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Carl Rotenberg, Times Herald Staff April 11, 2002

Gene Walsh/The Times Herald Michael McDannell, director of communication and training at Academy Leadership, stands by a list of the company's goals at its offices in Upper Merion Township.

Leading by examples: Academy Leadership head learned, teaches from history.

Upper Merion - Leadership skills can be taught by citing the historical examples of failed leadership and modern-day allegories.

The historical perspective allows dispassionate debate and understanding. That is why Michael McDannell includes many examples of failed leadership, miscommunication and outright chicanery in the leadership course he teaches for Academy Leadership of Upper Merion.

Miscommunication and the failure of distant British officers to look at the battle situation during the Crimean War caused the death of 600 British soldiers, McDannell noted. Their deaths were immortalized in the poem "The Charge of the Light Brigade," by Alfred Lord Tennyson.

Lord Raglan wanted the English cavalry to recapture British artillery pieces that were held by French soldiers on the Causeway Heights. His written order, communicated by Raglan's aide de camp, Nolan, was garbled by a physical gesture by Nolan that pointed Lord Lucan and his troops in the wrong direction.

Successful communication in business (and war) requires both parties to agree on what must be done, why it must be done, how it must be done and what it will look like when it is done correctly, pointed out McDannell.

During the Suez Canal crisis in 1956, a U.S. naval fleet commander in the Mediterranean Sea was ordered to send his flotilla of American naval vessels at top speed toward the British and French vessels that were vying for control of the Suez Canal, recalled McDannell, the director of communications and training for Academy Leadership.

The canal had been nationalized by Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser because the Americans and British had not financed the construction of the Aswan Dam. 

In a famous radio communiqué, the American commander asked his military superiors on which side the U.S. was planning to fight and whom should he attack? The Americans were actually supporting the British and the French against the Egyptian government.

McDannell believes successful companies have a core set of moral and business values and an agreed-upon plan for achieving their goals. He uses books like "Built to Last," by James Collins, and "The Goal," by Eliyahu Goldblatt, to teach a "Leadership in Action" course. 

He views the Enron Corp. debacle as a case of a company that ran amuck because the leadership was more concerned with making personal profit.

McDannell grew up in Lake Geneva, Wis., and graduated from Badger High School in 1967. He enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1967, graduated from West Point in 1972 and earned his MBA through the U.S. Army at the Yale University School of Management in 1980.

At West Point, he taught leadership skills, managed the leadership program and spent three years as the director of advancement. He was the executive editor of a leadership course for the cadet corps.

He has resided in Maple Glen for the past year. 

"You can have a good plan and fail with bad leadership," said McDannell. "A bad plan with good leadership will succeed."

For more information about Academy Leadership, contact Aaron Siegel at 610-783-6853 or toll free at 866-783-0630.