Swing Your Sword! Getting the Most out of your Sales Team NOW!

February 28, 2018

As a sales leader, I enter each year with a bit of anxiety about whether my sales team can achieve its sales goals. Like most sales leaders, I started preparing my team at the end of last year. But if I'm being honest with myself, I'm not sure if my team is any better than they were last year ...

We have all tried to attract strong competitive talent to our organization. When we couldn’t get competitive talent, we went and found kids that had those intangible skills we thought we could mold in the likeness of a winner.  We would coach, develop and train this talent, but yet too many times we guessed wrong or simply found after significant investment, that the talent we did attract -- couldn’t cut it. Simply stated, we don’t always attract the right talent nor put the best team on the field. Some of that goes to product and marketplace, but clearly, others are winning with the same bag and the same conditions.  What makes them successful? Usually, it boils down to leadership and talent. How then do we get better at recruiting, coaching, developing, and playing better with the players we attract? How do we get the most out of them? When you can’t find the best talent, can you still build a great team with lesser talent? I think so --

I pass on to you one man’s take on these questions and how they may apply to you in his book: Leading the Charge in Football and Life – SWING YOUR SWORD by Mike Leach, former coach of Texas Tech, co-written with Michael Lewis – the author of Moneyball. This book has inspired me to reflect on my own ability to coach and develop talent – and ultimately, play more intelligently in my sales market.

Coach Leach made a living at Texas Tech, recruiting average talent, and then coaching and developing this talent into great players and great teams.  He sets the right tone, attitude, and expectations – he keeps it simple – then applies an excellent, uncomplicated scheme to exploit competitive weaknesses. 

The state of Texas produces more four and five-star high school football players than any other state.  While schools like Texas, Oklahoma, and Texas A&M grab the biggest stars in the state, Texas Tech routinely competes for what’s left after these marquee schools have filled their ranks with the best players. (Many don’t know that the NFL’s best receiver, the diminutive Wes Welker of the New England Patriots was a former Texas Tech player under Coach Leach.)  Before Mike Leach arrived at Texas Tech, the school offered the least in terms of ‘product’ – poor facilities, a small budget, and a low graduation rate.  It had neither tradition nor a history of consistent winning. 

Six years under Coach Leach changed all that. He went from the worst graduation rate to the best in college football.  In 2008, the Red Raiders reached their pinnacle, finishing with a #7 national ranking while beating the then #1 Texas Longhorns. 

In SWING YOU SWORD Coach Leach used the story of pirates and their swords to motivate his football players.  Coach Leach explains how pirates viewed their swords the same way football players should view their bodies: “They took great pride in their swords, sharpening them just like players do their bodies by lifting the weights and doing all the drills we do.”  

Fortunately, you probably don’t have to lift weights to do well selling in your market. But never-the-less, good sales leaders have to constantly ‘sharpen their sword’—and for sales leaders, your sword is your people.  We have to sharpen them to a fine edge so that we can win in our marketplace. 

CALL TO ACTION: 

How will you swing your sword this year?  What are you going to do to improve your recruiting, hiring, training, and developing of your people? What scheme are you going to employ to ensure the company achieves its sales and revenue goals?

Here are a few ideas and insights from Mike Leach extracted from SWING YOUR SWORD. (These quotes are not all-encompassing – the book is filled with many others.) Each quote is followed by a few questions I designed to get you to reflect on the quote in the context of your business. These quotes are not in any particular order:

“You need confidence to be successful, but it’s success that breeds confidence. There’s this chicken-or-the-egg deal to the equation. At some point, you just have to decide you’re going to be confident. Then, as you do, you’re going to have more success. “

Are you confident going into this year? If not, what are you doing about it? How will you exude confidence so that you can have more success? Confidence above all else (not price, selection, quantity, service, etc) is the reason that your customer buys from you. How are you and your team instilling confidence every day that you are the person that brings greater value?

“Sometimes you believe that a certain way of doing things is best only to find out later that it isn’t.”

What beliefs of yours were challenged last year? Was there a belief that you held was the best way of doing something (recruiting, hiring, firing, developing, selling, etc.) only to find out later it wasn’t?

 “In old Westerns they’ll talk about how killing changes a man. Well, firing or cutting someone does too.”

