Cyropaedia
Leadership — Xenophon's idealized education of Cyrus the Great, in Henry Dakyns's translation: a father's leadership lessons, then Cyrus building an army and an empire.
Mechanisms
Don't plan on supplies you haven't counted
Cyrus is counting on an ally to feed his whole army and has never asked how much the ally can give.
"you are prepared to rely on what you do not know? Do you forget that the needs of the morrow must be high, not to speak of the outlay for the day?"
Why it matters
Cyrus is counting on an ally to feed his whole army and has never asked how much the ally can give. Three questions from his father expose the gap: the amount, the cost of tomorrow, and what happens if the ally can't or won't deliver.
Use when: Your plan depends on a partner's resources you have never actually seen.
Raise the money while you're flush
Cambyses ties reserves to bargaining power and authority.
"never put off the collecting of supplies until the day of need, make the season of your abundance provide against the time of dearth. You will gain better terms from those on whom you must depend if you are not thought to be in straits"
Why it matters
Cambyses ties reserves to bargaining power and authority. A leader who isn't visibly short gets better terms from suppliers and more willing followers.
Use when: You plan to start fundraising when the runway gets short.
Pay above the promise and it lands as a gift
Cyrus reasons that promised pay is owed, so the thanks go to whoever promised it.
"They are well aware of the terms Cyaxares has offered for their help: but whatever they get over and above the covenanted amount they will look upon as a free gift, and for that they will, in all likelihood, feel most gratitude to the giver."
Why it matters
Cyrus reasons that promised pay is owed, so the thanks go to whoever promised it. Only what comes above the agreed amount reads as a gift from him.
Use when: You're deciding whether a bonus should be built into the contract or given on top.
Doctors patch, leaders prevent
Cyrus is proud of the medical staff he hired.
"these excellent men are, after all, much the same as the tailors who patch torn garments. When folk are ill, your doctors can patch them up, but your own care for their health ought to go far deeper than that: your prime object should be to save your men from falling ill at all."
Why it matters
Cyrus is proud of the medical staff he hired. His father says that is repair and puts prevention on the leader: a healthy camp site, controlled diet, steady exercise.
Use when: You're proud of your support function and it's mostly cleaning up avoidable problems.
Set competitions with prizes
Cyrus's own idea, and his father approves.
"Let him propose competitions of every kind and offer prizes; the standard of skill will rise, and he will soon have a body of troops ready to his hand for any service he requires."
Why it matters
Cyrus's own idea, and his father approves. Contests make practice voluntary and visible, and later chapters show Cyrus running them across every skill.
Use when: Training feels like a chore and nobody practises unless forced.
Don't cry the view-halloo too often
Hounds stop answering a huntsman who has called false sightings.
"Let a man rouse false expectations often enough, and in the end, even when hope is at the door, he may cry the good news in vain." "his agents may step in and do it in his place; but he should reserve his own appeal for the supreme crises of supreme danger, and not dissipate his credit."
Why it matters
Hounds stop answering a huntsman who has called false sightings. Cambyses' fix is to let subordinates do the routine encouragement and save the leader's own promise for the moment it must be believed.
Use when: You're about to tell the team, again, that this quarter will turn things around.
Be greedy for your share of the cold
Cyrus wants the ruler set apart by forethought and work.
"I hold that the ruler should be marked out from other men, not by taking life easily, but by his forethought and his wisdom and his eagerness for work." "if the campaign is in summer the general must show himself greedy for his share of the sun and the heat, and in winter for the cold and the frost, and in all labours for toil and fatigue."
Why it matters
Cyrus wants the ruler set apart by forethought and work. Cambyses says a leader can't always do people good, but can always share their hardship and look ahead for them. He also notes the leader's pain is lighter because he works in public view.
Use when: Your team is pulling a hard stretch and you're working from somewhere comfortable.
The surer you feel, the more you guard
Cyrus asks whether a well-prepared army should attack at once.
"the more I felt persuaded of my own superiority and the power of my troops, the more I should be inclined to stand on my guard, just as we put our greatest treasures in the safest place we have."
Why it matters
Cyrus asks whether a well-prepared army should attack at once. His father says only if it gains something, and treats a strong force like a treasure: the thing you keep safest.
Use when: Your position is strong and you feel the urge to press it just because you can.
Both sides have to eat and sleep
Cambyses points to the routines neither side can skip: meals, sleep, the morning scatter.
"both of you must take your meals sometime; both of you must sleep; your men must scatter in the morning to satisfy the needs of nature" "wherever you are weaker, there you must be most on your guard, and wherever your foe is most assailable, there you must press the attack."
