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Event Review

Do you find your job frustrating? Does if feel like an endless series of impossible tasks, made more difficult by incompetent senior managers, meagre resources and absurd politics? If so, spare a thought for Colonel Bob Stewart. This former infantry battalion commander was sent to Bosnia in 1992, at the height of the conflict tearing apart the former Yugoslavia. He was given no mission, scarce intelligence and leaden rules of engagement. His boss at the time, General Rupert Smith, who would later become Deputy Supreme Commander Allied Powers Europe, sent him the following note of encouragement: "Bob, it looks like a crock of shit. Best of Luck."

Stewart's address to the London Business Forum (LBF) was ostensibly about decision-making, but it was also a reminder that no matter how difficult things get for us in business they will never be as harrowing as the challenges of war. Perhaps the most enduring image of Stewart from Bosnia was of a big, jolly man transformed into a killer on TV as he opened fire on a sniper using his tank's heavy machine gun. However, as he now confessed to the LBF audience, he hadn't actually killed anyone during that incident at all. "When I looked through the sights and saw them and I knew they were dead ducks, I just couldn't do it, so I aimed off to the left," he said.

This was a curious confession to hear at the Army & Navy Club in Piccadilly, a warren of wood-panelled rooms lined with cases of medals. We had gathered earlier in the club's library, which was stacked with thousands of texts on military strategy and accounts of famous battles. Now, in a nearby function room, we were hearing one of the British army's most high-profile officers explain how "victory" had come to mean something very different in the late 20th and early 21st Centuries. This was a sensitive man who demonstrated that, even in the most hate-filled and difficult circumstances, it was possible to solve problems through diplomacy and consensus, provided you employed enough creativity.

In March 1991, Stewart took command of an infantry battalion, consisting of about 800 people and 150 vehicles. In August of 1992, he was on holiday in Berlin when his second-in-command called the hotel to say the battalion had been ordered to Bosnia. This call was made on a Friday. By Sunday morning, Stewart was at the Ministry of Defence (MoD) in London, being given a history of the Balkans by intelligence staff.

It was a briefing that ended 10 years too early. "What's happened in the last 10 years since the death of Tito?" Stewart asked.

"We haven't really covered that much," came the sheepish reply.

"Where do you want me to go to the Balkans on Tuesday?" he asked.

"Er, why don't you choose a place?" they said.

The following day, Stewart went to Downing Street to meet the Prime Minister, then John Major.

"What's my mission?" he asked.

"I don't know," the Prime Minister replied. "Do a good job."

Amazingly, it took the MoD three months to give Stewart his orders: "Your mission is to save lives." By then, he said, "it didn't make an iota of difference." His battalion had already decided that saving lives was their chief responsibility, no matter which side of the conflict those lives were on. "My focus throughout my time in Bosnia was to save lives, period: anyone's life as far as I was concerned," Stewart said.

He picked the area of Tusla in Central Bosnia, the scene of some of the war's heaviest fighting, to set up his base. It was a decision he took to his 40 officers very quickly after being given the orders to deploy. Throughout his military career, he said, his decision-making process was, as far as possible, an inclusive one. Whenever a major operation was required, he would produce a basic plan in document form for the approval of his officers, so that they could voice concerns or suggest improvements, and then a final plan that they could all sign up to.

This plan would be based on three simple questions:

• What do we want to achieve?
• What tasks are essential to that?
• What do we have and not have to help us?

Achieving consensus was, he suggested, especially important in situations that required a completely unconventional response. And such situations were a regular occurrence in Bosnia. For example, in one instance, a Serbian mortar position fired on his base indirectly, from over a hill, and his rules of engagement prevented him from firing back. The solution he and his men implemented was to confirm the location of the position, warn the men manning it against trying anything similar again and then crush their weapons with tanks when they disobeyed. Similarly, when 800 Muslim refugees arrived at the gates of the British camp begging for sanctuary, Stewart decided to redefine what constituted a camp under his UN mandate, extending his defences and thereby creating a large zone of protection for civilians.

"I bent the rules as much as I could, as one should as an officer," he said. "For me, there is not a right way of doing anything. The task of an officer, as for an executive in business, is to make things happen... If you bend a rule, be prepared to justify why, but don't let that put you off."

Of course, he added, there are times when it is necessary to break the rules: when you have a moral imperative to do so. "I asked the Ministry of Defence to provide me with helicopters to go into Srebrenica and was told I was way out of area, way out of line, too dangerous, impossible," he said. "So, I asked the French and they provided helicopters. I then went to the BBC and told them what had happened. They broadcast it and half an hour later I had a signal saying British helicopters will be supporting you with immediate effect. Subtext: 'You've had it, we'll get you later.'"

Stewart didn't care about the reaction of his superiors in this situation because, he said, "the Geneva Convention's the highest moral authority to me." Ultimately, he argued, you have a greater obligation to your own moral code than to your employers. Thus, when he learned first-hand of a massacre of Muslim women and children at a village near his base, he went straight to the media, arguably heralding the age of warfare by television. "The only weapon I have that can make a difference [in this situation]... is the press," he decided. "The Ministry of Defence won't like that, they will say I'm over-stepping the mark again, but I've got to do it... This is a war crime. I'm not prepared to stand and keep silent when I see a war crime."

Getting people to follow unprecedented or even dangerous ideas is, of course, the very essence of leadership. And for Stewart it depends on character. In another candid admission to the LBF audience, he said he wasn't sure upon being deployed to Bosnia that he had the right character to prevail there, citing a confidential MoD report into his leadership qualities that read: "He has a caring style of leadership and a slight tendency to wear his heart on his sleeve." Stewart interpreted these words as follows: "That's army speak for saying 'He's a bit soft,'" he said. "So the lesson for me was harden up."

However, upon arriving in Bosnia he realised that the biggest key to success was to refer continuously to the mission parameters that he and his men had set for themselves. Being "hard" meant something different in the context of trying to save as many lives as possible.

Stewart decided the best way for him to maintain the respect of his men, not to mention controlling the mission most effectively, was to be on the cutting edge of as many operations as possible. He would often sleep in the same rooms as the junior ranks, in a sleeping bag, rather than retiring to a separate bedroom. And occasionally he would do sentry duty in the middle of the night, to show humility. The other thing he regarded as paramount, he said, was to "always have time" for his men, never saying: "I'm sorry I can't see you now... When people came to me with stupid ideas, I didn't say: 'That's a really stupid idea,' I said, 'Look, can I just explain the situation from my point of view.' Give them the time and they go away happy rather than disgruntled."

Ultimately, Stewart knew morale was the glue that would bind his nebulous mission together. In part, this required him to keep up appearances: "We had no lavatories, we had no running water, but I insisted that every soldier was shaved, with clean boots and clean fatigues," he said. However, food was also vital. "It's the one thing people look forward to," he said. "They say the British Army marches on its stomach. It doesn't actually mean that, it means it's well administered... Logistics is crucial to everything. If you can't administer yourself, you can't even start your job."

Stewart said that, as a captain, while teaching leadership at Sandhurst, he had never quite understood Napoleon's view that "Morale is to the physical as three is to one." However, he said, as a commanding officer in Bosnia he understood it perfectly. "The local commanders would come and ask, 'Colonel, how many men have you got under your command?' I'd say, 'Lots, how many do you think?' They always said between 3,000 and 4,000. And I had between 800 and 900."