Who did you fire or ‘cut’ from your team? How did it change you, your team, or them?

“You’re either coaching it or allowing it to happen.”

What are you not coaching that you should be … what are you allowing to happen that you shouldn’t?

 “… I only experienced it when I was in the head coach role. You’re beyond invested in the program – it’s your head on the block. It’s amazing the stuff you’re able to remember, sort out, conceive, and anticipate. It’s also amazing what you’re blind to when you’re running ahead at full speed toward your goal. You’re just going, going, going and with that, you assume everybody’s behind you at the same rate.” 

As the head coach of your sales team, what periodic checks can you employ to ensure that everybody’s behind you at the same rate?  

 “It’s vital to make things more complicated for the opponent.”

 Our opponent is not our customers – it’s actually the companies who make the same products we do.   What you are doing every day to make things more complicated for them? 

 “One significant advantage offense has over defense is that the offense runs their package more than any defense works on defending it. An offense can run the plays that they rep every day … the defense has to work against a variety of different offenses through the season… they simply don’t have as much time to fine-tune their execution as the offense does.”

 What offensive package are you running? How often do you practice it, and role-play it? Are you letting the defense dictate your offense?  

“Being a great communicator is something I constantly strive to be. The central role of a coach is to reach his players. I believe that everyone is capable of great effort … You may not always be capable of great results, but you are capable of great effort. Anybody can try hard. A coach has to be able to explain to his players how they can get the best out of themselves.”

How can you improve or change your communication this year to get the most effort out of your team?  

“I want to have a role in the improvement of my players. I don’t buy into the notion that whoever has the best players automatically wins. I’ve never believed that, and I never will.”

Do you hold the opinion that the team with the best players automatically wins?  What can you do to improve your players or change their selling techniques to improve their results?

“It’s a cop-out whenever you hear a coach say that they told a player something over and over and over again, but the guy just won’t do it. It’s your job to hold the player and yourself accountable. It’s your job to find a way to make him understand how to do it.” 

Think about a time that you blamed the player and didn’t hold yourself accountable.  What happened? Why?  How will you improve accountability and coaching this year? 

“The author Michael Lewis once said to me – and I hadn’t given it much thought till he pointed it out – that I’m the most curious person he’s ever met. I try to absorb as much as I can because there’s so much besides football.”

How many of you eat, sleep, and drink your industry only? What are you doing to stay up on current affairs, sports, history, science, law, and politics, etc.? How are building connection points with your customers beyond what you sell? How are you imparting this to your people? 

“The other thing that I appreciate about ___________ is his ability to laugh at himself, and to see the humor in things where others see only misery. Some people are too closed minded to enjoy the differences and variety that other people can offer.”

Do you laugh at yourself? Do you take things too seriously? How will you make your job and your agency more fun this year? How will you open your mind to the differences and variety that your team offers?

 “In order to coach effectively, you have to be a good people watcher. You have to study their nuances, how they represent themselves, and how they interact with others … Despite how great your scheme is or how great your technique, you have to understand that the players out there executing are people, and all people are different. The better you understand them, the more effective you can get them to be, the better you’ll be as a team … Discovering the ideal way to motivate someone is the ultimate challenge for any leader. It’s gigantic. There is an art to it.”

Besides increased compensation, do you know what really motivates each member of your team?  How are you getting the most out of them as individuals and as a team? Is it working? What can you do better? 

“Once in a while, you come to the realization that nothing you do is going to motivate a player. On any number of levels, this type of player is going to hold the rest of the team back, and in those cases the best thing you can do is get rid of him.”

When have you held on to an employee for too long? How many times have you tried to motivate an employee only to no avail? What kept you from cutting this member sooner? 

 “I think everyone needs a push. If you’re driven, you might find ways to push yourself, but you still need an outside nudge from time to time.”

How do you nudge each member of your team? How often do you nudge them? Do you nudge them only when they make mistakes, when they need encouragement or when they just had a key win?

“Balancing personalities is one of the trickiest jobs you have as a coach. It is important to listen to your players, observe them, really pay attention to the nuances in their actions and interactions.”

How do you balance the personalities of your team?  Do you care?  Do you really pay attention and listen to your team members? Do you pay attention to their actions and interactions? 

