Letting go of losing battles can be the hardest part of the work we do. It might also be the most important thing we can do to retain our clients, our reputations, and our sanity while saving ourselves from destruction. Let me tell you a story to illustrate the point.
On June 24, 1812, Napoleon Bonaparte led the French Army across the Neman River into Russian territory. The reasons for the invasion were complex. Misunderstandings, a history of animosity, hubris. But, ostensibly, Napoleon wanted to force Russia to surrender so he could make Russia stop trading with Great Britain, and finally force Britain to sue for peace to end the Napoleonic Wars.
Napoleon’s army, when he crosses the Neman River, was 680,000 soldiers strong. Russia has fewer than 200,000 soldiers to defend the frontier. This wasn’t a fair fight, nor was it a battle Russia could possibly win.
So the Russian Army, given no alternatives, retreated.
Napoleon chased them and they met again for battle 4 days later in Vilnius. Again, the Russian army retreated.
This went on for 3 months. Napoleon chasing the Russian Army to fight what (he thought) would be an easy and decisive battle. The Russian Army retreating deeper and deeper into their own territory, burning buildings and crops as they went so the French couldn’t live off the land.
Eventually, Napoleon's troops were stretched from the border to Moscow. His supply lines were so long he couldn’t feed his soldiers. They were starving, dying of typhus, deserting.
Finally, Napoleon arrived in Moscow. And he found the city empty and burning. Russia had already evacuated and taken everything useful with them. With no food, no supplies, and winter approaching, Napoleon was forced to withdraw and try to make it back to French territory. The Russian Army harassed his troops the entire way. When Napoleon’s army finally made it back, only 27,000 effective soldiers were left. 380,000 died. 100,000 were captured.
What did Napoleon do wrong?
By most accounts, Napoleon was a brilliant military leader. At the time of his Russian invasion, the man was a living legend. He’d won countless battles, conquered much of Europe, become a man both feared and admired at home and abroad. But his incursion into Russia was an unmitigated disaster and the campaign is considered the turning point in the Napoleonic Wars.
What did Napoleon do wrong?
Napoleon was a brilliant strategist. But he also had a great big ego. He thought he was invincible. And he was obsessed with a single goal—force Russia to surrender. So even though, deep down, he must’ve known that it was a bad idea to chase the Russian Army into the heart of their own territory, he couldn’t let it go. And he sacrificed everything in his blind pursuit.
We’re all Napoleon—In our own ways
All of us, to varying degrees, operate like workplace Napoleons at times. We all have projects or processes or ideas we hold dear that compel us to set goals or standards, and then fight every single battle we can to clear anything that stands in the way.
I’m certainly guilty of it. There are times when I try to fight every battle in pursuit of my goals. Some of them are good and necessary battles. But a lot of them are losing battles and pointless battles. But I fight because I need to boost my ego. Or because I start thinking I'm invincible. Or because I have a goal and anything that gets in my way must be destroyed.
But working this way, fighting every battle, will eventually destroy us. Just like it did Napoleon’s army.
You’ll get to a point where trying to fight every battle will stretch you too thin. You won’t have the energy, the resources, or the time to keep on fighting. You’ll have to give up the goal. And when you try to retreat you’ll be too weak to fight off the counterattacks from the very things you were just trying to beat.
I admit this way of looking at things is fairly medieval. But the workplace doesn’t have to be so dark. That’s why it’s so important to be aware of our actions and tendencies to try to fight too many battles. When we operate this way, we’re the ones creating and spreading this primal mindset of fighting for limited resources. We create our own environments. And when we create an environment that’s aggressive and battle hungry, that’s what we’ll experience in return.
Choose your battles wisely
I’m not telling you to never fight battles. I’m not telling you to avoid conflict. And I can’t tell anyone which battles are worth fighting. That’s different for all of us.
What I am doing is encouraging everyone, myself included, to think long and hard before you engage in a battle. How much do you care about the outcome? How much are you willing to sacrifice? What happens if you win? What happens if you lose?