Supplemental Materials for Churchill

Background to Supplemental

The following information is provided to further enhance concepts listed in the book.

Adaptive Enterprise

What is an Adaptive Enterprise? Organizations that adapt to market conditions so that they can respond to and address changes in their market, their environment, and/or their industry to better position themselves for survival and profitability (also called: Adaptive Organization). As business velocity has increased the time to market is driving business forcing product and market cycles times to shrink. For example, HP reduced laptop development cycle from 9 ms to 4 weeks to respond to changing technologies and product obsolescence. A car manufacturer moved from 2 model introductions per year to 6. An online mortgage is approved in 20 minutes, what previously took days or weeks.

Organizations are faced with a new requirement of business agility, the ability to react instantaneously to changing market or customer conditions, and customer requests \before the competition can. Today there are competitive threats everywhere. The traditional business models of efficiency and economies of scale limit the agility of an organization.

The unprecedented levels of change have been driven by technology, IT, or the way it can be leveraged, and APPLIED. This has had a massive impact on organizations. Companies can really leverage IT if they integrate it into their strategic plans, transform their business processes and organization in lock step. WalMart is a good example leveraging IT in B2C, understanding the consumer base, and B2B in dealing with its suppliers.

The Churchill Analogy

The period May 1940 was selected for the book as it was a time of calamitous change. The situation for the UK could not have been darker, facing an onslaught and an invasion from the air and the sea. The eve to the battle was only a couple of months. In this window Churchill had to transform the UK and ready it for battle. He had to deal with change in much the same way we would deal with it today. By becoming more agile and responsive. Churchill had to transform his organization from a nation grounded into the mentality of First World War, static defenses, and slow methodical progress to the modern-day equivalent of an Adaptive Enterprise. Agility and responsiveness were the foundation to this and he drove his nation to this. His stewardship in this 4 month period was significant. The Churchill Centre has several white papers that describe this period well including the case for going to war as well as against, his relationship with Roosevelt and what Churchill knew about Japanese intent for Pearl Harbor prior to the attack.

The following information is provided to further enhance concepts listed in the book. Winston Churchill was swept into power on May 10th, 1940. It was not a forgone conclusion in fact Neville Chamberlain offered the premiership to Lord Halifax first who refused it. Prior to Churchill’s premiership Chamberlain had followed a policy of appeasement in which British interest were accomplished without entanglement in war. This had been misguided and had played Czechoslovakia into Hitler’s hands, and a Nazi-Soviet non-Aggression pact (read about the build up to the Second World War).

The Reality of the Situation

Although 350,000 Allied forces had been evacuated Dunkirk had been a disaster as 90% of the heavy fighting equipment was left behind which included field, heavy, anti-aircraft and anti-tank guns,  anti-tank   rifles, machine guns, motor vehicles, every tank, and large dumps of ammunition. Over 200 ships were lost in the evacuation as were many fighters trying to protect the beaches (read about what Churchill did). All this equipment would have to be replaced in the short term with an invasion imminent of the UK mainland.

Churchill’s Adaptive Enterprise

Churchill faced a dismal situation and his Adaptive Enterprise was created in very dire circumstances. Churchill's determination and his consistent stance against appeasement gave him credibility with the British people when he became Prime Minister.

Churchill not only had to stave off an imminent enemy invasion but also quickly move the peacetime economy to one that could support a war. This meant focusing slender resources on the immediate threat, unifying a disparate economy, and directing its output into immediate military use.

Transformation

With very little time Churchill had to transform his organization to an Adaptive Enterprise so it could adapt to this unexpected situation. Of course he had to get it right the first time and make the investments count. With many organizations from the public, military and civilian sectors to accommodate into the Adaptive Enterprise (as shown below) Churchill needed a governance framework. This required a collection of people and resources that had the legitimacy and authority to provide direction and to take actions needed to ensure the transformation was swift and managed effectively. For example, Churchill elected Lord Beaverbrook to the Minister of Aircraft Production in May 1940. Beaverbrook brought energy and new methods to the department and, substantially increased the output of aircraft.

Churchill and his architects created an  Adaptive Enterprise using the emerging technologies of the time. The principal elements of the solution consisted of the following:

•  
  •  
    • Storey’s Gate where Churchill and his staff, cabinet ministers, and chiefs of staff stayed in touch with the entire business-process map. This was a principal community that made the overriding decisions for everything. Storey’s Gate mapped out various scenarios, defined strategies, and managed multiple projects, resources, risks, and costs.
    • Bentley Prior where the air chief and staff needed a view of enemy activity and forthcoming attacks, their RAF reserve, the production of fighters, and those fighters available. Bentley Prior responded to real-time threats like in-coming raids, based on Bletchley Park intelligence, taking appropriate actions and repelling these within a time critical window.
    • Bletchley Park where the intelligence chiefs and staff required a flow of Enigma information related to enemy activities, and the ability to decode, interpret, and distribute it. Bletchley Park intercepted and decoded enemy communications and harvesting critical enemy intelligence into a knowledge repository.
    • Whitehall where the Ministry of Air Production required horizontal views of the supply chain, fighter production, and arms manufacturing, labor force, raw materials, as well as the armed forces’ needs. Whitehall managed the military supply chain, optimized the critical fighter production through a variable cost structure encompassing everything from factories, to garages, to repair shops.

The transformation was extensive restructuring large parts of the UK economy and moving it from a civilian based one to one on a war footing (read about British War Production). This required creation of arms production facilities, and a civilian workforce that was largely composed of women, a first in British manufacturing.

Churchill’s Legacy

Churchill is revered today as one of the greatest leaders any nation has seen. This is understandable considering the situation in the UK in May 1940. He was the man of the moment and even sensed this was going to be his destiny. In 2002 the BBC held a nationwide poll to determine the greatest Briton which Churchill won.

"He was the greatest Briton because he showed the determination and courage to protect Britain from invasion and without his inspiring leadership the outcome of World War II may have been very different. He was the choice of the people." - Mo Mowlam, who championed Churchill (read about Churchill the ‘greatest Briton’).

Credits and Sources
The following sources were used for the book.

Churchill's Adaptive Enterprise

•  
  Leonard Mosley. Battle of Britain. World War II – Time Life Books, 1977.
  Briggs, Susan. The home front: War years in Britain 1939-45, American Heritage, 1975. 
  Budianski, Stephen. Battle of Wits, Simon and Schuster, 2000.
  Collier, Basil. Leader of the Few:  The Authorized Biography of Air Chief Marshal Dowding.
  Deighton, Len. Blood, tears and folly,  HarperCollins; (December 1993)
  Deighton, Len. Battle of Britain. Jonathon Cape, 1980
  Deighton, Len. Fighter: The True Story of the Battle of Britain, Castle; (May 2000)
  Hodges, Andrew. Alan Turing the enigma. Simon and Schuster, 1983.
  Mason, Francis. Battle Over Britain. McWhirter Twins, 1969.
  Milward, Alan S. War, Economy and Society 1939-1945. Penguin Books Ltd, 1977.
  Mosley, Leonard. The Battle Of Britain. Time-Life Books, 1977.
  Pawle, Gerald. The War and Colonel Warden. George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd, 1963.
  Wintherbottom, FW. The Ultra Secret. Orion, 1974.
  Illustrations were used courtesy of the Imperial War Museum London