How Mission Command Solves The Strategy–Execution Gap | Stephen Bungay

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Most people do think of strategy that way.
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Developing a new strategy.
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Strategic blind spots when strategy meets reality, strategy, and innovation in the strategy world.
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Drive their strategic goals.
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And welcome back to Strategy Meets Reality Podcast.
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Welcome back to Strategy Meets Reality Podcast.
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I'm delighted to start and kick off season two with um fantastic guests, and I think it's the um perfect guest to start off the season two.
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Today I have Stephen Bungay, the author of The Art of Action.
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You can see this has followed me quite a lot in my military career when I first picked up this book, and it's guided me through quite a lot.
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So it's great to have you on today, Stephen.
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Well, thank you very much.
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Um that book came out in uh 2010, but I've been doing a lot of this and that before that.
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I I first joined went into business by joining the Boston Consulting Group in 1981.
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And they were then a strategy boutique.
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And so I learned about strategy, and really about nothing else.
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And they had the attitude at the time that execution or implementation, as it was called, was all rather boring, and the the client should get up with that.
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You know, we we we produced these fancy strategies that were sitting on the shelf and so on.
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And after a little while, we began to realize that maybe that wasn't entirely true.
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And uh things began to change internally.
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I was I became a member of something called the organization practice group, which was about change, really, producing organizational change.
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Um regarded a bit odd at the time, but it's become terribly mainstream now.
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And uh things progressed until I had, I suppose, got a little bit bored with it by the end of the 90s and left in order to set up by myself.
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I had also in the meantime written a couple of books of military history, which is really just a hobby at the time.
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But it was when I was writing the second book about the Battle of Alamaine that I came across something rather interesting, which I call the Rommel problem.
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I'll come back to the second.
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I'd also discovered uh that my clients were more and more concerned with the problem of turning strategy into action and not with what the strategy was itself.
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They had a lot of clever people of their own who would come up with fancy strategies, but how do you make it actually work?
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And this seemed to be an almost intractable problem, which is where we come back to Rommel.
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Now the Rommel problem, which was faced by the Eighth Army in uh North Africa, was that in some peculiar way, he, being an extraordinary military genius, was able to turn up in the desert and within about a week had turned forty-five thousand uh normally rigid, uh procedure-oriented Germans and fifty-five thousand totally incompetent Italians under his command into fast-moving, improvisatory individuals full of initiative who were running rings around the Eighth Army.
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And uh, they found this very difficult to explain.
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Uh, there are various rather silly explanations to come up with I won't bore you with at the moment.
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But anyway, I got interested to say why.
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Obviously, one bloke doesn't do this.
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And I discovered that in fact Rommel was a practitioner of a what I can say is a concept of leadership and an organizational process, which he had not invented, but was in fact deeply rooted in the German army of 1942 and goes back well, well, well before then, to the middle of the 19th century and the Prussian army, which encouraged individual initiative on the part of officers, with a word doing nothing is worse than doing something.
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And they did this because they had suffered a disaster at the hands of the polyon at Yinna and 1807.
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They thought that's not going to happen again.
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The problem being that their officers were just passive, they were sitting there waiting for orders while the French were running all over them.
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And this was so they encouraged individual initiative, but found that they had a problem in that they were losing control.
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Or they couldn't establish control by issuing detailed orders again, or you get rid of all the initiative and they need the initiative.
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So my hero, Field Marshal Helmut von Moltke, a very unlikely looking chap to be a military leader, right?
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So he's he's he's my hero too.
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I think many people who have watched his pre uh podcast will know I've mentioned him probably every episode.
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Yeah, uh absolutely he's famous for no plans to fires for contact with the enemy.
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Anyway, he managed to win the two major wars of the 19th century, first against Austria-Hungary in 1966 and against France in 1870, both in about six weeks, the original Blitzkrieg.
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And he encouraged individual initiative, but he said, now we are going to give orders in a very different way.
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In fact, it's so different that we're not going to call them orders anymore.
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We're going to call them a directives.
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And an order tells you what to do and how, and a directive tells you what to achieve and a why.
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And the German word for a thing you have to achieve and why is Auftrag.
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A task is an Aufgabe.
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You give children Hals Aufgarben, that's their homework.
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You don't give them Hals Aufträge.
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Um and Auftrag is usually used in the military today in the English-speaking world as mission.
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Yes.
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So here we can see the original term Auftrags tactic, German, which was then embedded not only in the Prussian army, the then the German army that succeeded it, and brought to quite a high pitch by the influence.
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And the British and Americans were sort of wondering in 1945, amongst other things, why it had taken the two post-war superpowers plus the British Army four years to defeat Germany.
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And worked out that this was one of the reasons the Germans were fighting smarter, nothing else, and encouraging individual initiative.
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And they started learning from German generals who've been on the Eastern Front and adopted it as mission command as opposed to order command.
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And you will be familiar with this of a number of people behind this, then commander of the British Army at the Rhine time, and it was introduced in sort of late 80s, and it was it was taught as doctrine.
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It was largely through Shrivenham that was set up, that's the Defense Academy of the UK.
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Yeah, yeah.
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Set up to do that, move NATO away from what's been described to me as a sort of a a ballet score of what happens when the Russians come through to Folta Gap.
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This is what you do.
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So this flexible response.
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And it is now, I believe, standard doctrine across the armed forces in NATO.
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Although I have to say it depends very much what particular unit you are in and who your commanding officer is to extend to it.
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That has always been the case.
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That was true in the German army as well.
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Anyway, I did pick this up and I thought, well, bloody hell, if the army can do it, why can't businesses do it?
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This is exactly what businesses need.
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Hence the book, which is translating half trich tactic stroke mission command into business terms.
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And since then I've spent most of my time helping companies actually put it into action.
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Yeah.
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Which is actually not as straightforward as you might think.
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It involves building some skills which takes effort, particularly at the beginning, but which universally pays off.
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I have to say, I think I haven't had a failure yet.
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That's good.
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Yeah, I'm not surprised there's so much um context there about mission command, and a few things being really true.
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One is about um especially the military, in my experience, I said some leaders that really embraced it and it was really good.
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Other leaders had a really um low tolerance for risk and then less trust.
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And yeah, mission command wasn't in, it was just control.
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But when when you when you're in that environment and mission command is in full play and you've got um initiative, you've got clear, unambiguous, um intent, you know, really saying what what I want and uh why, you can see how it works, and you can see actually it it's so much quicker and adaptable.
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The challenge is is always thinking about well, what what stops us won't talk about military terms, but in sense of business, but what stops businesses from applying it because it makes sense, but what where's the struggle?
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They have very different traditions.
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I think this suffers a great deal from the influence of macroeconomics based on mathematical models.
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And above all, my big bug bear.
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So if Malta's my hero, my nemesis is Frederick Winslow Taylor.
