LEADERSHIP STRATEGY PROFILE: NAPOLEON

Napoleon Bonaparte rose to prominence during the confusion and disorder of the French Revolution.  At the time, France was being attacked by foreign armies on all sides, and plagued by internal power struggles.  The populace was deeply divided.  Many people were driven by revolutionary fervor while a large number of French citizens from all social levels clung to their feudal traditions.

While attention is usually focused on Napoleon’s battlefield success, his greatest accomplishment was to create a new order out of the chaos, and unify the French people behind a set of ideas that shrewdly combined the best of the old and new regimes.  To signal his intent, Napoleon chose a former Royalist and a Jacobean revolutionary as his fellow consuls when he first gained power.  He did not discard liberty, equality and fraternity – the watchwords of the revolution – but spoke more of splendor, comprehension, and efficiency.

To give his countrymen a sense of a new direction, Napoleon consciously used the mental picture of ancient Rome.  Appealing too their imaginations, he promised to make Paris greater and more splendid than was Rome in its glory.  In each conquered territory, Napoleon introduced the decimal system for measurement and currency – a symbol to these people that their world was changing, but as a counter to the revolutionary atmosphere, it also created a theme of reason, logic, and order.

Wherever possible, Napoleon tried to unify warring factions within French society, in order to free up energy for other causes.  The Revolution attacked the church as well as the French aristocracy and religious strife was rampant when Napoleon rose to power.  He settled the issue in a manner that was in keeping with his values.  Napoleon declared complete religious equality for Catholics, Protestants and other faiths.  He called a council of Jewish rabbis and had his soldiers knock down the walls of Jewish ghettos as a symbol of new freedoms.

You could see his policy of combining the best of the old and new orders even in the way he handled military matters.  The French army was deemed by many to be the best in Europe before the Revolution.  To make it better still, Napoleon retained the skilled professionals – such as engineers and artillery experts – but got rid of mercenaries.  He converted the army into a democratic institution.  Napoleon declared to his troops that a field marshal’s baton was tucked into every soldier’s knapsack, a powerful signal to people conditioned to accept personal limits on their careers as dictated by the class system.  He promoted those showing ability and, as a result, attracted many brilliant young officers and developed a body of dedicated well-motivated soldiers who were willing to make great sacrifices.

Values

•           Splendour, comprehension, and efficiency
•           Believing rulers should be subject to the will of the people
•           Humanity versus despotism and rule by divine right

 Vision

•           Surpassing the glory and might of ancient Rome

 Signals

•          Choosing a former Royalist and a Jacobean revolutionary as consuls
•          Declaring  a field marshal’s baton was  in every soldier’s knapsack
•          Introducing the decimal system in conquered territories

 Appropriate Leader Response to Challenge

•          Tearing down the walls of the Jewish ghettos
•          Blocking unmerited appointments of the old aristocracy

 The following equation is from The “I” of the Hurricane: How to generate and focus corporate energy

(updated rewrite will be in E stores by November 2011)