Inject Some Vimy Into Your Business

April 9th marked the anniversary of the attack by Canadian forces on Vimy Ridge, France, in 1917.  There are good business lessons to be learned from the way Canadian military commanders approached their task.

The background to the assault on Vimy Ridge should be well-known to most Canadians.  German forces had, since 1914, occupied the high ridge situated next to the Douai Plain in the northern segment of the war’s western front (which meandered all the way from Switzerland to the shores of the North sea).

Vimy Ridge was described by Tim Cook, in his book, “Shock Troops”, as a “blue-grey promontory, running along a 7-kilometre” axis, the high points of which “allowed the Germans to look into the Canadian lines”.

In his own book, “Vimy”, Pierre Berton called the ridge “as high as a 50 storey building – a miniature Gibraltar, honeycombed with German tunnels and dugouts, a labyrinth of steel and concrete fortifications, bristling with guns of every caliber.”

In the two years prior to 1917, numerous attempts had been made by allied forces to dislodge the Germans from this advantageous ground.  The British and the French (twice) had each failed to overcome this obstacle to eastward advancement, at the cost of over 300,000 casualties between the opposing forces.

By all accounts, the Germans were confident that their elevated position was impregnable.  Pierre Berton mentioned a sign posted on the German side which read, “Anybody can take Vimy Ridge but all the Canadians in Canada can’t hold it.”

In the years prior to 1917, hundreds of thousands of lives had also been spent elsewhere along the front, in places like Ypres and the Somme, with little in the form of tangible results.  The front had bogged down in a bloody stalemate of machine gun fire, poison gas, and artillery bombardment.

Vimy Ridge was as a key obstacle to be overcome by the allied forces, but what reason was there to think the still-fledgling Canadian Corps could achieve the impossible?  Perhaps none, which may be why Canadian General Arthur Currie started from the perspective that new tactics would be required.

General Currie seized on the unprecedented, concept that every man must know the plan.  This approach was contrary to the military tradition that the brains are at the top of the organization and the brawn at the bottom, and never the twain should meet.

In the days and months preceding the grand assault on the ridge, General Currie’s boys were told every detail of the attack.  As Pierre Berton put it, “Each soldier would know not only his own task in the assault but also the tasks of others; thus, if necessary, a private could take over from a corporal, a corporal from a sergeant, a sergeant from an officer.  Indeed, there would be times when the casualties were such that sergeants ran companies and sergeant-majors ran battalions.”

Tim Cook recounted that “[V]ictory would hinge on the infantry, who were instructed over and over again, through the use of models and courses built from aerial photographs to simulate the battlefield.  General Currie … ordered the construction of a full-size practice course in which every known enemy trench and machine gun nest, as well as suspected enemy position, was represented.”

In support of this broad dissemination of information, some forty thousand maps were distributed to section leaders, marking their intended line of advance on paper.  It seems like an obvious part of such large-scale planning, but it was apparently unprecedented at the time.

The training, according to Pierre Berton, “had the morale-building effect of making each man feel that he was trusted, that his leaders considered him intelligent enough to be let in on what had been secret information in previous battles”.  The ultimate result, of course, was a military victory that has been hailed as one of the decisive moments in the building of Canada’s status as a nation.

I wonder if businesses today apply enough of General Currie’s theories in relation to their employees.

Are employees brought into the circle of confidence when it comes to “the plan”?  (Perhaps the first question that should be asked is whether, in fact, there is a plan!)  Or are they treated as robotniks who have no need to know the higher-level objectives of the organization?

Are employees drilled on the key elements of their job or are they just handed a general job description and set loose?  Are they involved in the sort of vertical integration envisioned by General Currie such that, when a boss or subordinate is absent, the void can be filled and the larger mission can carry on?

Are employees entrusted with a “map” illustrating their objectives and their path along the way?  Or are they simply directed to a cubicle and left to find their way outward from there?

Sometimes, looking backwards can be the best way to figure out how to go forwards.  In the case of General Currie and his Canadian Corps, lessons learned on the way up an unwelcoming hill are ones all business people would do well to remember.