Chapter 5: Boldness

Overview

Touch a thistle timidly, and it pricks you; grasp it boldly, and its spines crumble. Carry the battle to the enemy! Lay your ship alongside his!

”Admiral William Bull Halsey ^[1]

Boldness is the daring to commit resources to endeavors with uncertain, even highly uncertain , outcomes to achieve breakthrough results and, in some instances, blow open frozen situations.

Such commitments usually entail considerable risk. While informed estimates of the costs and benefits of capturing, maintaining, or defending a position can mitigate this risk, sometimes the data are insufficient to make an estimate, or the information that does exist may suggest a cautious approach. Nevertheless, when the potential benefits are sufficiently high, the practitioner of maneuver warfare must be willing to take action despite data that are inconclusive or downright discouraging. What keeps this risk-seeking behavior from becoming recklessness is the thoughtful weighing of risk and reward.

In this chapter we offer five historical examples of boldness and its key components , as well as present-day lessons from the Marines. General Douglas MacArthur s amphibious landing at Inchon in 1950 during the Korean War and Lou Gerstner s successful turnaround at IBM in the early 1990s illustrate boldness in warfare and in business. From the American Civil War s best-known battle, Gettysburg, Union colonel Joshua Chamberlain s stand at Little Round Top and Confederate general George Pickett s infamous charge serve as contrasting examples of how to and how not to weigh the risks and rewards associated with acting boldly. And from business the launches of Victory Brewing Company s HopDevil India Pale Ale and Lager serve as similarly contrasting examples of how to and how not to commit resources to a new market. Finally, Warren Buffett s reluctance to invest in the technology bubble of the late 1990s shows that boldness sometimes requires the steely resolve to abstain from an uncertain and potentially undesirable situation.

The Marines creation of a culture that encourages self-confidence and decisiveness can serve as a useful guide to fostering a propensity for boldness among the members of your organization. To this end our intent in this chapter is to use their experiences and some of the lessons learned from our historical examples to suggest ways in which you can use a risk-reward trade-off framework to increase your propensity to make bold decisions, train your people to make decisions and act in the absence of complete information, and reinforce and reward risk taking, both successful and unsuccessful , at all levels in your organization.

^[1] Cohen, Morris, The Wisdom of Generals .