Late in the morning of June 4, 1942, a high-tech Dauntless SBD dive bomber launched from the U.S.S. Enterprise slipped through the Japanese fleet anti-air defenses and, stabilized by its innovative dive brakes, dropped a 500-pound high-explosive bomb in the middle of the Imperial Japanese Navy’s aircraft carrier Kaga’s flight deck. Dozens more SBDs followed and scored more direct hits with 500 and 1000 pound bombs, sending the entire Japanese carrier force to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean: Kaga, Soryu, Hiryu and Akagi. Within a matter of minutes at Midway in the remote Central Pacific, the course of World War 2 had been decisively changed.
The Japanese mismanagement of their Midway campaign provides an important lesson for people who run businesses and governments. Focus and scope management are critical to success.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the Japanese had twelve months to win WW 2 or at least entrench themselves strongly enough to force a stalemate. The United States was in the midst of a massive rearmament program started in the late 1930s and by early 1943 a dozen plus Essex-class super aircraft carriers would enter the fight in the Pacific. The Japanese were aware of this and knew they needed to destroy the U.S. Pacific Fleet and its five older aircraft carriers in 1942. After this, they would be able to occupy the Hawaiian Islands and use land-based aircraft to neutralize the Essex aircraft carriers. The Japanese planned to lure the U.S. Navy into battle at Midway, threatening the Hawaiian Islands, and destroy the U.S. Navy's operational aircraft carriers.
"For want of a nail... the battle was lost." The Japanese didn't just throw away a nail for the battle horse's shoe. They threw away whole boatloads. Despite knowing that victory at Midway was imperative to win the war, the Japanese filled the six months after Pearl Harbor with big and small initiatives that wasted boatloads or resources before the battle.
By the time the Japanese fleet arrived off Midway, they had diverted and lost so many resources that the Americans, who were throwing everything into the battle, had almost 140 more aircraft at Midway Island and on its aircraft carriers than the Japanese fleet.
Instead of waiting until they'd located the American aircraft carriers, the Japanese immediately attacked Midway and began losing more aircraft, and most of these were attack aircraft belonging to the one aircraft carrier what survived the first fatal American dive bomber attacks. The Japanese, still not focused on their primary object, the destruction of the American fleet, decided to attack Midway again and their carrier decks became a confusion of rearming for a naval battle when the American aircraft carriers were finally discovered. The lost minutes and lost and missing aircraft were fatal. "For want of a nail...."
This is a lesson for all businesses and governments. Know and focus on the objectives that make your business successful. Manage scope. Be absolutely ruthless, RUTHLESS, in saying NO to any initiatives that distract from achieving the organization's objectives. (you'll never be as ruthless as Admiral Raymond Spruance was when he launched the 117 plane raid against the Japanese fleet knowing that half of the American pilots would never return and hoping that thousands of Japanese would end up dead).
America hasn't managed scope successfully. For generations we have been haunted by the legacy of slavery and many of our best efforts to fix slavery's problems have been diverted into other initiates. Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity have become the solution for every problem. We have softball teams for all the girls while most of the young black men who'd like to play get cut from the high school basketball team. While black children are gunned down by the score in the streets of Chicago, our government starts arguments over the census and transgender bathrooms.
Focus and be RUTHLESS.
