The WAY to WOW Shows
Is Your Strategy Bold or Foolish?
March 12, 2024
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[0:00] hello and welcome to business lessons from the military I'm your host Kevin bemel and we're here every Tuesday at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time 1M eastern time to talk about business um sorry military history military Doctrine the practices of great military leaders and how we can translate that into lessons for ourselves in business in our business and professional lives so today I'm going to do something a little bit different than I've done before and that is I'm going to look at a a famous

[0:36] battle from World War Two it's it's it's called operation Market Garden and it happened 80 years ago this summer it happened um I believe in June I I it could could could be July but anyway um 80 years ago this summer and the situation was that um um sorry it it it was not it was July that's right because um D-Day happened in June so the situation was that the Allied invasion

[1:11] at Normandy had taken place June 6th 1944 and the Allies had successfully gotten a foothold on Northern Continental Europe and the Hope was that the the war would be over World War II in Europe at least would be over by Christmas um there was there was a thing going around we're gonna we're gonna have we're gonna Bring the Boys Home by Christmas all this kind of stuff right and um the the the leading

[1:47] um players if you will at that time were uh General Eisenhower Dwight Eisenhower who was um the um Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe okay he oversaw literally everything and then um field Marshall Bernard Montgomery uh basically was in charge of all ground operations so field Marshall Montgomery was the senior English commander in the European theater of

[2:23] war and he was um he had been very successful in northern Europe and that's really where his Fame came from he had basically beaten the desert fox raml the great um German general um and and then he had gone on to fight in Sicily and um he uh he was kind of in a a race with uh General George Patton um who could get to poo first and and cut off um the

[3:00] German Retreat um from Sicily into Italy um and if if you've ever seen the aonomus movie Patton you know that that Patton beat Montgomery and was one of the biggest probably the biggest rival in World War II was that between uh field Marshall Montgomery and general uh General Patton so moving forward now you may be wondering wait a minute what what happened to Patton right so um again if you if you've ever seen the the the film Patton so George Patton had a

[3:37] tendency to stick his foot in his mouth and while Eisenhower badly wanted uh Patton to be a part of D-Day politically he was not able to do so because um at what Patton thought was an off- the record event to open a Welcome Center in um England to to there was a place for American and British uh military people to go and you know have a donut and a cup of coffee kind of thing and and and and and talk to the hostesses there um

[4:12] Patton had made a speech about how the Allies were going to rule the world after the defeat of Nazi Germany and he left Russia out of the group of allies that he mentioned and this of course upsets Stalin and Stalin complained and this wasn't the first time um Patton had stuck his foot in his mouth um and and and this time um Eisenhower felt he could not Overlook it and so he sidelined Patton and he basically Patton was basically the decoy around which um

[4:50] much of the strategy for D-Day was developed and so um when it came to The Landings in the immediate aftermath um Patton was not involved with that um and so um the Allies are you know breaking out now from the Normandy beaches and the idea was they wanted to get into Northern Germany across the rine as quickly as they could because the the rure which was the northern part of Germany was the Industrial Heartland of Germany and if the Allies could capture

[5:26] that they could dramatically reduce armorment production um by by Nazi Germany and and in so doing they thought um you know again dramatically shorten the the length of time the war continued and so um field Marshall Montgomery came up with a bold plan and he and it was called operation Market Garden I'm gonna go ahead and share my screen so you can see a little bit about it here we go Okay so so this is the

[6:01] Netherlands here as you see and here's Germany here's the Ry and the idea was they that the Allies wanted to go sweep like this and into Northern Germany into the rure which is not not quite on this map so the strategy was to mount an offensive starting basically at einhoven in NE in the Netherlands and go going sort of point to point for a number of bridges so um the the main pattern was from einhoven to ne ne

[6:38] Nan and and then to Oster Beck and arnna okay and then there there were two sort of smaller Bridges uh veel and and grav in between and the idea for the battle was to do what what what became the largest Airborne um battle in in history at least up until that point by dropping um um brigades of uh of of airborne troops at n nigan Oster

[7:14] Beck and arnam and they would hold the bridges while the the ground forces infantry and arm and armor um you know went from kind of point to point to relieve relieve them and in so doing would recapture all of the Netherlands and set the stage to then go into Northern Germany okay and if you can you can see down here in the text so um Brit British 30th Corp would advance from the bridges and cross the

