The WAY to WOW Shows
Collaboration & Patience
September 24, 2024
Automatically generated from YouTube captions; names and wording may contain errors.

[0:01] hello and welcome to business lessons from the military I'm your host Kevin bemel and we're here every Tuesday at 10: a.m. Pacific time to talk about military history Doctrine and the leadership practices of great military leaders all by way of distilling lessons that we can use in our business and professional lives so on Monday I'm sorry on Saturday it will be the 243rd anniversary of the battle of York town

[0:38] some also known as The Siege of Yorktown now this was the final battle in the American war for independence and um having prevailed uh the Americans um became a separate country from uh Great Britain which was eventually recognized under the Treaty of Paris in 1783 um roughly two years later um and you said why why so long well it just it took time to you know work out all the details of the treaty so I'm I'm going

[1:16] to talk about this this battle and distill from it as I said lessons that we can use in in in our businesses so the Battle of Yorktown uh began on September 28th 1781 and it ended on October 19th 1781 so it was um three weeks long now that is a long time for a battle in in in the

[1:51] during the American Revolution typical battles lasted anywhere from a few hours to maybe a few days so if we exclude The Siege of Boston which went on for months and months and months and wasn't really a kinetic battle at all uh the the the Battle of Yorktown was um the longest battle of the American Revolution and and you'll see why that's important um in in in a little while so you had on the one hand um the British forces under

[2:27] General corn Wallace and they faced the Americans under George Washington of course he was the he was the um the commanderin-chief basically of of the American forces and general roshambo who was the French Commander um of of the French troops that were there and excuse me what what was going on was corn Wallace was given the job basically of maintaining British control over the

[3:04] American colonies and he had been conducting a number of actions in the southern colonies um that basically didn't go his way and and so after this series of setbacks he decided to retreat to Yorktown Virginia and he was going to then rest and refit and he thought well look the British Navy will come in they'll bring in new supplies they'll bring in replacement troops and and and then I can go back on the attack

[3:39] now the American forces realized that um they had an opportunity to strike corn Wallace at Yorktown and so George Washington uh who was again the commander of the Continental Army and roshambo they created a plan where they would basically trap Corin Wallace and his troops at Yorktown meanwhile the French Admiral um the French Fleet I should say under Admiral degrass um would sail from the Caribbean

[4:14] and essentially blockade Chesapeake Bay and prevent the British Navy from resupplying cor Wallace's forces right so now by the way keep in mind that this is 1781 it's not as if some someone you know picked up a a radio and or a telephone right and called um Admiral degrass in the Caribbean and said hey degrass get your ships over here to Virginia right the only form of communication was essentially personal Messenger right so and since you know

[4:51] sending a message to Grass required not just Overland route but then getting on a boat getting to you know wherever graph ships were in the in the Caribbean right communication it we we think of communication today as as being almost spontaneous I mean there was no telephone no Telegraph you know nothing like that at that time so just the ability to coordinate this was was was quite amazing so The Siege began on September 28th of of 1781 and uh Washington and R

[5:27] Shambo moved their combined Army of 177,000 men and essentially cut off corn Wallace and his army of about 8,000 uh men at Yorktown and they essentially surrounded them now the the British had had fortifications okay so the American and frenched forces couldn't just attack them and you know and over and overrun them what what Washington and ramb realized was that um they needed to lay

[6:05] Siege to the British fortifications the routs that the British had built hence why the battle is also sometimes called the siege of Yorktown and so they did that now this was the the fortunate thing was um Admiral degrass was so on the ball that by September 5th roughly three weeks before The Siege began he had already cut off the British Navy from resupplying corn Wallace so on the one side corn Wallace was up against

[6:41] essentially the you know the water Chesapeake Bay which was controlled by the French navy under degrass and on the other side he was faced with an army more than double his size led by Washington and R Shambo he was caught in the middle he had no way to resupply himself to Supply ammunition food medical supplies NADA as we say right and so there you know Washington and R Shambo had had a a basic choice right they could try to overrun the fortifications which would have been

[7:16] costly in in their soldiers lives or they could lay Siege which is what they decided to do and so in in Lane Siege they they launched a an artillery bombardment and they just kept bombarding and bombarding and bombarding corn Wallace um and and moving in closer and closer by building trenches that allowed them to move their artillery ever closer to the British fortifications and they basically gave corn Wallace and his army not a moment's

