GE Royal Air Force Museum Cosford

The event was put on at the RAF Museum Cosford and was a joint collaboration between the Museum, the University of Wolverhampton Business School (Ian Hughes), the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (CILT) in the UK, and Lessons from History. 

This special event discussed The Great Escape – a captivating story, and a classic film with the objective of  what could we really learn from one of the most audacious and daring escapes ever attempted.

The agenda covered:

1530 Arrival and registration

1600 Afternoon Seminar for Sixth Forms and Colleges, The Great Escape: The Big Idea from the Big ‘X’

1640 See RAF Artefacts from this period

1700 Tour the museum

1800 Meet Veterans from period

1830 Main Presentation - The Great Escape: A post-mortem on invaluable lessons for today

1930 Questions & Answers

2000 Close

The day commenced at 3.30pm with a seminar for Sixth Forms and Colleges on ‘The Great Escape: The Big idea from the Big ‘X’’ was followed by the chance to view artefacts from the period and a tour of the award winning National Cold War Exhibition. Local college and sixth form students from across the West Midlands were invited to attend the ‘Lessons From History’ seminar. 

The evening Seminar commenced at 6.00pm and was open to interested individuals who had the unique opportunity to meet veterans who served during WWII followed by the final presentation – The Great Escape: A post-mortem on invaluable lessons for today.  The evening closed with a Question and Answers session with Mark Kozak-Holland and the WWII veterans.

CILT(UK) West Midlands Region, Mercia Group

The Great Escape required a lot of planning, preparation and team work.  It was planned and executed as a project in what seemed a hopeless situation and the men overcame huge obstacles with ingenuity and tenacity. In today’s difficult and hostile economic climate, there are parallels with the challenges facing us today.  

The Great Escape was a rigorously planned and implemented project which mirrors many ‘impossible’ requirements of today’s business world.  

The presence of the WWII vetrans in the room gave the whole experience a unique dimension. To set the scene, Alan Clifford, a veteran of the Stalag Luft III camp, first explained what it was like being captured and interrogated after bailing out of his stricken aircraft in 1943. That was his first ever jump! He recounting how he went through 4 days of interogation and eventually came to arrive at Stalag Luft IV. In January 1945 he was force marched back East and arrived at Stalag Luft III. He was there for a few months and was then part of the Death March to Germany where may POWs died. He recounted how he and a friend finally managed to escape - although by then they were escaping from the Soviet Russian forces not the Germans. Alan is part of the RAF Museum volunteer staff.

The afternoon started with the presentation of the Great Escape story to a group of 47 young students from the Birmingham Metropolitan College who were studying a variety of business subjects.  The story was linked to key business issues of today, including the gathering and effective use of business intelligence, leadership, resource management, and project management.

This was followed by the story of the camp and the development of the Great Escape plan and associated tunnels. It looked at how "business intelligence" was gathered and effectively used, and why leadership and organisation were key components of the event, and how the innovative and opportunistic approach of individuals helped to maintain the required momentum.

Ultimately, as an escape and return home it was a failure - with only 3 airmen making it back to allied territory- but the plan's other objective of causing confusion and tieing up large numbers of German troops and para-military in the searches was successful. The key people issues of leadership, resilience, determination, and effective use of intelligence in an adverse environment are surely useful lessons for us all at the moment.  

The evening session related the story and the events of the Great Escape, and explain the valueable business, leadership, and project management lessons that we can learn from this historical event. The audience comprised of 30 local managers, members of the CILT and PMI, and students from UWBS.

Our thanks to the Museum and veterans, Ian Hughes, Martin Price, and RAF Cosford.