0:02 Who are you? And where are you going? What do you want?
0:16 >> Hello and welcome to Business Lessons from the Military. I'm your host, Kevin Bemmel, and I'm here every Tuesday at 10:00 a.m. Pacific time to talk about military history, doctrine, and leadership practices and then distill from them lessons that we can apply to our businesses and professional practices. So, we're in the midst of the 24 episode campaign. uh the the previous eight episodes were talking about strategy uh the doctrine of strategy across kind
0:52 of all of the branches of the US military and today we're switching into the next segment which is on execution. So again, I'm going to be talking about concepts that really bridge all the various service branches. Uh but but now we're moving from how do we conceptualize our businesses to what are the practices uh in which we should engage in order to be effective? What what are some of those practices that we can take from the US military? So today's topic is
1:28 called mission command. Now if you uh saw the the first season of this show uh when I talked about Marine Corps warf fighting doctrine I talked somewhat about mission command. We're going to go, I think, more deeply into it today because I do think that in today's business world, this is one of the most important concepts that we can adapt from how the military runs. And I will say as as kind of an aside uh watching
2:05 you know what's happening in the Middle East in in the war with Iran uh being understanding mission command I think is important to understanding how military activity actually happens and why sometimes mistakes are made and and why um there doesn't seem to necessarily ally be perhaps the kind of penalties for mistakes that might seem warranted by the consequences. So that's just kind
2:40 of that obviously that has nothing to do with business but um you know for if if you're a you know a news follower uh like me so then this will give you hopefully some context on that as well. So the the key idea in mission command is that um um the our teams are given the objective and then they are charged with the responsibility
3:15 of figuring out how to get there. So with the adop wider adoption of remote work with more decentralized teams with the greater use of of um independent contractors who aren't full-time employees for our companies and with more and more even especially smaller companies operating on a more global scale. How much we as business leaders can give
3:50 autonomy to our teams in an effective way and how well our team members can take that autonomy on board and use it effectively will will in large part determine the success of our businesses. So I think a lot of organizations struggle with a a false dichotomy and that is they need to control everything which inevitably slows down execution among creating other problems or they
4:25 need to delegate everything and therefore they lose alignment among the various portions of their business and they lose the they lose the ability to really guide the company that neither one of those uh is a part of mission command. So mission command is a concept that's been in development for decades. I think it was it was seen quite a bit uh in World War II. I think it was one of the reasons why the United States was so
5:00 effective in combat in World War II. It's a system that that empowers teams to act independently while remaining aligned with a clear objective. Okay? And so I'm going to talk about how to do that. Well, why that why that's important and then how how to accomplish that that goal. So mission command is a leadership philosophy first and foremost. Okay.
5:35 Leaders provide the intent not the instruction. So you'll you'll hear in military circles, well what is the CI? What is the commander's intent? In other words, what is what is the commander trying to achieve? What is the objective? Okay. So instead of controlling actions and plans, commanders first of all they define the objective, take this hill, conquer this country, destroy the
6:10 industrial capacity of a country, destroy the missile launching ability of a country. Okay, for for example, Iran, then they communicate the purpose behind it. Okay, let's let's take the last example I gave. Destroy the missile launching capability of a country. Why? Because that prevents the country from hitting back when we hit it and especially from hitting back civilian locations or hitting hitting back our allies who are not engaged in active
6:46 combat operations etc. what that describe define the purpose behind the objective. Next, set boundaries and constraints. Okay? So, you know, do not launch any operation within a certain distance of uh a hospital or a school or whatever. Okay? Uh you know, these these are the boundaries of operations, right? You notice that they're not saying only hit within. No, they're just saying these
7:22 are the ones that are out of bounds, right? That's setting the boundaries. Okay? And then empower subordinates to decide how to execute. That includes making the plans, training up for the plans, and actually enacting the plans. Okay? So this allows for those closest to the action who have typically the best information the most quickly to be to make the key make key
7:57 decisions that will make victory more likely. Okay. Now you may be saying to yourself, wait but some of these people are so young. Yes, I've talked about this from time to time. In the Marine Corps, there's this idea of the strategic corporal. So, a corporal is the lowest ranking uh officer in command. He's what's called a non-commissioned officer, an NCO. Corporal would be in in charge of a rifle team or perhaps even a platoon depending on how things are organized.
