Quick decisions= Instant first steps= Constant accountability, Lessons from Napoleon
After Napoleon lost his first battle he introduced new rules for his officers to eliminate procrastination
1. Orders must be written in 3 minutes
-officers had a tendecy to search for the perfect plan.
-New rule: the decision must be written within 3 minutes after the discussion. Slow orders kill more soldiers than bad ones.
2. I’ll prepare later
-The officer had to begin execution immediately. Beginning with the smallest step.
-“if the order was to march, the soldier must already be putting on his boots”
-Once action starts, the brain stops negotiating with itself
3. Report every 24 hours
-Every assignment required a daily update- not the final result, just visible progress.
-Napoleon often repeated: “I punish silence, not mistakes”. This made procrastination impossible to hide
4. “A bad plan today beats a perfect one tomorrow”
-This became one of Napoleon’s most repeated principles.
-Decision speed was the French’s army’s greatest advantage.
*during the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) the French army conquered almost all of Europe, parts of Russia, Egypt, & Syria.
5. Why it kills procrastination
-Behavioral psychologists call this the immediate action loop.
-Quick decisions= Instant first steps= Constant accountability
-When the cycle is short, the brain stops inventing excuses
What can you learn from this for your business? Your group?