Cuban Missile Crisis 50th anniversary: Leadership Lessons Jon Chapman

Steve Macaulay October 2012 marks the 50th anniversary of an important landmark event in the 20th Century, it became known as the Cuban Missile Crisis. Now we are going to explore this with Jon Chapman who has made a special study of historical events and their leadership implications today. Now Jon can you set the scene what was happening fifty years ago? Well we are at the height of the cold war between the Soviet Union and the United States. Theres a nuclear arms race going on with each side trying to out produce the other, it gets to the point where we could wipe the world out several times over so any conflagration, any war that takes place that goes nuclear threatens the entire planet. What these two countries are doing are enlisting people around the world to help fight their cause one of which is Cuba, a Communist country, went Communist in 1959 led by Fidel Castro, the Soviet Union decide that they will install nuclear missiles on Cuba only ninety miles away from the United States. One Monday morning in October 1962 the President of the United States John Kennedy is woken up and shown the photographs and asked what do you want to do? So the World was on the brink for thirteen tense days, how was it resolved? Well at the outset Kennedy is presented with a series of mutually exclusive options, there is a diplomatic solution, there is a military solution, and so on and so forth. The outcome is actually a blend of all those things and its made possible by one of the skills that Kennedy particularly shows which is his ability to put himself in Khrushchevs shoes and work out what his opponent would be thinking or feeling about the situation so that emotional intelligence and a willingness to listen to different points of view is really important in bringing together different aspects of those different solutions so at the end of the day the missiles are withdrawn, there is a secret deal for the Americans to withdraw their missiles from Turkey and the whole situation is resolved in a way which saves face for both sides.

Jon Chapman

Steve Macaulay Jon Chapman

Steve Macaulay

So John if we take the corporate world of the 21st Century say you are in charge of BP at the time of the Deep Water Horizon crisis or Lehmans when that went bust, what lessons can we draw from the Cuban missile crisis? Well I think because they are two very, very different examples, but of course in both of those cases you have organisations which suddenly find themselves under threat and in the case of BP one thing thats clear is that the kind of conversation they are seeking to have is focussed around the technical solution which is where a lot of their expertise lies and unfortunately what they ignore are the different kinds of conversations they

Jon Chapman

Cranfield University 2012

www.cranfieldknowledgeinterchange.com

should have been having with the rest of the oil industry and with the American administration and as the crisis progresses we can see it gets them into deeper and deeper trouble and ultimately threatens the whole existence of the organisation. In the case of Lehman Brothers the problem really arises when you look at how the different administrations try to deal with the problem and you have different administrations with different agendas with different kinds of organisational cultures struggling under a lot of time pressure to come us with a consensus solution and the default solution happens its the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and we are still five years on dealing with the fallout from that so one gets a sense that the kind of getting your organisational act together in advance knowing who you need to work with and who you need to be talking to is really important because it is very very hard to build those kind of relationships under pressure. Steve Macaulay So for leaders under pressure its bound to happen that there are still some very relevant lessons. Indeed and I suppose the important thing is start thinking now because you might not have time when it actually happens. Jon, thank you very much.

Jon Chapman

Steve Macaulay

Cranfield University 2012

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