8:32 Okay. So a just a a handful to maybe you know 8 10 Marines something like that. Okay that corporal will be given an objective and tasked with carrying it out. Okay. And the reason he's strategic is because when all is said and done, it's really the corporals and the sergeants in the Marine Corps who are seeing to it that the objectives are met because they're the ones who were leading the infantry men to actually capture the objectives.
9:08 Okay? So, they're exercising a tremendous amount of command authority. Okay? because they're they're not being told, you know, they're not being micromanaged, I should say. They're they're being given an objective, take it. Now, they've been thoroughly trained. Corporals have gone to a leadership course called the corporal's course. So, they've been trained in leadership as well. Okay? But this is what they do. And a corporal can be young, 19, 20 years old. Okay? That's
9:44 one of the reasons why the Marine Corps is so effective. By the way, I've talked about this before from time to time. A plane captain who is the sailor on an aircraft carrier who decides whether a 60 to80 million plane leaves the deck. That plane captain 18, 19, maybe 20 years old, exercising a great deal of authority. Why? because they decide whether it's safe for that aircraft to leave the deck. Okay? Because the commander's intent is when planes leave the deck, they do so safely. The commander the the
10:21 the commander of the airwing is not deciding which planes leave the deck. Even the squadron commanders are not, nor is the maintenance officer, okay? Or the operations officer. None of these officers are making that determination. It's that airman, okay, an E3 who's making that decision. She's probably 18 years old, maybe 19. And you say, "Wait, why are you saying she?" Because one of the best plane captains I ever met in the Navy was a a a girl, a
10:58 young woman, 18 years old. Okay, that was and and she she several times had to tell a a a lieutenant commander an 04, you're not leaving the deck. Okay, she was an E3. Okay, that's that's that's very profound responsibility for someone that young. And they take it very seriously. They're highly trained and they are counted on to use good judgment to make sure that the
11:33 objectives are met. One of the first objectives of any plane launching off an aircraft carrier is getting up into the sky safely and coming back down safely. Okay. If that can't be accomplished, probably the mission is not going to be met. Okay. All right. So why was this concept of mission command developed then? So the fact of the matter is modern warfare is very complex and it's very fastm moving and so centralized control just won't work. Okay. When we
12:08 think about the size of an army from like go back to biblical times 3 4 thousand years ago, a huge army might be a few hundred people, right? So the commander, the the you know the general, the ultimate commander. All right, he's controlling four or 500 people, something like that. Okay, well that's not so difficult. Okay, but think about the size of the armies in World War II where you had hundreds of thousands of personnel assigned to an army. There
12:46 is no way possible that the commanding general can micromanage that large a force. Okay? And that's again that's why this concept was developed. Generals had to be had to rely on their colonels who had to rely on their lieutenant colonels and majors who had to rely on their captains who had to rely on their lieutenants who had to rely on their sergeants and corporals in order for this all to work in order for them to make progress.
