The General Who Fought the Weather

Yesterday marked a 85 years signing anniversary of the disgraceful Armistice between France and Nazi Germany.  France collapsed with shocking speed. To many, it became a symbol of national weakness.  But to those who are capable of looking deeper, those who understand systems, leadership, optionality, doctrine, and friction – it wasn’t cowardice. It was catastrophic abstraction that led to the collapse.

General Maurice Gamelin, Supreme Commander of the French forces and BEF, tried to plan war like logistics–schedules, forecasts – no deviation. His vision was algebraic. He saw battle as a sequence of controlled reactions, measurable in time, distance, and probability. He built a well-defined and rational world of projected battlefield metrics, including loss ratios based on troop density, artillery saturation, and fixed front geometry. Unfortunately, he didn’t teach his army to fight in the Fog. He tried to make the Fog go away.

As a result:

-              Doctrine became bookkeeping.

-              Officers became order-takers.

-              And when chaos arrived – from the Ardennes, no less – France’s brave soldiers were too rigid, too slow, too scripted, too constrained.

They weren’t weak. They were stripped of the historical hallmarks of the French army - initiative, elan and mobility.

This isn’t just history. It’s a pattern I see again and again in modern organizations.

-              Rigid systems

-              Over-planned roadmaps.

-              Teams stripped of judgment.

-              Leaders confusing order with readiness.

But the fog never leaves. You don’t avoid complexity.

-              You breathe it.

-              You learn to move through it.

-              And only then – you begin to master it.

Can your system think? Can you adapt? Can you master the fog?