“We also wanted to leverage their defense in our favor. I tell my quarterbacks, draw a line down the center’s ass, and if you see more defenders on one side of that line than the other, you probably need to go where there are fewer of them.”

Is your team spending too much time going to accounts where there are more defenders or are they going where there are few of them? 

“On top of it all, your players respond to your attitude, and regardless of whether you just had a great play or a bad one, it’s the next play that counts.”

What attitude are you demonstrating every day? 

“You have to maintain focus, for yourself and for your team. There are always a bunch of things out there that you can see, but it’s important to not overload your player.”

How do you keep your team and yourself focused? Do you have a plan and is it simple? 

 “I watched two games from up in the booth. You can see the game better, but it’s not like you can’t still see the game pretty clearly from the sideline. The biggest element I felt like I lost being up in the booth was the emotional connection to the players.”

Are you a booth coach or a sideline coach?

 “I find that the most difficult teams to play against are the ones that operate under a similar philosophy to mine.  They don’t try to make too much happen in any one play. They’re good about executing good plays with good technique. This mindset usually comes from the MEDIUM-TALENT teams.”

Does your team try to make too much happen on every customer call? Do they execute a good sales call or cover a case well – using good selling and case coverage fundamentals? Can they outsell medium-talent teams? 

 “… I do find the term “outside the box” lame, overused, and non-descript. Really, I’m just striving to be open-minded in my search for solutions. My mindset is no guts, no glory.”

Are you open or closed-minded in your search for solutions? How often have you picked up the phone and asked your fellow sales leaders how they are having success? 

 Mike Leach on Coach John Wooden: “He’s the one who said the thing that’s going to impact the score is you doing the best you can, and if you want to change the score, change yourself.”

How will you change the score this year? 

 “Bad effort is the kiss of death when you’re evaluating someone. Unless you can convince yourself that you’re the one who can change the guy’s mentality, you don’t need to have him on your team … Typically really lazy people don’t become hard workers. Avoid underachievers.”

How can you improve your recruiting and hiring to avoid underachievers? 

 “There’ve been several people that I regret not cutting, but I’ve never made a cut that I regret. There’s a definite quality of addition by subtraction … If you decide you can’t change them, then ask yourself, “Can I live with it?” If the answer is no, you have to cut them.”

Have you not made a cut that needs to be made? If you can't change them, can you live with keeping them?

 Mike Leach on Rex Ryan: “Rex told me, “I did the best in classes that I enjoyed, which is why it’s important to me that my coaches have the ability to make our players enjoy practices and meetings.” “Rex has an acronym he likes to operate by, “KILL – Keep it Likable and Learnable.”

How are you making your sales efforts, coaching and developing, and training likable and learn-able? What can you change this year? 

 Juan Castillo, Philadelphia Eagles assistant coach: “For me, it always came down to, ‘What do I have to do to get my guy better?’ … There is a confidence factor in me and I see it in Coach Leach. We’re not scared of being underdogs. We both have the ‘Why not me?’ attitude and know that when you work hard, good things happen.” 

What are you doing to make your guys better? If your company or team are underdogs … are you scared of being so? Do you have a ‘Why not me?’ attitude? 

Go buy the book. Take a couple of weeks to digest the book and begin to ask these questions I have posed. Take them seriously and earnestly apply the lessons to your own sales team.  Look forward to a great year – SWING YOUR SWORD!!  

Corporate Leadership Training on a Civil War Battlefield!

December 12, 2019

This past year, I took my Sales Leaders through a leadership development experience at Kennesaw Mountain Park, a Civil War battlefield located 30 miles northwest of Atlanta. The goal was to provide an immersive leadership experience that uses the battlefield to distill key leadership lessons that can be applied directly to leadership at any level in business or corporate America.

I chose the Kennesaw Mountain battlefield, because every aspect of leadership I wanted to explore and impart to my team, was present during this battle in June 1864. My three Sales Managers hail from Minnesota, Michigan, and Illinois – and units from these three states participated in this battle. This served to make the event more personal and relevant as they could see how leaders from their home states lived, fought, and in many cases, died on this hill in Georgia.