13:21 Okay. So what are what are the underlying problems in not problems but challenges in commanding a large force today? Well, first of all, if it's large and it's all got to come from the commanding general, you're going to have communications delays, right? Information has to go up the chain of command. It has to come back down the chain of command. By the time that happens, opportunity can be lost. Okay? And that's that's not good. We've got to be able to take advantage of opportunities when they present
13:56 themselves. Conditions rapidly change. Okay? Intelligence, despite how it's it's presented in movies and such, intelligence is never perfect. Sometimes it's not even very good, right? And so, uh, a a a rifle team or a platoon or a company, they may not know what they're really going to face on the battlefield until after the battle starts. And now they've got to adjust. Okay? And so, as the battlefield conditions change, they need to be able
14:31 to respond. Okay? And finally, there's plain flatout just sometimes incomplete information. Okay. So maybe the intelligence that they have is great. It's very highly accurate, but it's incomplete. Okay. Well, once the battle launches, now you know the full picture. Has to be dealt with. And it's past the time now that that information can be sent up the chain of command. Let it be digested. Let the planning people redo the plans
15:06 and then send them back down to you. By by the time that all happens, the battle probably has been lost. Okay? At least any opportunity that might have presented itself in the beginning has probably gone. Okay? So by distributing decisionmaking authority, mission command, it maintains strategic coherence while creating an efficient way for that strategy to be enacted. Now, here's one
15:42 of the key aspects of this. Okay, commanders at the various levels have the authority they need to pursue their part of it. Okay, a corporal does not have the authority to change boundaries. Okay. So, if there's, you know, five platoon moving forward, there's going to be boundaries between those platoon. So,
16:17 they each stay in their lane, so to speak. Okay. None of those platoon commanders is going to have the authority to change those boundaries. The company commander, though, may have that authority for his platoon. But if there's four companies advancing, those company commanders probably are not going to have authority to change boundaries between companies. Okay. Now, what they might have the authority to do is to call the company commander next door and say, "Hey, here's what's going on. Can we shift boundaries?
16:53 I think it'll be more effective." They may have that authority, but they won't have unilateral authority, right? Because as as you recall when we talked about commander's intent, part of commander's intent was setting boundaries. Okay. So this this idea of uh mission command uh really has its roots in Prussian military doctrine from the 19th century. Okay. And and then as we moved
17:28 into the 20th century, World War I, and then again, most especially World War II, it really became an embedded and well-developed aspect of American military doctrine. It relies on certain qualities. Number one, trust. Trust between commander and commanded. I know that that sounds kind of tinish to our ears, right? Trust between commander and subordinate, if that sounds easier to hear. Okay?
18:06 And it the trust has to go both ways. Okay? So the commander has to trust his subordinate to follow the commander's intent and to not violate the boundaries. And the subordinate needs to trust his commander that he's going to get the support that he needs and if he makes a mistake, he's not going to be clobbered for making a mistake. Okay? He'll have to explain
18:42 there. There will be some conversations at some point about how it could have been done better, but he's not going to get clobbered. Okay? If the commander clobbers the subordinate, the subordinate will lose trust in the commander. He won't take the kind of assertive action he needs to take and now the system falls apart. Okay, that's number one. Number two, there has to be shared understanding. The commander has to be clear in defining the objectives, setting the
19:17 boundaries, in other words, conveying his intent. And the subordinate has to have a clear understanding of those. Okay? Without them, the objective is not going to be met because the objective probably is not well enough understood. Okay. And then finally there has to be disciplined initiative taking. So the commander has to place his trust in the subordinate
19:53 and the subordinate use needs to use that trust in a disciplined way to take the initiative in achieving the objective. He cannot go off like a loose cannon. He cannot violate boundaries. He cannot violate broader combat doctrine and training. Okay? So, he's going to be very disciplined in the way he plans and executes how he obtains the objective that has been set for him. And if he needs to go outside of those lines,
20:30 that will need to be cleared. Okay? So you can see how all of these work together but when they work together well you get amazing results. Okay. So without these three qualities trust, mutual understanding and disciplined initiative the decentralization just becomes chaotic. Okay. So the core components of mission command are first of all