[7:53] rest there was no respite from the bombardment and and as a result corn Wallace realized um that his his troops were exhausted he had no way to resupply them and that eventually he would be starved out or wiped out and so on October 17th he sent a request to um he actually sent it I believe to R Shambo um for a request for a ceasefire um to negotiate surrender terms and then two days later on October 19th corn

[8:28] Wallace officially surrendered to the American and French forces now shamefully frankly um corn Wallace was was so upset that he claimed to be ill and so he sent his second in command George oara to actually surrender to uh Washington and R Shambo and as I remember my history I think Ohara actually surrendered to R Shambo or wanted to surrender to Ros Shambo who said no no no you Washington is the leader here you you've got to surrender

[9:03] to him and and you know the British were trying to save face like we weren't really beaten by the Americans we were actually beaten by our long-standing enemies the French and the French were were were having none of it so corn Wallace is defeated at um at Yorktown and although there were some smaller skirmishes afterward words um the British government realized that they they just could no longer sustain the war effort now that France had actively come in on the side of the

[9:40] Americans um the British realized it it was a lost cause at that point and so they they um uh proposed um Peace negotiations as I said they were held in Paris and the Treaty of Paris um in 17 1983 recognized American independence now by the way that was not the end of the conflict between the United States and Great Britain um I I think I've talked about this in a previous episode um the War of

[10:16] 1812 which is sometimes called the second American Revolution was another war between Great Britain and America where were finally a number of of issues that had um been un unresolved basically or resolved but but the resolutions didn't hold um finally were were played out so what what happened so what so what so anyway y the Battle of Yorktown essentially ended the American

[10:51] Revolution okay and and so the question really is why did it work I it's how how how was the victory brought about so I have six uh points that I want to discuss with you that I think we can draw from Washington and Rambo's Victory at Yorktown and and the first one is collaboration and Partnerships so if you saw the social media posts I I noted collaboration as one of the key uh key

[11:30] points to learn out of the at Washington's Victory at Yorktown so and I I started to talk about this a little bit at the beginning of the show so not only did Washington have to collaborate with r Shambo okay he also had to collaborate with Admiral degrass now collaboration was much more difficult in those days because communication was more more difficult and I'll talk about that in a minute but there was very good

[12:05] collaboration between the Americans and the French and indeed that collaboration made a tremendous amount of sense for America to have raised an army of 177,000 men on her own would have badly disrupted among other things farming and other Comm activities that needed to go on in America in order to support the war effort and so the the ability to team up with the

[12:40] French and and bring their army to bear was the the collaboration that that allowed um America to be able to win not just at New Yorktown but also show the British that further resist was fruitless so in our businesses we have a some sometimes we we have a a tendency to want to have everything in house so one of one of my

[13:16] colleagues um he when he when we first started working together a couple of years ago he wanted to build this big huge organization with hundreds of employees thousands of employees and and all of a sudden I said whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa I said to to burden a startup with that number of people doesn't make sense let's team up with other organizations and keep our organization as lean as possible so so for example

[13:51] there was there's no reason for us to have in-house payroll there's so many great payroll services around and they specialize in pay payroll and they're a lot less expensive than even a payroll clerk let alone you know having a full-time payroll department right it's uh you know farming out accounting again much more efficient than having a big in-house accounting department uh even a lot of clerical tasks can can be farmed out these days so rather than having a

[14:26] big organization where you're trying to do everything as B in businesses we can um we can focus on the most important aspects that we bring to our success and farm out collaborate with other businesses on everything else having said that we can also collaborate with other organizations other companies even on our core Mission so it sometimes it can be better to share the burden so if there's if there's research and development if there's sales and

[15:02] marketing we may be better off teaming up with another company uh and and and sharing in the success rather than trying to do it all on our own and trying to develop all those resources on our own and that collab one of the thing about one of the things that's best about collaboration is we bring each each organization may bring different ideas that when brought together can come up with with an even better plan for succeeding in in in our

[15:38] mission so excuse me when you think about building your business especially these days think first and foremost about collaborations and Partnerships and you can see how effective that was for for Washington and Rambo it can be equally if not more effective in our businesses and professional practices today so that's that's that's takeaway number one takeaway number two is communication and coordination so in order for a a

