"The highest commander and the youngest soldier must be conscious of the fact that omission and inactivity are worse than resorting to the wrong expedient" ~ Field Marshall Moltke (Prussian General, 1800s)
Businesses today are operating in a tight labour market increasingly influenced by talent shortages and inflationary pressures. Throw in the hangover effects of COVID-19, and it is little wonder many leaders are grappling with how to harness talent and enable rapid decision-making aligned with business strategy. As Peopleology works alongside our clients, from time-to-time we see individuals and teams seemingly hamstrung by a lack of clarity, decisiveness or resources.
This is where businesses can adapt a highly successful military philosophy known as Mission Command. Essentially, Mission Command is the strategic empowerment of leaders and followers to execute centralised intent-based planning in a decentralised way. Its underlying principles include unity of effort, freedom of action, mutual trust and risk acceptance.
Unity of effort
At its core, this principle is a shared understanding of the desired outcome (intent and purpose) supported by horizontal and vertical nesting of effort by everyone in the organisation toward that outcome. Leaders at every level provide their team with absolute clarity around the specific and tangible outcome to be achieved – whether short or long term – that feeds into the overarching shared outcome. Leader's conversations are along the lines of “this is what we need to achieve”. Not, “this is what I want you to do”.
In addition, the leader provides the resources (people, time, budget, workspace, equipment, etc.) to realistically deliver the outcome. To prevent siloed activity, transparent communication occurs between leaders and peers, ensuring everyone knows what each team is doing and how that fits into achieving the desired outcome.
Freedom of action
Staying ahead of the competition’s decision-action cycle requires empowered teams to use their initiative to develop and implement solutions that deliver the desired outcome, rapidly adapting their plans and exploiting opportunities in the dynamic environment. Leaders at every level continually check in to ensure their team is comfortable, understands the intent and purpose, and remains adequately resourced. Beyond that, leaders do not constrain their team's creativity, overlay their own bias for how things should be done, or micro-manage the activity.
Mutual trust
Acknowledging that every person in the organisation is a competent professional with specific contextual expertise is the first step towards mutual trust. Leaders show confidence in the competence of their team by delegating tasks to the right person and empowering them to deliver how they see fit. With this comes acceptance from leaders of reasonable failure and rapid learning from failure as their team pursues the organisations’ strategic objectives. Essentially, leaders who actively trust their team develop teams who trust them back. Additionally, providing timely feedback and praise when results are good builds mutual confidence and trust.
Risk acceptance
A shared understanding of the level of risk acceptable to an organisation and whether to tolerate, treat, transfer or terminate a particular risk allows leaders to delegate timely and effective decision-making to teams. There is an element of risk that the solution may not be ‘perfect’. However, with good judgement and a sound understanding of when to act for maximum impact toward the desired outcome, it exponentially increases an organisation's agility. In today’s dynamic, cyber-connected, fast-paced and competitive environment, quickly achieving an 80 per cent solution is likely more beneficial than realising nothing at all.
Embedding the philosophy of strategic empowerment into an organisations’ culture develops cohesive high-performance teams that generate higher productivity and profitability. While leaders remain accountable and responsible for achieving the desired outcome, team members at all levels of an organisation become highly engaged. They feel valued and trusted to think for themselves, analyse and perform tasks rapidly and autonomously. This creates a whole new level of organisational agility and efficiency.
Is this something that you could see working in your organisation?
