Commander’s Intent: Applying military methodologies to encourage decentralized decision making
I recently made the leap from an Infantry Officer in the Marine Corps to a Program Manger in the tech sector. After being a Marine for almost five years, I still find myself thinking about business problems with methodologies that were ingrained during my time in the military. I think it is natural for us to try to translate our current situations into terms that we are familiar with, and it has certainly been an interesting thought exercise comparing the tech space to the military.
Besides obvious differences like wearing Chuck Taylor's instead of combat boots or catered lunches instead of MRE’s (think one step above wet dog food in a vacuum sealed pouch; one thing I really don’t miss); I have found that the two worlds are more alike than different. In both spaces you have highly talented and motivated individuals who are working towards a common objective; you have lofty goals and high pressure to achieve them; and you operate in a fluid, complicated, ever-changing environment that requires you to be adaptable and flexible if you want to win.
In the military, you train to fight and win against a living, thinking, breathing enemy-one whose life may depend on defeating you. At the risk of sounding melodramatic, I believe the business world is extremely similar. While the stakes are certainly lower, and it is unlikely that your business rival will conduct a raid on your headquarters, it is safe to say that the competition is fierce. Knowing that we operate in such rapidly developing, hyper-competitive industry, how do you ensure you can continue to succeed? I believe we can use certain tools taught in military schoolhouses around the country to operate more efficiently and ultimately get shit done.
While I believe there are multiple takeaways from military training that can be applied to business focused problems, the focus of this article is what the military calls “commander’s intent.” Commander’s intent can be thought of as the “why” behind a task or the desired outcome of a situation. Notice it is not a definitive “what” or “how”- by providing a solid intent to subordinate leaders, you allow them to operate more independently towards a common goal. Another way to describe this is encouraging “controlled chaos.” Typically, you want to ensure your immediate subordinates understand the commander’s intent two levels up. This means they should understand both yours and your immediate manager’s intent. Providing this higher-level view increases your team’s ability to quickly make decisions and out-cycle competitors.
To provide an example, imagine you are a Platoon Commander who is responsible for the success or failure of your team and you just received orders for a mission. You have been given a map that depicts the area of operation. There is a river flowing from North to South, a road that appears to have a bridge crossing the river, and a pair of large hills on the East side of the river. You have been told to take your unit North of your current position, cross the river by way of the bridge, and clear the Northern most hill of any enemy forces.
Your commander described what and how you should accomplish this task. Stop and ask yourself what else would have been helpful to know? You probably would want to know more about the situation, are their adjacent friendly units in the area? Do you have any extra support from other teams? And most importantly, why are you doing this? For the sake of this example, you do not have the answers to any of those questions and you begin your patrol towards the bridge. After reaching the bridge, you see that is has been destroyed. As one often hears in the military, “no good plan survives first contact.” So you are standing with your team, looking at a destroyed bridge, knowing that you were told to cross the bridge and clear the northern most hill of enemy forces. You are facing a competitor who wants to beat you and your success depends on your ability to adapt and solve problems. Given only the “what” and the “how,” you have been crippled from making decisions and adapting to a changing environment. Maybe you try to radio your commander to get additional guidance. Maybe you make a decision without really understanding the desired output of this mission. Either way, there is a high probability that you will not be successful.
Now, let’s take the same example but provide a “commander’s intent.” Before you step off on your mission, your commander tells you “my intent is that friendly forces are able to safely navigate the roads on the eastern side of the river.” That certainly changes how we look at the problem. As you take your unit North, you notice the bridge is blown. Knowing the “why” behind the mission, you inform your commander of the change (as it likely impacts the ability to navigate roads on the eastern side of the river), but you continue without needing to stop and ask for further guidance. Perhaps there is a place to cross the river further North, perhaps there is a creative solution to ensuring safe passage on the eastern side of the river without physically occupying the area. Regardless of the solution, you have been enabled to think creatively and adapt as the situation changes. Not only does this make you a more effective member of the team, but it frees up your commander to focus on the bigger picture instead of hand-holding you through the task at hand.
I believe we can utilize this methodology as a tool to better solve problems in a more business-oriented atmosphere. To be clear, this is not a hard and fast rule but instead can serve as a helpful guidepost when tasking your teams or coming up with goals. Let’s consider this through an example more applicable to the tech industry. A manager provides her team with the following: “we need to increase adoption by 10% by the end of Q1.” Unfortunately, I believe we sometimes confuse a key performance indicator with a true “intent.” To build on this example, there are multiple ways that team can likely increase adoption by the end of Q1. That said, the approach can be a dangerous one. Maybe the team takes on a lot of technical debt to meet this short-term goal. Maybe they sacrifice a solid customer experience for increased short-term adoption. You can likely see that there is the potential to achieve the goal at the risk of harming the company’s reputation or standing in the long term. What if the manager provided a clearer intent to her team? Instead of just providing a KPI, she tells her team that the intent is to allow customers a safe and effective platform that can be utilized globally and inspires trust and joy in your company. It is worth calling out here that the intent will be broader the higher up in an organization the leader is. A CEO’s intent should look vastly different than a middle manager’s. The closer the person is to execution, the more detailed the intent. A more strategic role (executives for example) will have a much broader intent.
While intents can seem broad or brief, it is not an excuse to “wing it.” As a thought exercise, think of a complex task or goal that you have seen recently at work. Now try to imagine that you need to achieve that by just providing the why. It is likely harder than you think. To truly provide a proper intent, you must conduct detailed planning. This planning (or war-gaming, in military terms) is crucial for the leader to gain a solid understanding of the problem. This intense planning is not meant to develop a plan that can be followed step-by-step, but instead to allow the leader to gain the situational awareness required to provide the why.
Before approaching a new challenge at work, ask yourself “do I truly understand why I am doing this?” If you are a manager, ask yourself “does my team really understand why we are doing this?” If you are an executive, ask “do my leaders understand why we are doing this? And do their teams understand why?” While it is not a silver bullet, providing intent and truly understanding the “why” behind something enables us to more effectively tackle complicated problems. Give it a try! I would love to hear any thoughts you might have.