[16:15] collaboration and a partnership to work we there needs to exist as seamless as possible communication and coordination as we can muster now I was I was talking with a friend of mine about this yesterday evening this is the real here's here's the Crux of the challenge here now think about George Washington and R Shambo okay George Washington spoke English roshambo spoke French okay now it was it was likely that each of them spoke at

[16:53] least some of the other language okay that was pretty common uh for people to speak both French and English but more likely they had interpreters who were interpreting between them certainly excuse me the average American and French soldier probably did not speak the other language right so this was another hurdle to communication and coordination and so there had to be a system to make sure that excuse me

[17:29] the French that that French in English right the the the the the language Gap didn't cause problems okay and then as I mentioned before there was just the difficulty of communication at a time when there was no telephones telegraphs Etc right wasn't even you know I mean you had horse Messengers on horses and Messengers in boats that was pretty much it and you could write messages down right so the fact that George Washington and um General roshambo were able to be so

[18:07] effective in coordinating their Siege at Yorktown shows that there was a lot of attention paid to making sure that the lines of communication were kept clear so likewise in our businesses we need to do the same thing now here in the United States pretty much we all speak English okay so so we don't have that hurdle however what I've noticed is different people use words meaning different things and that's a real that's a real

[18:44] Challenge in a business so I'm I'm I'm trying to remember the example from from last night but um PE the my my friend of mine was talking about how um how where he works gosh where he works they're having a lot of trouble working out working out how things are going to happen between the company and and one particular client and and as he's describing the situation to me he

[19:21] he paused at one point and I said well the basic problem is is even though you know your company and the client are using using the same words they clearly mean two different things and and and that gets to the root of it just we we we we tend to talk in in buzzwords these days and catchphrases they're meaningless unless we know for sure that that they're being understood the same way we mean them right and so clear communication clear coordination comes

[19:59] first of all from sharing a vocabulary so I'm sorry for the interruption so clear communication and clear communication comes from sharing a vocabulary so that when I say you know concept a the other side understands what I mean by concept A and they're not

[20:34] thinking concept B in their head even as they're hearing me say concept A okay so this is very important to to develop language that's mutually understood now this can be difficult because sometimes there is an incentive to obate in how we use language to to hide what we really mean in the language that we're using in order to get the other side to agree without really understanding what they agree to I I

[21:12] think that's extremely problematic we're much better off making sure the under other side really understands so that when we think there's agreement we can know if in fact there truly is to kind of almost Hoodwink someone into agreeing to something um by by using words that they're their understanding in a different way all that does is create dis U hostility it it creates mistrust and and these are not good for good

[21:47] collaboration and partnership they're not good for coordination okay so we need to be clear in how we communicate we need to be consistent and we need to make sure that that what we're how what we're saying is understood is what we mean okay all right so that's number two number three decisive leadership so there's a time for analysis and there is a time to act and the reality is that um for all that that

[22:26] the Continental Congress complained about George Washington's dithering he could be very decisive when he needed to be and and the same as well R Shambo he wasn't thought to be dithering he was he the Continental Congress didn't know him well enough but but the fact of the matter is when when Washington and R Shambo saw the opportunity that they had at Yorktown they immediately took steps to take advantage of that opportunity there

[23:02] was no hesitation they didn't they didn't sit back and do you know multiple weeks of analysis they realized this is this is too good an opportunity we have to act we'll have to develop our plans on the Fly we'll have to send our Messenger to to degrass and and and all these things but we we're we're we're gonna have to press ahead as strongly and decisively as possible okay and the same thing is true in our businesses and professional practices while we don't want to act

[23:37] precipitously we do want to act decisively and and that that can be a difficult difference a diff difficult distinction to make and so we we we need to be constantly looking at market conditions we need to constantly be examining our our comp competition we need to be uh consistently looking at our own strengths and and and and weaknesses in our businesses and practices so that when an opportunity comes we're prepared

[24:13] to seize it right Carpe DM they say in in Latin sees the day right we could say Carpe opportunity that's what we need to do in but the consonant with seizing that opportunity is that our team sees that we're being decisive there's no back battling that we we commit to something and we drive forward on that decision now you're going to see in a in in a little while there there are ways that

