An asymmetric information environment: you see the enemy clearly, and the enemy sees a picture of you that isn’t there.

Summary

• Aggressively and deliberately pursue the information that drives your team’s decisions.

• The better your system for gathering, analyzing, and synthesizing information, the faster your decisions — and the more asymmetric your information environment becomes.

WAR

To make good decisions, it isn’t time that matters most. It’s information. If every relevant and accurate piece of information is in front of you, the correct decision is usually obvious. The problem is that we rarely have all the information we want, and getting it and making use of it takes a long time. The team that shortens the time it takes to gather and process information creates an environment that drives better and faster decisions.

In warfare, one of the biggest competitive advantages you can hold is an asymmetric information environment — which is just a fancy way of saying you know more relevant information than your enemy does.

Economists have a term for it: information asymmetry, one side of a deal knowing more than the other. The idea is important enough that it won three economists the Nobel Prize in 2001, mostly for showing how it warps markets: the used-car seller knows the car is a lemon, the buyer doesn’t, and the whole market bends around that gap. Economics discovered it in markets.

As usual, civilian economists and business leaders are discovering something combat leaders have been using for thousands of years. Sun Tzu put it plainly: “All warfare is based on deception.”

In warfare there are essentially no rules governing information, so everything is on the table. The two main strategies: gather as much accurate information about your enemy as possible, and give your enemy as much bad information about you as possible. The ideal is a completely clear and accurate picture of the enemy’s position while they hold a totally inaccurate picture of yours — and are confident in it.

D-Day

One of the greatest information campaigns in history was run in the months before D-Day. The Allies fought both halves of the information war at once: one effort to see the Germans clearly, and a second to make the Germans confidently wrong.

The first half was seeing the enemy clearly. By 1944, the codebreakers at Bletchley Park had broken the German Enigma ciphers — a program called Ultra — and the Allies were reading much of the German military’s own command traffic. Layer photo-reconnaissance flights and reports from the French Resistance on top of that, and Allied planners held an accurate, current picture of the Atlantic Wall: which defenses were strongest, where the reserves sat, what the German command believed.

The second half was making the Germans confidently wrong. That was Operation Fortitude. The Allies built a phantom invasion force, the First U.S. Army Group (FUSAG), aimed at the Pas de Calais — the shortest hop across the Channel and the militarily obvious choice, which is exactly what made the lie believable. They gave it inflatable tanks, plywood landing craft, scripted radio traffic, and, as its commander, George Patton, the one general the Germans most expected to lead the invasion. Then they delivered the story through the enemy’s own trusted channels: British intelligence had captured or turned essentially every German spy operating in Britain, so the reports flowing back to Berlin were written by the Allies. One double agent, codenamed Garbo, fed the Germans an invented network of sub-agents so convincingly that they awarded him the Iron Cross.

Both halves at once. The phantom army (FUSAG) points at Calais, where the German 15th Army waits for Patton. The real landing goes to Normandy.

The two halves fed each other. Because the Allies were reading German traffic, they could watch their own lie land: the decrypts showed the German 15th Army holding at Calais, waiting for Patton.

On June 6th, the Allies landed at Normandy. The Germans held their strongest force at Calais for weeks afterward, convinced Normandy was the diversion and the real invasion was still coming. It never came. That is a fully asymmetric information environment: a clear and accurate picture of your enemy, while your enemy holds a false picture of you and is confident in it. The Allies didn’t just know more. They knew more, they knew the enemy knew less, and they made every D-Day decision from that high ground.

Tie to the OODA loop

Information asymmetry ties directly into the OODA loop. When I studied the OODA loop, one of my main takeaways was how important the Observation step is. It is the first step, and it feeds every step after it. Gather the relevant information and orient on it, and the decision and the action become obvious. Look at the wrong information — or stop actively gathering it — and the rest of your decision cycle will be wrong, or much slower than your enemy’s.

_{Observe is the step that feeds every other step. Win there, and the rest of the loop turns faster than your enemy’s.}

What this means is that in the Observation step, you are trying to produce an asymmetric information environment. You do that by keenly observing and gathering the information you need to drive the next decision, so you can out-cycle your competitors. The more effectively you gather information and then process it, the better and faster your decisions will be.

The key to out-cycling your enemy’s decision cycle is to deliberately create an asymmetric information environment.

BUSINESS

A business leader is paid to make good decisions. Those decisions allocate resources for months and years, and if the allocations are wrong — pulling resources away from a product or an entire service line — they can literally bankrupt the business. If a leader’s job is to make a few key decisions, they need to make them with accurate and relevant information.

In the business world you can’t do what the military does and relentlessly lie and cheat for an advantage. What you can do is process drastically more information than your competitors — information deliberately and aggressively pursued to make the most accurate decisions possible.

Most businesses spend much of their time fighting internal fires with siloed data that can’t be connected into real insight. If you can figure out what truly drives success in your company, then gather the information behind the decisions that drive that success, and analyze and synthesize it faster than your competitors, you make better and faster decisions than they do.

You create an asymmetric information environment by being extremely deliberate about how you gather the data that drives your most important decisions. Constantly ask what information would make the next decision obvious — then relentlessly attack gathering it.

How I’m using this

In my own business, I’ve been building a database with as much relevant data as I can possibly get. This is the data that drives every decision in the company. If I can outpace my competitors at analyzing it and synthesizing it, and let it drive rapid and accurate decisions, I will out-cycle their OODA loop.

My current data sources:

• Google Ads API

• Google Analytics API

• QuickBooks Online API

• CRM data

• Twilio phone data

• Competitor intel: captures of websites, ads, and landing pages

• Google Search Console

• Compliance data

• DataForSEO

• Semrush

That is essentially a comprehensive list of the data my business produces. The breadth is deliberate: I collect everything so the AI can search everywhere, but I aim it with the specific decision questions I need answered to make my next strategic move.

_{Massing, with data for arrows: every source converges into one database, and one decision comes out the other side.}

With that database in place, I give a frontier AI model keys to it and ask it to analyze and synthesize information across the entire company and compare it to my competitors. That has drastically increased my ability to orient on the most important information for my next most important decision.

The first thing the AI did was link every Google Ad to my CRM to confirm which ads produce actual converted clients. Then it analyzed the copy of those ads and the structure of their landing pages against my competitors’, and immediately improved our landing pages. I would never have had the skill or breadth of knowledge to analyze and synthesize that information the way AI can. The greatest capability of AI will be creating an asymmetric information environment for the decision-makers who let it.

Processing data to drive decisions is what creates an asymmetric information environment in business.

Key takeaways

• Good decisions run on information, not time. The team that gathers and processes it fastest decides best.

• Win the Observation step and the rest of the OODA loop turns faster than your competitor’s.

• You can’t deceive like the Allies did, but you can out-collect and out-process. Decide what questions matter, then build the system that answers them.

References

Macintyre, Ben. Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies. Crown, 2012. Link

Hesketh, Roger. Fortitude: The D-Day Deception Campaign. Overlook, 2000. Link

Boyd, John R. A Discourse on Winning and Losing. Edited by Grant T. Hammond. Air University Press, 2018. Free PDF

Coram, Robert. Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War. Little, Brown, 2002. Link

United States Marine Corps. MCDP 1: Warfighting. 1997. Free PDF

_{BAMCIS: six troop-leading steps on one axis. Ask any Marine which one matters most, and they’ll yell the answer.}

Summary

• Every Marine leader is taught one basic planning process, so that planning becomes reflex under pressure.

• The heart of it is reconnaissance: identify the assumptions your plan depends on, then go confirm them before you commit.

• For business, three steps: analyze the problem and develop options; get answers to the questions that decide between them; decide, execute, and supervise.

WAR

Planning and preparation are huge drivers of success. The military figured that out a long time ago and built standard planning processes to train Marines to plan their operations deliberately. This article covers the most basic one: BAMCIS.

Like most things in the military, BAMCIS is an acronym:

• B — Begin planning

• A — Arrange reconnaissance

• M — Make reconnaissance

• C — Complete the plan

• I — Issue the order

• S — Supervise

It’s taught to young officers and non-commissioned officers as the way to turn a mission into an executable plan, and it is drilled until they think in it naturally in combat. The more repetitions a leader has with the process, the better their decision-making gets.

Here is each step, with what it means for a business leader.

Begin planning

Begin planning is the initial evaluation of the information your commander gave you. Under ideal conditions that arrives as a five-paragraph order or a fragmentary order (frag-o): the friendly and enemy units in the area, your mission, the plan of attack, coordinating instructions, and the supporting assets at your disposal.

The Marine runs that information through an analysis called METT-TC — mission, enemy, terrain and weather, troops and fire support available, time available, and civil considerations — which feeds their own five-paragraph order. (METT-TC and the five-paragraph order each deserve their own article.)

The outcome of Begin planning is a detailed analysis of everything your commander gave you and an initial plan to accomplish the mission.

Part of that initial plan is identifying your risks and assumptions — the gaps in your information that, if filled, would most increase your chance of success. Deciding how to confirm those assumptions is what drives the next step.

Business takeaways

• When you’re handed a problem to solve, an opportunity to capture, or a project to lead, spend real time on the initial planning.

• The main output of that planning is a list: what information do you need to make the best possible decision? Which part of the task do you understand least? What data exists? Who has worked on this before? Who else needs to weigh in?

• That list drives your information-gathering phase, which is the next step.

Arrange reconnaissance and make reconnaissance

The next two letters, A and M, stand for arrange reconnaissance and make reconnaissance. They are separate steps in execution; I’ll cover them together.

Your initial plan carries risks, and most of them trace back to unconfirmed assumptions: about the route, the enemy, the vehicles, the communications. You prioritize those assumptions and arrange reconnaissance against them — specifically the assumptions that, if wrong, would do the most damage to the mission.

The Marine confirms them by any available means: a drone, snipers sent forward, someone who has walked the route before. The most common method is the leader’s recon, because it is always available. You may have no other reconnaissance assets, but you can always go look yourself.

_{The leader’s recon: a small element goes forward from the unit to confirm the one thing the plan can’t survive being wrong about.}

To arrange it, you prioritize what must be confirmed and assign someone — often yourself — to go confirm it. That means leaving a large portion of the platoon or company behind, and it is a risky move: the recon element can get killed or lost, and the Marines left behind can get attacked. The Marine Corps has learned the hard way that it is riskier still to go into combat with too many assumptions in the plan. The recon is worth it.

It’s telling that the Corps split arranging from making. The point of arrange reconnaissance is to force you to think through all of your assumptions and get creative about confirming them. If the process had simply said make reconnaissance, the thinking about how to do it well would have been skipped — and the step would have been treated as a formality.

When the leader returns from reconnaissance, the assumptions are confirmed or disproven, and the plan can be finished.

Business takeaways

• In the previous step you listed the information you need. Now prioritize it by impact and by when it’s needed — the sales data, the financial analysis, the conversation with the engineering stakeholders. Whatever most improves the decision gets gathered first.

• Make a plan to go get it. Delegate within your team or do it yourself, and task whoever goes with exactly what information you need and why.

• That will mean finding the data, setting up stakeholder meetings, reviewing history, and looking at competitors and the market.

