This Leadership Framework Helped Lincoln Save the Union. You Should Try It.

Leaders are leaders, regardless of their area of endeavor: business, the military, politics, charity, clubs; even family.

The lessons we learn from leaders in one arena are often at least as valuable as those from our own, because of the outside perspective they lend.

Take Abraham Lincoln, for example. To our knowledge, Switch and Shift has few politicians who are readers. But the lessons of this great politician span any field, including business.

There exists a wide consensus that Lincoln was America’s greatest President. He was inspirational, a surprisingly savvy politician, and above all humble (something most leaders in any realm could emulate). But more importantly than any personal characteristics, he got it – he understood how to achieve the mission he was called upon to perform.

How did Lincoln do it? He mastered what I call the “principles-to-practices framework”. It goes like this:

• Principles – The view from space


• Strategies – The view from 30,000 feet up


• Tactics – The view from a second-story balcony


• Practices – The view if you lie on your stomach and look down

Most leaders have a tough enough time with the second level of this framework, (strategy), not to mention the first (principles). Indeed, once you get comfortable viewing the world through the lens of “principles to practices”, you see again and again how organizations and their leaders clearly don’t get it.

Let’s dive into ”principles to practices” with Lincoln’s presidency, and you’ll quickly see how effective it is.

Principle: Save the union

That’s it. Abraham Lincoln was a very active man as President, but he did not have two principles he stood for, or three, or ten. He realized from the day the South began to clamor for succession that only one thing mattered. Everything he did as President he measured against this single question: Will it, or will it not, help me save the Union?

What about your company? What are your principles? Better yet, can you name just one, and measure everything you do by your own version of Lincoln’s litmus test?

From here, staying with Lincoln’s example, we’ll focus on just one of each of the next three items in the framework. In real life, please understand that any one principle will spawn one, two, or even a dozen strategies simultaneously, and each of those will have many tactics under it, etc. I like to think of a tree, with one trunk branching into a few big roots, to ever-more-numerous small roots.

So to continue with Lincoln…

Strategy: Wear the confederacy down until they surrender

Lincoln had a tremendous amount of trouble finding the right commanding general, it’s true, but he always knew what he needed his generals to do: fight, and fight, and fight, until the South was exhausted into capitulation. He knew the superior economy and larger population of the North would eventually prevail, if he could just keep his own people from giving up on him.

Tactic: Charge head-on, and don’t let up until the enemy is driven to flee

This is where General Grant took over from Lincoln in the execution of the war. His job was to do exactly what his President expected of him, which was to fight until he won. How he did that was up to him. We can second-guess the tremendous loss of Union life this head-on approach took versus a more agile general such as Lee, but that is for another post (probably on a history blog).

Practice: Give the soldiers 50 rounds of ammunition each, and resupply them as needed

Practices can – and often should – be changed daily, if need be. Are 50 bullets too heavy, and not necessary? Lower it to 20. Are 50 too few? Raise it to 100. Who cares? Experiment at lot, and do what works. When that stops working, change it.

Most companies are really good at measuring minutia, at determining an optimum number of bullets…or number of minutes a call center operator should be on the line, to bring this back to a business context. But as we go from the easy metrics to the less-quantifiable stuff – like “Why do we have a call center in the first place?” or “Why are so many of our customers calling with complaints?” – companies have trouble.

Worse, many have no idea there even is trouble, until it bites them in the butt with mass defection to a more customer-centric competitor.

That’s a shame. And it’s completely unnecessary. A little work higher on this framework can transform your business.

For my first post on the Principles-to-Practices Framework, read This Trumps Strategy. You Need More of This.

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