Actor Gary Oldman’s stunning Academy-Award-winning portrayal in Darkest Hour of Winston Churchill, Britain’s Second World War prime minister, has sparked new interest in a man many regard as the greatest person of the twentieth century.

Great doesn’t mean perfect of course. Like any of us, Churchill had his good moments and his misguided ones. Still, we can learn a great deal about leadership by studying Churchill.

Unfortunately, Winston Churchill’s leadership is usually viewed through a very narrow lens, focused primarily on his “confident manner” and “soaring rhetoric.” These, we are told, are the mark of a leader.

I must dispute this assertion. Real leadership isn’t a show. It takes years to fully develop. It must be underpinned by real substance, substance that can be counted on in difficult times. And to be worthy of the name, leadership must be in service to a complex undertaking. Churchill’s leadership deserves study because of its substance, because of its depth (it was developed over a lifetime), and because there has been no more complex undertaking in human history than winning the Second World War.

It’s not hard to find a broader view of Churchill’s leadership, especially in his own hand. He was a prolific writer, producing thousands of speeches and articles, and more than 50 books — at least seven million words in all. And it’s great writing; in 1953 Churchill was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature.

I was first exposed in detail to the man’s work when, after graduating college, I read his six-volume history, The Second World War. Since then I have read almost all of Churchill’s major works, and a good many books about Churchill, both by professional historians and by people who knew the man.

Along the way I have made mental notes about his work habits and methods — notes about how he interacted with people, how he gathered information, how he planned, how he refined and strengthened those plans, how he gave direction, how he synthesized new understanding from old experience. In 2015, to mark the half century since Churchill’s death I wrote down some of my observations. I thought that, with the renewed interest in Churchill brought about by Darkest Hour, it was worth revisiting those ideas.

While these ideas are written with an eye on Lean organizations, they are entirely applicable — perhaps more applicable and more important — in organizations that haven’t been influenced by the work of Edwards Deming, Shingo Shigeo, and Ohno Taiichi.

(I should note that I’m normally skeptical of using war or sports analogies in business. However, war does provide a level of stress that brings to light problems in systems and personalities that could easily remain hidden in normal times, so learning from war and war leaders, done cautiously, serves a useful purpose.)

The time will come when each of us will face dark hours. Be prepared. Click below to learn more about the Leadership Lessons of Winston Churchill.

Listen.
Ask questions.
Give clear directions.
Don’t get angry at challenges to your ideas. Learn from them.
In most cases, it isn’t the person, it’s the process.
Learn to think in terms of a system.
Go and see for yourself.
Measure a lot of things, and have something to compare them to.
Have courage. Tell the truth, and expect others to do the same.
Great oratory is built on great arguments. Master your facts and your arguments first.

Copyright 2018 by Paul G. Spring. All rights reserved.