21:06 commander's intent a clear articulation of the desired end state and why it matters. Number two disciplined initiative. So teams act independently when conditions changed but they remain aligned with the commander's intent. Number three. Number three, mutual trust. Okay, going up and down the chain of command. Four, shared understanding. Okay,
21:42 everyone needs to understand the broader mission so they can understand how they fit into it. It's not enough to just to convey to a team leader what what their objective is and what the intent of that inject objective is. They also have to understand how they fit into the larger picture. Okay. And number five, there has to be an acceptance of risk when command authority
22:17 is somewhat dispersed. Okay. Sometimes mistakes are going to be made and that has to be acceptable that the risk of mistakes has to be acceptable in order to preserve speed and adaptability. If people start getting clobbered because they took discipline because they took initiative and what they considered to be disciplined initiative and and if they get clobbered because it still doesn't work out well, they're going to stop taking disciplined
22:52 initiative. Okay. So, where do businesses get this wrong then? Well, companies often say that they want empowered teams, but they do not provide clear objectives. They micromanage execution. They punish mistakes and they centralize decisionmaking. All of that works counter to um mission command, okay? to a a decentralized
23:28 more efficient way of attaining an objective. So this creates confusion because teams hesitate to act. Leaders become bottlenecks because every decision has to go through senior leadership. Okay? As a result, execution slows and now accountability blurs as well. Because if you say to a team, well, you know, I want you to do this and here's how I want you to do it and here's how it should be based on that. Well, wait, who has the responsibility now? If a leader in a company has
24:03 micromanaged a team, why would the team members have any responsibility? It was dictated to them what to do and how to do it. You can't turn around and hold them responsible. the re their their their feelings. Wait a minute. You were the one who's who told us how to do this. Okay. So, the result is not control or autonomy. It's just complete dysfunction. Okay. Now, there's a big challenge and and I've
24:38 actually been going through this challenge with a company that I oversee for an estate that I administrate and that is for more than two decades the people who worked at this company were micromanaged. A they would not make any decision without checking. Now, the fact of the matter is they've been essentially doing the work at the company for, like I said, multiple decades, 25 years. And then I come in and I have a responsibility to the court to make sure
25:14 that the company operates properly. And they're coming to to me multiple times a day to say, "What do we do here? What do we do there?" And I said, "Well, I don't know. What did you do before?" Right? You're you're closest to the issues. you're closest to the problems. You know, the people involved, the tenants, the vendors, etc. I I need to have you use your best judgment to solve these problems because I don't have the information. I'm never going to have the information that you have, the
25:50 experience that you have. And so over the last two years, a little over two years that I've been administrating this company, they've had to get used to a new way of working. And at first, understandably so, they were very trepidacious, right? Well, what happens if we do something wrong? I said, okay, so then we'll talk about it. We'll figure out how to do it better next time. Right? But there wasn't a high degree of trust because they didn't know maybe I was going to start screaming at them if if they made a mistake. So it took some
26:26 time for them to see that when I said to them I I take it for granted that at times you're going to make mistakes because last I checked you're human beings. That's okay. You make a mistake. Just do your best to make sure that I find out about it from you, not from someone else. and then we can figure out how to fix it. That's it. And that's how it's been. Several things have have uh resulted from that. Number one,
27:01 the whole company operates much more smoothly, problems get solved much more quickly, and they enjoy their work much more than they ever did before. They feel appreciated for their work. They feel respected for their work, for their accomplishments, for their knowledge and experience. And the fact of the matter is they've done a fantastic job. Why wouldn't they? They've been they've had decades to figure all this out. They just never had
27:37 an opportunity to use all that knowledge and experience essentially on their own valition. Right. And and now they're starting to build the company larger and there are people, you know, people more junior to them coming on board who are going to learn and work as team members under the same mission command structure because that's how they will work best. Now, by the way, there are some team members, not not at this
28:12 company, but there are some companies that have team members. They don't work well under mission command. They don't they don't have the ability or don't want to take initiative. They don't want the responsibility. Okay, that's fine. But the companies for which they work are not maximizing the potential of the companies. When people have to be micromanaged, that takes a lot more time and effort. Okay? Now, you say, well, they don't make as many mistakes. I don't buy that.
