Friction and Leadership

The 19th century Prussian general and military strategist Carl von Clausewitz is perhaps best known for his book On War, a primer on military strategy that has been (and continues to be) widely read by military leaders around the world.  Even business leaders have read On War to gain powerful insights on strategy.  As one book reviewer stated, "Clausewitz speaks the mind of the executive, revealing logic that those interested in strategic thinking and practice will find invaluable."  

While Clausewitz discusses many important concepts that I believe are relevant to leadership in general, I want to focus in this post on a concept that he calls friction, which he describes as the difference between what happens in plans versus what happens in reality.  He wrote, "Friction is the concept that differentiates actual war from war on paper."  Friction are those things that all leaders encounter that make "even the simplest thing difficult."

During a recent post (see "Improvise, Overcome, Adapt"), I mentioned an article by Dr. Martin Samuels ("Understanding Command Approaches") that I found online in the Journal of Military Operations.  Dr. Samuels expands upon Clausewitz's concept of friction by describing it as "the gap between the action and the desired outcomes."  He suggests that there are three potential kinds of gaps that lead to friction (based on a model developed by Stephen Bungay, see The Art of Action), all of which generate a response from a leader and his or her subordinate team:

1.  Knowledge Gap - a gap between what leaders would like to know about a particular situation versus what they actually know.  As Clausewitz noted, "This difficult of accurate recognition constitutes one of the most serious sources of friction in war, by making things appear entirely different from what one had expected."  In response, leaders can know either more or less than their subordinate teams known and may seek to close the gap by either demanding more information or by adapting their leadership approach to cope with less information.

2.  Alignment Gap - a gap between what leaders want their teams to do versus what they actually do.  Subordinate teams may implement their leaders' instructions to a greater or lesser extent, and leaders may seek to address this gap, specifically when their instructions are not implemented, either by specifying their general intent and leaving the rest to their subordinate teams' initiative or requiring their subordinate teams to follow a detailed set of instructions or protocol.

3.  Effects Gap - a gap between what is intended versus what is desired, in terms of outcomes, that frequently arise due to chance.  Leaders may address this gap either by intervening or by allowing their subordinate teams to react to the changes in real time.

Dr. Samuels developed a 2x2x2 table (considering knowledge, alignment, effects as either/or axes) to produce eight different permutations of leadership that can be used in a specific situation or context.  The table of his 8 different leadership approaches is shown below:

The resulting 8 "command approaches" are shown in the Table below:

I want to wait on talking about each of these different "command approaches" and their implications for non-military leadership for an upcoming post.  However, I will say that the "Enthusiastic Amateur" and "Neglected Control" are two approaches that are best avoided.  It's also important to remember that there is likely not a "universal command approach" that works in every situation, and as I've stated in the past, the best leaders are the ones who can flex between several different leadership and command approaches given the specific contextual factors of the situation at hand.  I do think that Dr. Samuels breakdown to friction and leadership is unique and will be of interest, and I look forward to additional discussions on this topic!