Cinco de Mayo -La Batalla de Puebla
Okay so it's 5/5 again and here's usual reminder of the importance of that battle and the lessons for business today updated for the GenAI era.
Military and commercial history is full of success stories where leaders strapped on risk and charged forward in times of crisis while others held their breath, maintained the status quo, retreated, and stared into the fog.
Crisis and big tech shifts multiplies the fog of ‘war’. Like the advent of the machine gun, air power or let's say GenAI.
So the Battle of Puebla! Cinco de Mayo, 162 years ago….
The short version is a much smaller Mexican force trounces a much bigger, better, more smartly dressed French force under Napoleon III. But there are some key learnings in the actuality and the details of that battle. In fact, there are Cinco –
Uno – Humility Matters
This should not be news, but unfortunately, it is. I think this is the single biggest gap CIOs have, which often gets reinforced by the leaders above them. They often don't understand that the tech game they have played well for so long is no longer the same, not the technology itself, not the competition, not the arena, not the pace of battle (change). The lego-ization of tech, GenAI, the speed of incubation and growth, demographic shifts (GenZ) and the massive broad AI change sincluding two orders of magnitude in cost structure in part drive the change.
Lack of humility is being too prideful. It doesn't allow for a healthy fear of the competition and often allows you to believe everything is just fine and your stuff is superior. The French General and his smartly dressed superior troops truly believed the battle would be easy and, worse, that the people of Puebla would rise up and support them. Today and historically, that’s just bonkers. It's just as bad as their thinking the battle would be short-lived.
This is not some psycho-sociological maxim that being personally humble is important. Of course, that’s also true but the real point is humility drives healthy respect for the enemy and removes the 'experience blindfold' (stole that term from John Ainley in UK).
Dos – Focus Beyond the Front Lines
In a crisis lack of humility and short-term thinking lead to a lack of focus on support functions like supply chain, administration, training/talent acquisition, infrastructure development of all kinds etc. One consequence of that at the Battle of Puebla is the French artillery ran out of ammo. Yes, ran out of ammo. In military circles, your artillery running out of ammo mid-battle is frowned upon. They also completely missed the longer view. WIth all the excitement about GenAI and customer service, sales, marketing remember taking cost out of the support areas is a gold mine.
Tres – Purpose
Purpose, mission clarity, and morale matter more than you think. There is no such thing as a short-term purpose for an organization.
The Battle of Puebla was inspirational for the Mexican military. No one expected Mexico to win. It showed they could win, it gave them a rallying cry, it bolstered their purpose. Of course, the big picture on purpose was national sovereignty/self-determination versus French puppet regime supporting Napoleon III half a world away, clearly an imbalance of purpose.
There is no Diecisiete de Mayo festive day in Mexico. The 17th of May was the Second Battle of Puebla. We lost, the French routed the Mexican troops and then captured the capital. Benito Juarez’s government fled to the north and for four years mounted guerrilla warfare against the new emperor, Maximillian, an Austrian Habsburg Archduke. The win on Cinco de Mayo gave them hope and purpose without which the fight may have been short-lived.
Cuatro - Crisis/Change and Short-term Thinking
At the end of May in 1862, the government was fleeing to the hills in the north, certainly in crisis, and visibility to any sustainable victory was almost impossible. But in crisis, they refused to think in short-term cycles. They would use agile, asymmetric tactics to harass and 'dent' the overwhelming French forces wherever and whenever they could. It took four years, four hard years but it did work. They really did not win in an outright military sense. Those four years made it economically punitive for the French to continue to garrison troops in Mexico. Shortly after the French left the Juarez army had the decisive victory in part because of overwhelming relative force size.
The lego-ization of tech, GenAI, the current availability to 'rent' scalable resources (talent, distribution, manufacturing, service) make asymmetric threats not just annoying but potential scale threats in cycle times we have never seen.
In the US in many companies, a crisis, almost all of which are short-term things is an excuse to do stupid stuff. We are missing our numbers two quarters in a row so let's cut heads including some of the new sales folks we just hired to help us grow the business. Cut training and ESG spend, just for a while. If your response to a crisis includes things your competition would wish you do, to be less competitive then it's in the stupid category. You would be surprised how much of that goes on...just look through that lens occasionally, you will be surprised.
How many conversations at your firm are about this quarter’s numbers, next quarter's product work, this fiscal’s headcount to the exclusion of the longer term? How many conversations are about what we are doing now that ties into the next three years. What are you doing now that leads to real victory three or four years out. Not what are you discussing but what are you actually doing? The fighters in the hills that constantly harassed the massive French Army were thinking very short and very long term.
Cinco – Outside-in Perspective
About a thriteen years ago I spent three days with Admiral McRaven and his direct reports with a small group at Special Operations Command digging into innovation. I was proud and flattered to be invited but my initial response was ‘why would the top, most innovative, tech-savvy Spec Ops group on earth want to burn cycles on an innovation confab?’. The simple answer was the enemy was continually becoming more innovative.
Google what the CEO of Walmart carries in his wallet to remind him that being #1 is not a guarantee of future success and historically has been transitory. Interestingly he was one of the first CEOs to dig in on 5G.
At the financial services firm in the UK where I ran tech and some other bits in 2008 the financial crisis was an opportunity to reinvent the company and win. This was at a time when many firms froze in their tracks and focused on survival and loss minimization.
At your firm in this crisis how much time do you spend thinking about outmaneuvering, out-innovating the enemy? How often does the competition feature in everyday work sessions, planning, conversations, and reporting? Or are conversations focused internally with earnest efforts to incrementally improve what you have? Or are you really proud of who you are to the exclusion of the little Mexican army at the Battle of Puebla.
Are you structured and staffed for the next war, the next enemy or the last one ?
It's a trick question by the way and probably not in the way you think.
What might have happened…The US Civil War…
In the second half of 1862, there were severe cotton shortages for the large, economically important French textile industry because of the Union Blockade of the Confederacy. Without the big win against all odds at the Battle of Puebla maybe there is no effective guerilla action and a sustained Juarez government in the north. Maybe that gives Napoleon the idle resources and just a bit more leverage to align with the Confederate Army which was his inclination. Maybe the French allow for the delivery of the ironclad ship the Confederates bought from the French.
It is important to note that Benito Juarez benefited from a much-needed $30M from President Lincoln (gracias). This is another reason to love Lincoln and why his face was originally on the 12 peso note (it actually wasn't, nor is there such a note, but it was a good idea nonetheless).
On my birthday, mid-May 1866 near Queretaro the Archduke and his army lost the final battle (they were outnumbered 4 to 1). Within 5 weeks he was tried, sentenced and executed (not always done in that order) along with his two top generals.
Beyond the Crisis
As we move into a new technologically intensive era, the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and as we emerge from crisis-fighting the old war, resting on laurels, being internally focused and short-term attentive will lead to defeat. Not understanding whom the next enemy is in a Gen AI infused world will lead to defeat.
Being well prepared for the last war is of course also not useful.
P.S. easy to pick on the overly tailored colorful French Army adventuring in a misguided way in the 1800's. Today the best example of positive change and private public partnership to help innovation and the start-up communities thrive is what France has done with constant focus for a decade. Also in big banking and FS there is a huge firm way out front on innovation thinking. Okay, so now I can go to France again.