28:50 Every company makes mistakes. It's just who makes them. Okay? That's all. And the fact of the matter is the more junior the person, generally speaking, the less consequences for the mistake. Okay. So, let's take a break. I'm going to apply this um to to business uh after the break. When life brings unexpected changes, managing inherited property shouldn't add to your stress. Magnum Properties
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30:03 business world. I've got five thoughts to to share with you on this. Number one, define intent, not tasks or at least not just ts. Okay. So, when you need something done, explain what success looks like. Okay. So, in this company that I'm I'm going to be using this company because it's it's I think it's a vivid example. So, one of the challenges that this company has is it manages a property in a area a high crime area of Los Angeles and the property needs to be sold so
30:40 that the estate can pay its estate taxes. Okay. There's a big problem with people call them homeless, but they're not homeless people. They're just criminal vagrants. Okay? They do a lot. They vandalize the property. They sometimes terrorize customers, etc. So uh the pe the people who work for this management company, we have an objective and the objective is to as best we can solve the criminal vagrant problem and get the property back into shape so it can be sold at a reasonable a reasonable
31:17 price to pay the estate taxes. Okay, that is the objective. What does success look like? success looks like we've sold our problem child, okay? And and for for a a price that uh you know is is commensurate with what the property is worth, okay? And and that allows us to make a major dent in paying the property taxes. That's what success looks like. Okay? Why does it matter? Well, because we have to be able to sell this
31:53 property. This property is the key to closing the probate on this estate. Okay. There's about 15% of the value of the estate is in this property. A little less than 15%. Maybe 14%. Okay. So, it's it's an important asset to the state, the estate. And so, it matters. It matters because it is such a large percentage of the value. Okay. What constraints exist? Well, until recently,
32:30 Los Angeles Police Department hasn't been willing to engage because they're not getting the support from uh civilian officials in the city. Okay. The city council's office didn't want to engage. Now, not too long ago, we got a new council member there, and so she's more willing to engage on these issues. Those are some of the constraints. Other constraints are that uh um there are financial constraints, right? We can't spend an unlimited amount of money getting the property in shape because we're just working against ourselves.
33:06 So, we're working with some budget constraints. Okay? So we've talked about all these things with respect to this particular property. Okay. And instead of um giving them detailed instructions um what I do is I've given them a clear picture of the outcome we're seeking to achieve. And then I'm letting them who are closest to the problem and have dealt with this property far longer than I have figure out what needs to happen
33:43 and they've put together plans and now kind of one by one we're going through the various things and in general my responses have been great do it great do it okay now once in a while I have a question okay that's my responsibility to to make sure that I'm I understand what they're going to do and why they think this is the proper steps to take but they have very broad latitude to solve this problem to meet this objective. Okay. Um and and
34:18 so I each each week when we have our staff meeting, okay, we review this situation, okay? And I want I make sure that they understand where things are at, not just with that property, but with the overall estate so they can understand where this key asset fits into the overall plan. Okay? And then we cons I consistently communicate what the priorities are. Okay? So they have an they have clarity of intent and it this enables independent action. Okay. All right. So that's number one.
34:54 Number two, um I push decision making to the edge. Okay. So decisions are made by people closest to the problem. This is it's it's it's virtually impossible to overstate how important this is. I will never ever have the amount of information that they have because they deal with it every day. Okay? So oftentimes as they get used to this new
35:30 way of working, okay, they'll push things up to me and say, "What should we do?" and I turn around and say,"What do you think we should do?" And it's not me being, you know, catty or anything like that. It's it's me reminding them they're the better decision maker. Okay? So I make I make topline strategic decisions, but in operations and tactics they need to make the decisions because at best I could make decisions
36:07 that are basically as good as theirs. But if they have to wait for me to make those decisions, I've created a bottleneck. So since the decisions they make are going to be at least as good as my decisions and maybe better, I'm better off reminding them, you have the authority to make this decision. Go ahead and make it. I'll stand behind you. Okay. Okay. So in in pushing decision making to the edge, I'm empowering my
36:43 frontline team members. Okay. I'm reducing the approval layers. Okay. And I'm allowing rapid response to changing conditions. Okay. So part of speed and execution comes to the proximity of team members to the information. By by the way, at times they've made mistakes, but you know what? I probably would have made mistakes as well, maybe different ones, but mistakes
37:19 were still going to be made and we talked about it. Okay, how could we do this better next time? What can we learn from this? Okay, the one lesson I insist they not learn is that Kevin can do it better because I can't. I can't. Okay, I know where I can make the better decisions because I know where my um knowledge and experience is. Right? Okay. So, that's number two, push decision making to the edge. Number