Complete the plan

After reconnaissance, the assumptions have been confirmed or proven false, and the leader can make final decisions and accept the remaining risk knowing the preparation has been done. This is the chance to modify the plan — or change it completely — based on what the recon found.

The hill you wanted for a machine-gun position turns out to be a cliff, so the position moves. The river has only one crossing, miles out of the way, so the route changes. The enemy force is twice the size intelligence predicted. Whatever is learned gets incorporated.

_{Complete the plan: the planned route (dashed) ran straight into what the recon found. The completed plan goes around it.}

This is the Marine Corps being adaptive and refusing to fall in love with its plans. A lot of blood was spilled learning that lesson. Rigid plans built on too many assumptions lose.

Business takeaways

• As your questions get answered, update the plan and refine the decision. Keep one living document everyone works from, so the plan the team sees is always the current one.

Issue the order

Now the Marines get the order. The intent is for the team to know the plan as thoroughly as possible. The Corps does this in the five-paragraph format, which conveys the information in a familiar flow and ensures nothing key is left out: if the leader hits every paragraph and subparagraph, everything necessary has been passed. Then it’s time to execute.

Business takeaways

• The business equivalent is the kickoff meeting. Everyone leaves aligned on the plan and clear on their piece of it — and clear on the intent and end state behind it, so they can decide without you when things change.

Supervise

When I was learning BAMCIS, the instructors would ask, “What’s the most important step?” and the whole class would yell, “SUPERVISE!” (Marines like to yell.)

The last step is making sure the work in the plan actually gets done. The first thing to supervise is understanding: have your key leaders back brief you on the overall plan and their responsibilities inside it. That usually looks like them giving you almost the exact brief you just gave them, with you correcting mistakes until every one of them can brief the whole plan clean. Then they do the same with their teams, until the plan is known inside and out at every level. The Marine Corps has a formal version of this called a ROC walk, which is a post of its own.

When execution starts, the leader sets the example, places themselves at the friction points between units, and keeps everyone working as one team toward the mission. It takes many forms, but it usually means being with your team while they work.

_{Supervise: the leader’s place during execution is the friction point between teams, where decisions are needed and sequencing breaks.}

Often all the work has been delegated and the leader has little direct work left in execution. The work that remains is the leader’s alone: be present to deconflict the teams, make timely decisions, and accept work as complete so the team can keep moving.

That is how the Marine Corps uses one simple planning process to help every leader build a plan that wins.

Business takeaways

• Supervising is the most important step of the planning process.

• Check in with your team and show them you’re working alongside them.

• Deconflict teams, make decisions, and accept work quickly, so nobody is waiting on you.

BUSINESS

Every organization would be better off with a basic planning process that can be taught to its leaders and followed by them — paired with a communication format, which is a separate topic. A shared process trains leaders to consider everything that needs considering, and it stops the pattern most companies run on: decisions made without a clear mission, without confirming assumptions, and without honestly analyzing logistics and time.

Here is the version I recommend. It is BAMCIS with the field stripped out: three steps.

_{The business planning process: analyze the problem, get answers to the questions that matter, then decide and execute.}

Step 1: Analyze the problem and develop options

The analysis has three parts: a problem statement, the options, and the questions.

The problem statement is one simplified sentence. “Increase sales in Michigan.” “My team isn’t getting enough exposure, and it’s limiting their promotability.” The point is a problem everyone can understand the same way.

The options are the different ways to solve it. Everything has tradeoffs; you’re looking for the decision with the best terms for your goals. Brainstorm with as many stakeholders as you can, and come out with two to four candidate solutions.

The questions are a parking lot for everything that came up while building the first two parts — prioritized by impact on the decision. The better you understand the options, the more obvious the most important questions become.

Sometimes the right answer is already clear by the end of this step. If so, skip ahead and execute. If not, the questions drive the next step.

Step 2: Get answers to the most important questions

You now have a prioritized list of questions which, if answered, would let you make the best decision available. Get as many answered as time permits. Some take a quick meeting or an email; some take several meetings and real analysis; some you won’t be able to answer at all.

The focus is the exact information needed to make the decision — not a mountain of data. Usually one or two critical pieces point to the solution, and that’s where the effort goes. Once the most important assumptions are validated, you’re ready to decide.

Step 3: Choose the best option and execute

Finalize the path forward by stating each team’s tasks clearly, then confirming they understood — by having them repeat the tasks back, or by having them build their own plan consistent with yours. Confirming understanding from every team member is not optional; it’s the step that saves you in execution. (If you read the Connecting File post, this is the read-back.)

Then execute. Execution is the hardest part, and the leader’s job during it comes down to two things:

• Make decisions. It’s easy to tell two peer teams to work it out themselves — and expensive, because now they spend days negotiating a decision you could have made in a minute. Be there to make it and keep everyone moving.

• Deconflict and sequence your teams. The most common failure when leadership is absent is teams not working together — one starting too early, another too late. That is always a communication failure by the leader, whose job is to sequence the teams. Nothing wastes more resources than bad sequencing. (This is unity of command doing its job.)

There’s a wide spectrum between micromanaging and being hands-off. At certain points in a project the team needs you and will be grateful you’re there; at others your presence only creates work. Find the places you add value: the friction points between teams, and the moments your team needs a decision to keep moving.

Conclusion

A leader is either taking action or preparing to take action, and part of preparing is a solid plan — executable, and built on as many facts as possible. A planning process is how you teach leaders to produce one.

In the Marine Corps, that process is Begin planning, Arrange reconnaissance, Make reconnaissance, Complete the plan, Issue the order, and Supervise. In your organization it can be anything that fits your work. My recommendation:

• Analyze the problem and develop options to solve it.

• Get answers to the most important questions.

• Decide, execute, and supervise.

The biggest lesson: whatever your process is, teach it to the leaders below you. The better the decisions across your organization, the more successful it will be.

Key takeaways

• Marines are taught one planning process until it becomes reflex under pressure. Give your leaders one too.

• Most plans fail on unconfirmed assumptions. Name them, prioritize them, and go confirm the ones that would hurt most.

• Supervise is the most important step: confirm understanding before execution, then stand at the friction points during it.

References

United States Marine Corps, The Basic School. “Tactical Planning Process I” (student handout B2B0255XQ). Link

United States Marine Corps. MCRP 3-10A.4, Marine Rifle Squad. Link

A ROC walk: every key leader gathered around the terrain model, walking their piece of the plan to the objective in front of everyone else.

Summary

• Your entire organization understanding the plan in detail is the key to executing it.

• The best way to teach the plan and confirm understanding is to have each key leader brief their part of it back to you, in front of the other key leaders.

• Correct them and rehearse until every leader can walk the whole plan without a major error.

WAR

In battle, the more thoroughly a team understands the leader’s plan, the better its chance of victory. Understanding of the plan directly drives the speed and quality of every subordinate leader’s decisions.

After enough battles and training exercises, the pattern became impossible to miss: units that understood the plan won, and units that didn’t, didn’t. The process the military built to raise understanding of the plan is the Rehearsal of Concept walk — the ROC walk.

An Australian Army training note defines it well:

A Rehearsal of Concept (ROC) drill is a dry walk-through of a plan between a commander and their subordinates ensuring a shared understanding of the plan. It is not a repeat of the wargame. It allows a final confirmation of particularly complicated portions of the plan and may result in amendments to control measures.

In plain terms: a ROC walk is having every key leader on your team explain, out loud, how they are going to execute your plan. It lets you correct them until they understand the plan thoroughly, and it gives them an immediate channel to feed changes back into the plan.

A simple example, tasking a Marine squad with an attack:

“Sergeant Smith, your squad will attack Hill 22 after First Squad consolidates on Hill 33 and you have good indirect fire suppression on Hill 22. Use green smoke to indicate that all enemy on Hill 22 are destroyed.”

Sergeant Smith goes off and makes his plan. After a set amount of time he comes back and briefs the plan to you, so you can confirm he understood it.

At the scale of one squad, that looks more like micromanagement than coordination. Now scale it up. Imagine three maneuver platoons with weapons attachments, engineers, aircraft, and tanks, all of which have to synchronize during one attack, probably over 200 people. Nobody calls the back brief micromanagement anymore.

The first step is communicating the plan well in the first place. The Marine Corps does this with a thorough planning process — BAMCIS, METT-TC, the Marine Corps Planning Process, if you want the acronyms — and a common briefing format, the five-paragraph order. Those make sure the plan is complete and that it is communicated effectively the first time.

The problem is that many, probably most, of the people listening missed some important piece of it. Worse, they won’t realize they missed it until execution — so they won’t ask you a single question.

The question becomes: how does a leader confirm that everyone actually understands the plan?

They run a ROC walk — a method of having each subordinate leader back brief the plan to you and to the whole group. The high-level process looks like this:

• The commander briefs the plan to the team.

• The team breaks for a set amount of time, so each subordinate leader can review the overall plan and build their own plan for the portion they own.

• The team reassembles, and each subordinate briefs their part of the plan to everyone. The commander corrects and adjusts the plan on the spot, and the group works through contingencies and each leader’s response to them.

• The outcome: every leader walks out with high confidence that everyone understands the plan.

_{Left: the brief is one broadcast, and most of the audience misses something. Right: the back brief is every leader explaining the plan up to the commander — which is where the misses surface and get corrected.}

The best version I have seen makes it physical. Each leader has to move something on a terrain model or a map and talk through all of the conditions surrounding it. When their phase of the plan is complete, they hand off to the next leader, who walks their portion. This is done for the primary plan and for the most likely contingencies.

Along the way your leaders will make mistakes. You correct them on the spot and make them go back over that section until they get it right. You keep going until every leader can walk the entire plan with no mistakes — demonstrating that they understand the intent of each phase and the conditions that have to be in place to move forward.

This kind of back briefing is extremely effective. As a leader, it gives you immense confidence that your team understands every detail, and it gives them a dozen openings to show you what the plan looks like from their perspective. If you read the Connecting File post, you’ll recognize what this is: the read-back, scaled up to the whole plan.

Then the leaders who have been through a ROC walk go run one with their own teams, and the understanding starts to permeate the entire unit. If the lowest-ranking rifleman can back brief the plan, your chance of success skyrockets.

_{The cascade: each leader runs the walk with their own team, and the test of the whole thing is the last rifleman on the line. If he can brief the plan, the unit understands it.}

Better understanding, more flexibility

My initial instinct was that the more detailed your planning, the more rigid your execution. In my experience it’s the opposite. The better your team understands the plan, the easier it is to change it. The shared context built during planning gives everyone a framework to flex from.

If your subordinate leaders deeply understand their role in fulfilling the intent and the conditions of each phase, they can make good decisions without your input.

Eisenhower put it in one line: “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” The plan is not the important part. The understanding of the plan is. The more everyone understands the purpose and reasoning behind each decision inside the plan, the better their decisions will be when the plan starts to change — and it will.

BUSINESS

The ROC walk translates directly to the civilian world — with one prerequisite that is, honestly, where most companies fall down.

First, the leader needs a plan. This is a common gap: plenty of goals and objectives get set, but a detailed plan to accomplish them — with priorities and deconfliction across the whole organization — doesn’t exist. (The real work a leader does is deconflicting and supporting their teams at the friction points. That’s a post of its own.)