[7:50] rine and its tributaries okay the bridges were einhoven uh Nan and arnam basically and there were other ones uh in in in between okay so it's it was it was a daring plan and if it had worked it might very well have um have resulted in a a dramatic shortening of the war okay so um the Airborne operation was launched and here you you can see certain pictures of it and such okay um

[8:28] and um I'm going to I'm going to play you now a um a short um video it's a two-minute video that talks about the Battle okay I'm stop sharing here and we'll go back uh here we go um it's it's a two-minute video and and this it really um puts on display how things work worked out okay so so here we go

[9:28] e e

[10:28] e for

[11:06] okay so so that gives you a flavor you see some you saw some of the people there you saw Bernard Montgomery you saw some of the bridges you know it has that that gritty black and white um look to it that's that's always so interesting to when you're when one is uh viewing World War II history okay so um the narrator described what what the plan was and that it didn't work okay so the question is why didn't it work and and there there there are several uh factors um number one um

[11:43] there was not enough airborn transport for the uh first Airborne Army to land the three divisions where they needed to go that that was that was one problem now by the way I don't know I don't know that any individual problem was was fatal in in and of itself the Allies were typically short of things throughout World War II whether it was um watercraft for for foring uh Rivers whether it was um trucks for bringing supplies forward whether it was aircraft

[12:18] it it always seemed that there was never enough okay so um in and of itself um the fact that there weren't enough uh Airborne transports that mean not have have been been a problem um the second was um the intelligence gathered about the German um uh forces in the area um turned out to be um inaccurate and in fact the Germans had much stronger forces in the area than the Allies anticipated so that was another um

[12:56] difficult uh factor a third third Factor was because of the nature of the Netherlands and the Netherlands is actually uh it's it's actually underwat it's only because there are dikes holding the ocean back that that the whole country isn't flooded and throughout the country there are dikes and and such um in order to Traverse certain parts of the country and not get down fogged down in swamps so um when it came to moving quickly from bridge to bridge for the uh infantry and armor um a lot of times they had to go in

[13:32] single columns and if if a tank broke down that caused a massive delay because they couldn't get around it and so they ended up not being able to move nearly as quickly as they thought they would excuse me and this was particularly difficult because although they had three Airborne divisions holding the various Bridges an Airborne Division is is smaller than an infantry Division and they because they were Airborne they were only carrying for the most part light weapons right and they found themselves against a much

[14:09] larger German Force than they anticipated and so while as the narrator mentioned there were heroic efforts on the part of these these Airborne soldiers um they were required to hang on for a much longer time than was anticipated in the original plan so why did these things happen why were there not enough transport why was there not um you know good intelligence why did they not anticipate the problems of moving forward well I think there's there's there's several things going on

[14:45] there one one is and I mentioned this just a moment ago the Allies were perpetually short of all kinds of things and so um in in authorizing operation Market Garden to go forward I think Eisenhower you know took the took the position well we're we never have enough of anything so you know we we can't let that hamper us um in in in in in making this move um in terms of the intelligence the reality is and and this is something I think that

[15:20] when we only watch you know movies about war and such Doesn't necessarily sink in um generally speaking you we don't know that intelligence is wrong until after the fact right so there's a lot of effort done to gather information to analyze it sift through it and get as clear an intelligence picture as we can but in the end um there's no way really of knowing whether the intelligence gathered is is accurate you hope it is um and the best you can do is act on the

[15:56] information that you have um um the the Germans had um taken some e made some efforts to um sort of um disguise if you will the strength of their forces which wasn't unusual um all armies do that um and so and you know one one can't necessarily say oh well you know the intelligence people were were were incompetent or whatever it's just in the fog of War it's very difficult to gather the the the um the kind of information

[16:32] that the the accuracy of information I think is a better way of explaining it um than you know that that that you would really want to have now the third thing is and this was a another Perpetual issue in the um initial few months of the invasion of Northern Europe and that is the Allies encountered conditions that they did not anticipate so in the breakout from Normandy um what happened was after they got off the beaches they got into what

[17:07] was known as the hedro country so what were hedr hedr were very densely um grown um borders of basically bushes um that that um separated Fields because Norman Normandy was essentially an agricultural area in France and as the Germans withdrew from the beaches and and and retreated they withdrew from hedro to hedro and they could be behind a hedro which was a very

