What two WWII tanks teach us about workplace adjustments

In 1944, the Allies built two very different tanks. One was designed over many months in a planning room in England. The other was welded together in a muddy field in Normandy. The first was a costly failure. The second helped break the deadlock of the entire campaign. The gap between those two tanks tells managers almost everything they need to know about workplace adjustments, and about why the best ones are rarely the ones designed furthest from the person who needs them.

The story is worth telling properly, because the detail is where the lesson lives.

TL;DR: Many workplace adjustments fail for the same reason one famous WWII tank failed. They are designed in a back room, in advance, away from the real person and the real work. The adjustments that genuinely help look more like the tank that was improvised in the field: small, built with the person in front of you, tested quickly, and improved as you go. This post tells the story of both tanks, then shows managers how to run small adjustment experiments well and how to make it safe to get them wrong.

The tank is built in the back room.

The first tank was the DD, short for Duplex Drive. It was one of a set of inventive machines nicknamed “Hobart’s Funnies,” after the British officer who championed them. Engineers took a standard Sherman tank and added a folding canvas screen and propellers, so the tank could float and swim ashore under its own power, arriving with the first wave of infantry. On paper, it was brilliant. The plan was detailed. The engineering was clever. Everyone could see how it was meant to work.

Then it met the sea. On D-Day, off Omaha Beach, the DD tanks were launched far out in rough water. The canvas screens were never designed for those conditions. Of the twenty-nine tanks launched in that sector, twenty-seven sank before they reached the shore. The plan was elegant. The water was real. The two did not match, and the men paid for the gap.

This is what happens when we solve a problem far from where it actually lives. A great deal of effort goes into it. The thinking looks complete. Everyone signs it off. Then it touches reality and goes under.

Learning for the Workplace

Plenty of workplace adjustments follow exactly this path. A policy gets written. A standard list of accommodations is agreed centrally. Everyone with a particular diagnosis is offered the same software, headphones, and flexible start time. It feels thorough and fair. However, it was designed for an average employee who does not exist. For example, two autistic people can have opposite needs. One may want more structure and clearer instructions. The other may find the same structure stifling. A pre-built, one-size-fits-all adjustment cannot tell the difference between them, because it has never met either of them.

To be clear, this is not an argument against planning. The DD tank did not fail because someone planned. It failed because the plan was fixed and signed off before anyone tested it in real water. The same is true at work. An adjustment designed in full, approved, and rolled out without ever making contact with the person is a tank that has never been near the sea.

The tank was built on the beach

The second tank had neither a committee nor a budget. Once ashore, the Allies got stuck in the bocage, the ancient Normandy hedgerows: thick banks of earth and root that stopped tanks dead, or tipped them up and exposed their vulnerable undersides to enemy fire. The careful invasion plan had no answer to it. The advance stalled.

So a young American sergeant named Curtis Culin did something about it. Working in the field, he welded scrap steel, much of it cut from the German beach defences the Allies had just captured, into a set of tusks on the front of his tank. The tusks let the tank dig in and drive straight through the hedgerow rather than climb it.

• It was crude.
• It was cheap.
• It was built from the enemy’s own rubbish.

And it worked. When General Omar Bradley saw a demonstration, he ordered the device fitted across the army. Those “Rhino” tanks helped power the breakout that finally got the Allies moving again.

Why it worked

Notice why it worked. Culin was standing in front of the actual problem.

• He could see the hedgerow and the tank.
• He built the smallest thing that would get one through the other, and he tried it straight away.
• He did not write a specification and wait.
• He did not design for an imagined hedgerow.
• He solved the one in front of him.

Good workplace adjustments work the same way.

• You sit down with the person and the task at hand.
• You agree to make one small change this week.
• You watch what happens.
• Then you keep it, drop it, or adjust it again.

Nobody needs a perfect, finished solution on day one. Instead, you need a fast, honest loop between trying and learning. That loop is where genuine fit comes from, and fit is the whole point.