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Coincidentally, I think has been proven today to have been a complete fraud.
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Pig iron experiment he did.
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He just fudged all the numbers.
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Anyway, the idea is that managers do the thinking, workers do the doing.
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You have to separate thought and action.
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You can there is but one right way, and you can in principle know everything you need to know to create complete efficiency.
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Yes.
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This worked terribly well for Henry Ford in producing Model T Fords, but they were all Model T's and they were all black.
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So it's a great one to run an assembly line.
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Essentially, you're turning people into robots, and most assembly lines now are indeed run by robots, you know, the consequence.
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There's a few people started pointing out some time ago, like Peter Drucker, as far as long ago as 1955, there are a lot of other things that go on in their business that are not open to that sort of regimented process orientation.
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And where you actually need human brains, actually rather good human brains, stand on constantly and looking for new ways of doing this.
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How innovation takes place.
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Yeah.
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And um I've I've tried to sort of expunge Taylor, but it's I mean, he he's he still stalks to corridor.
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He's ghost.
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His ghost still stalks to corridor.
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And I think it takes a major disaster for that to change.
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I mean, in the all the military examples, there has been a disaster which has forced people to recognize that the environment is fast changing and unpredictable, and you have to give up control.
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Yeah.
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And people find, especially if they're generals, find that very, very difficult.
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They'd like to believe that they're in control.
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In fact, they're not, they can influence events, but they can't control them.
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Yes.
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Friction.
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Now, executives, unfortunately, are still in that sort of position, and there hasn't been a Napoleon to beat a lot of them up, which is maybe what they need.
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Although it's under crisis, um you would have thought with with uh COVID and all those shocks that have happened that you would have started to see it, but it's almost we had this point where um because I think I think the tailorism is so ingrained into people, and I think it it's the decades of business schools that have taught um sort of the efficiency tailorism, and it it's it's such a hard it's gonna take a real paradigm shift to get them to view a different way, and hopefully uncertainty.
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Yes.
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I think that's the problem, and it's this realization that you have to give up control and instead seek influence, and also this fear, fear of risk.
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Well, you you can imagine, you know, when von Moltke came up with all this in the middle of the 19th century, in pressure of all cloudy forces, um, he he wasn't given exactly a smooth ride over this one.
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I bet.
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And just one or two people said, you know, do that.
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Um and were terrified of losing control.
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And indeed they they had a point, because if you just have this low-level initiative, you will lose control and you'll get chaos.
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Um his genius is to maintain that, but maintain the autonomy, high autonomy, but to create a new system for creating alignment.
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So you have high alignment and high autonomy at the same time.
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Most people think that's a trade-off.
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He said, No, it's not.
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I can have both at the same time.
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And that is the techniques, the techniques behind mission command, because once you've understood your commander's intent in mission command, that is binding.
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You can't just wander off nilly-nilly and do what you like.
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If the situation changes, you're expected to change what you do, your actions, but still act in line with intent.
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Yes.
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If there's a need to change the intent, that's a big deal.
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And occurs quite rarely.
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But the situation's changing all the time.
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You adapt to it, sometimes it's problems, sometimes actually it's opportunities.
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People exploit opportunities.
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But you've always got to have that intent in mind.
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And creating that discipline, that alignment up and down, but not just up and down, the organization as well.
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So that I know that these other guys in different functions or different countries also know what I know.
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And if something happens, they are all good, we are all going to try to do something similar.
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That creates enormous cohesion and power.
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So you have adaptability and cohesion at the same time, and that's priceless.
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Yes.
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And we're always trying to build that because you want those teams to be self-organizing, adapting, but you don't want them to have conflict.
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So we that's right about that that coordination that needs to go go across so that they can act that way.
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But there's a real good point that you made earlier, which I think fractures this, and it's the sense that, and I suppose it highlights your point from tailorism that you know the leaders do the thinking and people do the doing.
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You separate the two, and you see this as separated in the strategy and execution.
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People have in modern day, well not modern days, but in organizations separate the two.
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So you've got this strategy, and I can argue it's actually strategy, and then suddenly they just throw some stuff over the wall and expect people to pick it up and run with it, but they're just completely disconnected, which then doesn't really give people initiative or ability to adapt.
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No, that's uh that separation of thinking and doing is deadly.
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I've uh sentence in the book is that strategy and execution become a distinction without a difference and that your strategy is not being completed until the people right at the bottom have got it and are doing things differently.
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What tends to happen is that everyone sort of thinks, oh well strategy it's the board, it's exco or something.
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And they come up with this strategy, usually having been ripped off by McKinsey or PCG or some other buggers.
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Very true.
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And then uh the CEO goes around on a sort of roadshow and exhausts himself for three months, giving a slide presentation about the strategy, and everyone goes, I'll go back to work and think, oh, that's interesting.
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I wonder what he wants me to do.
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And it's not clear at all.
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And what is this so so you create a gap.
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The top, they all know this is the strategy, and the bottom, busy running operations.
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Well, maybe I wonder what it's got to do with me.
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And you've got to fill in the layers in between.
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It's no good the CEO can tell you till he's blue in the face about whatever the hell it is at his level.
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What people tend to do is make the mistake of demanding that he or some other people go into more detail.
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Uh there was a strategy's not clear.
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I don't know.
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Well, I mean you can go on forever and ever going into detail.
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Actually, what they mean is not I lack detail, but I do not know how to make a choice if it is forced upon me.
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I'm unable to make trade-offs because a strategy, one thing a strategy should do is to say, we're going to do this and not that.
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And so this year we're going for revenue growth, um, not margin.
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So grow revenue, whatever.
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Next year we're going to go for margin development, and you can keep growth flat or whatever it is, right?
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Whatever the trade-off is, it must be clear.
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This is a service business, not a product business.
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The important people are our installers, not the general public, because they make the decisions, the purchasing decisions.
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It's stuff like that.
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So it can be a very simple thing, but executives are prone to be beset by lists, just like everybody else.
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Lists.
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Yes.
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Objectives and I don't know, the balance scorecards, and don't get me on guard.
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Yeah.
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And all this sort of crap.
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And you can't lists are a useful way of going shopping, but they're not a useful way of getting strategy.
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You've got to think about what the higher intent is.
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And think to yourself, okay, I'm in this situation, this unexpected situation.
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I've got a choice to make.
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Which way should I go?
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And if the strategy is clear, it'll give you the answer.
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And in order to make it clear, it has to come not just from the top, but the next level down has to think about so what are the implications for you know marketing?
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What are the implications for production?
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And then the next level, okay, what are the implications for marketing in Asia Pacific and so on?
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And then I get down to I'm responsible, I'm the country manager for Thailand.
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Okay, so what you know, I got this big client who's making a lot of fuss, but I've also got this thing about developing new technology.
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And if I take people off to deal with the client, I can't do the technology.
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What am I gonna do?
