Edward G. Miller
Lieutenant Colonel, US Army (Ret.)
Leadership Historian / Consultant

How Can I Benefit From the Study of History?

Can a business leader learn from the past? As an adjunct to his work on Corporate Staff Rides, Ed is researching the transference of lessons from military decision making under pressure to a business setting.

This includes lessons applicable across start-up businesses: what makes them a success or a failure?

There are common trends and issues in decision making that the private sector and military share. One can learn from the other, but books like "Leadership Lessons of General 'X' " aren't particularly valuable because authors often neglect to put these 'lessons' in historical context--to make them relevant.


Thought Leadership:

Business leaders can learn from military history - and military leaders can learn from business, but the first issue is getting over the human/​physical resource factor. That is, on one hand, military leaders are taught to focus first on people, and business schools, when they teach 'leadership' at all, still place most of their focus on resources before the human element. Yet the human factor drives all other, and the 'manager' who ignores this unalterable fact does so at great risk to career and the bottom line.

Campaigns of any historical period are replete with valuable lessons for the professional soldier, but how about the private sector?

Certainly. Business school case studies are nothing more than historical lessons learned packaged differently than the comparable military historical experiential leadership instructional tool such as a staff ride. History is valuable, but its all about the context. Specific conditions don't repeat themselves, but people do. Learning from history is possible if one focuses on people.

Changes in technology and doctrine (for example the US Army's much-touted revision to its basic doctrinal manual, FM 3.0, Operations, dated February 2008) render some lessons obsolete, but others, particularly those involving human reaction to stress and personal danger are timeless because they spring from human characteristics.

The private sector translation of this matter is this: market share, customers, physical resources, etc., did not necessarily cause the melt-downs of high flying names like WorldCom, ENRON, and doubtlessly some present-day financial services firms. Senior leaders caused the destruction.

The current operational environment requires stable, emotionally mature leaders/​executives, but there is no real learning laboratory for them. As a result practical experience is all too practical and too often comes at the risk of customers, shareholders and employees. Arrogance is another factor--how many of these leaders will admit that they don't actually know everything? A crisis is not the proving ground for a management plan.

Its not enough to train for success merely through a sterile list of business maxims or principles that are, frankly, neither fully analyzed nor understood. However, one practical tool is the staff ride and its related real-world discussions and training. A Corporate Staff Ride is an on the scene critical analysis of applied management that provides the client a unique experiential learning environment. You ask, "So what? Assuming such training has any value, why not read a book and spend a lot less time and money?" Simple--there is no substitute for putting client-students an actual piece of terrain, confronting them with a historical situation analogous to a business event, then stimulate them to reach conclusions or derive lessons from the experience that they can apply in the corporate setting. This is decidedly different than other offerings, which are merely tours with limited discussion of issues relevant to the participant.