STRATEGY IS SACRIFICE

 

 

In WW2 the main British heavy bomber was the Lancaster.

It had a crew of 7: pilot, engineer, navigator, bomb aimer, wireless operator, mid-upper gunner, tail gunner.

It had an average speed of 245 mph, it had 4 engines, it carried an average 4,000lb bomb load, and it weighed a massive 16 tons when empty.

In short it was a slow moving, heavy bomber.

Slow moving because of the weight and the need for so much defensive armour. Standard strategic thinking was that that the more defensive armour they put on a bomber, the better the chance it would survive an attack. So the Lancaster had 8 machine guns manned by 3 gunners.

The Americans took this strategy even further.

Their heavy bomber was the B17 ‘Flying Fortress’, it had a crew of 10: pilot, co-pilot, bombardier, navigator, radio operator, top turret gunner, ball turret gunner, left-waist gunner, right-waist gunner, tail gunner.

It had 13 machine guns, and it also weighed a massive 16 tons.

The British and American strategists thought that the more guns a slow-moving bomber had the more chance of survival it had.

But Geoffrey de Havilland had a different strategy, a creative strategy.

You needed a lot of guns for when the enemy attacked you, but what if the enemy couldn’t catch you?

What if the bomber was too fast for German fighter planes?

Everyone thought it was ridiculous strategy, German fighters were over 100mph faster than any allied bomber.

This was Geoffrey de Havilland’s moment of creative strategy.

If he got rid of everything that made a bomber capable of defending itself, he could make it extremely light and fast. So fast it wouldn’t need to defend itself.

So, instead of adding more and more things to defend it, he stripped more and more things away, and he designed the de Havilland Mosquito.

Unlike the heavy metal bombers it was made of wood, so it was very light.

It had 2 engines instead of 4 because it was half the size. He got rid of all the guns, so he didn’t need the weight of them or any gunners.

The Mosquito could carry a 4,000lb bomb load like the bigger bombers, but it only needed a crew of 2, not 10 like the bigger bombers.

Geoffrey de Havilland’s strategy was to keep taking more and more things away until the Mosquito weighed just 7 tons. 10 tons lighter, less than half the weight of the bigger bombers.

So it could fly at nearly 400 mph like a fighter, even faster than a Spitfire, German fighters couldn’t catch it.

And British bomber crews loved it because their survival rate was many times greater than in the bigger slower-moving, heavy bombers.

It became the best aircraft of the war, nearly 8,000 were built.

All because Geoffrey de Havilland realised the power of a creative strategy.

Creative strategy is not about adding more and more stuff. Creative strategy is about taking stuff away.

Taking away absolutely every possible thing, until there’s only one thing left: one single powerful, simple thought.

Stripping everything back until you’re completely focussed on one thing with nothing  to slow you down.

One thought that’s leaner and more efficient than the competition.

What Saatchi & Saatchi called ‘Brutal Simplicity’.

That’s what a creative strategy should be.

That’s something we should remember at every stage of the process.

 

That’s why David Ogilvy said “Strategy is sacrifice.”