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Yeah, if the strategy's clear, there's an answer, and if not, there's just confusion and confusion.
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Paralysis first and then confusion.
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I think that's that's dangerous, isn't it?
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Paralysis, because you know, as we recognise, and Rommel recognise and vomit, that you know, you could do nothing, but the the world around you, the environment is still going to move.
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It's gonna move.
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So it it's yeah, it's regardless of what you do, but the the more then you allow it to move into paralysis, the more then you're you're forced to react to circumstances forced upon you rather than creating opportunities or seizing opportunities.
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And and I think there still persists with this disconnection between thinking and doing, and in in mission command, the power is in the interpretation, like structured into mission command.
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That I will give you my intent, I'm gonna allow you to go away, interpret what you mean.
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Is um I think Klauswitz talked about it in the the friction and the misinformation transfer.
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Um, and actually, we're gonna make sure that we are aligned, and then that gives you the understanding, and then gives you what you need to be able to adapt to your yeah, your context.
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So, what you've just said, it reminds me of a a model I use in the book to transition from Klausowitz, who explains the problem friction, which is has been summarized as you know, shit happens all the time, right?
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Everything when everything goes wrong, it's gone normal.
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Right.
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And I've had a little molecule, three gaps.
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So Klausowitz's first gap is the knowledge gap.
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You never know as much as you'd like to know.
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So you've somehow got to make a judgment call on the basis of what you do know and grasping the essential point, and then you've got a communication issue.
00:19:19.519 --> 00:19:24.000
You have to pass that on and make sure that the next level down has got it.
00:19:24.000 --> 00:19:31.440
And the only way to do that is to have a discussion with them, ask them to go away, think about it, and then come back and tell you what they're gonna do as a result.
00:19:31.440 --> 00:19:36.160
So you brief them, and that is then followed by a back briefing.
00:19:36.160 --> 00:19:37.839
They brief you back, yeah.
00:19:37.839 --> 00:19:39.599
Very simple thing.
00:19:39.599 --> 00:19:41.680
And you have to complete that loop.
00:19:41.680 --> 00:19:44.480
Communication is a loop, it's not a line coming from the top.
00:19:44.480 --> 00:19:45.920
And then there we are, you've got it.
00:19:45.920 --> 00:19:46.880
Okay, off you go.
00:19:46.880 --> 00:19:48.720
Uh, send me an email when you're done.
00:19:48.720 --> 00:19:49.519
No, no.
00:19:49.519 --> 00:19:55.039
And you have to have agreed that is, in fact, what I wanted you to do, and you're going to do it.
00:19:55.039 --> 00:19:56.960
And so now you can off you go.
00:19:56.960 --> 00:19:59.759
And when you go off, you have the intention.
00:19:59.759 --> 00:20:06.319
Will give you a set of boundaries, an area of freedom within which you are free to act.
00:20:06.319 --> 00:20:17.839
In fact, you are expected to act if the situation changes, but it's also obviously an area of freedom has a has boundaries and you mustn't overstep them.
00:20:17.839 --> 00:20:22.400
So that's how you get the cohesion and the adaptability at the same time.
00:20:22.400 --> 00:20:25.680
But this is some people are very scared by that.
00:20:25.680 --> 00:20:26.319
Yeah.
00:20:26.319 --> 00:20:42.880
I'm amazed actually in business organizations how people will spend hundreds and hundreds of thousands hiring, you know, really high-powered, brilliant people and then treat them like idiots.
00:20:42.880 --> 00:20:43.759
Yeah.
00:20:43.759 --> 00:20:46.079
They can't trust them.
00:20:46.319 --> 00:21:21.599
No, and it's also there's that also the structural point around that they like you said, there's boundaries and constraints, you put it, there's you know clear roles, but when these are unclear, they'll then obviously spend more money on internal communications teams to try and to communicate the intent that should be in the role of the leader to be able to communicate, not some you know, massive internal team that will dumb down things for you and uh produce masses of PowerPoints and memos and then videos or see all this crap.
00:21:21.839 --> 00:21:26.319
Um what matters to most people is what their immediate boss sponsor to do.
00:21:26.319 --> 00:21:26.880
And that's right.
00:21:26.880 --> 00:21:47.839
If this I hesitate to call it a cascade, but it's it's kind of like a cascade, I prefer to think of it as an act of translation or unpacking the meaning, the implied meaning of commander's intent to the Exco's intent and my functional heads intent to my regional heads intent sector to me.
00:21:47.839 --> 00:21:50.240
And I get it from the guy above.
00:21:50.240 --> 00:21:51.039
Yeah.
00:21:51.039 --> 00:21:55.920
One of the clever things the military have done, I've said you have to think two levels up.
00:21:55.920 --> 00:21:59.440
So I get everybody saying, okay, so what's my boss want?
00:21:59.440 --> 00:22:05.519
And sometimes I don't know, sometimes they want, and what's my bosses want and what want, and they usually have absolutely no idea.
00:22:05.519 --> 00:22:14.400
I think uh if you don't that then suggest to them what they might want, what you think they ought to want, and let them correct you, which helps a little bit more thinking.
00:22:14.799 --> 00:22:24.400
Yeah, I think this comes to your point earlier around that loop, so the back brief in the loop, and then the linear it's not linear, it's a loop, which is completely right.
00:22:24.400 --> 00:22:41.599
One that that never exists, and two, that's where that high I don't like using the term cascade either, but that comes sort of the the dogma in people and leaders' heads that I well I've told them they should tell the next one and the next one, but really what we're thinking about is the fractal nature of an organization, yeah.
00:22:41.599 --> 00:22:51.039
But you know, there's there's fractal layers and making sure that the interpretation is happening at the fractal level to ensure that communication and intent is interpreted and understood.
00:22:51.359 --> 00:22:52.640
Yes, yes.
00:22:52.640 --> 00:22:57.440
I've think to myself if we can do it, well, can't businesses do it.
00:22:57.440 --> 00:23:09.759
I remember um seeing a clip once, I think from an embedded journalist of some squaddy, I think it was a corporal, somewhere in Iraq.
00:23:09.759 --> 00:23:10.640
I don't know.
00:23:10.640 --> 00:23:15.839
He was squatting behind a wall, and you could hear the bullets pinging off the wall.
00:23:15.839 --> 00:23:17.359
He said, Well, what are we gonna do?
00:23:17.359 --> 00:23:17.920
What are we gonna do?
00:23:17.920 --> 00:23:21.599
He says, Well, command intent is to secure the village by nightfall.
00:23:21.599 --> 00:23:27.599
Um pretty damn sure there's a sniper in that house over there, so we're gonna take him out, move around, and then see what we can do.
00:23:27.599 --> 00:23:31.440
But uh the important thing is to stick to the commander's intent.
00:23:31.440 --> 00:23:34.480
The commander, of course, didn't know about the sniper, and bitter or anything else.