Assuming you have a plan, the steps are the same ones the Marines use:

• Brief the plan to your team to get buy-in and make adjustments.

• Give them adequate time to process it and plan their own portion.

• Bring everyone back, and have each key leader present how they are going to execute their part — with every other key leader in the room to ask questions and clarify.

The intent of that session is for each key leader to demonstrate three things: a deep understanding of the whole plan, a detailed plan for their own portion, and an eye for where deconfliction between departments is needed.

What it looks like in practice: say the plan is a product launch. Marketing, engineering, operations, and sales each own a phase on one shared timeline. The marketing lead walks the launch campaign against the dates the engineering lead just committed to — and the room discovers the campaign goes live a week before the feature does. The ops lead walks fulfillment and realizes nobody has told sales what the stock constraint is. None of those are mistakes anyone would have found in a status meeting. All of them surface in twenty minutes when the leads have to walk the plan in front of each other, in sequence, phase by phase.

_{A business ROC walk: one timeline, one objective, each lead walking their phase in order. The seams between departments are where the plan breaks — and where the walk catches it.}

Correct on the spot, exactly as in the field. Where a lead’s understanding is off, fix it in the room; where the plan is wrong, change the plan. Then send your leads to run the same walk with their own teams. The goal is the same as the rifleman test: can the person actually doing the work explain how their piece fits the whole?

Every key leader should come out of a ROC walk confident that everyone is working toward the same goals, and clear on the priorities that set the conditions for each phase of the plan.

Key takeaways

• A briefed plan is not an understood plan. Most of your team missed something, and they won’t know it until execution.

• Confirm understanding by having each key leader walk their part of the plan back to you, in front of the others, until nobody makes a major error.

• Understanding is what makes a plan flexible: a team that deeply understands the plan can change it; a team that merely received it can’t.

References

Birch, Anthony (LTCOL), and Huw Kirby (MAJ). “ROC Drills — Observations from Combat Training Centre.” Australian Army, The Cove. Link

_{This is the first post in a series on discipline — the Fieldcraft side of War and Business, where the subject drops from the team to the individual. I’m going to write a lot about discipline, because it’s the most important driver of success that almost nobody can define.}

Other than talent, I believe discipline is the biggest driver of success for any person or team. If you don’t believe that, it’s probably because you don’t share my definition of discipline.

The word is confusing. Ask most people to define it and they won’t have much of an answer, let alone an accurate one. Even the big voices who preach discipline — Joe Rogan, Jocko Willink, David Goggins — mostly land on some version of “doing what you’re supposed to do even when you don’t feel like it.” (Here is an entire video of Jocko Willink talking about discipline as generally improving yourself, without ever actually defining it.) Doing hard things when you don’t want to is part of discipline. It is not a definition of it.

If you’re a normal person trying to become more disciplined, and your only definition is “do things when you don’t feel like doing them,” you have nothing to grab hold of. The way forward stays confusing — mostly because we don’t actually know what we’re trying to build.

So: discipline is one of the most important drivers of success for any person or team, and as a society we barely know what it is. That’s a crazy situation to be in.

I’m going to set in my defensive position and die on this hill. My definition of discipline:

Discipline is meeting a standard, at the frequency required, to accomplish a goal.

That’s it. Three parts. A standard — the thing you do, and how well you do it. A frequency — how often you meet it. A goal — what meeting it is for. It works the same for a team or an individual: meet the standard, at the frequency, and the goal arrives.

How I landed on this definition

I’ve been trying to figure out what discipline is for years. I’m in the Marine Corps, and most people would agree the Marine Corps is the most disciplined branch of the military. So the obvious question I asked myself: what makes the Marine Corps more disciplined than every other branch?

I interact with the Navy the most, and when I thought about the difference, it came down to this: the Marine Corps has higher standards. And the organization — mostly its leaders — holds itself and everyone in it accountable to those standards. If you don’t meet them, the Marine Corps will, with absolutely no empathy at all, remove you, because you are not meeting the required standard.

What I landed on: the difference between discipline in the Marine Corps and the other branches is meeting a higher standard, frequently enough to accomplish the organization’s goals.

Once I had that framework, I started thinking about the people in my life who were more disciplined than me — in school, in sports, at work. In every case, they had higher standards, and they met those standards more often than I did.

Examples of discipline

Being a disciplined student means holding high standards and meeting them for the entire semester. You organize your coursework, do all the reading, finish every assignment, start and finish your essays well in advance. Those are high standards, and meeting them all semester long is the frequency. Do both, and the goal — good grades — takes care of itself.

I was not that student. I held myself to low standards: unorganized, nothing finished early. So I met a very strict standard in short bursts — cramming — to get passing results. Not only was my standard low most of the time, but I met the strict one with no consistency at all, so I got average results. If you’ve seen the discipline matrix in my Team Discipline post, that’s the top-left quadrant: a high standard met with no frequency. It works well enough to survive and never well enough to excel.

Being disciplined about exercise means meeting a standard at a frequency that accomplishes your fitness goal. Say you want to run a marathon. That means you’re going to run a certain number of times per week — call it four. Running is the standard; four times a week is the frequency. As you get stronger, the standard rises: farther, faster, more often. The best marathon runners in the world run over 100 miles a week, at a pace a normal runner couldn’t hold for a quarter mile. Extremely high standards, met week after week for years, plus talent — that’s how they became who they are.

_{The equation of discipline: standards on one axis, frequency on the other, and the star is the goal met. Cramming lives in the top-left — high standard, low frequency.}

We could go on. In almost every case, the people who are more successful at a specific goal have met a higher standard, more frequently, for longer than you have.

That is what discipline is.

The combined arms dilemma: pressure from two different kinds of threat at once, so every choice the enemy makes is wrong.

Summary

• A combined arms dilemma puts your competition in a bind with no good choices.

• Find the two most important ways you compete, and pressure both hard enough to force your competition’s hand.

WAR

Imagine that you’re a newly recruited German soldier in WWI. You just rode a train for days to get to the western front. After a couple of weeks in the trench, you realize that your feet are constantly soaking wet and you barely get anything to eat. When you get an opportunity to sleep, it’s in a small dugout in the trench.

At dawn one morning, huge artillery shells start landing all around you. The explosions are the loudest things you’ve ever heard. Dirt and mud rain down on you after every blast. You see soldiers farther down the trench take a direct hit from a shell that tears their bodies to shreds. You dive into the deepest part of the trench. You feel like you’re lying there for hours waiting for the explosions to stop. Eventually they slow, and then they stop.

Right when they stop, heavy machine-gun fire starts ripping just above the lip of the trench. You don’t dare lift your head, but you know the Americans are attacking. You hear the shouts and the gunfire getting closer. The fire above your head is still too heavy to shoot back into. Then two enemy hand grenades land in the trench right next to you. You have nowhere to go, so you jump out of the trench to escape the blasts. As you climb, one of the grenades explodes behind you, peppering you with hot metal fragments. You stumble but keep climbing to get away from the second one. As you reach the crest of the trench, the horizon starts to open up. You see a US Marine fifty yards away, his rifle fixed on you. You see his muzzle flash as he fires. You’re now on your back, looking up at the blue skies above Belleau Wood, France, taking your last breaths.

That is a combined arms dilemma: putting your enemy in a no-win situation. Stay in cover and die from a bomb, or come out of cover and die from a bullet. The Marine Corps infantry is built from the ground up to create exactly this dilemma, and it’s written into our foundational doctrine:

Combined arms is the full integration of arms in such a way that in order to counteract one, the enemy must make himself more vulnerable to another. We pose the enemy with not just a problem, but a dilemma — a no-win situation. (MCDP 1, Warfighting)

Three concepts make the dilemma work: direct fire, indirect fire, and defilade.

Direct and indirect fire

At the highest level, there are two types of weapon systems:

Direct fire — rifles and machine guns. These fire bullets directly at the enemy. To affect the enemy with direct fire, you have to be fairly close — within a couple thousand meters — and exposed to them. If you can shoot them, they can shoot you. (A rare exception: you can actually arc machine-gun fire over small hills onto the enemy.)

Indirect fire — aircraft, artillery, rockets, mortars, and grenades. These drop bombs indirectly on the enemy. The most important property of indirect fire is that it can reach an enemy who is hiding behind cover — the bomb comes down on them, or is thrown in with them. You can also deliver it from much farther away. The trade-off: indirect fire is far less available, and usually has to be authorized by a higher command.

What is defilade?

At any moment, an individual enemy soldier is doing one of two things:

In defilade — hiding behind something that stops bullets: a hill, a wall, a tree, a bunker. This is closely related to “cover.” In defilade, they are only vulnerable to indirect fire, and they usually can’t — or don’t — shoot back, which makes them less of a threat to friendly troops. If our fire forces them into defilade, they are suppressed.

Exposed — out from behind cover, moving or returning fire. Exposed, they are vulnerable to both direct and indirect fire: a bullet or a bomb. Even a soldier in a good fighting position or bunker is barely exposed — but technically still exposed.

_{The dilemma in one picture. Behind the berm, the enemy is safe from bullets but not from bombs. Step out from behind it, and the rifle is waiting.}

Implementing the combined arms dilemma

As a leader, it’s your job to coordinate your resources to put the enemy in a combined arms dilemma — and infantry units are equipped to do it at every level:

• Regiment and division (thousands of Marines): jets, helicopters, rockets, artillery, and naval gunfire — heavy indirect fires used to break up and suppress large enemy formations.

• Battalion (under a thousand Marines): 81mm mortars, anti-tank rockets, and heavy machine guns (.50-caliber and automatic grenade launchers) — scaled to the size of enemy a battalion is tasked to attack.

• Company (a few hundred Marines): 60mm mortars, lighter rockets, and medium machine guns — capable against a platoon-sized enemy position.

• Squad and platoon (a dozen to a few dozen Marines): grenade launchers, hand grenades, and individual weapons.

Even at the smallest level, two Marines in a buddy pair can create a combined arms dilemma: one Marine suppresses the bunker with his rifle while the other crawls up and throws a hand grenade into it.

_{The smallest combined arms dilemma there is: one Marine pins the enemy behind cover, the other closes with the grenade.}

From the division down to the buddy pair, the structure of every unit is built to put the enemy in a no-win scenario. They’ll either die from getting shot or die from getting blown up. Death is coming either way.

BUSINESS

There are no circumstances where you’ll be pinning an enemy down and lobbing high explosives at them. But the concept translates directly, in two main ways:

• Put your competition in a bind by outperforming them in the critical areas of your industry.

• Set up your teams so they can keep that pressure on with as little outside support as possible.

Strategy

Putting your competition in a bind is very possible in the business world. If you’re the best at a few of the things that matter most to your customers, you’ll excel in your industry. Two questions get you there:

• What are the most important ways we compete? (Product, service, price, guarantee, customer experience, and so on.)

• Is there a strategy that pressures our competition in more than one of those ways at once — forcing them into a hard choice?

The way you win is to put your resources toward beating the competition in at least the two most important ways. Coming out of those questions, you should be able to say something like:

“As a team, we are going to win at Thing 1 and Thing 2. Those are the two most important things we can deliver, and if we excel at both, our competition is in a bind.” That is your combined arms dilemma.