[24:48] that may need to be tempered but if we're going to take a decision we're best to take the decision decisively especially if there's risk in the decision okay because the sense of risk in a situation tends to already cause people to not Advance as assertively as they might so a a decisive decision decisive leadership will give them the confidence to drive forward and and do their best to make a

[25:25] a success of whatever the plan is okay so decisive leadership that's number three number four resource allocation and efficiency so the fact of the matter is be because um The Siege of Yorktown was not some long planned operation okay uh the the uh French and the Americans they didn't have unlimited um resources uh available to them so what

[26:02] they had to do was figure out how do we use the resources we have most effectively right and and so when we talked when I talked about the bombardment of the British and and and the consistency of it notice that they I also mentioned that they they trenched ever closer to the British in order to make the bombardment more effective now that was a calculated risk right because the closer they got to the British the more

[26:37] likely it was that the British could do something to potentially Counterattack and and or or to launch some kind of counter offensive that that could have stalled them right but the fact of the matter is it's more effective to to bomb fortifications from from closer up than from farther away because you can batter them down more effectively so if you don't have an unlimited supply of artillery which in fact Washington and Rambo did not they had to figure out a

[27:13] way to use what they had as effectively as possible and so that so the efficient use of of of their resources was was critical okay and notwithstanding that they had the French Fleet offshore blockading the British Fleet from getting in the fact of the matter was they couldn't say to the French Fleet go get some more stuff for us and bring it back right because they if they had if the French Fleet had left or if it had diminished then the British Fleet might have overtaken the French Fleet or if the French Fleet left

[27:49] altogether the British Fleet right would have had an open opportunity to re resupply corn Wallace and his army right so as much as as Washington and roshambo and degrass had corn Wallace surrounded essentially that didn't that doesn't mean that they could just sort of you know sit back and go okay we're we're good we can just you know take forever to you know to starve them out that that was not the case right because the Americans while they were able to get some

[28:24] resupply um you know they had a 177,000 man army that takes a tremendous amount of food and and you know the the civilian population still needed to eat right so so it it couldn't you know it couldn't go on forever so they so Washington and R Shambo had to be very um good husbands as we say of the resources they have so likewise um in in our businesses so we need to we need to have a a very clear picture of what our resources are

[29:03] how extensive they are the quality of those resources and then we need to be both strategic operational and tactical about how we use those resources so strategic means we need to have an overall idea of how we're going to use those resources okay so that's part part of our our plan there should be a as part of our overall strategy there should be a sense of here's what our resources are here are their qualities here's where they will be used okay then as we move

[29:41] down into the actual day-to-day effectuation of that plan we need to constantly be looking at our resources and saying where if we were to shift our resources where could we be more effective so so let's take a a a a situation um let's let's take a a a a a retail store let's take a clothing store okay and they have um I don't know let's say they have 10 people right is the best allocation of resources to have all

[30:18] 10 of those people on the floor working to working with customers helping them decide what clothing to buy or would it be a better allocation of resources to have one of those 10 on social media working that channel of communication and marketing to bring customers into the store and let the other nine work with the customers or maybe there should be two marketing people and eight salese what is the best allocation of resources

[30:56] in terms of person now now let's say you have a situation where you have 10 basically 10 trained salespeople and you don't have anyone trained in um in social media marketing well so that may be a situation where you have to look at it and say um well I need to get one of these people one of the salespeople trained in social media marketing because we're missing that resource um in order to bring the people in because it's all good and well to have all these people to serve customers but there aren't if there aren't any customers to serve it won't it won't

[31:32] help us so in this case you may have a misallocation of resources because there's they're they're all focused on one activity and there's no one to focus on the other so it may be that you have to do a change over in some of your team members or do some training of your team members or retraining of your team members right all of this should be looked at again from the Strategic level but then as you as you work your plan maybe you initially start out with just one social media marketing person and that person is having a lot of success bringing

[32:07] customers in but you you can see that you you still have too many salese versus customers so then tactically it may make sense to shift another person into marketing to bring more customers in and now you only have eight salese so they'll be busier right and and play around with that balance what is it should it be 1 to n 2 to8 3 to 7 five to five you know I I I I don't know it will depend on um what their talents are what you're selling what the economic climate is right all of these