[17:42] effective screen for them and they could M you know they could have their machine guns there they could have their artillery and regular tanks could not get through the Hedge RS and so the typical way that that that that that an advance worked is is you set your artillery in the front and you had infantry following behind and the idea was the artillery would would kind of break through and then the um the Infantry would kind of mop up um unless you came to a situation

[18:17] where there was too much mass armor and anti-tank weapons in which case then the Infantry would take the lead to wipe those out and then the the are the the uh armor would would move forward um so when it came to the Hedge rows the the armor couldn't get through when I say armor I mean basically tanks the tanks couldn't get through but if you sent your infantry forward they were decimated because the enemy was protected by the Hedge RS but they they could you know shoot from basically behind the Hedge R but threw them with

[18:53] their machine guns and such and wipe the out wipe out the attacking infantry and so so the Allies had to develop mechanisms to mount on the front of their tanks that could tear down these hedge R and and and and that was one of the strengths of the Allied war effort especially the American part of the Allied war effort is they were very um resourceful in figuring out solutions to these things and so if you've ever seen tanks with these these sort of like they almost look like rollers they were like um big rollers in front of them

[19:29] they would just like chew up everything in front of them others that had these sort of things they almost looked like um um sort of a snow plow but like a pointed snow plow that they would cut through these Hedges right and so but but the key thing is the the Allies did not anticipate these problems they dealt with them in you know as they moved forward okay well so in the bre break out from Normandy and and and and going through the hedg RS right there wasn't

[20:04] there was no sort of um you know airborne troops that they had to connect connect up with within a certain time frame right so the fact that it took them much longer to move through that that section of Normandy while it took longer it didn't mean that there was you know the loss of of a battle per se in in the case of operation Market Garden when they didn't end anticipate the very narrow Lanes they had to move through in order to go from bridge to bridge to connect up with the Airborne forces that

[20:39] were what that meant was the plan essentially didn't work okay because the airborne troops were just not in a position to hang on you know for for multiple weeks they could hang on for a few days which is which is what they did and they actually hung on longer than it was anticip ated they would but in the end they were not strong enough against German armor German artillery Etc okay and so these unanticipated um issues really that's what what I think

[21:14] did in operation Market Garden so um while candidly I'm not a Montgomery fan those of you who watch the show you know I'm a patent fan right um and and I'll just add here by the way that I think there was another Factor I've never seen this discussed anywhere in any of the things I've I've read about operation Mark and garden and by the way probably the mo most well-known book is is called A Bridge Too Far um by Cornelius Ryan there's a famous movie based on on the

[21:49] no on not the novel on the book as well a bridge to far and and it it comes from this idea I'm going to share my screen again so you can see this clearly um so they did get all the way to n Nan um but they couldn't get to arnam arnam was a bridge too far that's that's where the name of of Ryan's book comes from right and so um um while I you know I give um I give Montgomery credit for coming up with this plan I would argue he was the wrong person to execute it um

[22:27] I think Patton might have actually pulled the plan off because it was really playing to Patton's strength this idea of pushing forward no matter what and not letting anything stop him that that was that was Patton's Brilliance as a field commander um and it's why by the way um I think he never you know um he never Rose to the positions that for example Omar Bradley held and and of course that that Eisenhower held that

[23:03] was that was not Paton Forte he was not a political General um he was a field General he wanted to be down there fighting the battles and nobody fought that the kind of battle better the this the sort of fast maneuver battle better than Patton he was he was probably better than the Germans were at it um as as his evidence that um Patton beat not um not uh uh I'm shoot I'm not I'm going on his name uh the the The Desert Fox not that he beat

[23:39] the desert fox head-to-head in Northern Africa raml um but but again as you see in the movie he did beat rl's plan um which is close to the same thing um and and so if anyone was going to find a way to quickly deal with the problem of having to go down this Narrow Lane it would have been George Patton um and but but he had been sidelined for political reasons so what are the lessons for us in the Business and Professional world that that come out of operation Market

[24:15] Garden well one of them is that bold action is worth the risk just recognize it's not always going to pay off now one of the interesting things is M after the failure of Market Garden Montgomery never planned a bold operation again he became much more careful about what he did and and and that was that was that was unfortunate for the Allies because a bold Montgomery

