Working with Purpose: Leading up and down the Chain of Command
As we grow our digital services company, we strive to never lose sight of the core principles that formed the foundation of Coforma (formerly &Partners) in 2017. One of the principles that’s helped us work with purpose from the beginning is holding each other accountable.
Though there is individual accountability that we each must have as responsible workers, we operate in a wolf pack mentality. The team supports the individuals and creates a safety net around decision-making. We have each other’s backs, but there’s more to it than that.
Why Accountability Matters
When implementing a wolf pack mentality, accountability matters at every level of operations. Whether you’re sizing the scope of a contract, assigning responsibility for deliverables within a project, or working on a strategic goal with several moving parts, those in a leadership role are tasked with conveying what matters to the tactical team members who are doing the work on the ground without bogging them down with too much behind-the-scenes detail.
Sometimes, to ensure a favorable outcome on a project, or to move forward with a broader objective that the entire team may not be privy to, a lack of understanding can result from providing too little information, having too little transparency and accountability. This lack of understanding can lead a team to confusion, lack of purpose, and ultimately the risk of not reaching the goal.
We operate with a wolf pack mentality by protecting the team from bearing the weight of challenging circumstances when they arise, but we are committed to always being critical and offering constructive criticism internally in order to help each individual fulfill their commitment to the work. This ensures that team members have the right information at the right time in order to make the right decisions.
Leading up and down the Chain of Command
I learned about accountability to a team during my time in the Marines, where the individual Marine is responsible for themselves but also for everyone in their fireteam, squad, platoon, and ultimately their unit. However, this wasn’t a concept that I fully comprehended until I read a book called Extreme Ownership by two Navy SEALs, Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. They tell a story of being part of Task Unit Bruiser in Ramadi, Iraq, detailing how they suffered one of the first SEAL losses in the war in Iraq and how that impacted the unit.
Months later, back stateside, Jocko was asked to give a presentation on the operations his unit performed. He put together a powerpoint slide that put it all in perspective — how each area of the operation had been a piece of a larger puzzle. It was only when Leif saw the slide, long after returning home from war, that he recognized the broader strategic role his platoon’s success had played. It dawned on him that if he hadn’t realized fully the strategic goals of the mission at the time, then the men he was leading farther down the chain of command who were carrying out all that he asked of them day to day, surely hadn’t had the context to understand the full scope either. Those in the front lines couldn’t possibly know what was to happen next or why. They couldn’t know how they were contributing to the stabilization and security of the region if their leader didn’t tell them.
In the book, Jocko talks about that moment and says one of the greatest lessons learned was “leading up and down the chain of command.” This has been something that we’ve taken to heart at Coforma.
How We Apply the Concept to Our Small Business
To circumvent potential challenges, or occasionally to deal with real ones, we provide our team with greater autonomy and transparency, making sure they have the information necessary for them to fully understand why we are making decisions and how their work is critical to what we do and how we do it.
“Any good leader is immersed in the planning and execution of tasks, projects, and operations to move the team toward a strategic goal. Such leaders possess insight into the bigger picture and why specific tasks need to be accomplished.” — Leif Babin
But the information the leader possesses doesn’t automatically transfer or translate to other layers of leadership, or to the staff on the ground. A junior designer who is asked to change every color in a design they spent weeks working on in order for the design to be Section 508 compliant is rightly focused on their specific job so that the technical goal can be achieved: the design is more accessible to all individuals, specially those who have a need for assistive technology. They don’t need to know, however, that their management may have been engaged in hours of back and forth with the client, negotiating the cost of making the design compliant after it had already been approved and providing the changes at a loss in order to meet a broader strategic goal of ensuring all designs created by the company are as inclusive as possible. Likewise, the person in the management role doesn’t necessarily need to know how the testing and editing were achieved in order to meet the standard.
While they don’t need all the details, they do need to understand what the other’s role is. And the junior leaders need to hear from senior leaders about how their work contributes to the success of the company as a whole.
How You Can Lead up and down the Chain of Command
Relaying enough information to your frontline team to enable them to succeed without saturating them with too much detail is not intuitive. Big picture strategy simply isn’t as obvious to every layer of the company as you might think.
To lead down the chain of command, the leader must ensure there is enough understanding among other levels of leadership, evaluate their own level of transparency, and regulate their communication frequency. They must make adjustments to communicate the right amount of information often enough to help everyone understand the greater mission.
To lead up the chain of command, they must gather enough information from the frontlines to inform their leadership. They also must be open to receiving feedback — both critical and complimentary.
If the leader is able to provide this communication and understanding feedback cycle consistently, they will find that those who report to them, and those who report to those who report to them, and so on along the chain, will be able to prioritize tasks better and perform their duties more holistically.
“It requires regularly stepping out of the office and personally engaging in face-to-face conversations with direct reports and observing the “frontline troops” in action to understand their particular challenges and read them into the Commander’s intent. This enables the team to understand why they are doing what they are doing, which facilitates Decentralized Command.” — Leif Babin
As a leader employing Extreme Ownership’s “leading up and down the chain of command” mentality, I know that I must first look at my own behaviors and communication style and frequency when my team isn’t doing what I want them to do. It’s important not to blame anyone else for not seeing the big picture. If you want everyone to operate strategically, you have to communicate in succinct terms that are easy to understand.
We implemented this concept because our goal is to have a positive and ethical impact in our sector of business, and the only way to achieve that is by ensuring that we, ourselves, hold each other to a higher level of accountability and are able to get out of our own way and that of our team’s to allow them to succeed.
About Coforma
Coforma builds ethical technology products that disrupt the status quo through Human-Centered Design and research. We design solutions that have positive social impact in an effort to help government modernize services and provide better digital products for the people who need them most. Visit us at coforma.io to learn more about our work.