In the early stages of the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, Union General William T. Sherman tried to flank Confederate General Joseph Johnston but was unsuccessful. Sherman believed that a direct assault would break the Rebels. So he changed his tactics and planned a move against the center of the Confederate lines south of Kennesaw Mountain at Cheatham Hill. Sherman feigned attacks on both of Johnston’s flanks then hurled 8,000 men at the Confederate center. It was a disaster. Entrenched Southerners bombarded the Union soldiers, who were attacking uphill. Three thousand Union troops fell, compared with just 500 Confederates.

The first lesson explored was that the location of the leader on the battlefield matters. This was a great opportunity to explore where leaders should be in the heat of battle. The lesson learned: There is no right or wrong place to lead, but a leader should position himself where they can best influence the outcome of the battle.

Leaders must constantly examine the terrain and the conditions to ensure they are in the best location to lead in battle. Sales leaders find themselves in conference rooms, meeting rooms, hospital operating rooms, and in the offices of customers. The location of a leader must be a deliberate decision that best serves the accomplishment of the mission. Military history is replete with examples of leaders who led from the front and died at the front – sometimes for no other reason than to seek personal glory.  At Kennesaw Mountain, the Sales Leaders examined two leaders whose units attacked side-by-side, yet one chose to lead from the front and the other chose to lead from behind – providing a perfect opportunity to discuss where leaders should lead in the battle to best influence the outcome.

The second lesson explored was that of new leaders getting out of their comfort zone. When leaders are promoted to a new leadership position, they take on increased responsibilities. They do their best to prepare for the new duties entrusted to them by their organizations – but many are left to their own devices to figure out what to do. It is often a struggle for them to move beyond the behaviors and actions that helped them achieve their promotion. Often, leaders do not appreciate the changes necessary to be successful in that new role and instead, they return to what is familiar and operate a level below because it is comfortable given their past successes.

A key lesson from the training: Many leaders default to their comfort zone. The lessons of this battlefield: Sales Leaders need to move beyond their comfort zone -- to grow and learn as a leader -- especially when it feels uncomfortable to do so.

There were many other lessons explored during this leadership workshop including these examples:

1.      Confederate engineers made the mistake of laying out their defensive line in the dark and atop a hill rather than using the military crest of the hill. This seemingly small error may have saved the Union Army thousands of lives – in that many were in a covered position while in the attack. This may have been avoided by simple inspection of the defensive line by junior or senior leaders and unfortunately for the Rebels, the mistake was not caught until it was too late. (This begs the question of how and when leaders should ensure their orders are carried out appropriately.)

2.      The coordination and interaction between defending units of the Confederate Army in the defense of Cheatham Hill. (This provided a good example of how sales leaders could work together with their counterparts from different business units to accomplish the greater corporate mission.)

3.      While Sherman made the decision to assault Kennesaw Mountain, he left the choice of the target and the manner of attack up to his subordinates. History has largely blamed Sherman for the frontal assault and extreme loss of life at Kennesaw Mountain, but it has given his subordinate commanders a pass. (This is an excellent example of how senior leaders are sometimes scapegoated by junior leaders who prefer not to ‘own the problem’ or accept personal responsibility for their own decisions or actions.)

4.      General Sherman demonstrated his adeptness at strategic matters mastering the art of the flanking maneuver as evidenced in his march from Chattanooga to Kennesaw Mountain. Sherman lost a tactical battle at Kennesaw, but inevitably, he turned Confederate General Johnson’s flank and took Kennesaw Mountain. Johnston won the tactical victory, but ultimately, he lost the strategic one with the fall of Atlanta a few months later. (This provided a relevant example for our business in that leaders are sometimes too much like Johnston -- focused on tactical victories at the expense of larger more strategic ones.)

5.      Finally, a visit was made to the "Unknown U.S. Soldier" gravesite on the battlefield – and the only remaining gravesite at Kennesaw Mountain Battlefield. Recently, through a painstaking process of elimination and cross-checking, a local historian formally identified the soldier in this grave.  (The parallel to corporate America was to ensure that leaders have identified all the unsung heroes – whether they are surgeons, healthcare workers, employees, or patients – leaders do their best to identify them, recognize them, and honor them in their sacrifices and circumstances.)

