alexander

Leadership Process One: Reframing Problems 5
1: Defeating a Navy on Land
Leaders are constantly confronted with ‘‘unsolvable’’ problems—those
big, hairy, audacious problems that are intractable,
even when you are throwing resources at them. My
research suggests that the greatest leaders in history—
military, political, and economic—do not attempt to solve such
‘‘impossible’’ problems when confronted with them. Rather,
they find or create a different problem so that when they solve
this new difficulty, the old unsolvable, or impossible problem
becomes either trivial to deal with or irrelevant.
Alexander had fought and won two of his four great battles—Granicus
and Issus—and was almost ready to penetrate
to the core of the Persian Empire. First, however, he
had to secure his needed supplies.
The food supply was his greatest challenge. Armies require
enormous amounts of food, but in antiquity, commanders
did not have the benefit of rapid-transit highways,
helicopters, and large trucks to help them obtain it. Almost
all food was transported in quantity by waterway. This
meant that Alexander had to secure water routes from
Greece to the coast and the rivers of Persia in order to be
able to receive his supplies. Darius III, the Achaemenid king
whose dynasty had controlled Persia for more than a thousand
years, commanded a formidable navy of about 200
veteran warships. In contrast, Alexander had only a small
coastal fleet and food-carrying barges. The problem was obvious:
How could Alexander protect his food supply when
the Persian navy could so blithely intercept the coastal
barges?