One of my favourite military strategists of all time is Napoleon and of course, many of us knew about his exploits and achievements in modern warfare and strategies. In my opinion, Napoleon's victories are unmatched and perhaps will never be matched. His achievements are even more amazing given the fact that he often out-maneuvered his adversaries who are usually superior in numbers. For those who are interested in the exploits of Napoleon, I would recommend the novel by Max Gallo as a starting point. Please take note however, that the book by Max Gallo is a combination of history and fiction. Because of Max Gallo's brilliant imagination, the quartet of books is highly readable and therefore, is a good start before we read more serious and "dry" military books.
The series are divided into four books as follows:
a) The Song of Departure
b) The Sun of Austerlitz
c) The Emperor of Kings
d) The Immortal of St Helena
There are many lessons which we can learn from Napoleon's amazing achievements and his subsequent downfall:
1) In war, as in politics, one must fight one's adversaries by uncovering their intentions, letting them reveal themselves as one feigns weakness or ignorance, and then strike at the desired moment.
2) One must always, when one cannot crush an enemy completely, leave him the possibility of fleeing and saving face, so that instead of being compelled to fight to the death, he agrees to negotiate. (This message is standard in all military texts and good leaders should remember this. Very often, our ego gets in the way and we ended up fighting long wars which drains our energies and resources. For me, I always remind myself on the "real" objective of doing something. In fact, Napoleon's own downfall is due to his protracted campaign against the Russians (so are the Germans) which ultimately results in his defeat at Waterloo).
Reading about Napoleon's campaigns, one will learn the importance of surrounding yourself with good leaders (or managers). Napoleon's army is famous throughout Europe because he picks good leaders such as Lannes, Ney, etc. Napoleon's strategies also involve quick movement of his military units and often surprises his enemies from the back and again, it is important in our day-to-day management to make quick and decisive decisions.
For this series of books, I will limit the list of useful lessons but rather, will encourage those interested in Napoleon to "enjoy" reading his spectacular rise and subsequent painful downfall. To compensate for the reduced content in this post, I will include some useful military quotes for your reading pleasure:
1) Leadership is the art of getting someone to do something you want done because he wants to do it - Dwight D. Eisenhower.
2) There are only four types of officer. First, there are the lazy, stupid ones. Leave them alone, they do no harm......Second, there are the hard working intelligent ones. They make excellent staff officers, ensuring that every detail is properly considered. Third, there are the hard working, stupid ones. These people are a menace and must be fired at once. They create irrelevant work for everybody. Finally, there are the intelligent lazy ones. They are suited for the highest office. (Personal opinion: Careful on interpretation and don't ends up filling your company with lazy people.)
- General Von Manstein on the German Officer Corps
In summary, reading military books is great for budding leaders but for me, it is important that we get the right lessons. When I was younger, I refused to read books which teach us to achieve our objectives at all costs or where the ugly side of human being are emphasised for fear that I would turn into a person with all the material riches in the world but with no real friends or families. For that I leave you with a quote which I extracted from Sun Tzu's The Art of War which was translated by Lionel Giles and with a new foreword by John Minford:
"Emerge from the mud untainted; understand cunning but do not use it" - A Ming-dynasty writer.
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