00:23:34.480 --> 00:23:36.079
That's his job, that's the corporal's job.
00:23:36.079 --> 00:23:36.720
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:23:36.720 --> 00:23:45.920
And his squad isn't, so he quickly gets, you know, you guys, Charlie, went around that way, that and that way, covering fire, and you know, all that stuff, and that's it in action.
00:23:45.920 --> 00:23:47.200
He doesn't sit there thinking.
00:23:48.400 --> 00:23:48.640
No.
00:23:48.640 --> 00:23:57.599
But this is where you said earlier, and it is completely right about the they've got the freedom of action and they're expected to own that freedom.
00:23:57.599 --> 00:23:58.160
Yes.
00:23:58.160 --> 00:24:08.960
But I think there's to your point about treating people like idiots, is that I find too often that people start to impose or leaders start to impose in people's freedoms.
00:24:08.960 --> 00:24:09.680
Yes.
00:24:09.680 --> 00:24:29.200
They don't allow them to have that freedom because they've already started to define how, so in your situation, the soldier, even though he can bl blatantly see that there's a sniper there and he needs to deal with that first, someone else that's not in the context, doesn't understand that information, is telling them, No, no, I want you to go, I want you to go straight on.
00:24:29.200 --> 00:24:30.720
I want you to do this now.
00:24:30.720 --> 00:24:31.359
Yeah.
00:24:31.359 --> 00:24:36.559
And I think that's the that's the challenge that you've got to enable people to have that freedom.
00:24:36.720 --> 00:24:38.880
This is really all about people.
00:24:38.880 --> 00:24:41.440
And I come across two problems with people.
00:24:41.440 --> 00:24:45.039
One is the senior people who can't give up control.
00:24:45.039 --> 00:24:49.440
And sometimes they really want to, and they don't know that they're not.
00:24:49.440 --> 00:24:55.599
Uh, example I'd like to use sort of theoretical example, I suppose, is we've got across the river, build a bridge.
00:24:55.599 --> 00:24:57.599
If they go, why do we need to build a bridge?
00:24:57.599 --> 00:25:03.359
Maybe if we we made us some boats, maybe if we look a bit further up, the river's actually quite shallow and we can ford across.
00:25:03.359 --> 00:25:05.039
We don't need any of this crap at all.
00:25:05.039 --> 00:25:08.240
But but the temptation of the senior guy is that I've thought of a solution.
00:25:08.240 --> 00:25:09.039
Build a bridge.
00:25:09.039 --> 00:25:14.799
And so he doesn't say work out how to get across the river, which is what he ought to say.
00:25:14.799 --> 00:25:18.640
He gives them his solution instead of giving them the problem.
00:25:18.640 --> 00:25:21.680
And that's quite tricky, actually.
00:25:21.680 --> 00:25:26.400
That can creep up on you um unbeknownst.
00:25:26.400 --> 00:25:31.119
So that's the you know, some of these, some of some of these people are real control freaks.
00:25:31.119 --> 00:25:32.799
You can tell they're a mile off.
00:25:32.799 --> 00:25:36.319
The the trouble is the people who really want to do it who don't realise they're not doing it.
00:25:36.319 --> 00:25:46.400
The other problems from the bottom up, because a lot of people in the population at large are terrified of the idea of having responsibility for an outcome they don't fully control.
00:25:46.400 --> 00:25:50.319
They want to follow due process, and if it all goes wrong, it's not their fault.
00:25:50.319 --> 00:25:57.680
Now, mostly, I say with the greatest respect, people like that join the civil service, which is where that's exactly what's needed.
00:25:57.680 --> 00:26:01.039
These are the procedures, you know.
00:26:01.039 --> 00:26:06.079
So, you know, this is how to fit in your tax form, and this is what was that etc, etc.
00:26:06.079 --> 00:26:10.160
Um, however, some of them do creep into businesses.
00:26:10.160 --> 00:26:10.960
Yeah.
00:26:10.960 --> 00:26:13.200
And they're fine at a certain level.
00:26:13.200 --> 00:26:17.279
I mean, in some businesses, I don't know, like insurance businesses, you need a lot of people like that.
00:26:17.279 --> 00:26:17.759
Right?
00:26:17.759 --> 00:26:18.640
That's fine.
00:26:18.640 --> 00:26:21.920
But if they rise up the ranks, uh they become a problem.
00:26:21.920 --> 00:26:26.319
And they won't tell you, but in fact, they're terrified of mission command.
00:26:26.319 --> 00:26:30.720
And they really want someone to tell them exactly what to do.
00:26:30.720 --> 00:26:31.119
Yeah.
00:26:31.119 --> 00:26:34.240
And you brought so that they feel safe.
00:26:34.240 --> 00:26:34.880
Safe.
00:26:36.240 --> 00:26:39.440
And you brought a really good point with the creeping into solutions.
00:26:39.440 --> 00:26:47.519
I see it all the time, and I correct clients all the time and say, okay, but right, you've got all this stuff, but what is it you want them to achieve?
00:26:47.519 --> 00:26:48.559
Don't tell me how.
00:26:48.559 --> 00:26:54.880
Let's let's let's reword this into what actually is the end state that you want to achieve, not how you're going to get there.
00:26:54.880 --> 00:26:59.680
And that's a real challenge for people to separate the two and have that open.
00:26:59.680 --> 00:27:01.759
And I think you're completely right with the procedure.
00:27:01.759 --> 00:27:13.839
I would say if it if it's predictable and you know that it no matter what happens, that this thing will just repeat itself and is predictable, you know, have the best process in the world and fill your boots.
00:27:13.839 --> 00:27:18.960
Majority of the time, the things we do aren't predictable, they're not they're not going to be predictable.
00:27:18.960 --> 00:27:25.680
So why waste the energy trying to recreate a process when you don't need to just give some principles?
00:27:25.839 --> 00:27:26.079
Yeah.
00:27:26.079 --> 00:27:30.319
Is that because you you raised the point of SOP's standard operating procedure?
00:27:30.319 --> 00:27:32.640
Wolka was also hot on those.
00:27:32.640 --> 00:27:36.000
They are very valuable as long as they are your slaves.
00:27:36.000 --> 00:27:38.559
And they're terrible if they become your masters.
00:27:38.559 --> 00:27:39.599
So I know it's a good idea.
00:27:39.599 --> 00:27:42.640
Tend to creep to be told by Royal Marines.
00:27:42.640 --> 00:27:44.400
Corporal former roadblock.
00:27:44.400 --> 00:27:47.039
And the word roadblock means something.
00:27:47.039 --> 00:27:49.279
It's got a kick in it, there's a machine gun there, something.
00:27:49.279 --> 00:27:55.119
Everybody, no, the corporal, the privates know what a roadblock is.
00:27:55.119 --> 00:27:57.359
So nobody has to supervise them.
