WWII and Organizational Discipline.

Are you an entrepreneur who is seeking to build more discipline in his organisation?

Well, my friend, you may just be going towards the path of organisational suicide if you treat discipline as an end goal.

I'd like to take an historical example to support my thesis.

Consider the case of Germany & Japan - the 2 most disciplined societies in the world. Both of them started out well at the start of world war 2. Germany captured a very large part of Europe using the immensely successful blitzkrieg campaign. This needed a disciplined population who followed their leader unquestioningly.

Similarly, Japan also had great initial success in capturing far east territory including China, Malaysia etc at the start of the war because of it's highly disciplined army. But we all know how world war 2 ended up for them. The countries that defeated them were vibrant democracies with a strong set of values.

So seek not to make your organisation disciplined, because really when you complain about lack of discipline, you are complaining about people not complying with the way you think about work, and look at how that ended up for Hitler. Instead, seek to instill empowerment, set a vision & build shared values which guide your organisation long after you're gone.