McClellan, did not seek to exploit his advantage, nor to attack the retreating Confederate troops. This failure to exploit the advantage contributed to the war dragging on for another 2.5 years. He was too cautious and not seeking to find and exploit the opportunity presented from this battle.
Compare this performance to President Abraham Lincoln who was quick to exploit the battle for political advantage. He announced his Emancipation Proclamation a week after the battle thus making it difficult for any European powers who may have been inclined to support the Confederate cause.
As Dave Snowden puts it – resilience is about early detection, fast recovery and early exploitation of opportunities that arise.
- Lee recovered quickly after the battle, carried out an orderly retreat and exploited the opportunity to fight another day.
- McLellan did not exploit his opportunity, and his cause suffered several more years of the war.
And I headed off to the final point of my tour – at Gettysburg.
What are you doing to keep your Response/Recovery thinking fresh, and evolving your knowledge and skills in that regard?
Or are you still using heavily codified and decaying knowledge?
How is your Intelligence function? Will it detect early signs of trouble and help you adapt?
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