00:27:57.359 --> 00:28:01.359
You don't get an officer involved, and he knows that they know and they'll do it.
00:28:01.359 --> 00:28:13.519
Um, but what you then do with your roadblocks, or or what happens if um, I don't know, a load of bad guys suddenly turn up on your right flank unexpectedly.
00:28:13.519 --> 00:28:15.200
There's no SAP for that.
00:28:15.200 --> 00:28:16.079
Yeah, yeah.
00:28:16.079 --> 00:28:17.839
And so you need them both.
00:28:17.839 --> 00:28:26.799
And so you've got to distinguish this sort of low level, this tactical level, from this era of freedom above strategy on on top.
00:28:26.799 --> 00:28:29.519
But yeah, yeah, people tend not to do that.
00:28:29.519 --> 00:28:33.200
It's remarkable how much common sense is not common practice.
00:28:33.519 --> 00:28:44.160
No, and you brought up a really good um point earlier on, way earlier, when you talk about that idea of giving them the intent and then going away to understand it.
00:28:44.160 --> 00:28:58.400
I remember in you know, when I was leading troops or when I was being led as a soldier, we we spent a good bit of time, which doesn't happen in organization, which where we go, this is this is the intent, and we we go through planning.
00:28:58.400 --> 00:29:01.039
We're not trying to create the perfect plan, we just go through planning.
00:29:01.039 --> 00:29:07.599
And I remember we would go through there and go, right, um, you know, Private Jones, what happens if we get a casualty here?
00:29:07.599 --> 00:29:36.079
And now to me, there is an SOP in the sense of there is a way that we deal with casualties at that point, but there is also a layer that is slightly different because we're on a certain different phase, so I have to use my interpretation of common sense around well, I know I need to do these things because they are useful and standard, but also that I need to think, well, we probably should take the casualty to this point because that seems like it's the most safest option, and there's that exactly that point you're talking about.
00:29:36.079 --> 00:29:45.119
There is that underlying bit that helps me with the cognitive task of it, but then that leaves me space to think about well, what's different here and how do I need to adapt it?
00:29:45.839 --> 00:29:50.319
It doesn't happen because he'd be quite rigorous about how they go through that.
00:29:50.319 --> 00:29:55.119
I I remember talking to um a Real Marines major who was in Iran.
00:29:55.119 --> 00:30:03.920
He said one night he suddenly got uh a call and he was told to take his company and occupy a village that was about ten kilometers away.
00:30:03.920 --> 00:30:14.559
And so he said, I I literally sat down on a tank turret with a fag packet and wrote down command intent and thought thought it through for about ten minutes.
00:30:14.559 --> 00:30:21.599
He had half an hour that he got his guys in and they discussed it for ten minutes because you you can imagine at night, right?
00:30:21.599 --> 00:30:41.359
So there's engineers using one road, and there's a the guy the how much of this thing where it's got to be and um then they left in third, and he was a that's a third to third third, so it's a third, a third for my guys think, and then action really pulling it through at that micro level.
00:30:41.359 --> 00:30:44.640
And they did take the village, oh well so he told me without an account.
00:30:44.799 --> 00:30:45.039
Yeah, yeah.
00:30:45.039 --> 00:30:46.960
That's the that's the thing.
00:30:46.960 --> 00:31:02.079
I've always said that what I found most difficult transitioning from military into civilian world is that I've always grown up because I joined the army as a you know 17-year-old boy, I I grew up assuming that everything will be chaos.
00:31:02.079 --> 00:31:06.000
Yeah, and then thus I adapt where I find the basic assumption.
00:31:06.000 --> 00:31:08.799
Yes, that's the basic assumption, everything's gonna be chaos.
00:31:08.799 --> 00:31:37.279
No, as von Mockter famously said, no planifies contact with the enemy, and then you come into the civilian world business, and it's not, and I try to distinguish when I say this, I don't I'm not saying it's civilians, it's the people, it's the structure, the structure doctrine that's been brought in that views the world as stable and predictable, and we need to produce these reports and these powerpoints and all this stuff because that's what we should do.
00:31:37.599 --> 00:31:41.599
And if the world is stable and predictable, then all you need is compliance.
00:31:41.599 --> 00:31:43.359
That's generally what you get.
00:31:43.359 --> 00:31:48.960
And I remember talking to a friend of mine who was in the Royal Navy submarines for 20 years.
00:31:48.960 --> 00:31:53.279
Um his first assignment was to go to the Falklands and get bombed.
00:31:53.279 --> 00:31:58.240
Um anyway, he spied that and said, I think that may be why I decided to go on submarines after that in light surfish.
00:31:58.240 --> 00:32:00.319
Yeah, but then we use a medic, actually.
00:32:00.319 --> 00:32:02.559
And I asked him once, he said, what's the biggest difference?
00:32:02.559 --> 00:32:05.359
He was working in a pharmaceutical company, which is where I met him.
00:32:05.359 --> 00:32:08.720
What's the biggest difference between the civilian and military life?
00:32:08.720 --> 00:32:12.079
He said, I'm astonished how compliant civilians are.
00:32:13.039 --> 00:32:13.599
Yeah.
00:32:13.839 --> 00:32:24.400
He said, if you're, you know, a mile or two below the Antarctic and someone with an extra fly for this seed tells you to do something that you think is a bit stupid, you do enough asked some tough questions.
00:32:24.400 --> 00:32:25.519
Yeah, yeah.
00:32:25.519 --> 00:32:29.839
I think the submariners have actually do have this rather maverick culture, actually.
00:32:29.839 --> 00:32:36.720
Again, you know, there are a lot of cultural things that come down to different units and different parts of the army, the navy and the air force and so on.
00:32:36.720 --> 00:32:44.480
Uh the Air Force finds it hardest, I think, because it's learning how to fly a fast jet is all about procedures and checks.
00:32:44.480 --> 00:32:45.119
Yeah, yeah.
00:32:45.119 --> 00:32:48.000
And if you don't do that, you die fairly soon.
00:32:48.000 --> 00:32:58.640
Whereas I think in if you take, I don't know, the parrots, they know the first thing that's gonna happen to them is they they're gonna jump out of a plane at night and hit the ground to break a leg and not know where the fuck they are.
00:32:58.640 --> 00:33:01.759
And yet they've got it or where their mates are.
00:33:01.759 --> 00:33:06.319
And yet they've got to do something and they've got two hours to do it, you know.
00:33:06.319 --> 00:33:07.759
And that's always been the case.
00:33:07.759 --> 00:33:15.920
And they've always talked about airborne initiative right back in the Second World War, when the British Army was very much all the command, only after law.
00:33:15.920 --> 00:33:19.519
So there have always been these exceptions, and there still are.