37:55 three, build trust through consistency. Okay, so autonomy can only work where trust exists. Okay, first and foremost, we as leaders need to show our team members we trust them. It's not enough to say I trust you. We have to show them. And for team members who haven't worked
38:31 under a mission command scenario, that is very difficult because they're they're not not only are they not going to trust it when you say I trust or not only are they going to believe it when we say I trust you, but they're going to be reluctant to do something that requires our trust. So we have to encourage them and in the beginning it'll take a lot of encouragement and and it's it's perfectly valid. In
39:06 fact, I think it's good to say to them, it's okay if you make a mistake. Okay, here's what's going to happen if you make a mistake. Okay, either you're going to realize it and you're going to let me know or the customer client's going to realize it. Let you know, let me know. Anyway, we're going to find out about the mistake and then we're going to talk about it. We're going to figure out what went wrong. Why was this? Why was the mistake made? And then we're going to figure out how could how could this mistake have been avoided? If possible, maybe it was
39:41 unavoidable. Okay? As important as explaining to them what will happen, explain to them what will not happen. I'm not going to get mad at you. I am not going to yell at you. That is unprofessional. It's unproductive. You are not going to get punished. That is unprofessional and it's unproductive. Okay? You may have to say that 10, 20,
40:18 50, 100 times. as you build this system into your company. But you got to mean it. That's the thing. You've got to mean it. You've got to give people You've got to build that trust so they will embrace autonomy and use everything they've got professionally to drive the organization forward. This is why part of the reason at least
40:53 why the American military is such an effective organization. It is because that kind of trust exists. Okay. So how do you what are other ways you can build trust? First of all, do not second guessess every decision. Okay. Just because it wasn't done the way you did it doesn't mean it was a bad decision. Okay? I've said that to my, you know, my my team as well. Okay? Just because you're not doing it my way doesn't mean it's wrong. Okay? Just just
41:29 could be different style. That's fine. Okay? If if there's a better way to do it or a different way to do it, I'm fine. Okay? That's number one. Support teams even when outcomes are imperfect. Okay, you met the objective. It was kind of bumpy, wasn't it? All right, let's talk about it. Okay, what could have what went right? What could have been done better? It's okay to have those, but it's still if the objective was met, the objectives was met. That's that's a good thing.
42:05 Okay. And finally, maintain consistent leadership behavior. The way you respond, especially when things don't go as planned or when the objective is not met, that is the crucial issue. You still have to be a leader. You have to be calm. Okay? We're here to support our teams to help them learn how to do ever better
42:41 without expecting per perfection. Okay. So trust is the foundation of execution. It's the foundation of autonomous execution. Okay. Number four, create accountability without micromanagement. Okay, so mission control or mission comp, I'm sorry, mission command, it doesn't eliminate accountability, it actually strengthens it. Okay,
43:18 here's why. If I give a member of my team an objective and the authority to attain that objective and it's not attained, I know where the accountability is. Okay? Now, that doesn't mean I clobber them if they didn't attain the objective, but I do know where the responsibility is. And here's something that used to drive me crazy when I was f first in the workforce. I had a boss who would give me responsibility for attaining an objective without the
43:54 authority to do so. Okay? And a lot of times he would micromanage me. I wouldn't meet the objective, but then somehow I still had responsibility. It was very demotivating. Okay? So by giving team members the responsibility and the authority they also have now the accountability. Okay. And we can hold them accountable not in a a punishing way
44:29 in a in a way that helps them learn and execute better next time. Okay. Next, we can measure outcomes, not activity. Okay? And that's important. You know, I the other when I first, again, I'm using this company. When I first became responsible for over administrating this company, they had to punch time clocks. Okay? It's a property management company. They can get a call at any time of the day or night if there's an emergency. I said, 'I don't understand how a time clock
45:05 works. Are you telling me that if there's a problem at midnight, you have to come to the office, clock in, handle the problem, and then clock back out? I said, "Well, we don't usually do that." I said, "But then you're not getting presumably you're not getting paid for that time. That's not right." I mean, it's just it's kind of it's it's it's crazy. Okay. So, I don't I said I said to them, you know what, if you can get your work
45:42 done in six hours a day, it's fine with me. I I I'm I'm largely indifferent to how how much time you work each day. What I care about is the results. said if if you can figure out how to do it more efficiently, more quickly, great. So, we're going to redo the compensation plan looking at what is the market value of your knowledge and experience and
46:17 you're not punching a time clock anymore. Okay? If you want to say you're on, you're honored to do your work. Okay. I mean, I said, "Look, I I'm indifferent to which hours you work. What I care about is we meet our objectives." And again, that was that was difficult for them to uh to understand at first. They it took some time to adapt. Right now, I think they really like it because they realize our our philosophy is we don't live to work, we work to live.
