The Need for Organisational Resilience - Chapter 7

consideration likely to lead to success so conceived?” In other words, “What is the theory of the

case?”

In the German government in 1937-40, these questions were asked, re-asked, and re-asked, but

in the French and British governments they were hardly asked at all. French and British political and

military leaders – Churchill not excepted – answered for themselves the question, “What is going on?”

The almost inevitable answer was based on those pieces of information most consistent with their

preconceptions. They did not test or even identify critical presumptions. They believed what they

needed to believe in order to do what they thought either desirable or expedient. General Bock [Fedor

von Bock, commander of Army Group B] had it right when, after learning that Group Kleist had

crossed the Meuse River, he wrote in his war diary: “The French seem really to have lost all common

sense! Otherwise they could and would have stopped us.” (May 2009, 458–59)

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Erosion of resilience

The French and their Allies remained complacently static in their approach towards

defensive consistency as their prevalent mode of resilience. Nevertheless, the weakness of

a focus on preventative control should have been blatantly obvious to the French and their

Allies in the light of the Polish campaign in September 1939: “…her [France’s] army and its

leaders lacked the proper flexibility and responsiveness to reply to the unexpected” (Doughty

1990, p. 4).

The sole focus on preventative control and performance optimisation as a form of

organisational resilience does provide distinctive advantages, and yet distinctive signs of

weakness (see Table 7.1) could provide the necessary warnings to refocus and recalibrate a

profile as well as breadth and depth of resilient operating. Although a range of dissenting

voices in French politics and higher military echelons were raised, voices concerning the

erosion of resilient capabilities were in the minority and remained unheard until it was too

late. The following tables provide a glimpse of what constitutes resilience, what warning

signals indicate, the erosion of resilience and those indicators prevalent pre- and post-1940:

At its best

Signs of weakness

France, pre-1940

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