While the battlefield provided a great metaphor for how we lead our teams, I wanted my team to walk away from this experience thinking about the three battles they face every day. I challenged them to think about how they fight these three battles: The first battle, is the battle of self – how do I see and lead myself? The second battle, is the battle of team – how do we have each other’s back? The last battle is the battle of mission – how do we lead ourselves and our teams to accomplish the mission? This experience provided an excellent opportunity to reinforce these lessons and help us grow as leaders!

Questions to Explore during the Battlefield Leadership Lab

Vignettes and Questions

Leadership, Courage & Rashness

In the attack on June 27 at Cheatham Hill, Colonel Dan McCook was given a rare opportunity to shine on the battlefield as a lead brigade against the apex of the angle. He seemed eager for the trial – possibly to prove worthy of his place in family lore. Two brothers and thirteen of their sons -- known as the Fighting McCooks -- joined the military and produced six brigadier generals. Before the battle at Cheatham Hill, McCook was counseled by senior leadership: “Don’t be rash, colonel, don’t be rash.” He responded by reciting a stanza from Macaulay's poem Horatius -- “…to every man upon this earth, Death cometh soon or late. And how can man die better than facing fearful odds ...” In the battle up Cheatham Hill, McCook led from the front and exposed himself to urge his troops on. He reached the top of the hill and stood upon the parapet of the enemy position, and using his sword, he parried the efforts of the Confederates to bayonet him. McCook paid dearly for his bravado. He was shot by a Confederate soldier and was mortally wounded. He died six weeks later at his home in Steubenville, Ohio. 

Questions:

• Have you experienced a similar moment in your career, where you felt it necessary to “put everything on the line and at risk?” Why? 
• Do you believe Colonel McCook in leading from the front was rash? 
• Where do you position yourself in battles with corporate and with your agents? 
• It seems that Colonel McCook had either a determination for glory (even a glorious death), a determination to earn his spot in family lore, or to lead from the front so as to inspire his troops in a perilous situation – how do you see it? 
• Has your leadership gone unnoticed or unrewarded? How do you feel about that?
• How do you notice and reward the leadership of your subordinates? 
• When have you felt compelled to live up to family expectations? How did that turn out for you? 

Effective Leadership

After McCook was wounded, he was evacuated off the hill by a group of three men. The group came upon McCook’s colleague, Colonel John Mitchell, whose second brigade had gone into the right of McCook’s. Mitchell and his staff were standing near a tree about seventy-five yards in front of the main Union line, on the other side of the branch valley. According to one of the men in the group, McCook angrily berated Mitchell. “If I live, I will have you court-martialed,” he said. McCook was furious that Mitchell had stayed behind instead of leading his brigade to its fate. After the battle was over, officers involved in the effort went to great lengths to explain why their men had been unable to puncture the Rebel line. Mitchell argued that “the distance to be passed was too great,” the heat too intense, and he had no support on his right flank. Others argued that a direct assault against a well-prepared defensive position such as that held by Cleburne’s division on June 27th could not be accomplished.  

Questions: 

• Mitchell lived through the Battle of Cheatham Hill where his brigade took a tremendous beating with many killed and wounded. Do you think Mitchell lacked courage or was in the appropriate place to lead an assault on Cheatham Hill?
• Can you be an effective leader if you’re not leading from the front?   
• Where have you put yourself in harm’s way as a leader and where have you not? 
• When given what seems to be an impossible mission, how do you react? What justifications do you make or excuses if any, do you typically offer? 
• Is there a right time to express ‘moral courage’ – to say something ‘can’t be done’ and ‘it’s foolish to try’? 
• When have you had to ask subordinates to do something you didn’t want to do yourself? What did you do – how did it work out? 
• When your career is over – how do you want to be remembered?

Loss of a Leader

After Dan McCook was wounded, Colonel Oscar Harmon of the 125th Illinois took charge of the brigade but he was shot and killed little more than five minutes after McCook. Not long after both leaders fell, the brigade began to move away from the Confederate works. One of the soldiers in McCook’s brigade remarked: “Somehow we lost our grit.” When the Corps Commander, General Palmer, encountered a mortally wounded Cook and a dead Harmon in the rear, he knew with certainty the attack had been a failure. 