Why it matters
Cambyses points to the routines neither side can skip: meals, sleep, the morning scatter. Guard your side where you are weakest at those moments and press theirs.
Use when: You're planning a competitive move and looking only at the other side's strengths.
If it's night, plan the day
Cambyses names the deal followers expect: they give obedience and you give a plan for the next stretch.
"if you wish your men to follow you, remember that they expect you to plan for them." "if it be night, you must consider what your troops shall do when it is day; if day, how the night had best be spent."
Why it matters
Cambyses names the deal followers expect: they give obedience and you give a plan for the next stretch. He says a leader can never afford a careless mood.
Use when: Your team keeps arriving in the morning to find nobody has decided the day's priorities.
Put merit pay to a vote you expect to win
Cyrus could have decreed it.
"I cannot help seeing that within our ranks are men of every kind, some better and some worse, and yet if anything is won every man will claim an equal share." "it would seem too base to deny that he who works the hardest and does most for the common good deserves the highest recompense."
Why it matters
Cyrus could have decreed it. He puts it to the army because the spoils feel like common property, and he expects few will say aloud that the hardest worker deserves less. The commoner Pheraulas then carried the vote.
Use when: You're switching from equal splits to performance-based rewards.
Tens, hundreds, thousands, and one order
Cyrus took the army's span of control and applied it to the finances and departments of an empire.
"He remembered how the captains of ten supervised the squads of ten, and were supervised themselves by the company-captains, and they by the captains of the thousands, and these by the captains of ten thousand, and thus even with hundreds of thousands not a man was left without supervision" "by conferring with a few officers he could keep the whole system under his control, and actually have more leisure for himself than the manager of a single household or the master of a single ship."
Why it matters
Cyrus took the army's span of control and applied it to the finances and departments of an empire. The structure handed him back his time, and he spent it training his deputies.
Use when: You're the bottleneck for every decision in a growing organization.
Have a friend claim the truant's estate
Nobles who skipped court came running once their property was at stake.
"He would go to one of his most intimate friends and bid him lay hands on the property of the offender, asserting that it was his own. Then of course the truants would appear at once crying out that they had been robbed."
Why it matters
Nobles who skipped court came running once their property was at stake. Cyrus then delayed hearing them for days, gave the best tasks to people who turned up on time, and in the end handed a persistent truant's holdings to someone who came when called.
Use when: Key people keep skipping the meetings where decisions get made.
Many king's eyes, never one
Rewarding anyone who brought useful news gave Cyrus an information network with no single informant to dodge.
"It is little that one man can see or one man hear, and to hand over the office to one single person would be to bid all others go to sleep." "Cyrus' munificence toward all who told him what it was well for him to know set countless people listening with all their ears and watching with all their eyes"
Why it matters
Rewarding anyone who brought useful news gave Cyrus an information network with no single informant to dodge. Xenophon adds that one known "eye" would make everyone guarded around that person.
Use when: You rely on a single trusted source to tell you what's really happening.
Make the new standard a point of honor
Cyrus was building a Persian cavalry from foot soldiers.
"suppose we make it a rule that every one who receives a horse from me shall be considered to disgrace himself if he is seen trudging afoot, be his journey long or short?"
Why it matters
Cyrus was building a Persian cavalry from foot soldiers. Tying status to the new skill made riding a matter of pride, and Xenophon says Persian gentlemen still avoided being seen on foot in his day.
Use when: You're introducing a new tool or skill and people keep slipping back to the old way.
Feed the camp servants like soldiers
Cyrus expected support staff to be loyal, quick and calm and to treat any order as within their dignity, so he gave them the soldiers' share.
"he always insisted that the army servants should share and share alike with the soldiers in everything, for he held that those who did such service for the army were as much to be honoured as heralds or ambassadors."
Why it matters
Cyrus expected support staff to be loyal, quick and calm and to treat any order as within their dignity, so he gave them the soldiers' share.
Use when: Your support staff are held to high standards and rewarded like an afterthought.
Seat people by merit and let the seating move
Cyrus made rank visible at his table and kept it moving: good work raised a guest's seat, slack work lowered it.
"where the world believes merit will win no crown and receive no proclamation, there the spirit of emulation dies, but if all see that the best man gains most, then the rivalry grows keen." "he made it a law that by good deeds a man might rise into a higher seat or through sloth descend into a lower"
Why it matters
Cyrus made rank visible at his table and kept it moving: good work raised a guest's seat, slack work lowered it. He also made sure the most honored guest was seen to get the most favors, so the seating meant something.