00:33:20.880 --> 00:33:44.960
We we well, we we do have the thing where you know lawful command, you know, we don't have to we have to bear anything that's not a lawful command, and in the doctrine of mission command, it says there to um you know, you can you you challenge, and I've done it before in my career, you challenge um or or seek clarity around certain orders that we've we've been given.
00:33:44.960 --> 00:33:47.920
Yes, and are you sure you want me to do that and not do this?
00:33:47.920 --> 00:33:51.759
Um, and it's always for the for the betterment of the intent.
00:33:51.759 --> 00:34:04.480
But I find the a sort of perspective of the military is that I think they see the guards in their red tunics and their their bearskins on the parade, like with position, doing exactly what they're told.
00:34:04.480 --> 00:34:11.679
And I I think they assume that that's the military rather than what we are actually, is a very adaptable organization.
00:34:12.000 --> 00:34:19.360
Yeah, it's a big difference between operations and non-operations, which is actually uh for people I've talked to, it can be quite hard to manage, though.
00:34:19.360 --> 00:34:25.039
When I'm in barrels, I need permission to roll up my sleeves, and then we go on off, and it's mission command.
00:34:25.039 --> 00:34:29.760
And um I think an advantage that business has is that there is no distinction.
00:34:29.760 --> 00:34:31.199
They're always on operations.
00:34:31.199 --> 00:34:35.920
Not these sort of and and they don't go off have to go off and trade, they're doing it all the time.
00:34:35.920 --> 00:34:40.239
So they ought to find it easier because there's constant practice.
00:34:40.239 --> 00:34:41.039
Yeah.
00:34:41.039 --> 00:34:46.159
I found that they, you know, once once people have got it, it takes a little while for people to get it.
00:34:46.159 --> 00:34:53.039
They really go off, and and um I uh do is with Py Creative people that sort of R D.
00:34:53.039 --> 00:34:56.159
Very, very clever people.
00:34:56.159 --> 00:34:59.679
I mean, scientists, you know, with double PhDs and price and those ones.
00:34:59.679 --> 00:35:02.320
They still have to work very hard to get this.
00:35:02.320 --> 00:35:08.079
And and you get these really abstruse conversations about what the intent really is and what it really should be.
00:35:08.079 --> 00:35:12.320
They lose me after 10 minutes, of course, and then the acronyms creep in.
00:35:12.320 --> 00:35:15.840
Um, but you know, they come out really refreshed.
00:35:15.840 --> 00:35:24.239
You know, it and or indeed, it's a good job we talked about that because I was gonna do this, and you thought I was gonna do that.
00:35:24.239 --> 00:35:27.760
And in six months' time, we'd have been indeed doo-doo.
00:35:27.760 --> 00:35:35.519
Um, because we thought we were clear the traps is I've I'm absolutely clear, you're absolutely clear, but we're clear about completely different things.
00:35:35.519 --> 00:35:36.000
Yeah, yeah.
00:35:36.000 --> 00:35:37.599
Clarity complexity.
00:35:37.599 --> 00:35:40.159
I mean because we never talked about it.
00:35:40.159 --> 00:35:48.400
No, and so I use this phrase common shared understanding as as the sort of touchstone of clarity of intent.
00:35:48.400 --> 00:35:52.159
Right up and down, but and and and across the organisation as well.
00:35:52.480 --> 00:35:55.039
We you see it, we're quite lazy.
00:35:55.039 --> 00:36:03.440
I I see all the time when I'm working with executives, they'll they'll say something and um they'll go, everyone understand, and everyone's like, Yeah, I understand.
00:36:03.440 --> 00:36:11.920
But they do understand from their perspective, it doesn't mean that they are they have a sh, like you said, a common shared understanding of what's been yeah, common.
00:36:11.920 --> 00:36:13.280
And that's the that's the gap.
00:36:13.280 --> 00:36:15.760
So then we just go, Well, I well, they know.
00:36:15.760 --> 00:36:22.480
So when they go off and do something that's different to what I expected, then I start to think that they're at fault.
00:36:22.480 --> 00:36:23.199
Yeah.
00:36:23.199 --> 00:36:25.360
And I put more controls in place.
00:36:25.599 --> 00:36:26.960
Yes, yeah, yeah.
00:36:26.960 --> 00:36:33.199
So when this when the three gaps open up, they're hideous wide mouths, and people fall into them.
00:36:33.199 --> 00:36:36.159
The response is normally to tighten up control.
00:36:36.800 --> 00:36:37.039
Yeah.
00:36:37.280 --> 00:36:44.559
Seek more information, give more detailed instructions, and uh have review meetings every two weeks instead of every month.
00:36:44.559 --> 00:36:54.079
And of course, this paralyzes the organ, it makes everything worse and focuses it inward instead of outward achieving the outcomes you you really want.
00:36:54.079 --> 00:37:00.159
Yeah, I mean it's uh it's a fascinating topic, and uh, I suppose something of a legacy.
00:37:00.159 --> 00:37:05.679
But the problem in business is that our legacy is Taylor, and then you've got to root the bugger out, really.
00:37:05.679 --> 00:37:06.559
Yes.
00:37:06.559 --> 00:37:08.079
And that's I agree.
00:37:08.079 --> 00:37:14.000
But I I think one of the the great things about Mission Command is that it gives people an alternative.
00:37:14.000 --> 00:37:18.880
I think Taylor Taylor is has been around for so long because well, what else are you supposed to do?
00:37:19.519 --> 00:37:21.920
Yeah, well, I suppose that comes from our now.
00:37:22.079 --> 00:37:24.000
We know that there's no excuse anymore.
00:37:24.000 --> 00:37:26.480
Now we know what we've got the alternative.
00:37:27.199 --> 00:37:33.920
I think it was it was useful to a point of industrial revolution when it was all about factory lines and efficiency.
00:37:33.920 --> 00:37:41.360
Yeah, well, but that but that's a particular context, but we're still trying to take that context and apply it in modern businesses.
00:37:41.360 --> 00:37:42.880
You still see efficiency.
00:37:42.880 --> 00:37:54.159
It it doesn't take long to hang around when someone's had Deloitte or KPMG or something in there, and you know, their alternative straight away to any problem is to let's let's reduce numbers and it's all about cost.
00:37:54.159 --> 00:38:00.239
But there's no that that comes that internal look where they we get problems, we come internalized.
00:38:00.239 --> 00:38:07.119
We don't look outwards, we're not looking at the terrain to see see where the advantage is, where we need to position ourselves, what does that mean?
00:38:07.119 --> 00:38:09.039
Do we have the capabilities for that?
00:38:09.039 --> 00:38:16.159
Um and I think that's where we really do need to think about adapting about you know how how do we understand mission command?
00:38:16.159 --> 00:38:17.360
How do you make it relevant?
00:38:17.360 --> 00:38:19.519
Uh, and what does that mean to our modern practice?
00:38:19.760 --> 00:38:24.800
I had an interesting spirit service um doing this with executives.