_{Pick the two things that matter most to your customer, and win both. Your competition now has to allocate perfectly on two fronts at once — and they almost certainly can’t.}

If you’ve chosen the right combined arms dilemma for your industry, your competition has to allocate their resources perfectly or start losing ground. They almost certainly can’t — which is exactly why this concept is powerful. Keep improving on the few things that matter most to your customer, build your teams to execute on them, and the advantage compounds.

Team setup

Next, set up your teams with the mix of skills to make progress fast and keep the pressure on. The better a team can handle problems at the lowest level, under a single leader, the faster the work gets done. The question to ask:

• Are our teams set up to execute our combined arms dilemma at the lowest level?

This is the equivalent of putting direct and indirect fire weapons on every team. In your industry, maybe that means product, merchandising, and sales working on the same team and reporting to the same general manager — the same logic as a Scrum team in software. A team built that way can support your highest-priority accounts with very little outside help.

Your teams will be most effective when they have the right skills on board, report to a unified leader, and that leader is responsible for executing the combined arms dilemma you’ve chosen.

Conclusion

Identify the things that matter most in your industry. Build teams capable of executing on them at the lowest level — and when a problem is too big for the team, they call in more assets, the same way a squad calls for mortars. Do both, and you’re no longer handing your competition problems to solve.

You’re posing them a dilemma.

References

United States Marine Corps. MCDP 1: Warfighting. 1997. Free PDF

_{A connecting file: a deliberate point of contact between two units, so critical messages move even when everything else fails.}

Summary

• The most reliable communication is in person: one leader looks another in the eye, delivers the message, and hears it repeated back.

• A connecting file is a planned point of direct contact between two teams, used to confirm that conditions are set.

• Communicate at milestones, leader to leader, in the smallest group possible — and cancel the standing status meetings.

Subscribe now

WAR

Imagine that you are the commander of a 40-Marine platoon. Your platoon’s mission is to destroy the enemy on a key hill — the first objective. The second objective is a radio tower that will be attacked by a different platoon. That platoon will execute only after you signal that your attack succeeded.

Your Marines attack the hill. When you reach the top, there are dozens of dead enemy fighters. Two of your Marines were killed in action and four were wounded. You are out of breath and barely able to think, and your Marines must set in 180-degree security facing enemy territory.

Now you need to signal the other platoon, or they won’t move. Between heavy breaths, you call them on the radio to start their attack on the tower. No response. You try again. No response. You throw a red smoke grenade — but you’re pretty sure they can’t see it from their position.

What do you do next? There are a million things you could do. None of them are fun.

This situation is the genesis of the connecting file. In battle, the speed and reliability of communication is the difference between life and death.

A connecting file is a deliberate point where two separate units stay close enough to pass critical messages by voice or by sight. The farthest Marine on one unit’s flank can physically see or hear the nearest Marine of the next unit.

Now imagine that in the same attack, you had placed a Marine in position to keep visual or audible contact with the platoon at the tower. When the conditions were set for their attack, that Marine literally yells at them, or gives a physical signal, and their attack begins. That is a connecting file.

_{Left: the radios are down and the message dies en route. Right: a Marine placed between the units carries it the rest of the way.}

In the infantry, we always plan a primary, secondary, and tertiary means of communication — and we’ll often use all three, even when the primary seems to have worked. We communicate with radios, hand-and-arm signals, yelling, smoke, pyro (like small fireworks), flags, and whistles: whatever gets people’s attention. As long as you aren’t confusing anyone or stepping on other traffic, more communication is better, because the intention is always to increase reliability.

The question quickly becomes: what is the most reliable form of communication?

The answer: a Marine with a message.

The situation in battle is constantly changing, and passing updated information is vital for success. A connecting file lets leaders pass information without radios. When radios fail, a Marine with a message will deliver. Reliability is king.

Challenges of a connecting file

A connecting file has real costs. First, it takes considerable physical coordination to keep two units in contact: one unit may be moving faster in the attack than the other, or the terrain and vegetation may be so thick that staying connected is hard. The leaders of both units have to work at it.

Second, the leader has to brief the message to another Marine well enough that it passes through the file accurately. That Marine has to understand the plan and be an effective communicator. All of it takes more time and effort from everyone involved.

In general, a connecting file costs more than a simple radio call. What you buy with that effort is reliability — and in both battle and business, reliable communication wins the day.

Benefits of a connecting file

The main benefit is reliability. Passing a critical message from key leader to key leader is the ideal; every other means is a downgrade, and every downgrade dilutes the message. Pass it over the radio, and it gets diluted. Send an email instead of making the call, and it gets diluted. Route it through too many people, and it gets diluted. Skip having the person say it back to you, and it gets diluted. The list is endless.

The connecting file is the least diluted battlefield communication the infantry has.

BUSINESS

In the business world, almost all problems trace back to ineffective communication from leadership. The lesson of the connecting file: pass critical information through direct contact between leaders.

Critical information

Critical information should be an agreed-upon milestone — something one team accomplishes that directly affects other teams, usually because it opens up a chunk of work for them to execute.

The military version: an objective has been secured, and signals go out — including a direct message through a connecting file — so everyone knows. The business version: a contract gets signed, or a prototype is approved. It’s the milestone leaders are waiting on so they can turn their teams to the next phase.

Communication frequency

A key lesson of the connecting file is that the communication is not done until the milestone is complete. Along the way, quick progress notes at most — no extensive reporting from the working team. In business, extensive weekly or even daily project updates are common, and they are a heavy burden on the team. The alternative:

• The leader sets the team’s objective, so leadership is comfortable knowing exactly what the team is working on.

• The major milestones — and the communication plan around them — are agreed on by every affected party: “when the team finishes this, bring everyone together for a full update.”

• Between milestones, very little broad communication is needed. Everyone knows what the team is working on and trusts that when the milestone is reached, they’ll hear about it.

_{Communicate at the milestones, not on the calendar. The burst of communication happens when a line is crossed — and the big one triggers the full update.}

The standard weekly or daily status meeting should be eliminated. That frees everyone’s calendar for work — and for the short, purposeful conversations that actually move it.

Leader-to-leader communication

Communication spreads through a team like a virus: it starts with one person and flows outward through the organization. If the first transmission is clear and comes from the leader, the strain is strong. The connecting file is the strong inception of a message between two teams.

The simplest and most reliable form is a direct connecting file from one leader to another. When a key event occurs, communicate directly and clearly with the key leaders of every affected team. In order of reliability, the channels run: in person, video call, phone, chat, and then email. The more effort the channel demands, the better the result — and the result of communication is how well the other party understands your message.

_{The dilution ladder. Every step down costs understanding. Send critical messages from as high on the ladder as you can manage.}

A connecting-file meeting takes one of three forms:

• One-on-one or small-group conversations when there is actually something to update — not a standing 30- or 60-minute weekly call. Discuss the relevant updates, and the meeting is over.

• Group meetings of no more than five people to solve a specific problem that needs input from everyone.

• Large group meetings for leadership to present future plans, get feedback on them, and update everyone on progress.

Almost all recurring meetings should be canceled to free that time, so people can call or meet individually for five to thirty minutes when there is a reason to. It is more efficient to update people quickly and purposefully when something has actually happened than to hold a meeting because the calendar says so. If you truly need a recurring meeting, scope it to one group of stakeholders, so you can pass exactly the information most relevant to them.

If you lead a hundred people, you can’t meet every person one-on-one to deliver a message. You can meet every leader and stakeholder — and make sure the message lands with them. Communicate through the smallest group possible or the largest group possible: an intimate discussion of five or fewer, or a mass update to all stakeholders at a town hall. It’s the medium-sized standing meeting in between that wastes everyone’s time.

The worst meetings are the weekly recurring ones where no one participates but the leader — and for some reason, those are the predominant meetings in the business world. Most people measure their effectiveness by how packed their calendar is, not by how many problems they solve.

One diagnostic to carry with you: when you see confusion in your team or your stakeholders, your communication has not been clear enough. That is the sign that a connecting file needs to be established.

In ideal conditions, one person looks another in the eye and tells them the message, and that person repeats it back to confirm understanding. The connecting file is the closest thing to ideal communication anyone can get.

Key takeaways

• Deliver critical messages leader to leader, in person, with a read-back to confirm understanding.

• Define the milestones that matter, then communicate at milestones — not on a calendar cadence.

• Cancel the standing status meetings. Meet in the smallest group possible or address the largest, for minutes at a time, on purpose.

• When you see confusion, that’s the signal: establish a connecting file.

_{Discipline is the whole formation holding the line. The red unit is where it starts to break.}

Summary

• Discipline is meeting a standard, at the frequency required, to accomplish a goal — the standard, the frequency, and the goal it serves.

• Set standards the team believes in, and communicate the expectation so no one can say they didn’t know.

• Drive consistency with supervision and visible tracking. Praise publicly; support privately.

WAR

Imagine that you are a Marine infantryman. It’s over 100 degrees in the middle of an Afghan summer. You’ve spent the last two days searching dozens of compounds in Taliban-controlled territory. The 60 pounds of weight on your back is crushing your shoulders. You’ve barely slept, and you are dehydrated and hungry.

To search a compound, you take a long stick with a hook on the end and scrape the ground around the entrance to confirm there is no improvised explosive device hidden under the dirt. The next compound you’re tasked with clearing looks like a family lives there. It doesn’t seem threatening. Your exhausted mind justifies not scraping the entryway. Instead, you do a quick scan with your eyes for any disturbance in the ground. You don’t see anything. You take a step over the threshold.

You wake up in a hospital in Germany seven days later with both of your legs missing.

In combat, the smallest things make a huge difference. Did you coordinate the plan? Clean your rifle? Double-check your gear? Scrape every single doorway for booby traps? Everything adds to your chance to win and survive. Discipline wards off complacency by keeping you prepared.

Whoever has the most discipline slowly gains an edge on their enemy. An organization can have better weapons and more technology, but the true difference-maker is an unbreakable will to fight and the discipline to execute every day.

The mentality of discipline

Male Marines are expected to shave every day. Shaving has almost no tactical value. The only reason for it is that it gives your gas mask a tighter seal — and the vast majority of the time, we operate without gas masks, so even that rationale rarely applies.

So why do we force ourselves through the highly inconvenient task of shaving when we’re in the field, it’s 20 degrees outside, and there is no warm water?

The reason is discipline.

Shaving every day is the Marine Corps standard, and we don’t drop our standards no matter the circumstance. When a team stops shaving, next they’ll stop cleaning their weapons, then they’ll stop prepping their gear, then they’ll stop checking every entryway for improvised explosive devices.

_{Standards fall in sequence. Nobody skips straight to the one that kills you — they slide there, one dropped standard at a time.}

If a person or a team holds themselves to high standards in one area, it’s much more likely they’ll hold high standards in other areas as well.

The mentality of discipline transcends all things.

What is discipline?

I define discipline as meeting a standard, at the frequency required, to accomplish a goal. That gives the equation three parts: the standard, the frequency, and the goal.

The more consistent you are, the more disciplined you are. The higher your standards, the more disciplined you are. If you’re very consistent and hold high standards, you are extremely disciplined.