Questions:

• Do we have a succession plan? Have we trained our junior leaders to take our place if we get taken out?
• Do our junior leaders know the ‘bigger plan’ and have they been given opportunities to lead and more importantly to ‘fail’ in leadership positions so as to optimize their learning? 
• When our senior leaders are removed, what fears present themselves? How do handle the loss of a leader? How do we exercise leadership in the face of a lost senior leader? 
• Have we trained our teams well enough that they can carry on without us? 
• What would you do if you were General Palmer – what orders would you give? 

Defensive Positions - Defilade

 On Cheatham Hill, Confederate engineers made the mistake of laying out their defensive line in the dark. They staked out a few yards farther up the slope of Cheatham’s Hill than was required. As a result, the Confederate infantrymen could not fully see the ground in their front, partly shielded by the true military crest a few yards in front of their trench. Men in the left regiments of Vaughan’s brigade and the right regiments of Maney’s brigade could not see more than twenty-five to forty yards ahead of their line. Standing on the ground in 1897, many years after the battle, a former Federal officer was struck by how the crest of the slope provided cover for the Federals after their attack failed on June 27 – just 60-70 feet from the enemy. 

Questions:

• How often in our jobs do we fail to properly assess a situation – we don’t know all the facts and we accept our assumptions too easily? When have we believed we understood a situation only to find out that our assumptions were completely wrong? 
• When has a competitor failed to properly assess and understand the competitive situation – allowing us to exploit an otherwise vulnerable situation? 
• When have we used defilade to hide either from corporate or competitors? 
• The Confederate engineers who laid out the trench line on the topographical crest or actual crest rather than the military crest – inadvertently saved many Federal lives – and prevented a complete slaughter of the Army of the Cumberland at Cheatham Hill. What hills are we attacking in our career – what obstacles are we facing – where are we finding cover and respite – and where does it feel overwhelming and desperate? 
• Where were the junior leaders? Did they not know that trenches should be on the military crest and not the actual crest? Who supervised the digging of the trench line and why didn’t someone pipe up?

Supporting Fires

Ironically, because the Confederates at Dead Angle were on salient or spur on top of the actual crest of the hill, it is one of the first instances in warfare where defensive units fired obliquely across the front of the men to their left or right and their adjacent units doing the same -- all because they couldn’t see the soldiers directly to their front. Colonel George W. Gordon of the 11th Tennessee began to coordinate a plan for infantry fire with neighboring units. Interestingly Gordon’s 11th Tennessee was the last unit in Vaughan’s Brigade (Show on the Map) – so it was wise of him to work out these plans well before the Yankees came. As warfare advanced this became a standard defensive tactical practice -- providing interlocking fires with adjacent units to cover gaps and provide concentrated fire. 

Questions:

• How do we work with our units on our left and right – to strengthen and enhance our selling position? 
• What gaps do we have in ‘our lines’ what are we doing to tie off with units to our left and right? 
• When we notice something isn’t just right or could be improved – are we taking ownership?

Preparation of the Battlefield – Missed Opportunities

The Federal guns continued firing on the morning of June 24, pounding the angle and partially enfilading Vaughan’s left flank. (Note: Show on the Map) Cheatham worried that his position would soon become untenable, that he might have to conduct a difficult withdrawal. Fortunately for the Confederates, it seemed as if the Union gunners were unaware that their fire was having an effect, for they stopped after an hour. Similarly, Confederate Colonel John C. Carter’s Tennessee Brigade continued the line around Cheatham Hill where Maney’s defense had left off. He too, could lay down some oblique rifle fire on the area in front of Maney. But a more effective supporting fire could be laid down by a concentration of eight artillery pieces located on Carter’s line that could enfilade the right flank of the Union Column hitting the Dead Angle. 

Questions:

• How do you identify obstacles and opportunities in your business? How much time do you take to prepare for sales calls or training?
• Where have you missed opportunities to change the course of your career or sales objectives?
• How do you assess lessons learned or best practices from your efforts? How do you memorialize those lessons and then pass them on?

