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Churchill: The Agile PM (Part 17)
Most people are very familiar with Winston Churchill but may not be familiar with his “agile” approach to project management and his skills as a PM in the summer of 1940. With an invasion imminent, Part 16 looked at how Churchill’s organization prepared itself for the air battle to meet his short-term objectives of staving off the invasion. This article looks at how Lord Beaverbrook and his leadership style made an immediate impact at the Ministry of Aircraft Production (MAP).
The U.K. economy was in spite of everything on a civilian footing: Household goods and new automobiles were still being built and diverting critical manufacturing resources and raw materials. Churchill had to prioritize fighter production over everything--even bomber production, which the Air Ministry had been prioritizing.
The fighter production rate itself was still struggling to meet targets of 200 fighters per month. Even a new Spitfire fighter factory had failed to produce anything in six months, plagued by the complexity of the Spitfire’s elliptical wings.
So how did Churchill address this situation? Churchill believed the Air Ministry had failed to meet its fighter production targets and had to be replaced. Churchill wrestled fighter production out of the control of the Air Ministry by creating the Ministry of Aircraft production and appointed …
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"The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopts them." - Mark Twain |