Fast Iterations: How Napoleon Managed the French Army
This article sounds really good at a high level, but it misses an important point.
Prior to the invention of the radio, lower level commanders always had to use their initiative when commanding their troops, because there was no reliable way to quickly communicate with their commanders during a battle.
It's disappointing this was missed, because it's an important point: Control needs to be proportional to communication.
Also:
They also were taught to live off the land by hunting and foraging. This decoupled the soldiers from the slow supply caravans and allowed them to remain independent for long periods of time.
The author probably should have pointed out that this tactic led to his armies in the Iberian peninsular being bled by attacks form the local population sick of having the crops stolen by "foraging" soldiers. It also led to the Russian disaster - the Russians left nothing for the French armies to forage, and so when winter came they ~all died.
Military analogies and examples are almost universally terrible when applied to software development (and business in general). That blog post cherry picks a few anecdotes from Napoleon's history and ignores his failure to learn from his mistakes. As his famed opponent Arthur Wellesley (Wellington) said after defeating Napoleon the final time: "They came on in the same old way and we defeated them in the same old way." https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Column_%28for...
Business is not war.
Interesting... he became the most renowned military commander in European history by relinquishing his command to his subordinates. In effect, he pioneered not micromanaging.
Of course, there's more to it than just saying "do what you think is best" and calling it a day. Napoleon still needed to make high-level strategic decisions, he needed ensure his subordinates' individual initiative was in line with those strategic objectives (even harder if the officers are French aristocrats), and as usual he needed to completely re-invent logistics for his army to be able to take advantage of their flexibility (see also: Kanban). In a very real sense, he wasn't just a great general but invented an entirely new way of waging war.
Napoleon was innovative, but only covering his career to 1805 sort of ignores the final punchline. Over the next ten years he was repeatedly defeated by a coalition that could field larger armies, and slowly but surely stole (or improved on) all of his innovations. Thus demonstrating the "innovator's dilemma."
Napoleon practiced what is now known as Maneuver Warfare. John Boyd - the guy who originated maneuver warfare formally studied spent his life learning this stuff. Patterns of conflict was a study of 2500 years of conflict and includes Napoleons campaigns.
The current startup culture of fast iteration is a very weak version of what Boyd produced. I'd advise anyone starting or running a business to read up on the subject Boyds' work will tell you what you can and cannot achieve and how to go about doing it.
http://radio-weblogs.com/0107127/stories/2003/02/08/oodaAndB...
Fairly interesting, but a bit surprised that he missed one of the most surprising elements of Napolean's innovations: canned food. Modern war is largely a question of logistics, and canned goods (over foraging) gave them the ability to keep food edible longer over greater distance. Of course, not even canned food could give them victory over the russian winter.
This is only peripherally related. But since we are on the topic of Napoleon...
Charles Joseph Minard created and published a flow map of "Napoleon's disastrous Russian campaign of 1812"[1]. This graphic is way ahead of it's time. It provides so much information in such a concise and clear form that it's hard to imagine that it was published in 1869.
Also see more information on Tufte's website[2][3]. That is how I originally found out about it.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Joseph_Minard and http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/Minard.pn...
Utter and complete crock. Armies had always requisitioned food. Hunting could never supply a substantial part of an army's needs. Napoleon drew in part from lessons learned by the French while assisting the Americans during the American Revolution. Etc. etc. etc.
But as business publications go, it's above average.
Didn't the Roman general Gaius Marius also introduced the idea of backpack? His soldiers were called Marius' Mules.
Also shows the problem of first followers in action.
All of Europe got smacked around for a while by this great disrupter, but eventually, they learned from Napoleon, found some weaknesses, and then broke him in the two key battles ending the Napoleonic Wars. He couldn't maintain his 'first mover' advantage.
There are only two posts on that blog, and they're both great. I hope he keeps it up.
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