You can be very consistent but barely meet the standard — just disciplined enough. You can also lack consistency but exceed the standard through intermittent bursts of extreme effort — you’d likely meet the standard, but you would not be very disciplined.

_{The equation of discipline: consistency on one axis, standards on the other. The star is where disciplined teams live — high standards, met every day.}

The Marine Corps is known for its discipline. The reason: our leaders set high standards and consistently hold us to them. There are very few exceptions to our basic standards, and if you show that you can’t meet the level of discipline the organization requires, you will be removed. It’s not personal; it’s just business. Our currency is discipline, and everyone has to pay up.

BUSINESS

A disciplined team sets a standard and meets that standard consistently. If you want more discipline, set a higher standard and get more consistency.

Setting standards

You cannot have discipline without an established standard. A standard can be very simple: “This team publishes a report every day.” “For this shift, you show up at the exact time.” “Before any major strategic decision, we discuss it with this team.”

Once the standard is set, the expectation to meet it must be clearly communicated. Communicating the expectation stops anyone from saying they didn’t know, and it gives people the opportunity to ask clarifying questions and to raise risks to their ability to meet it. If the standard has been defined and the expectation communicated, leaders and teammates alike should feel comfortable holding everyone to it.

If a team deeply believes that maintaining the standard is fair and supports the team’s success, the team will start to self-regulate. When the entire team — not just the leadership — holds everyone to the standard, discipline is perpetually maintained.

The key is that the team deeply believes in the standards. Ideally, everyone contributes to forming them, which lets each team member suggest tweaks based on their own experience. The more collaborative the setting of the standards, the higher the belief in them.

Sometimes leadership has to establish a standard with little input from the team, or a new team member arrives after the standard is set. In those cases, the leadership and the more experienced team members should thoroughly explain why the standard matters. If the reason behind a standard is understood, belief in it can be maintained.

The intent is that everyone believes in the purpose of the standards and understands them thoroughly.

Driving consistency

Leadership supervision is the most effective way to drive consistency. If the team knows a leader will consistently inspect whether the standard is being met, they are far more likely to maintain it. That takes moral courage — the willingness to correct people when the standard isn’t met, and the willingness to support the people who are struggling to meet it. A good team works to bring everyone into standard, because they believe it helps the team succeed.

The inspected standard is the maintained standard. Supervision isn’t distrust — it’s the leader’s share of the discipline.

A more advanced way to drive consistency is a visual tracking system. The output is a manual or automated metric that drives consistency and accountability across the team. It can be as simple as everyone self-reporting on a whiteboard whether they met the standard that day, or as advanced as a dashboard producing up-to-the-minute data. The book The 4 Disciplines of Execution explains visual tracking systems very well.

A tracking system shows you who exceeds the standard and who struggles to meet it. People who consistently exceed the standard should be praised in public. People who don’t meet it should be supported in private. And if someone cannot meet the standard even with the team’s full support, it quickly becomes clear they are not a good fit. The team needs to succeed and fail together.

If a team is consistently meeting its standards, the team’s overall goals should be getting met — and that is another metric to track. When goals are visibly being met, belief in the standards grows stronger.

Conclusion

If you lead a team and want it to be more disciplined, ask yourself:

• Does the team have standards for its work?

• Is the expectation to meet those standards well understood by everyone?

• Is the consistency of meeting the standards being tracked or supervised?

Those questions identify the gaps in the equation of discipline. Once you know the gap, fill it: set the standard, explain it clearly, and hold your team to it.

References

McChesney, Chris; Covey, Sean; and Huling, Jim. The 4 Disciplines of Execution. Link

Unity of command: one commander, with the authority to direct everyone working toward the objective.

Summary

• Assign a single person who is responsible for solving the problem.

• For cross-functional work, set up a project team with a single leader and every capability needed to solve the problem.

WAR

Unity of command is one of the nine principles of war. It is the principle that overall responsibility should be assigned to a single person. That gives them the authority to sequence and allocate everyone on the team so it is as effective as possible at achieving the goal.

The US Marine Corps defines unity of command in MCWP 3-10, MAGTF Ground Operations, as:

Unity of command means that all forces operate under a single commander with the requisite authority to direct all forces employed in pursuit of a common purpose… Unity of effort, the coordination and cooperation toward common objectives, even if the participants are not necessarily part of the same command or organization, is the product of successful unified action. Commander’s intent, what must happen and a description of the end state, is the foundation for both unity of command and unity of effort.

The need for a single commander was learned repeatedly in combat. Operations failed because no one had the authority to put all the pieces together and get the most out of the team.

Allocation of scarce resources

It is very hard to get complex teams to work together without a single designated leader. Even with selfless and competent leaders, there will always be disagreements about priorities, because some teams will inevitably have to sacrifice more than others.

Every leader wants their team to succeed, and to succeed they want as many resources as possible. Resources are always limited. Deciding which team gets them is where the sacrifices begin.

That prioritization has to be a single leader’s decision.

Sequencing of teams

Sequencing is another decision that belongs to a single leader. The timing of when each team executes its work is important and delicate.

Perfect execution would be a perfectly orchestrated sequence: each team hits its timeline exactly, which lets the next team start its share of the work.

Perfect sequencing never happens in real life, so every team is sequencing as well as it can. Bad sequencing generally happens because no one is holding anyone back. If every team pushes full bore toward the goal, a bottleneck develops, and one team ends up blocking everyone else.

Three teams on one timeline. The lead team has reached the red phase line and has to wait. Without one leader holding the others back, this is where the bottleneck forms.

A single leader has the responsibility to hold teams back and sequence them as close to perfectly as possible.

Decision-making with or without unity of command

The decisions needed to prioritize and sequence resources are best made by a single responsible person.

Without one, those decisions have to be made by mutual agreement, which is sometimes impossible and always slow. Reaching consensus on every decision as a leadership team takes considerable time and effort.

It is much more efficient to have a single leader who can take in all the inputs and drive the decisions.

Example

Imagine you are a Marine sergeant leading a squad of 12 Marines. You are tasked with setting up a small forward operating base alongside another squad, also led by a sergeant. While building the base’s security plan, the two of you disagree about how to position the machine guns. You are the same rank, and neither of you was assigned as the leader for this task. Friction follows, decision-making slows, and a power struggle sets in.

That is a lack of unity of command.

Left: two equal squads and no one above them. The red frame is the gap where a commander should be. Right: unity of command.

When no one responsible is assigned to a task, it either doesn’t get done or doesn’t get done well.

This applies at every level, from a small task to a large operation. Size doesn’t matter. What matters is that one person is put in charge, all decisions and responsibility stop with them, and the entire team understands their authority.

BUSINESS

Unity of command translates cleanly to the civilian world.

When you assign a task or a project, make it clear that there is one responsible person, and make that person as close to the problem as possible.

In business this is harder than it sounds. A project involves many teams, most of them in different departments, and the first person with authority over all of them is often a vice president or higher.

That is a problem. Vice presidents are generally pure leaders; they will not be closely involved in a cross-functional task or project.

In that situation, the Marine Corps would put people in direct support of the effort and still assign one leader, usually the ground commander closest to the fight.

In the civilian world, that should be the leader closest to the problem, and they should be given a cross-functional team so they can succeed.

This is what that looks like:

• Your priority projects have a dedicated team with every key department represented (procurement, finance, marketing, operations, engineering, and so on).

• All of those people report to one leader, who is given decision-making authority.

• The project is their highest priority. All other work stops.

• Team members are not tasked with anything that affects their project work. If they have spare capacity, they can ask their department lead for more, with the project lead’s agreement.

• Work is prioritized through the project leader. Department leaders provide assistance and expert advice.

One project lead with decision-making authority over a dedicated cross-functional team. Department leads advise; the project lead prioritizes.

The only argument against this setup is “we don’t have enough people to dedicate to projects.” That means you are doing too many projects. Focus on the most important ones with the people you have.

The ideal state: your highest-priority project has a dedicated team with every kind of expertise it needs, working together and reporting to a single leader who is responsible for its success. That leader may not be from their department. A marketing person can take priorities from an operations person, if that is the right leader.

This is very similar to how Scrum works in software development.

Key takeaways

• Assign one leader to fix the problem and give them a team with all the knowledge and capabilities needed to succeed.

• The entire team should know that person is their leader and that all responsibility stops with them.

References

Headquarters United States Marine Corps. 2018, April. MCWP 3-10 MAGTF Ground Operations. Link

• Commander’s intent and end state tell the team the purpose of a task and what done looks like.

• Armed with that, a team can make decisions in a dynamic environment without waiting on leadership.

• When the original plan falls apart, they keep working toward the intent and end state they were given.

WAR

The commander’s intent and end state are two of the most important concepts in military leadership. Many objectives have been lost because they were not understood.

Let’s start with the definitions.

Commander’s intent:

• Commander — a person in authority.

• Intention — an aim or plan.

Combine them and you get “a person of authority’s aim.” The commander’s intent is the leader’s desired outcome.

End state:

• End — come or bring to a final point; finish.

• State — the particular condition that someone or something is in at a specific time.

Combine them and you get “the final condition of someone or something at a specific time.” The end state is the vision for the outcome.

The best official definition comes from an Army publication:

The commander’s intent succinctly describes what constitutes success for the operation. It includes the operation’s purpose, key tasks, and the conditions that define the end state. It links the mission, concept of operations, and tasks to subordinate units. A clear commander’s intent facilitates a shared understanding and focuses on the overall conditions that represent mission accomplishment. During execution, the commander’s intent spurs disciplined initiative. (ADRP 5-0, p. 2-19)

A clear commander’s intent and end state empower a team to make decisions. People act confidently because they understand the purpose and the goal — and they no longer need to confirm every decision with leadership.

Examples of commander’s intent

The best way to show the impact of a commander’s intent is through examples.

Example 1:

• Friendly situation: You are a squad leader with three teams. Each team has one corporal team leader and three riflemen — thirteen Marines in total, including you. You are currently on Hill 11 (see figure below).

• Enemy situation: A likely enemy fire team on Hill 22 — one corporal team leader and three riflemen.

• Mission: Destroy the enemy on Hill 22.

• Commander’s intent: None.

• End state: None.

Your squad approaches Hill 22. When you get within visible distance, the enemy is not on Hill 22. You can see them on Hill 33.

As the leader, what do you do?

Do you:

• Attack Hill 22, hoping that taking the hill was the point of the mission.

• Attack Hill 33 to destroy the enemy fire team that is there.

Without the commander’s intent or end state, there is no correct answer.

The situation: your squad on Hill 11, an empty objective on Hill 22, the enemy now on Hill 33. Without intent, both axes are defensible.

The commander may have wanted Hill 22 because it is key terrain in the area — in that case, you should take Hill 22. Or the commander may have wanted Hill 22 because the enemy was on it — in that case, you should change direction and attack Hill 33.

Let’s add the commander’s intent and end state to the original mission.

• Mission: Destroy the enemy on Hill 22.

• Commander’s intent: In order to clear all enemy presence in the area of operations.

• End state: No enemy is able to attack friendly installations in the area of operations.

Now you face the same situation — the enemy has moved to Hill 33. What do you do?

With the intent of clearing the enemy and an end state where the enemy cannot operate, you attack Hill 33.

