What was the Battle of Britain? On September 1, 1939 the Germans invaded Poland, launching WW2. For six months after war was declared, not much really happened. The Allies stared across the lines at the Germans in what has been called the Phoney War. Then suddenly, in April 1940, the Germans invaded Denmark and Norway.
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By traditional measure my first professional mentor was a failure.
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So you are executing flawlessly, but are you doing the right things? After the first World War, the fledgling Royal Air Force struggled to prove its worth as an independent service.
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To succeed under pressure we have to trust. Every day brings the same routine for the Royal Air Force’s pilots. Wait. Stare at magazines, but never turn the pages. Watch the hands twitch around the clock face. As the morning wears on the pilots think, “It’s almost too late, the Germans won’t be coming.”
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Leaders make mistakes too. In the early days of WWII, the Royal Air Force lost almost twenty-five percent of their Hurricane fighters in combat over France. Despite their tenacity, the RAF pilots were ineffective when they engaged the Luftwaffe.
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Can we earn our employee’s respect through critical feedback? Eighteen thousand feet above the Isle of Wight, enemy German planes swarming around him, George Westlake’s engine went silent.
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Does productivity equal performance? During the Battle of Britain England’s secret weapon was the Dowding System, and its heart was the Filter Room.
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Are we leading our teams from behind our desks? Squadron Leader Don MacDonell’s pilots had a thirty minute release. The weather was deteriorating and Group command didn’t want them sitting in their planes waiting for the skies to clear. The Germans wouldn’t fly in this weather. With the grey clouds scudding across the hills, they’d never […]
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Are we focusing on the right things? September 15, 1940. It was 10:30 in the morning and ten miles from the French coast, off Cape Nez Griz, forty German planes were racing toward England.
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