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April 19th is the anniversary of the twin battles of Lexington and Concord, when “the shot heard ‘round the world’ kicked off our War of Independence in 1775.
This event teaches a lesson about the need for contingency plans, including consideration of the worst case scenario. Let’s look at things that morning from the British perspective.
700 British troops, well trained and led by good officers, marched all night from Boston to the village of Lexington. Their mission was to seize arms and munitions, remind everyone who was in charge, and then march back. Their advance guard under Major John Pitcairn, came into Lexington at dawn.
There Major Pitcairn faced what all young officers dread: a mob of angry civilians, some carrying guns. Harsh words were exchanged, bayonets were fixed, and the mob was told by its own leader, John Parker, to scatter and “not to fire.”*
Then things went wrong.
A gun went off. Then the British reacted and fired a full volley and rushed the mob. Within a minute 10 civilians were dead and 8 more wounded.
Not the outcome Pitcairn wanted, so he tidied up his line, turned around and headed back to Boston.
That’s when the lack of a good Plan B became obvious. American farmers and townsmen swarmed to the scene and followed the British column, shooting at them the whole way. Writer Bart McDowell describes “a battlefield of horrible proportions: 200 yards wide and 16 miles long.”
By that evening, 10% of the British soldiers were dead and three times that many wounded or missing. There was plenty of misery to go around, over 100 Americans were also casualties. But the tone was set for American exceptionalism, and the British were never able to overcome it.
The British patrol to Lexington 248 years ago wasn’t the first or the last time people failed to make any contingency plans, when no one asked…
What could go wrong?
What if this happens? Or that?
Every day we see mergers, product rollouts, technology upgrades, or sales presentations that go down the drain. People then look at the facts and ask, “Couldn’t someone have seen this would happen?”
People expect leaders (quite unrealistically) to foresee the future. That’s impossible. But it’s possible to think - even to think the unthinkable – before starting on a project.
Make sure that you or someone you trust is always asking “but what if…” during your planning, and even during your execution phase. Not a Debbie Downer from SNL, but someone to ask questions from the other side’s perspective and force you through some “hold ‘em or fold ‘em” drills along the way.
Major Pitcairn was a good leader. The British were good troops. They deserved to have someone ask, way back in Boston before they ever moved out, “What if an unexpected shot goes off?”
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*There are many good accounts of Lexington and Concord. The direct quotations and basic facts here are from National Geographic Society's excellent 1967 book The Revolutionary War by Bart McDowell.