Use when: Your team can't tell who is doing well or what doing well earns.
Send the dish to the absent friend
Cyrus turned his own table into a running record of who had done good work, including guards and servants who were never at dinner.
"all that was set before him, after he and his guests had dined, he would send out to his absent friends, in token of affection and remembrance." "He would include those who had won his approval by their work on guard, or in attendance on himself, or in any other service, letting them see that no desire to please him could ever escape his eyes."
Why it matters
Cyrus turned his own table into a running record of who had done good work, including guards and servants who were never at dinner. Xenophon adds that people then courted whoever received the king's dishes, so a gift also told everyone else who was in favor.
Use when: Good work happens out of your sight and you want people to know you noticed.
Have them rule on the case before you name the defendant
Cyrus puts the rebel Armenian king through questions about how he treats his own disloyal officers, one point at a time, then hands the answers back to him.
"If you have an officer and he does wrong, do you suffer him to remain in office, or do you set up another in his stead?" "Son of Armenia, we have heard your own judgment in this case, and now tell us, what ought we to do?"
Why it matters
Cyrus puts the rebel Armenian king through questions about how he treats his own disloyal officers, one point at a time, then hands the answers back to him. Xenophon has Cyrus use the same method on his grandfather as a boy, asking what he'd do to a runaway slave before announcing his own plan to run off hunting.
Use when: You need someone to accept a consequence they will resist once they see it applies to them.
Arguments
An idle army eats itself
Cambyses reasons from cost: a large group consumes more and wastes more, so it must always be either gaining ground or improving itself.
"A single man is hard enough to support in idleness, a household is harder still, an army hardest of all. There are more mouths to be filled, less wealth to start with, and greater waste; and therefore an army should never be unemployed."
Why it matters
Cambyses reasons from cost: a large group consumes more and wastes more, so it must always be either gaining ground or improving itself.
Use when: Your team is between projects and you're letting the gap drift.
Don't quarrel with all your people at once
Cyaxares was furious that his Medes had followed Cyrus.
"it seems to me a grievous error in a ruler to quarrel with all his subjects at once. Widespread terror must needs be followed by widespread hate: anger with all creates unity among all."
Why it matters
Cyaxares was furious that his Medes had followed Cyrus. Cyrus's answer is that collective punishment unites the punished against the one doing the punishing.
Use when: A whole team let you down and you're about to come down on all of them together.
Pray only for what you've trained for
Cyrus recalls his father's rule that some outcomes are earned through learning and training, and that asking for luck without that work is asking for something forbidden.
"a man had no right to pray he might win a cavalry charge if he had never learnt how to ride, or triumph over master-bowmen if he could not draw a bow, or bring a ship safe home to harbour if he did not know how to steer"
Why it matters
Cyrus recalls his father's rule that some outcomes are earned through learning and training, and that asking for luck without that work is asking for something forbidden.
Use when: Your plan for a hard outcome leans on luck in places where training would do.
Evidence
The general's teacher only taught tactics
Cambyses quizzes Cyrus on whether his paid instructor covered economy, health, morale or obedience.
"'He taught me tactics.'" "'And pray what will be the use of tactics to an army without supplies, without health, without discipline, without knowledge of those arts and inventions that are of use in war?'"
Why it matters
Cambyses quizzes Cyrus on whether his paid instructor covered economy, health, morale or obedience. The answer each time is no. Cambyses runs through supplies, health, discipline and morale, and the teacher covered none of them.
Use when: You're hiring or training a manager on technical skill alone.
Clubs against clods
A brigadier ran a rough mock battle showing that close fighting beats missiles.
"half were equipped with stout staves of fennel, and half were ordered to snatch up clods of earth and do what they could with these." "on the next day the whole plain was studded with combats of this type, and whenever the army had nothing more serious in hand, this sport was their delight."
Why it matters
A brigadier ran a rough mock battle showing that close fighting beats missiles. Cyrus asked about the bandages at dinner, the story spread, and the whole army copied the drill unasked.
Use when: You want a lesson to spread through a team without issuing a directive.
My friends are my treasury
Croesus warned that Cyrus's gifts would ruin him.
"There, Croesus, that is treasure number one; and now run through the rest, and count what sums I have in hand, in case I need them." "But I hold to it that if I make my friends rich they will be my treasures themselves"
Why it matters
Croesus warned that Cyrus's gifts would ruin him. Cyrus sent a request round his friends, and the pledges came to more than a hoard would have held, with no envy and no hired guards attached.
Use when: You're weighing whether to keep the surplus or spread it among your key people.