Lessons from Vimy

by Robert Paterson

Nearly 100 years ago, generals were faced with the same kind of problem that modern leaders have today. They had been shaped by an era that made them ill equipped to understand and apply the new technology of their time. But on Easter morning in 1917, an army made up of amateurs, who were not bound by the old ideas, won the battle of Vimy Ridge and showed how the new technology could be used.

This short book is the story of what the Canadians did to solve this problem. The lessons that they learned apply to all who wish to lead our organizations into the network age. The book is a practical manual for cultural change paid for in blood and so has great rigour. It is also a human story about an English aristocrat, a real estate salesman and a university professor who together changed the way of war and set in motion a process that lead to peace.

35 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 5, 2013

About the author

Much of my early years were spent in nature. As a boy I lived in Ghana and spent most of my time on the beach. Most of my vacations were spent in rural New Brunswick. My teen years were spent in rural England. As a teenager I spent a year as a diamond prospector in Botswana. I lived and worked in the bush under canvas exposed to the majesty of how life must have been lived before civilization. The natural world had seeped into my core.

But I left all that behind and had a career. I was the typical institutional person.

But, in my 40’s, I began to feel that something was wrong. Of course I felt that I was the one with the problem, not the system that I had spent my life in. But after much anguish, I woke up. For the last 20 years I have devoted my life to understanding the shift from machine to nature that we are living through. These booklets are a summary of all that I have learned.

Reviews

[Createpei · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent "and short" read on innovative leadership. Was super proud that the leadership innovations were Canadian in design.

I have only two recommendations for later versions:

1) I would love to see a bibliography/reference section for some of the very interesting facts... Rob Paterson, the author, cited many areas but left some areas out in his citing. Or references to books that he particularly recommended for a deeper dive into the material.

2) Longer. This book definitely could have longer. The length is appealing from a time perspective - I was able to read this in about an hour or 1.5 hours before bed time... but the information was quite interesting and I would have loved to see further parallels to today's modern corporation.

[Robert Paterson]

One of my own so I will not review