Many feel that the military emphasizes risk mitigation instead of audacious action.  It is hard to argue with the importance of safety, but in combat audacity can save lives.  A World War I case study from the British Navy in the Dardanelles demonstrates the risks of being risk averse.

On March 18, 1915 Vice Admiral John De Robeck led the Allied fleet that attacked the Narrows of the Dardanelles.  The mission was to seize control of the Dardanelles from the Turks to reopen the straights to Allied naval traffic.  In the first day of the attack, one Allied ship sank suddenly and three more were damaged.  Believing the Turks were floating mines with the current, De Robeck pulled back the fleet, and was personally despondent at the losses, worrying about his future career.  In the coming days, he decided that the Navy would not proceed with the attack without a corresponding Army operation.  This decision delayed the attack by weeks. 

Fearing the relatively small risks of an audacious attack on the straights cost the British Navy a chance for a huge strategic victory and a chance to expedite the end of the war.  William Manchester recounts in “The Last Lion: Visions of Glory” – the first of three volumes of a biography of Winston Churchill –

After the war the Turkish general staff declared that “a naval attack executed with rapidity and vigor’ would have found the capital’s garrison ‘impotent to defend it,” and Ever Pasha, Turkey’s wartime military dictator, added: “If the English had only had the courage to rush more ships through the Dardanelles they could have got to Constantinople.”   (Page 542)

Manchester later quotes British Commodore Roger Keyes as saying “because we didn’t try [to continue the attack], another million lives were thrown away and the war went on for another three years.”

I continue to think about what causes our culture of risk aversion and what we can do to develop a bias toward audacity in junior leaders.