Strategy & Tactics

General Sherman demonstrated his adeptness at strategic matters mastering the art of the flanking maneuver as evidenced in his march from Chattanooga to Kennesaw Mountain. However, his sense of how to conduct a tactical offensive vis-à-vis Cheatham Hill left something to be desired. Sherman lost a tactical battle at Kennesaw, but inevitably, he turned Confederate General Johnson’s flank and took Kennesaw Mountain. It proved to be a tactical victory for Johnson as he slowed Sherman’s march and killed over 3,000 Federal soldiers – but it was a strategic defeat in his ultimate loss of Atlanta.  

Questions: 

• Where has our business won tactically, but lost strategically or vice versa? 
• Where are we trying to take our business strategically?
• Do you understand our corporate strategy? Do you feel your tactical execution supports that strategy? 

Blame, Responsibility & Moral Courage

While Sherman made the decision to assault Kennesaw Mountain, he left the choice of the target and the manner of attack up to his subordinates. History has largely blamed Sherman for the frontal assault and extreme loss of life at Cheatham Hill, but it has given his subordinate commanders a pass. It was General George Thomas (my hero and widely regarded as the best Union strategist in the Army) who chose to attack a salient in the Confederate line called the Dead Angle. This attack by Thomas’ men was one of the few occasions during the entire Civil War on which European mass or heavy infantry tactics were used (rather than linear Light Infantry tactics) – attacking 10-12 ranks deep with the highest number of casualties of any engagement in the Atlanta Campaign.  Palmer (who reported to Thomas) did a good deal of scouting to find a suitable place for this 14th Corps to attack and he chose Cheatham Hill. But later admitted he had little faith in the enterprise.  After scouting the position all morning on June 23rd, and dodging enemy fire, Palmer “reported to General Sherman that this whole Army could not carry the position.” According to Palmer, Sherman responded that “Joe Johnston must not consider any part of his line safe, and ordered the assault.”

Questions:

• Where have we allowed our boss to be ‘scapegoated’ rather than to take responsibility for our decisions or actions? 
• When was the last time we hid behind our boss’ decision or blithely said this is a ‘corporate requirement’ when passing on orders or tasks to subordinates? 
• When could we have challenged our boss and his decision and are we willing to do that today? When is the appropriate time to challenge your boss and his/her decision-making? 
• Where have we reverted to old tactics and done what was expedient? 
• Every day we implant our products into patients – when do we directly or indirectly put them at risk by our actions? Are we willing to speak up when we see something that’s not right?

The Unknown Soldier

Michael, I would like to spend a little bit of time at the Grave of the Unknown Soldier. I would like Jim Rasmussen (who is from Chicago) to read the following vignette: 

Pvt. Mark Carr was 19 when he enlisted in the Army in 1861. It is likely that his family in Illinois never knew what happened to the young Union soldier who was deployed to the South to fight in the Civil War and later declared missing in action. As it turns out, he died June 27, 1864, charging the enemy during the Cheatham Hill attack in the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain. He is buried in a grave that for more than 70 years was marked "Unknown U.S. Soldier." Brad Quinlin, a volunteer historian at the park, spent five years poring over documents from Georgia to Illinois to Washington to learn the identity of the soldier buried in the only remaining grave at the former battleground operated by the National Park Service. Born in Indianapolis, Carr moved with his family to rural Dixon, Ill., about 45 miles southwest of Rockford. He was a farmer and day laborer before responding to Lincoln's call for troops. Carr enlisted in the 34th Illinois Infantry -- known as the Red River Rifles. According to his military service records, Carr was a loyal and committed soldier. He was always present for paid duty roll calls, never taking a day off sick or for personal reasons. When he was called to war, he served his country, as did 260,000 other Illinoisans who volunteered for the Union. Today this grave serves as a reminder of what happened here and that people died here – and some are still lost to time and memorial. Today, he is no longer unknown and he is remembered! 

Questions:

• Where in our business are the unsung, unmentioned heroes? How can we take the time to discover them and recognize them?
• Who are the casualties of our business dealings, our acquisitions, and our competitive selling efforts? What happened to them – how did they fare?
• What happens to the patient after we’ve done our job? What kind of outcome did they have? Did we do our best to ensure the patient had a good surgical procedure? If not, why not? What are we doing to prevent it from happening again?    

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