Example 2:

• Mission: Destroy the enemy on Hill 22.

• Commander’s intent: In order to control the observation post on Hill 22.

• End state: Friendly forces are able to freely use the observation post on Hill 22 to observe the surrounding area.

What do you do with this intent? You attack Hill 22, no matter what — even though the enemy has moved to Hill 33.

Same situation, two different intents, two different correct answers. The intent — not the original task — tells you where the arrow goes.

Same mission statement, opposite answers. That is how much these two sentences change execution. Understanding the purpose and the end goal of a task changes how people execute it.

Format for commander’s intent

In the Marine Corps, the commander’s intent is woven into the five-paragraph order — the format leaders use to communicate their plan. Intent is given in a few ways.

First, the execution paragraph has a subparagraph reserved specifically for it. The commander literally says, “My commander’s intent for this mission is to…” and then “The end state for this mission is…”

Example:

• Commander’s intent — My intent for this mission is to destroy the enemy on or near Hill 22 to allow friendly movement on Highway 5.

• Key tasks — Destroy any enemy that can affect Highway 5. Breach enemy obstacles on Hill 22. Integrate fires within the attack.

• End state — Charlie Company consolidated on Hill 22, monitoring and disrupting enemy activity around Highway 5.

The Marine Corps also expresses intent with an “in order to” clause in mission and tasking statements:

• Destroy the enemy on Hill 22 in order to protect civilian movement on Highway 5.

• Suppress the enemy on Objective 1 in order to allow 2nd squad to breach the obstacle.

The cue does two things. It reminds leaders to put intent into their tasks, and it forces a pause to consider the purpose. I always stop and think for a few seconds after writing the “in order to” — am I giving the right intent for this task?

I like using questions as prompts. For commander’s intent and end state, some good ones are:

• Commander’s intent — Why are we doing this? How does it help the team reach its goals?

• End state — When it’s complete, what will it look like?

And here is the commander’s intent and end state for the commander’s intent itself:

• Intent: your team understands the reason behind a task, in order to make accurate decisions when the environment changes.

• End state: your team completes tasks successfully, without leadership intervention or supervision.

BUSINESS

We are not attacking hills in the civilian workplace, but the business world is complex enough to need intent and end state — we can drop the “commander.”

Decisions are made constantly, from the executive team to the hourly worker, and every one of those decisions rests on that person’s understanding of their leaders’ intent and end state. They may never have heard the terms; the concepts still apply.

Procurement managers, merchandisers, and engineers are all making decisions based on their understanding of what the CEO, the vice presidents, and the directors actually want. The better they understand it, the more accurate their decisions will be. If they do not understand it, their decisions suffer.

Ask ten different people for the intent and end state of the company’s most important project, and you will probably get ten different answers.

You should get one.

Ten understandings of the goal produce ten directions of effort. One clearly stated intent aligns them on a single end state.

The practice: give your intent and end state for every task and meeting, and ask your people for theirs. Repetition is essential for retention.

Examples:

• Giving intent and end state on a project: “The intent of this project is to produce the best pair of men’s running shoes in the $100–$150 range, with an end state of 30% market share in that segment by the end of the year.”

• Intent and end state of a meeting: “My intent for this meeting is to get input on the team structure for this project. The end state is a decision on the team, so we can move forward.”

• Intent and end state of a task: “Hey, Jess — I need some help processing this ticket. My intent is to get it closed today or tomorrow, so I can start working on the platform again.”

• Asking for intent and end state: “Just to be clear — the intent of this spreadsheet is to compare Q1 and Q2 income statements, so our director can report it to the VP in next week’s meeting?”

Intent and end state can be used in almost any situation. They are an excellent framework for clarifying the purpose of nearly anything.

Key takeaways

• The intent gives the reason behind the action, so when the environment changes, the team can still make good decisions without further guidance.

• The end state describes what done looks like, so everyone can judge their own progress against it.

• Give both clearly, and subordinate leaders and individual contributors will make the right decisions rapidly, without supervision, in dynamic environments.

References

“ADRP 5-0, The Operations Process.” Headquarters, Department of the Army. May 2012. Link

Stouffer, Jeff, and Farley, Kelly. “Command Intent: International Perspectives and Challenges.” 2008. Link

Dempsey, Maj. Richard, and Chavous, Maj. Jonathan M. “Commander’s Intent and Concept of Operations.” Military Review, November–December 2013. Link

• OODA Loop is a four step process that is constantly happening and driving all decision making

• Observe - intake information from your environment

• Orient - process information

• Decide - decide on what you need to do

• Act - take the action to make your changes in the environment

WAR

The OODA Loop is a decision-making process developed by a US Air Force fighter pilot named Colonel John Boyd.

OODA stands for (Boyd, 1):

• Observe

• Orient (Think)

• Decide (Hypothesis)

• Act (Test)

The four steps of the process are a sequential cycle that happens whether or not you’re conscious of it. You are constantly observing your environment, orienting on what you see, deciding on what to do and then acting on that decision.

The faster, more accurate, and bolder your OODA Loop is, the greater the advantage you will have on your opponent. The advantage comes from your actions causing a change in the environment. These changes will force your enemy to either reset their OODA Loop or take action without considering it. If they reset their OODA Loop, their decision-making is slowed. If they have to take action without considering it, their decision will be less accurate.

“Idea of fast transients suggests that, in order to win, we should operate at a faster tempo or rhythm than our adversaries—or, better yet, get inside the adversary’s observation-orientation-decision-action time cycle or loop. Why? Such activity will make us appear ambiguous (unpredictable) thereby generating confusion and disorder among our adversaries—since our adversaries will be unable to generate mental images or pictures that agree with the menacing as well as faster transient rhythm or patterns they are competing against.” (Boyd, 1)

If you are taking more action to change the competitive environment than your competition, you will have the initiative and a competitive advantage.

Observe

Observation is the first step. All current context and information is gathered during this step.

The inputs that Col Boyd outlined for observation are:

• Unfolding circumstances

• Outside information

• Unfolding interaction within the environment

• Implicit Guidance and Control

There are an unlimited amount of things that you can observe. Choosing the right things is the main contributor to making good decisions. There are certain observations which do not help you make your next decision. There is also valuable observation which is closely monitoring the exact thing that will help to drive your next best decision.

There are constant changes in your environment. You, your opponent and other factors are contributing to the changes. Most of them are not within your control.

Actively monitoring the changes and seeking relevant information is the best way to increase the accuracy of your decision making. The only way you know what to look for, is through thorough analysis and previous experience.

Here is an example:

Imagine there are two fighter pilots in a dog fight. The communist fighter has an older, confusing control panel on his plane. This causes him to look down to flip switches, which breaks his observation of his enemy. The American F-22 fighter pilot has read War and Business blog posts and keeps constant observation on his opponent. Every time the communist jet makes a move, he counters immediately with a move of his joystick. The American slowly gains position, since his observation is laser-focused on the exact information he needs to make his next best decision. He eventually takes his six. He’s got a tone. The Hellfire missile is out and the enemy is destroyed.

The person who is more closely observing the more relevant information to make their next best directions, will speed up your OODA Loop. This gives them an advantage over their enemy driving accurate decisions and decisive action.

Key takeaway: Know exactly what information you need to make the next decision and actively observe for that information.

Orient (Thinking)

The orientation step is the least intuitive. Consider it the ‘thinking’ step.

Google defines orient as “ to adjust or tailor (something) to specified circumstances or needs.”

In this step, you will use your prior experience, intelligence and knowledge to process your observations to help you to generate a decision.

The inputs that Col. Boyd outlined for orient are:

• Cultural traditions

  • How have you and your enemy been socialized to approach this decision?

• Genetic heritage

  • How physically and mentally capable are you, compared to your enemy?

  • Are your pre-dispositions an advantage or disadvantage? (exp. risk taker vs. not a risk taker)

• Analysis and synthesis

  • How hard have you thought and processed the possible outcomes involved in this decision?

• New information

  • Have you analyzed and synthesized all new and relevant information or have you ignored or not paid attention to it?

• Previous experience

  • How much experience do you have with similar decisions?

The orient step is an aggregate of your capabilities, experience, disposition and level of analysis of the decision. All of these things will determine how well you can predict the outcome of your decision and following action. The more accurately you are able to predict the outcome of your actions, the more likely you are to make the best decision.

Another example:

If a pilot just finished Top Gun training, they would destroy a brand new pilot in a dog fight. This is because their orientation is going to be much more advanced. The action they decide to take will be more accurate and decisive than a beginner. Their experience and advanced training would have allowed them to analyze and synthesize the environment faster, while also constantly observing and processing new information.

There are a few key considerations about the orient step.

First, of the inputs that Col. Boyd outlined, only ‘analyses and synthesis’ and ‘new information’ can be immediately impacted. If you’ve done a deeper analysis of the situation, and have monitored all the new information more closely, you can have an advantage over a more experienced or more genetically gifted competitor.

Second, you can develop your orient step by building the correct type of experience and considering what types of cultural and genetic advantages you have. As you build experience in a field, your decision-making will become faster and more accurate.

Key takeaways: The orient step is an aggregation of how capable and knowledgeable you are at understanding the current situation. This is driven by information from the observation step and will feed what decision and action you take.

Decide (Hypothesis)

The thinking is done and it’s time to decide.

Col Boyd also referred to this step as a ‘hypothesis’. Google defines “hypothesis” as “a supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation.”

It defines “decide” as “to come to a resolution in the mind as a result of consideration.”

What are the implications of using decide vs. hypothesize?

Hypothesizing vs. deciding are on the opposite sides of a spectrum. The difference is the level of resource commitment during the action. On the hypothesized side of the spectrum, you can learn by making small decisions and assessing the impact. On the deciding side of the spectrum, are bold decisions in which large amounts of resources are committed that will cause more change in the environment.

When you are less experienced (your orientation step is less developed) taking an investigative approach to your decision-making is beneficial. This allows you to make smaller, faster decisions and increase the pace of your OODA Loop. The risk in making small decisions is they may not decisively impact your enemy’s OODA Loop. If the change is too small, then they may ignore your action and move forward causing them to get the upper hand.

If you’re more experienced, you can take bolder and more decisive action to gain an upper hand more quickly.

I put together the quadrant graph below with a horizontal axis of ‘decision accuracy’ and a vertical axis of ‘decision boldness’.

• Top Right: Where you want to be is in the top right - bold and accurate. This is where someone with considerable experience and a deep understanding of the situation can make a decisive decision and take bold action to get an upper hand.

• Bottom Right: The bottom right is a little more experimental - less bold but still accurate. This type of action allows you to invest fewer resources, while still learning and improving your position. If you’re less experienced or not as familiar with the situation, then it’s probably where you want to be with your decision making.

• Bottom Left: The bottom left is still generally positive - less bold and not accurate. In this case, you took less risk by making a less decisive decision and took smaller action. Even though you were wrong in your decision and lost your position, you didn’t invest as many resources. This allowed you to learn, without getting too far out of position.

• Top Left: The top left is where you don’t want to be - bold and not accurate. This means you swung for the fences and missed badly. You end up expending a lot of resources and getting way out of position. As a result, your competition gains a lot of ground on you. This is a place where overly confident and inexperienced people get themselves.