[24:51] and a bold pattent could have ended the war more quickly in my opinion Okay so um you know we can't let failures even big failures and I believe something like 13,000 out of 20,000 airborne troops were either killed wounded or captured right so almost three quarters right that that that that's a huge that's a huge loss it decimated you know the Airborne divisions um you know and it took a it

[25:28] took time for them to build up again um so but not withstanding the size of the loss that doesn't mean that few that that that bold chances shouldn't be taken if they're properly calculated the reality is they wouldn't be bold if they were sure things right so we have to be willing to take some risks Sometimes some big risks right people derive for example the whole the whole situation with new Coke if you many of you may be

[26:04] too young to remember that I I was a young man when that happened Coca-Cola came out with a new recipe for its flavor that was much closer to Pepsi it was much sweeter than Coca-Cola was it was a disaster however in the end it was worth doing because cocacola learned a lot from it which is people were very very very loyal to their product and that's a good thing to know they wouldn't have known it if they hadn't made that big huge mistake and

[26:39] they were able to recover from it okay now it wasn't easy it was embarrassing it was lots of things but in the end it was I I would argue it was a good thing for Coca-Cola because it it it allowed them to really figure out what do we need to be doing so we need to take big risks even when we have big failures that shouldn't dissuade us from taking those big risks that's number one number two sometimes maybe all the time we're not going to have the resources we

[27:16] need now we need we then we need to look at it from the standpoint of how critical is it for us how critical is it this lack of resources is it going to inevitably cause the failure of our plans or is it a calculated risk but we can mitigate or diminish the risk through other means compensate for the fact that we don't have enough of this because we've got this so maybe we have

[27:51] a we have a plan and it's going to take a lot of people to execute the plan and we just don't have the personnel but maybe the quality of the Personnel we have is so good and we can motivate them to dig so deeply that they can overcome the lack of numbers okay you see this in war movies all the time of course but in in in the business world too we can we can motivate our people we can get them to perform extraordinarily maybe not for

[28:28] months and years on end but maybe we can do it over the short term well enough that we can execute a bold plan and be successful okay now we can't be 100% sure of that but maybe we can be 75% 80% sure of that is that enough to go forward with our plans maybe it is maybe it isn't that's going to be a judgment call that we're going to have to make but we shouldn't be completely dissuaded by lack of resources we should look for

[29:04] compensating strategies okay and then assess will this compensate enough to justify taking the risk okay third unforeseen conditions okay we have to assume that we're not going to anticipate everything when we when we go to execute a plan there's going to be some things that come up we just didn't anticipate that's fine okay we're not going to be able to

[29:40] prepare for it because we don't know what it is but we can mentally emotionally even spiritually prepare for the fact that we're gonna that something unknown is going to crop up so that we're in a mindset to deal with it most effectively now how do we do that well one is just what I said another is we put people in key positions who are the best at that kind of improvised decision-making and action okay and sometimes that may mean

[30:16] putting people there who gosh you know they may cause us other troubles they may be a little bit more difficult to manage okay they May shoot their mouths off in a way we don't want them to okay but if in the end they might mean the difference between success or failure again we need to accept we need to assess that risk and and potentially use those people and just set the ground rules as well as we can so that we we lower the the

[30:54] opportunity for them to do damage while we increase the likelihood that our bold plans will be successful so that's the that's the lessons that I draw from operation Market Gardens and um I'm sure there are others we could we could draw but I wanted to do something you know relatively straightforward limited three points okay and and this is this is one of the fun Parts about studying military history is how can we apply it to these other things and so I invite your your your thoughts your comments especially

[31:29] if you're into military history and you know about um Market Garden what what do you think so drop a comment into uh social media send me an email happy to engage with you there um so that's that's our show for today um you know kind of fun a little bit different um I want to do more of I'm hoping to do more of these in the future so um um do do if you have a moment let me know what what you thought so um tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. um is my show people making money and we will be talking about the four questions

[32:05] every entrepreneur must be able to answer okay and then next Monday at 10: am. these are all pafic time is my show Tres and Estates weekly and then seven days from today we'll be back for the next edition of um um business lessons from the military so I thank you very much for watching wishing you a wonderful rest of the day and signing off Marie darling you are my bell all the best