00:38:24.800 --> 00:38:29.119
So I I take them through the strategy briefing, so it's five questions basically.
00:38:29.119 --> 00:38:31.119
And the first question is what's the context?
00:38:31.119 --> 00:38:33.519
And then what's the higher intent, what's my intent?
00:38:33.519 --> 00:38:39.119
What are the tasks I want my people to carry out, and then what are the boundary conditions?
00:38:39.119 --> 00:38:56.159
And they produced drafts and and I spent that talking through them, and uh months I spent about 40 minutes out of an hour talking to her about the context, what was going on in the business environment she was operating in, and also internally and so on.
00:38:56.159 --> 00:39:03.599
And then we covered the other bits, which actually flowed out quite easily once that was clear.
00:39:03.599 --> 00:39:08.000
Anyway, so a little while later, we were all having sort of feedback about how things had gone with their people.
00:39:08.000 --> 00:39:12.880
And she said, Well, I had a a bit of a learning experience.
00:39:12.880 --> 00:39:22.480
I said, I was getting a bit frustrated, frankly, in my conversation with Stephen, because he was going on and on and on about the bloody context, which I sort of know, that's my daily life.
00:39:22.480 --> 00:39:27.199
And what I wanted to do was to get my people busy.
00:39:27.199 --> 00:39:28.320
Question four.
00:39:28.320 --> 00:39:30.639
What are the implied tasks?
00:39:30.639 --> 00:39:31.280
Okay.
00:39:31.280 --> 00:39:33.119
You do that, you do that, you do that.
00:39:33.119 --> 00:39:34.400
Yes, bing, drop.
00:39:34.400 --> 00:39:42.159
And when I talked to my people, I discovered what she called an almost unquenchable thirst for context.
00:39:42.159 --> 00:39:45.599
They had no idea what was going on in the world around them.
00:39:45.599 --> 00:39:47.519
Yeah, which is my daily reality.
00:39:47.519 --> 00:39:51.519
And I realized so they're down there, not that far below her, right?
00:39:51.519 --> 00:39:53.440
Down there, you you're not.
00:39:53.440 --> 00:39:55.199
There's just stuff you're doing all the time.
00:39:55.199 --> 00:39:56.079
Yeah, doing stuff.
00:39:56.079 --> 00:40:03.760
Again, we're getting taylor creeping back in, you see, surreptitiously, the These guys are forced to not think, as it were.
00:40:03.760 --> 00:40:04.719
They're forced to do.
00:40:04.719 --> 00:40:05.360
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:40:05.360 --> 00:40:08.480
They expect them to do stuff.
00:40:08.480 --> 00:40:16.559
And a a a problem that executives had as they move up more, is that they actually they're paid more and more for thinking.
00:40:16.559 --> 00:40:18.480
And less and less for doing.
00:40:18.480 --> 00:40:25.119
And and if they think hard enough, the doing bit that other people need to do becomes kind of obvious.
00:40:25.119 --> 00:40:31.519
And she said that was a bit of a bit of a revelation for me and has changed the way I lead people now.
00:40:31.760 --> 00:40:35.599
Well, it's just I often challenge uh teams.
00:40:35.599 --> 00:40:36.559
I see it all the time.
00:40:36.559 --> 00:40:48.400
You know, I I I get sort of fed up with these um so-called strategy days that people say, or they or we took our team away for strategy J and they're they're changing ripping tires on an F1 car or you know, go and go ape.
00:40:48.400 --> 00:40:58.000
And you're like, that's fine if you if you want to build familiarity and a an experience that when they go back to the office they can talk about as sort of a bonding thing.
00:40:58.000 --> 00:41:05.519
But if you want something useful, you need to you need to spend time because that we don't, because we just in business is go and do stuff.
00:41:05.519 --> 00:41:09.679
We need to sit back and understand the context we're operating in.
00:41:09.679 --> 00:41:17.119
Understand I you call it context, I call it situation, it's the same semantic, but you must understand the situation you're operating in.
00:41:17.119 --> 00:41:18.400
So what what are the risks?
00:41:18.400 --> 00:41:21.039
What what's the internal factors, what the external factors?
00:41:21.039 --> 00:41:27.199
All these things, because you may understand them or you may think you understand them, but your team definitely won't.
00:41:27.199 --> 00:41:27.920
Yeah.
00:41:28.000 --> 00:41:32.079
So one core concept used by all the military is situational awareness.
00:41:32.079 --> 00:41:36.159
And I noticed that that is hardly part of business vocabulary.
00:41:36.159 --> 00:41:38.960
But it is, in fact, just as critical.
00:41:38.960 --> 00:41:46.559
If you look at the really big corporate disasters of the last 20 years, can back further, some colleagues of mine analyzed this actually.
00:41:46.559 --> 00:41:55.519
The biggest single cause of disaster is senior people getting the context wrong, thinking one thing's happening when another thing is happening.
00:41:55.519 --> 00:42:09.760
And and quite often with very good, you know, reasons, you know, Kodak, yeah, this new digital film where there's very low quality, and our customers like high quality of this sort of lot of investment, it's really not worth it.
00:42:09.760 --> 00:42:14.159
And it wasn't stupid, it was just totally wrong.
00:42:14.159 --> 00:42:20.800
Ughi got it right, and and that's the big and you know, we know where they are now or not, as the yeah.
00:42:20.800 --> 00:42:27.599
So really, if you really want to spoil your day and everybody else's day, get the context wrong.
00:42:27.760 --> 00:42:28.239
Yeah.
00:42:28.239 --> 00:42:53.760
Well, this is the thing where we talk about John Boyd talks about his orientation, and it's it's this point, is that what you view as the context limits what you'll see, and it's not until you sit back and you you challenge those assumptions and you you're really challenging your perception of of the context and what it is, then you can especially if you do it with your team, because um you're seeing from different perspectives, so you're gonna see a little bit more.
00:42:53.760 --> 00:43:05.199
If you don't, and you just assume, then you're then locked into looking for things only to confirm your belief, and you limit what's possible, you limit what you can see, and if you can't see it, you're gonna miss it.
00:43:06.960 --> 00:43:10.880
Um and it's quite interesting, again, uh just a general observation for experience.
00:43:10.880 --> 00:43:15.599
People write things down in this question one, and I sort of read it, mm-hmm.
00:43:15.599 --> 00:43:18.239
I wonder what's going on here.
00:43:18.239 --> 00:43:21.760
And uh what I tend to do is say, okay, so I've I've read what you've written here.
00:43:21.760 --> 00:43:24.960
Now, let's put this on one side for a second.
00:43:24.960 --> 00:43:27.199
Tell me what's going on in your business.
00:43:27.199 --> 00:43:31.039
And they are almost invariably far more eloquent.
00:43:31.039 --> 00:43:33.920
And I I just sort of follow up, why is that?
