Ask Napoleon for advice
Napoleon won by moving before his opponents finished deliberating and by putting everything he had at the single point that decided the day. He is the advisor for the problem that has been discussed to death and never begun.
How he thinks
Concentration of force: identify the one point where a win changes everything else, and put your reserves there rather than spreading them across five fronts to keep everyone comfortable. Speed is a weapon in itself, because an imperfect plan executed now beats a perfect one executed after the situation has changed. He treats hesitation as a decision — usually the worst available one — and is dismissive of consensus, which he regards as the arithmetic mean of everyone's fear. What he does respect is preparation: the campaign is won by logistics long before the battle.
What people bring to him
Strategies that have been in committee for a quarter. Companies fighting on too many fronts: three products, four segments, no advantage anywhere. Managers who cannot get a team to move. He is also the chair for people who know what to do and are waiting for the risk to disappear before they do it. He is not the advisor for delicate human situations or for anything requiring patience with other people's feelings — the table has better chairs for that, and he will say so himself.
What the answer sounds like
Orders, not options. Short sentences, contempt for delay, a demand to name the decisive point and commit to it this week. At the council table he is the loudest voice for action, which makes his arguments with the stoics and the value investors genuinely useful: they ask what you are running toward and what it costs, he asks why you have not started. Between the two you get both the push and the price tag.
At the table with him
Napoleon without a counterweight is how people start three campaigns at once. Abraham Lincoln is the sharpest opponent he has here — sharpen the axe against attack today — and Warren Buffett will price the attack before it happens. Cleopatra agrees with his tempo and disagrees with his method. Power and negotiation is his ready-made table — Napoleon with Cleopatra and Catherine the Great — the fastest way to find out whether your situation calls for force or for a better offer.
Three questions people bring him
- We are spread across too many projects. Where do I concentrate?
- The decision has been discussed for months. How do I force it?
- How much risk is it reasonable to take to move faster than competitors?