Manstein's Matrix
Timeless lessons from the World-War-2 German Army
“Blitzkrieg”
”Panzer”
The words conjure up images of German tanks steamrolling across Europe!
The numerically outnumbered Germans blitzkrieg’ed their way through Czechoslovakia, Poland, France, Belgium, Greece, Ukraine & North Africa. Later in the war, on the defensive, they fought the USA, UK and the USSR on 3 continents. It took 6 years & cost 18 Million soldiers’ lives before the Germans surrendered.
So why was the German army so effective?
Doctrine, training, strategy, combined arms tactics, armaments - the usual suspects.
But war is ultimately fought by humans. And the Germans hired, trained & promoted the right men for the right jobs. One of the gems here is the Manstein-Matrix created by Field Marshall Erich Von Manstein . He had an ingenious way to identify & promote the right officers in the German Army. He classified officers into this 2x2 quadrant.
Manstein’s Officer Matrix
Let’s start from the top-left quadrant - the Not-Clever-Hardworking officers.
Manstein’s solution:
He regarded these officers as a “menace” (exact words) in an org. Not only would they have bad ideas, but worse, they will force the org to implement these bad ideas.
Next up, the Not-Clever-Lazy types.
Manstein’s counter-intuitive solution:
These officers are not clever, but, by being lazy, don’t do much damage. He would assign them unimportant grunt work.
Next, the Clever-Hardworking types.
These folks make great Mid-Level management material and are promoted to the General Staff. Why just Mid-level management? Why not promote these officers all the way to the top?
It has a lot to do with the Clever-Lazy officers. It is here that Manstein’s counter-intuitive promotion system excels.
These are the true leaders. Being Clever & Lazy, they come up with strategic out-of-the box thinking. But by being Lazy, they delegate these to the clever-hardworking Staff Officers. Most importantly, they don’t micro-manage these officers. The excellent Staff officers then successfully implement these plans. This system produced some of the greatest German generals of WW2 - Guderian, Rommel, Rundstedt, Bock, Model & others.
Manstein himself belongs here! It was his brilliant “Sickle-Cut” plan that took France out of action so quickly in WW2. The original German plan was an offensive through Belgium. This was their WW1 attack vector as well. The British & French expected this & positioned themselves near Belgium. But Manstein had an unorthodox plan - the Sickle-Cut attack through Ardennes. These forests were considered impassable by tanks & hence lightly defended by the Allies. Manstein’s panzers swept through the Ardennes, bypassing France’s Maginot Line fortifications. The panzers enveloped the stunned French & British armies. The British would retreat back to England via Dunkirk while the French surrendered. The German blitzkrieg would next turn to Russia while the world watched in horror.
Have you looked around your org and found these 4 types?