00:43:33.920 --> 00:43:35.360
So there is more competition coming in.
00:43:35.360 --> 00:43:37.199
So what's drawing the competitors in?
00:43:37.199 --> 00:43:38.400
Why the why are they getting into this?
00:43:38.400 --> 00:43:40.000
You've been telling me how difficult it all is.
00:43:40.000 --> 00:43:40.559
What is it?
00:43:40.559 --> 00:43:41.599
It doesn't quite make sense.
00:43:41.599 --> 00:43:49.199
Well, even though and and and you go round and round, and then you end up with something so much richer than what was originally on the page.
00:43:49.199 --> 00:43:56.400
It's curious how I know stuff sort of stays in people's brains and goes round and round.
00:43:56.400 --> 00:44:17.360
And it's this discipline of writing a briefing or writing a statement of intent is really helpful because it involves getting it out of here onto a page and then stepping back and looking at it and thinking, mmm, that's not quite right actually, and then having to explain it to your people and having them comment on it.
00:44:17.360 --> 00:44:19.039
That's terribly fruitful.
00:44:19.039 --> 00:44:24.400
And it's um it means you don't carry this burden of worry around.
00:44:24.400 --> 00:44:26.880
Oh, there's this and there's that going on, there's that going to other.
00:44:26.880 --> 00:44:30.480
Well, let's sort it, let's structure it, let's sort it out.
00:44:30.800 --> 00:44:55.360
I like the the sort of rule and discipline with a good intent, is that you know someone should be able to pick it up and understand what you you want without any further amplifying information, which I think yeah, which I think's great, because I was witness to a strategy just after just when we started back because the first week of January, and they showed me it, and wow, this thing was a monster, absolute monster.
00:44:55.360 --> 00:45:00.159
It was, I think, a hundred and something pages long, and it was dense.
00:45:00.159 --> 00:45:06.719
And I was just like, Yeah, no one's gonna understand this, or at least remember anything pertinent to them in this point.
00:45:06.719 --> 00:45:07.920
Yeah, it was just too much.
00:45:07.920 --> 00:45:08.800
But we're used to that.
00:45:09.039 --> 00:45:14.880
Sounds like it was probably a plan on say you do this, you do that, it all happens, and then that will happen.
00:45:14.880 --> 00:45:19.840
I would probably call it more wishful thinking, but I'm afraid that's what they usually are.
00:45:20.480 --> 00:45:21.119
Yeah.
00:45:21.119 --> 00:45:36.320
The it's been fascinating to discover, and and I always say to people if you if you want to sort of understand Mission Command from a business perspective or a way that makes sense to business, I always say go find, go, go get your book.
00:45:36.320 --> 00:45:39.199
Um that's pretty kind of yeah.
00:45:39.199 --> 00:45:41.119
No, that was my intention.
00:45:41.119 --> 00:45:43.599
That was my intention in writing it.
00:45:43.599 --> 00:45:47.679
Yeah, it's it's definitely there.
00:45:47.679 --> 00:45:56.960
So when you if if you were to think now about what would you like people to think about from this this podcast, would you like to go away and think about from this podcast?
00:45:57.199 --> 00:46:02.000
Or do um doing this is harder than you think.
00:46:02.000 --> 00:46:16.719
But it's it's not impossible, it just involves uh learning how to give good direction, for example, which you might have thought was a basic thing taught in every business school.
00:46:16.719 --> 00:46:19.920
I can't think of a business school that does think that, as a matter of fact.
00:46:19.920 --> 00:46:23.039
All sorts of other laddie dar stuff, but there we are.
00:46:23.039 --> 00:46:26.079
But keep at it, keep persevering.
00:46:26.079 --> 00:46:30.400
You'll find it it gets easier, things will click into place bit by bit.
00:46:30.400 --> 00:46:36.400
I tell people when they're trying to write a good intent, it'll take three goes at least to get a good one.
00:46:36.400 --> 00:46:39.280
The first one's to brain dump and just just let it come out.
00:46:39.280 --> 00:46:41.360
Don't try and fiddle around with it.
00:46:41.360 --> 00:46:43.360
The second one is structuring.
00:46:43.360 --> 00:46:44.719
This is what really matters.
00:46:44.719 --> 00:46:47.920
This is not it's on the list, but it's down there.
00:46:47.920 --> 00:46:49.679
And the third thing is refinement.
00:46:49.679 --> 00:46:58.239
And uh if you if you try and practice that, you will find that your life gets easier and your people get more productive.
00:46:58.239 --> 00:47:01.199
If you want to make a start, just give it really simple.
00:47:01.199 --> 00:47:05.760
And the next time you meet one of your direct reports, don't tell them what you want them to do.
00:47:05.760 --> 00:47:12.880
Tell them what's going on and what you think their role is, and therefore what you'd like them to achieve, and ask them to go away and think about it and come and tell you.
00:47:12.880 --> 00:47:14.639
And you'll be amazed at what difference that makes.
00:47:14.639 --> 00:47:16.000
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:47:16.000 --> 00:47:17.679
Even that.
00:47:18.559 --> 00:47:20.800
Really dead simple.
00:47:20.800 --> 00:47:32.400
I always say there's one thing that I could take and if I could just inject into business, mission command would be that thing, especially business in a volatile, really uncertain environments.
00:47:32.400 --> 00:47:33.760
This is what this is what they need.
00:47:33.760 --> 00:47:37.760
And one thing I love about it is it's not it's not a fad.
00:47:37.760 --> 00:47:39.039
It wasn't invented yesterday.
00:47:39.039 --> 00:47:41.760
It was it's been tried and tested for centuries.
00:47:42.000 --> 00:47:46.800
It's been tested, it's developed in practice, which is a set of practices.
00:47:46.800 --> 00:47:51.280
And uh well, I can only end by agreeing with you wholeheartedly.
00:47:51.280 --> 00:47:53.039
That's what people need.
00:47:53.199 --> 00:47:54.400
Yeah, they are.
00:47:54.559 --> 00:47:55.920
Thank you very much, Ephraim.
00:47:56.320 --> 00:47:58.320
No, no, it's absolutely a pleasure to have you on.
00:47:58.320 --> 00:48:09.039
I've really enjoyed this episode, and to just get your perspective and your especially your deep um understanding of the history but also the context to apply, it's been fantastic.
00:48:09.039 --> 00:48:21.519
And if if listeners liked it, please um subscribe and share to your audience because no doubt there's a lot of people out there that the principles of mission command will be life changing, not to them, but also to their businesses.
00:48:21.519 --> 00:48:23.039
So, thank you very much, Stephen.
00:48:23.039 --> 00:48:25.440
Thank you for coming, and I'll thank you.
00:48:25.440 --> 00:48:27.440
Take care, everyone.
00:48:27.440 --> 00:48:28.239
Bye.