Why small experiments beat big plans for workplace adjustments

The reason small experiments win is simple. They make contact with reality sooner. A back-room plan hides its flaws until launch day, when they surface all at once and at maximum cost. A small experiment shows you within a week whether it actually helps. As a result, the cost of being wrong stays low, and you learn something useful either way.

There is also a great business example of this. Professor Shaun Fitzgerald, who founded the building ventilation company Breathing Buildings, has spoken about how the company began. Someone offered him a consultancy project to assess the market for his idea. He realised that actually starting the company would teach him far more, and far faster, than any report could. So he did the small real thing instead of commissioning the big study, and the market answered him directly.

That is the same principle that should guide workplace adjustments. A long assessment of what might work, written at a distance, is the consultancy report. A short, real trial with one employee is the company. Both have their place, but only one of them tells you the truth quickly.

How to run small adjustment experiments well

You do not need a new policy to do this. You need a different habit. Here is a simple loop any manager can use:

1. Start with the person, not the policy: Ask what gets in the way of their best work, and what would help. Their answer is your starting point, not the staff handbook. You are looking at this hedgerow, not hedgerows in general.
2. Pick one small change: Choose the smallest adjustment you could try this week. For example, a written agenda sent before every meeting, or a protected quiet hour with no messages. Keep it cheap and easy to reverse.
3. Agree how you will know it worked: Decide together what better looks like. Less anxiety before meetings? Fewer dropped actions? More focus in the morning? Name it before you start, so you are not guessing afterwards.
4. Review quickly: Check in after a week or two, not after six months. Keep what helps. Change what does not. Treat the first attempt as a first attempt.
5. Write down what you learn: A short note builds a picture over time. In addition, it means the learning survives even if the manager moves on or the role changes. Today’s small experiment becomes tomorrow’s good default.

For some people, a more structured starting point genuinely helps, especially where needs are complex or a manager is unsure where to begin. A Workplace Needs Assessment is the considered version of building on the beach. It looks closely at the real person doing the real job, then recommends adjustments that fit them specifically, rather than handing over a generic list. The point is not to skip the thinking. The point is to think with the person, not instead of them.

Making it safe to get it wrong

None of this works if people are afraid to fail. Here, the DD tank teaches a second lesson. It was a failure, but a useful one, because the army learned from it and adapted. The real danger is never a single adjustment that does not land. The real danger is a culture where nobody dares to try anything small, so the only option left is the big, slow, back-room plan that sinks in public.

Managers set this tone more than they realise. When an adjustment doesn’t work, treat it as information rather than blame and say so out loud. Try the next small thing. Over time, this builds a team where experimentation is normal and asking for what you need feels safe rather than risky. That cultural shift is often worth more than any single adjustment you will ever make.

It also quietly changes the wider conversation about neurodiversity in your organisation. Instead of a tense, one-off negotiation triggered by a diagnosis, support becomes an ordinary, ongoing part of good management. Therefore, the question stops being “what are you entitled to?” and becomes “what helps you do your best work?” That is a far better question and serves everyone, not only those with a label.

Build on the beach, not in the back room.

The Allies needed clever planning and improvisation in the field, but it was the tank built in front of the problem that broke the deadlock. Workplace adjustments are no different. Plan enough to make a sensible start, then get close to the person, try something small, watch what happens, and improve it in the open. That is how you build adjustments that actually float, and how you build a workplace where getting it slightly wrong on Monday is how you get it right by Friday.

If you would like help putting this into practice, our coaching for managers supports leaders to have these conversations with confidence, and our Workplace Needs Assessments turn them into adjustments that genuinely fit the person. You can also book a talk or workshop to open the wider culture conversation with your team.

Related reading

Praxis and Neurodiversity: Making Things Work

A close look at why putting ideas into practice, rather than theorising about them, is where real inclusion happens.

Neurodivergent Traits: How to Retain and Empower Them

Practical guidance for managers on keeping and getting the best from neurodivergent talent.

Equity and Neurodiversity: The Right Transport to Get to the Party

Why fairness means giving people what they each need to thrive, not treating everyone the same.

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