Someone with more experience will read the environment faster and more accurately. This allows them to make bold decisions and gain an advantage. Making rapid, accurate decisive decisions is heavily dependent on how developed your orientation is.

There will also be times that you will have come to the end of hypotheses and there is a clear path forward. Once it’s clear what is working, a heavy commitment to a decision is needed to make significant impacts.

Key takeaways: You want to make bold, accurate decisions. To do that, you need a highly developed orientation. If you don’t, you should make less decisive decisions to learn and expend fewer resources, until enough assumptions have been confirmed to set conditions for a bold decision.

Act (Test)

After the decision, there is a follow-on action to implement it.

Action is defined as “the fact or process of doing something, typically to achieve an aim.”

The key concept of the OODA Loop is understanding that the more and faster your actions change the competitive environment, the more your enemy will have to reconsider their current decisions. This will cause them to cycle back through while you have moved on to the next action, which then causes more disturbance.

The intent of your action should always be to change the environment your enemy is observing.

If you are less experienced or less familiar with the situation (your orientation is less developed), taking the smallest action that you can that still has an impact on your enemy allowing you to learn is the action you should take. Once a clear pattern of advantage has been established, bold action should be taken to win the engagement.

If you are very experienced or have a deep understanding of the situation, then bold action should be taken to gain as much ground as possible. The key is to make accurate predictions of the future outcome.

A key concept of the OODA Loop is outpacing your enemy. If you’re consistently taking action ahead of their loop, you’ve got the initiative. To do this, you need to take action and keenly observe how your enemy responds, so you can take advantage of the initiative you created.

If you give them too much time to reset their OODA Loop, you’ve lost the initiative.

Key takeaways: Your actions are the only real things that happen. They need to impact the environment to force your enemy to observe and process new information, or ignore it and lose ground.

Even vs Uneven Loops

The following are some examples of even competitors and uneven competitors.

Below is a diagram that shows even OODA Loops.

• In this situation, the competitors are taking evenly paced action

• No distinct advantage has been established

• They are observing at the same level of keenness, their orientations are evenly developed, they are taking similarly accurate and decisive decisions, which causes their actions to be of a similar level of boldness.

The following is a diagram that shows uneven OODA Loops.

• In this situation, the competitor on the left has a smaller loop. Their Decide and Act are much larger, representing bolder decisions and actions. Their Observe and Orient is smaller, representing rapid observation and thinking

• The loop on the right is much larger. This is because they are behind in their action compared to their competitors. They have a long Observation and Orient step, causing them to take smaller and less bold actions.

• The loop on the left has a clear decision making initiative.

When someone is “one step ahead” of their competition, they are out pacing their OODA loop.

In a fairly even competition, who is ahead in decision making will alternate. One competitor may ignore the changes while they take a bold action. This bold action will then impact the other competitor, forcing them to reset their OODA Loop and lose the decision making initiative.

It is a constant struggle to gain and maintain the decision making initiative.

Key takeaways: If you are watching a competition closely, you can see when the competitors are trading decision making initiatives. As changes are being made to the environment, time has to be spent observing, orienting, deciding and acting. Being one step ahead is always the goal.

Boyd’s OODA Loop Diagram

John Boyd’s full OODA Loop diagram is shown below.. The previous images were created to clarify and simplify specific parts. Now that you have read through this entire article, the full image is helpful to read through and start analyzing on your own.

[caption id=”attachment_1049” align=”alignnone” width=”2560”] Full OODA Loop, Wikipedia (2)[/caption]

The next section will consider how the OODA Loop can be applied to the business world.

BUSINESS

In the business world, your OODA loop is always spinning.

It is spinning in your interactions with your boss, your colleagues, your subordinates and your customers. Some interactions will cause it to spin more because those interactions are important. If you’re trying to close a big sale or debug some code, your OODA Loop is spinning hard and fast on the current problem.

How do you improve it to make faster, more accurate, bolder decisions that lead to decisive action?

The following are some general thoughts about how each step that can lead to improvement:

1. Observe

   • We need to know exactly what information is needed to make the next decision and pay very close attention to the environment to gather it.

     • That may mean watching your competitors very closely to see what new products or services they are introducing into the market. It also may mean watching how your boss or colleagues respond to the proposal you gave them.

     • The key concept is that you need to keenly observe, so that you can then orient on any new information.

2. Orient

   • Think as hard as time allows, before taking action. It is important to get input from as many experienced people as possible.

     • The three inputs over which we have most control in the orient step are:

       • Analysis and synthesis - How hard have you thought and processed the possible outcomes involved in this decision? Have you considered all of the different ways this could go? Do you have contingency plans for all of the possibilities? Have you talked to anyone who has dealt with a similar situation?

         • The deep analysis will help to develop your orientation for this situation. Even if none of the worst case scenarios develop, the effort you put into the analysis is important.

       • New information - Have you analyzed and synthesized all new and relevant information or have you ignored or not paid attention to it? This is linked very closely with ‘observe’. First, are you actually paying attention? Second, are you actually thinking about what that new information is telling you?

         • The person who is paying the closest attention and putting that information to the best use will have the edge.

       • Previous experience - how much experience do you have with situations like this? If you don’t have very much, then you need to seek advice from a mentor or advisor. You also need to be taking deliberate action to get the experience. You can do that through reading, courses or from taking on small or similar projects. None of us have too much experience or education.

3. Decide

   • How well you’ve oriented should drive how accurate you think your decision is, along with how bold of action you take.

     • If you’re very experienced, have thought deeply about this situation and have considered all new information, then you’re probably in a position to make an accurate decision, which should be supported by bold action.

     • If you’re less experienced and haven’t had time to consider this situation as thoroughly as you’d like, then your decision making may be less accurate. If this is the case, less bold decisions should be made to test and learn from.

4. Act

   • The more accurately you think your decision is weighed against the risk of expending resources, will determine the boldness of your action.

     • The bigger, more accurate punch you take, the more impact it has. The risk with a big punch, is if you miss it will leave you off balance and more tired than with a jab.

     • In the end, however, the only real thing in this world is the action. It’s how you will impact your environment and cause people around you to reset their OODA Loops.

     • You can observe, orient and decide all day long. However, if you don’t take action, no advantage will be gained.

This applies at all levels, whether you are the CEO of a Fortune 500 company or a new manager straight out of graduate school.

Whatever problem you’re dealing with, your OODA Loop is spinning on it. The harder you observe, the deeper you orient, the more accurately you decide, and the bolder action you take, the more successful you will be. This applies to combat and boxing matches, as well as to an engineering manager at Google, or the CEO of Coca-Cola.

The formula to succeed is the same, just the type and size of the problem changes.

References:

1. Boyd, John. “Pattern of Conflict.” ausairpower.net, December 1986, link

2. “John Boyd (military strategist)” wikipedia.com, link

3. Boyd, John. “The Strategic Game.” ausairpower.net, June 1987, link

4. Boyd, John. “A Discourse On Winning and Losing.” coljohnboyd.com, Air University Press, March 2018, link

5. Boyd, John. “Destruction and Creation.” goalseys.com, 3 Sept, 1976, link

6. Boyd, John. “Organic Design.” ausairpower.net, May 1987, link

• The infantry uses condition-set timelines to execute complex attacks and maneuvers.

• Instead of relying on fixed times or direct commands, condition-set timelines specify the criteria that must be met before the next phase begins.

• This allows subordinate leaders to use judgment and initiative when executing.

WAR

Imagine commanding thousands of Marines in a loud, stressful, and complex battle. To win, large groups of infantry must perfectly sequence their movement. If one group moves too fast or too slow, it puts everyone at risk.

So what is the best way to coordinate large groups of people?

This problem exists at every level of leadership, in both military and civilian organizations. In war, bad timing gets people killed. In the civilian world, bad timing can cause entire projects to fail.

The military addresses this problem by using conditions to drive timelines instead of phrases like “at this time” or “on my command.”

“At This Time” and “On My Command” Timelines

Two common ways leaders coordinate action are by setting a specific time or by directly commanding execution. Both methods introduce significant risk.

Time-Based Coordination

Using time is simple: the leader assigns specific start times.

Example:

• First Squad attacks at 0800.

• Second Squad attacks at 0830.

If First Squad takes 45 minutes instead of 30, they are now 15 minutes late. That delay can cascade into chaos when Second Squad attacks as scheduled.

Predicting how long something will take is extremely difficult. Thousands of variables influence execution. When these uncertainties are aggregated across a large project, the risk of timeline failure increases dramatically.

“On My Command”

Another option is on my command, where a leader directly signals execution—by voice, radio, message, signal, email, or any other method.

Example:

• First Squad attacks when I tell them to attack.

• Second Squad attacks when I tell them to attack via radio.

The problem is that leaders communicate less effectively than they expect. Messages may be unclear, delayed, or not received at all. Subordinate leaders often hesitate, waiting for the command.

This approach creates a single point of failure and drastically reduces initiative, making it a risky way to drive timelines.

Condition-Set Timelines

The third option—and the focus of this article—is the condition-set timeline.

A simple definition: a condition-set timeline defines the criteria that must be met before the next phase can begin successfully.

Everyday example (driving a car):

1. Open the door and sit in the driver’s seat

2. Start the car

3. Press the brake

4. Put the car in drive

Once those conditions are met, you can drive.

Military Example

First Squad attacks Hill 22

• Condition 1: First Squad is set in an assault position near Hill 22

• Condition 2: Effective mortar suppression is observed on Hill 22

Once both conditions are met, First Squad attacks.

Second Squad attacks Hill 33

• Condition 1: Second Squad is set in an assault position near Hill 33

• Condition 2: First Squad has secured Hill 22

• Condition 3: Mortars have shifted to Hill 33 and are suppressing the enemy

Once these conditions are met, Second Squad attacks.

These timelines rely on observation and initiative. Any leader who understands the conditions knows when to execute—no radio calls required.

In this example, Second Squad can observe Hill 22. Once it is secured, they begin preparing for the mortar shift that enables their attack. This keeps leaders engaged and proactive.

The biggest advantage of condition-set timelines is increased initiative. When leaders see conditions met, they are cleared to act. Decision-making accelerates across the organization.

The tradeoff is upfront effort. Defining and communicating conditions requires more planning than simply assigning a time or issuing a command. It takes deliberate discussion and shared understanding, especially under time pressure. However, teams trained to think in conditions can execute this rapidly.

Time, Command, and Conditions

Best practice incorporates time, command, and conditions together. They are not mutually exclusive. Conditions should ideally drive the timeline, with time and command nested within them.

BUSINESS

Every company operates on timelines that require work from multiple teams in sequence. If execution falls out of order, the timeline slips.

Most organizations coordinate using time. Teams want deadlines so they know when they can begin. In reality, what they are waiting on is the conditions that allow them to execute.

A more effective approach is to define those conditions explicitly and track progress against them.

How to Plan Conditions Into a Timeline

At a high level, using condition-set timelines involves three steps:

1. Define the major phases of execution

2. Outline the start and end conditions for each phase

3. Communicate the conditions teams are waiting on before executing

To define phases, identify the three to five major pieces of work.

