Quotes from Stephen Bungay

There are many reasons why people might only go through the motions. Two of the most common are that they do not believe a course of action is feasible or that they do not believe it makes sense.

I came to know and like some Germans later on. But I hated the enemy then for what they tried to do to Johnnie Cock and what they did to Johnnie Dewar, our squadron leader, later in the battle. He parachuted out, but when we found his body, it was riddled with bullets. Some of our people say what wonderful men the German pilots were personally. But I still feel that men who could shoot boys in parachutes are not people I want to know.14

It was just beer, women and Spitfires, a bunch of little John Waynes running about the place.

When you were nineteen, you couldn't give a monkey's

Indeed the degree of psychic and somatic fulfilment offered by a life filled with 'beer, women and Spitfires' seemed to most who enjoyed it then, and to many who contemplate it now, to leave little wanting. The RAF was not a hunting fraternity, but a flying club, the best flying club in the world.

Most of them kept going because they had a job to do, and they were the only ones who could do it. The closest thing to heroism was displaying humour:

verray, parfit gentil knyght'.

History was always present for Churchill. He understood, perhaps, that the essence of history is the present, for the present is nothing other than what the past has made it, only those most essential elements of the past being retained in the present. That is what makes them essential. One's understanding of the past is therefore a constituent part of one's understanding of current events and a guide as to how to act in it.

In 1911, Frederick Winslow Taylor's classic The Principles of Scientific Management enshrined the machine model for several generations. This approach to management rests on three premises: 1 In principle it is possible to know all you need to know to be able to plan what to do. 2 Planners and doers should be separated. 3 "There is but one right way." A manager was a programmer of robot workers. The essence of management was to create perfect plans and tell people precisely

Later in the war, I flew in the Middle East over desert. You'd look down and there was a lot of sand. It meant nothing to me. But flying over Kent and Surrey and the green fields of southern England and the Thames Estuary – that was home. The fact that someone was trying to take it away or break it up made you angry.30 Who the Hell do these Huns think they are flying like this over OUR country in their bloody bombers covered with Iron Crosses and Swastikas?31

A briefing cascade will only work properly if the organizational structure broadly reflects the task structure implied by the strategy. If it is in conflict with the strategy, it should be changed before anything else.

Eagle had indeed revealed what Churchill, no less, was to characterise as the essence of war: 'a catalogue of mistakes and misfortunes'6.

Shakespeare gave Henry V before the Battle of Agincourt, when the King addresses his men as 'we few, we happy few, we band of brothers'. Churchill was wont to compare the fighter pilots with knights.

The main object of the dogfight was to get on the opponent's tail – hence the name. The German word for

The best junior officers with at least three years' service could apply for a "high potentials" course which would lead to entry into the General Staff.

dogfight' is 'Kurvenkampf'' i.e. turning fight.

The big issue was not strategy but executing strategy. There was plenty of activity, but not much action.

His methods did not only develop what Argyris and Schon have called "single-loop learning," in which an organization learns to correct its actions so as to carry on its current policies and fulfill its current objectives, but "double-loop learning," in which the organization's policies, objectives, and behavioral norms are modified.11

Sins of omission should be regarded as far more serious than sins of commission,

the gap between promises and results," which it claims is itself a result of "the gap between what a company's leaders want to achieve and the ability of their organization to achieve it"; that is, the alignment gap – getting the organization to do what its leaders want.35

it is these miracles of execution," Clausewitz writes, "that we should really admire."9 The fact is that in war "things do not happen of their own accord like a well-oiled machine, indeed the machine itself starts to create resistance, and overcoming it demands enormous willpower on the part of the leader."10 In war, "everything is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult… taking action in war is movement in a resistant medium."11

A Prussian officer was expected to share a set of core values, defining his "honor," which took precedence over an order. If he acted in accordance with honor – or, as we might more commonly say today, with integrity – disobedience was legitimate. The right talent and the right behavioral biases were put in place as a first step.