[32:42] have to be taken into account okay so resource allocation and efficiency that's uh takeaway number four from the Battle of Yorktown number five persistence and patience so I me mentioned when I talked about the history of the Battle of Yorktown that it was the longest Battle of the war for independence um by by a long margin okay it was 21 days whereas again most of the battles were anywhere from a few hours to a few days

[33:18] now uh Washington and R Shambo exercised a tremendous amount of patience and in do doing so they they wore K Wallace and his army down to the point where they finally saw that they had to surrender and in so doing there was a a far fewer um casualties of that battle okay so on the one hand the patience was very important in minimizing casualties by the Same by the same uh

[33:56] point that they had to be persistent in their attacks in order for the patients to pay off so if Washington had only bombarded corn Wallace's fortifications maybe you know an hour or two a day all the patients in the world may not have um caused corn Wallace to surrender because he he realized the you know it all we have to do is survive a couple C of hours a day of of bombardment that's

[34:31] not causing a whole lot of damage and so our real our real issue is where do we find enough food you know to to stay alive because obviously the you know Washington and and roshambo are not intent on really pressing the battle home right so so Washington needed to balance those two he needed to convince uh um corn Wallace that on the one hand the the bombardment was not going to stop it was going to it was going to continue day after day night after night

[35:06] week after week um and at the same time that he he he saw he didn't need to do a frontal assault which might be very costly in lives and and and was content to just wear corn Wallace down through this war of attrition right so that's that's very that's a very important lesson for us to have so it's it's on some ways it's easy to be patient because we just keep doing what we're doing and and hoping that we'll get positive results from that on the

[35:44] other hand persistence requires that along with our patients we also um modify our tactics in order to get better results okay so patience pays off when it's backed up by persistence now this is particularly true if we're launching some kind of large uh um marketing plan or or or launching a new product okay it can C

[36:19] take time for the marketing efforts to sync in it can take time for a new product to catch on so one of the areas where where this is somewhat um Infamous is is in the entertainment business so it used to be and when I say used to be I'm going back you know at this point probably you know 50 years 40 or 50 years or more movies would sometimes be rolled out more slowly and or and and and they would stay in theaters a long

[36:55] time in order to attract an audience um and and make their money back um these days a film a film is released if it doesn't have a big bang in in the first week or week and a half of release oftentimes that's it it's done it's pulled out of theaters and it goes to television uh streaming all that kind of stuff so there isn't a patience with movies to let them develop their audience the way there used to be in earlier times in in the movie business

[37:33] right so in the movie business right it's essentially a business of introducing a new product each time a new movie is released you you say well I half the movies are sequels well that's true but but the even the sequel itself is a is is a new movie it may have some things in common with a prior movie right but not all sequels um succeed and we we we we've seen that recently in some cases so we we need to think about being patient but also persistent in making that patients pay off so how do

[38:08] we how do we make tweaks and adjustments to what we're doing to make it more likely that our plan will succeed and and and that's Point number five point number six then will sound like the antithesis of number three decisive leadership and it is adaptability and flexibility so Washington had originally plann to attack New York which was a big British stronghold and in fact New York was probably the most pro- British

[38:43] colony um during the the American Revolution it was a Tory stronghold um and and and Washington basically got pushed out of New York as a result um but when Washington saw the opportunity presented at Yorktown he quickly shifted his focus and he moved down to Virginia and enacted the siege of corn Wallace's Army and in doing so won this decisive victory that in fact won the war for independence and

[39:19] established the United States as a separate country so the fact that that one is decisive and patient doesn't mean that one should not be flexible now flexibility doesn't necessarily mean completely changing what we're doing right it can mean changing parts of what we're doing in order to be more effective in order to more effectively enact our strategy or bring our strategy to fulfillment okay and so even as we put a

[39:56] plan into action we need to be monitoring economic conditions we need to be monitoring our competitors we need to be monitoring the state of of our team or our teams our resources we need to be taking all of that into account so that if we do need to make a change we can do so decisively okay so just because we we make a change doesn't mean that we're not decisive any longer it's perfect fine to be looking at a particular line of attack whether it's in a battle or