Example: launching a denim jean line

• Design the jeans

• Build a prototype

• Secure financing

• Manufacture the first run

Next, define the conditions required to move between phases.

Helpful questions:

• What must be in place to start this phase?

• What does success look like at the end of this phase?

• What are ideal conditions for execution?

• What are acceptable but sub-optimal conditions?

Example Conditions

Design the jeans

• Start: Demographic and product vision defined

• End: Final design ready for prototype manufacturing

Build a prototype

• Start: Designs sent to manufacturer and quote agreed

• End: Prototype delivered and approved

Secure financing

• Start: Prototypes presented to investors

• End: Funds deposited into business account

Manufacture first run

• Start: Initial production run approved

• End: Finished inventory in warehouse, ready to ship

Thinking in start and end conditions focuses attention on what truly enables progress.

Once defined, the team has two responsibilities:

1. Update stakeholders on when conditions will be met so the next team can prepare

2. Concentrate resources to remove obstacles and accelerate completion

Communication becomes critical as conditions near completion. Leaders should alert the next team early so they can prepare to execute.

If a condition slips, the entire project slips. All effort should be focused on setting the next condition.

Soft and Hard Timelines

There are two types of timelines: soft and hard.

Soft Timelines

Soft timelines are largely under your control. Anxiety often comes from arbitrary deadlines set early in the project that don’t actually matter. What matters is whether the conditions are met.

Executing with condition-based timelines requires a mindset shift.

General recommendations:

• Set a vague overall timeline with generous margin

• Plan around major conditions, not tasks

• Communicate the sequence so teams know what they’re waiting on

• Mass resources on completing the current condition

Time and command still have a role. Communication should be layered: define the conditions, announce when they are met, confirm in writing—and then celebrate success.

Hard Timelines

Hard timelines occur whether you are ready or not.

Example: A Black Friday marketing campaign. You cannot move the date. The customers are coming regardless.

Conditions still apply. They are either met in time or not. You pay upfront through preparation or pay later through lost business.

Adjusted recommendations:

• Define a hard end state with absolute clarity

• Plan in detail around key conditions

• Communicate dependencies aggressively to avoid idle time

• Ruthlessly mass resources on setting conditions

In war, lives may be sacrificed to set conditions. In business, other priorities may need to be sacrificed. Hard timelines demand disciplined planning and execution.

Final Thought

The key to hitting any timeline is understanding and setting the conditions required to move to the next phase. The clearer those conditions are to everyone involved, the more likely they are to be achieved.

Resources: None

• Any dollar or hour spent on efforts that do not advance your biggest opportunity should be reallocated until that opportunity is fully funded and staffed.

• This will require saying no to good teams with good ideas.

• It is the leader’s responsibility to ensure the entire organization understands why funding and personnel shifts are being made.

  Thanks for reading the War and Business Substack. Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

A few summary of this article:

WAR

Economy of force is one of the nine principles of war.

MCWP 3-10 MAGTF Ground Operations defines it as:

Economy of force is the expenditure of minimum essential combat power on secondary efforts in order to allocate the maximum possible combat power on primary efforts. It is the judicious employment and distribution of forces. It is the measured allocation of available combat power to such tasks as limited attacks, defense, delays, deception, or even retrograde operations to achieve mass elsewhere at the decisive point and time.

Economy of force is the consequence of mass. To mass is to apply overwhelming combat power at a specific place and time to gain a decisive advantage over the enemy. Achieving mass requires directing all necessary resources to ensure success at that decisive point.

Minimum combat power is deliberately left in less important areas—just enough to prevent failure. Teams that have their resources reduced are experiencing economy of force.

Graphic: minimum power held in secondary efforts

Removing resources from a team to allocate them elsewhere is one of the most difficult decisions a leader can make—especially when those resources are directly tied to survival in combat.

Consider the following example.

You are an infantry battalion commander with three infantry companies. All three are heavily engaged and requesting additional artillery support.

Your artillery is currently distributed evenly among the companies. The result is a stalemate—no company has enough fire support to maneuver or gain ground.

You determine that victory depends on seizing key terrain: a large hill on the left flank. The only way to do this is to mass all available artillery in support of that attack.

This decision means stripping artillery support from the other two companies. Those units will almost certainly take increased casualties. You accept this risk because concentrating fires on the decisive terrain dramatically increases the probability of success for the entire battalion.

Members of the team must sometimes sacrifice for the success of the whole.

Everything has tradeoffs. Every organization operates with limited assets. The principle of economy of force demands that you apply the most resources to what matters most, and the fewest resources to what matters less.

The challenge is that everything matters—especially in combat. Some things simply matter more right now to achieve overall victory. What matters most is also fluid. Once an objective is achieved, priorities can shift rapidly based on the situation and the enemy’s actions.

Applying economy of force involves risk. Leaders must determine the minimum level of resources required for secondary efforts to survive without collapsing, while directing as much as possible to the main effort.

Overwhelming Force

Organizations with overwhelming advantages have an easier time allocating resources.

If 100 infantry Marines face 10 untrained opponents, resource allocation is simple. If 100 infantry Marines face 100 Army Rangers, assets must be applied with precision—and even then, significant losses are likely.

In even fights—or when operating as the underdog—economy of force becomes critical. Simply put: when you have weaker cards, you must play them perfectly to win.

Key Takeaways

• Economy of force requires a deliberate and ruthless assessment of the minimum resources secondary teams need to survive.

• Resources freed from secondary efforts should be reallocated to the primary effort to maximize its probability of success.

BUSINESS

Economy of force is just as critical in business.

It is easy to find good opportunities and start allocating money and time toward them. It is far harder to do the opposite—to remove funding and personnel from good opportunities.

Saying yes is exciting. Saying no is not.

“Every unnecessary expenditure of time, every unnecessary detour, is a waste of power, and therefore contrary to the principles of strategy.”
— Carl von Clausewitz
Graphic

Every team is trying to justify its existence by expanding headcount and budget. Most will present compelling arguments for why they need more resources.

The principle of economy of force says this: unless a team is working on the company’s most important opportunity, it should be asking how it can reduce its resource requirements—not increase them.

Teams responsible for the most critical initiatives should be so well-funded and staffed that they possess slack—idle time, excess budget, and margin for error.

Teams not working on the main effort should have only what they need to avoid failure.

Graphic: fully funded main effort cascading down to minimally resourced secondary teams

Applying Economy of Force

To apply economy of force, leaders must answer four questions:

1. What is the most important opportunity for success?

2. Is that opportunity funded and staffed at a level that ensures success?

3. If not, where can people and money be pulled to reinforce it?

4. What are the consequences of removing those resources from other teams?

The intent of economy of force is to minimize wasted time and money on lower-priority efforts. Any resources spent away from the main effort deliver a lower return on investment.

Once the primary opportunity is fully resourced, leaders can begin reinforcing secondary efforts. The goal is success everywhere—but decisive success somewhere first.

Graphic: trickle-down consequences

Communicating Resource Reductions

Eventually, leaders will hit a hard resource constraint. At that point, teams must be told they will receive no additional support—or that resources will be taken away.

These conversations are never easy.

Non-priority teams should be told clearly that they are expected to accomplish their mission with fewer resources. At the same time, leaders should publicly recognize and reward teams that succeed despite limited support.

The balance lies in giving the main effort every chance to succeed without neglecting secondary efforts to the point of failure.

CONCLUSION

Economy of force is the principle that resources not allocated to the main effort are being wasted.

Leaders must think critically about what matters most, ensure it is fully staffed and funded, and accept that many good ideas will need to be sacrificed to concentrate resources where they have the greatest impact.

Final Key Takeaways

• Identify your team’s or company’s most important opportunity and resource it for success.

• Expect to pull people and money from other areas—or reject good ideas—to avoid wasting limited resources.

REFERENCES

Headquarters, United States Marine Corps. (2018, April). MCWP 3-10 MAGTF Ground Operations.

• The principle of massing is to concentrate as much of your resources as possible at a decisive point in order to gain an overall advantage over your competition.

• This means limiting resources allocated to other areas that could also use them.

• If you had to win in one area, which one would give you the biggest advantage over your competition? That is where you should mass as much as you can.

The video version of this article:

WAR

MCWP 3-10, MAGTF Ground Operations defines massing as:

The purpose of mass is to concentrate the effects of combat power at the most advantageous place and time to produce decisive results. In order to achieve mass, appropriate joint force capabilities are integrated and synchronized where they may have a decisive effect quickly. Mass must be sustained to have the desired effect.

In simple terms, massing means putting everything you have into the advantage that matters most at that moment.

In war, massing generally refers to concentrating artillery, mortars, and airpower in a single location to break through an enemy infantry unit. Once that point is breached, it can be exploited.

Consider the following example.

Imagine you are an infantry battalion commander with three infantry companies. All three are heavily engaged with the enemy. Each is in trouble, and each is requesting artillery support.

You have a choice.

You can spread your artillery across all three companies so that each receives a small amount of support, or you can concentrate your fires on one company and help them decisively win their fight.

The principle of massing makes the decision clear. The company whose breakthrough would give the entire battalion the greatest advantage should receive as much artillery support as necessary to win. The other companies will have to accept little or no support, depending on how much the priority company requires.

The priority company is usually the one closest to key terrain or a critical objective. If artillery support enables that company to seize it, the balance of the entire fight can shift, giving the battalion a chance to win.

This is a painful choice.

The analysis will not be easy.

What if the commander chooses the wrong company and massing fires fails to achieve a breakthrough, wasting the effort?
What if the fires are massed too heavily and the other companies are overrun, creating a serious disadvantage elsewhere?

Massing will always be a difficult decision that requires boldness and courage. The commander is deliberately diverting resources away from units that may suffer or die without support. However, the principle dictates that more people will die if the priority effort fails.

It is rarely an absolute choice. Often, there is enough artillery to give one company decisive support while still providing limited assistance to others. A leader’s job is to maximize the effectiveness of available resources.

BUSINESS

The principle of massing applies directly to business.

If you are a business leader, ask yourself:

If we had to win in one area, which one would give us the biggest advantage over our competition?

That answer is where you should mass as much money and talent as possible.

Prioritizing and allocating scarce resources is difficult. Every team has a legitimate reason for needing more people and more funding. However, leadership requires making hard choices.

As a leader, you must clearly communicate which team is the highest priority and mass resources there. Once that team is appropriately resourced, you can begin diverting resources to other parts of the business.

I define appropriately resourced as the point at which adding more people or money produces diminishing returns, or when you are confident the team will succeed.

All non-priority teams must operate lean. This expectation must be communicated clearly. They need to understand why they are not receiving the funding or personnel they are requesting.

When people know they are not getting additional help, they tend to get scrappy and resourceful. If they believe help might be coming, they often slow down and wait for it. Make sure they understand they must make do with what they have while the priority team works to break through.

Massing on the correct opportunity is the key to success. Leaders must make the best decision they can with the information available at the time. Better analysis and better inputs lead to better decisions.

Key Takeaways

• Give your priority team everything they need to succeed.

• Clearly inform non-priority teams that they will not receive additional resources and must operate lean.

Reference

Headquarters, United States Marine Corps. (2018, April). MCWP 3-10: MAGTF Ground Operations.