It take 15,000 casualties to train a major general.
Interpretation
Leadership often requires difficult experiences and significant sacrifices to develop competence.
Ferdinand Foch's quote emphasizes that the journey to becoming a capable leader, particularly in a military context, is fraught with challenges and losses. It suggests that the experiences gained from facing and overcoming adversity, often through painful consequences, are essential for personal growth and effective leadership.
In practice
In a talk about resilience, one might quote Foch to illustrate the costs of leadership.
The military mind always imagines that the next war will be on the same lines as the last. That has never been the case and never will be. One of the great factors on the next war will be aircraft obviously. The potentialities of aircraft attack on a large scale are almost incalculable.
My center is giving way, my right is in retreat; situation excellent. I shall attack.
A battle won is a battle which we will not acknowledge to be lost.
One is defeated only when one accepts defeat.
Team members have to be focused on the collective good of the team. Too often, they focus their attention on their department, their budget, their career aspirations, their egos.
In peace-armies discipline meant the hunt, not of an average but of an absolute; the hundred per cent standard in which the ninety-nine were played down to the level of the weakest man on parade.... The deeper the discipline, the lower was the individual excellence; also the more sure the performance.
By altering his arrangements and changing his plans, the skillful general keeps the enemy without definite knowledge. By shifting his camp and taking circuitous routes, he prevents the enemy from anticipating his purpose. At the critical moment, the leader of an army acts like one who has climbed up a height and then kicks away the ladder behind him.
And if you want partnerships that focus on hard problems and real solutions, then pick a Black woman. Because that's what we do every single day and in every single way.
Every coach has his own style of play, but when you spend your whole life as a Cowboy, you have to be influenced by what we did.
We must be silent before we can listen. We must listen before we can learn. We must learn before we can prepare. We must prepare before we can serve. We must serve before we can lead.
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