[40:32] whether it's in a in a business or professional Endeavor and and come to the conclusion after a an appropriate period of time saying we're not getting the results here we want why are we not getting the results and having concluded that there's a sound reason why to shift what we're doing in order to make better use of our resources so adaptability and flexibility is the Sixth and final takeaway from the Battle of Yorktown now you will notice again

[41:07] that some of these seem to be in tension with each other so on the one hand patience and and and persistence seems to be somewhat in opposition to adaptability and flexibility right so where is that inflection point where we are no longer patient with what we're doing and we decide to change it right and and that is where sound leadership decisive leadership comes in we're not always going to know you know precisely when to make changes we're going to have to make

[41:43] judgment calls that is the so-called burden of leadership right so you could say well you know in the final analysis uh Washington and Rambo were lucky well there was there was a an element of luck there or what Washington would call Divine Providence right God smiling on the American forces they had a he had a good strategy with again the the French navy blockading Chesapeake Bay and keeping the British Navy from resupplying corn Wallace and on the other side his s the 177,000 British and

[42:20] I'm sorry not British American and French troops um blocking off corn Wallace's ability to get out of out of this trapped place right so that was that was a sound strategy a sound situation to be in okay so there there didn't doesn't appear to be any reason why Washington um in consultation with r Shambo would have changed that however within the more detailed aspects of the battle how they enacted the bombardment

[42:55] how they supplied their troops how they eventually brought the battle to a close that that is where flexibility and adaptability need to be exercised now having said that sometimes flexibility and decisive leadership do call on us to retreat and so that's what we're going to have to do um I've mentioned the example of New Coke a few times in shows sometimes Retreat is the most sensible step to take okay and and this is

[43:30] where insightful decisive leadership is so important and this is why leaders need to be out in the field so to speak seeing what's going on in their businesses like if you're in a retail business you need to be in the stores if you're in some other kind of business maybe something that's involved with lawyers or courts or whatever you need to be in the environments where you're talking to people seeing what's actually going on so you have you have a a solid sense of the lay of the land and can make these good decisions balancing out

[44:06] the different factors that are required uh for for victory so on this the almost 243rd uh anniversary of the Battle of Yorktown which again takes place actually on on Saturday about 5 days from now we can learn the lessons of collabor ation and persistence tempered or or or I should say supported by decisive leadership strong communication and coordin coordination um with uh proper

[44:41] allocation of resources tempered by a sense of adaptability and flexibility so I thank you very much for joining me today and let's see tomorrow at 10:00 a.m is my show people making money and I'm going to be talking about uh taxes affect you and the economy part two so I did part one back in July this time I'm gon to be talking about capital gains taxes excise taxes and tariffs

[45:16] okay and and I I probably actually will throw in a little bit about estate taxes as well so you can see how they work in concert uh with with capital gain taxes so we're going to be talking about how these impact us as individuals as well as how they impact the economy and therefore impact us less directly and then on Thursday at 5:00 pm Pacific time is my show jiggers his place and we're going to sit back and as we head toward the end of the week have a cocktail I'm

[45:51] going to be talking about a fantastic book that my daughter in to which my daughter introduced me called flowers for algeron it is a classic book written in the I believe early 1960s and I had heard of the book but IID never read it and so we I bought a couple of copies one for me one for my daughter and uh wanting to be a good father I I read it and and I I couldn't put the book down so I want to share some ideas from that book with you I think you will find them uh something to really you know good brain food as they

[46:26] say so please on uh Thursday again 5: PM central time uh not Central Time sorry 5:00 pm uh Pacific time uh join me for a cocktail and a Shmo as we sometimes say in Yiddish by the way if you want the recipes for the cocktails in advance please sign up for my email list because the emails that go out includes the cocktail recipe okay so you can go to my website it b.com just scroll down to the bottom you'll see a place where you can

[47:01] subscribe to my email list and and that way you'll you'll get you'll get one email each just be a couple of hours before each show is uh broadcast and you'll get things like the cocktail recipes and by the way talking about subscriptions if you're not a subscriber to my YouTube Channel please do I would really appreciate if you would consider subscribing just go to my YouTube channel and and click on the Subscribe button and that way you'll get notified each time we go a new we go live and a

[47:37] Andor a new episode posts so again thank you so much for joining me today wishing you a fantastic rest of the day indeed and signing off as I always do Marie darling you are my bell courage at all times