Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 24, 1991 TAG: 9103200583
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: E3 EDITION: METR
SOURCE: VICTOR ZONANA LOS ANGELES TIMES
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
"Any day now, the phone is going to ring and a client is going to say, `I want a Norman Schwarzkopf-type,' " said Usher, managing director of the Los Angeles office of Russell Reynolds Associates.
"People associated with great success become models," Usher explained. "Already, Norman Schwarzkopf and Colin Powell" - respectively the allied field commander during the Persian Gulf War and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff - "have become shorthand for that intangible quality of leadership the private sector so values."
In board rooms and business schools, would-be conquerors are analyzing the war for lessons to apply to business. They claim that what they are learning could shape everything from corporate strategies to labor relations for years to come.
"It's not as far-fetched as it sounds," insisted Robert Paulson, director of management consultant McKinsey & Co.'s defense practice in Los Angeles. Business and the military have a long history of borrowing from one another.
"Good strategic thinking is good strategic thinking, whether in business or the military," Paulson said.
But not everyone is so gung-ho.
"I'm appalled at the degree of chest-pounding in the wake of the war and I'm very skeptical about declaring Schwarzkopf to be a water-walker," said Thomas Peters, co-author of "In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America's Best-Run Companies," a book popular among business leaders just a few years ago.
"It's important that we not over-learn from this experience," Peters said. "Mainly, what we learned is we could beat the crap out of someone who is tiny and under-equipped."
Still, some of America's leading management lights say they hope to borrow a leaf or two from Operation Desert Storm's playbook.
"Just looking at it as a manager, I am envious," said Andrew Grove, chairman of Intel Corp. in Santa Clara and the author of "High Output Management."
"I'm awe-struck by the competence of the total operation," Grove said. "Everybody was mesmerized by the bombs going down the air shafts, but the managerial excellence that suffused this thing - from the cosmic big picture to the littlest detail - was flabbergasting."
Asked whether he would hire Powell or Schwarzkopf, Grove declared the question "presumptuous," adding: "Let's just say I'd be glad to go to work for either of them."
Those who subscribe to the theory that businesses can learn from the gulf war say the lessons fall into several broad categories:
Set clear goals and stick to them: "The clarity of the goal is absolutely essential in a military operation and in a business operation," said Abraham Zaleznik, professor emeritus of leadership at Harvard Business School and author of "The Managerial Mystique: Restoring Leadership in Business."
"If President Bush said it once, he said it a hundred times: `Iraq must leave Kuwait without condition,' " Zaleznik noted. "It was a goal that everyone from the top general to the men and women in the field could understand."
Maintain a technological advantage: "It is impossible to overstate the importance of staying ahead technologically," said Robert Waterman Jr., who co-authored "In Search of Excellence" with Peters. "It applies across the board in American industry."
Waterman pointed to a familiar culprit for U.S. lags in such crucial industries as robotics and semiconductors - the preoccupation with quarterly earnings and its negative impact on spending for research and development. "Maybe," Waterman said, "Bush can use the bully pulpit to get us to think long-term."
Empower - and respect - your employees: "It is no coincidence that the dogma of central control was richly embedded in both the Iraqi army and the Soviet economy, the two big losers in recent years," Paulson said.
"Saddam represented the worst aspect of American labor-management relations of the '50s and '60s: `Do what I say or I'll shoot you.' He was rigid and gave his army little room to innovate," Paulson added.
By contrast, the allied forces' field doctrine emphasized flexible responses to changing conditions - an approach "crucial to winning on both the battlefield and in the marketplace," Paulson said.
Many business experts also cited Schwarzkopf's easy camaraderie with his forces as a big morale booster from which top business leaders could learn much.
"We saw example after example of deep, genuine concern by the flag officers for the people who were putting their lives on the line on the battlefield," said H. Ross Perot, the legendary computer entrepreneur.
Build strategic alliances and think multinationally: "The CEO of the future is going to have to be a trans-national player," said Ted Jadick, New York-based partner in the management recruitment company Heidrick & Struggles. "What Schwarzkopf did in melding U.S., French, British, Italian and Arab forces was a masterpiece of organization."
Use intelligence creatively and avoid direct competition wherever possible:
"Why go up the middle when you can surprise the enemy with a clever attack from his unguarded flank?" Paulson asked. Example: Apple Computer's clever exploitation of IBM's graphics weakness in personal computing technology allowed Apple to make the Macintosh a viable product in the face of stiff odds.
by CNB