Creative Execution: What Great Leaders Do to Unleash Bold Thinking and Innovation

Japan’s Great Leap Forward: From Tsushima to Pearl Harbor

At age 19, Yamamoto was a junior officer on the Japanese cruiser Nisshin, which was about to face off with the bulk of the Russian main battle fleet. The year was 1905, and the Russian fleet had sailed halfway around the world—over 18,000 nautical miles—to thwart the Japanese blockade of Russia’s main Pacific harbor of Port Arthur (modern-day Lushun in Northeast China). The Russo–Japanese War had erupted the year before when Japan’s navy struck the small Russian Pacific Fleet at its anchorage in Port Arthur—a surprise attack that would set the pattern for Pearl Harbor.

The admiral of the Japanese fleet, Heihachiro Togo, had been an astute observer of British naval tactics. The British ...