46:54 Work is one aspect of our lives. It's not our detra, as the French say, our reason for living. They enjoy their work a lot more. Okay. They're much more enthusiastic about it. They we I've been able to see the professional growth. It's really just been one of the most wonderful professional experiences I've ever had. Okay. as I've as I've embraced this concept of um of mission command and and actually you know injected it into a
47:29 company. Okay. And and and in the end they know that they're responsible for the results. Okay. The nice thing about it is when you deal with highquality people which which the people at this company are, they know they're responsible for the results. I don't have to be saying you're responsible for the results. They know and they embrace that responsibility. And so the accountability has been strengthened because we put this system into place. Okay. So
48:05 freedom and accountability not only can they must coexist. Okay. And in fact, I would argue you can't have accountability without freedom. If you're micromanaging your people, they have no accountability. It's all on you. Okay. Finally, number five, train for adaptability, not compliance. Okay. So, when military units train, they train for uncertainty. They train to respond to new
48:41 information. They train to respond to unexpected consequences. They do not train for perfection. Perfection should never be the goal. Continual improvement, yes. Perfection, no. Because we're never going to meet perfection. And the demand for perfection will stop people from taking risks. And we need our people to take risks if we're really going to grow our organizations.
49:16 Okay? So we can we even even in business we can train we can run scenario planning exercises. We do this in our staff meetings sometimes. Okay? We talk okay what if what if this happened? what would we do? How would this work out? Okay. And when problems come up, okay, rather than saying, okay, here's what we're going to do, I say, well, what do you think we should do? And give them a chance to develop their
49:52 problem solving skills. Okay. And then finally, I reward initiative. Okay, you know, these these my my team at this company has worked extraordinarily hard over the last two years. And I I needed to recognize that. First of all, financially, they have a retirement plan now. We're starting a health plan. These are things that they've earned
50:29 because they they've been such loyal employees to this company and they've worked so hard. But I also give them a lot of verbal recognition, a lot of personal thanks in a group and one-on-one. All of that is important. Okay. So, especially when they take initiative on something, I just lavish praise on them
51:08 because it's it's so central to getting to the next level. Okay? And and if if you know me, I'm not one to do that when it's not warranted. Okay? But we do, we need to reward our people. Not the kind of gold star for showing up kind of reward. That's counterproductive, I I would argue. But when people take the initiative, especially when it's, you know, really aligned with our intent and they carry it off, they really need to be rewarded
51:44 for that. And people need to see that they're rewarded so that they'll they'll get the message. This is the way to do it. But even when people take the initiative, even if it doesn't quite work out so well, they still need to be rewarded for taking the initiative. Maybe they can't be financially rewarded because if the initiative didn't result in in a good or didn't end up in a good result, we don't have, you know, the resources there to
52:19 reward them financially. We can still reward them verbally and say, I I'm I'm I'm very happy you took the initiative. Okay, it didn't work out the way we had hoped. That's what happens sometimes. But still, you're to be commended for taking the initiative. Now, let's figure out how we can do this better next time. That should always be the attitude. Okay. So, what does mission command mean for
52:55 remote decentralized teams even for your people who are there in the office with you? Well, uh, the fact of the matter is remote teams cannot rely on constant oversight. Okay, distributed organizations, they need to they need to make faster decisions. Okay, and global operations require local autonomy, right? So this diffused more diffused work workplace we've had over the last five or six years it really means that mission command as a concept is more important
53:30 than perhaps any prior time in business. So without mission command communication becomes overloaded decisions stall and teams disengage. So with mission command alignment remains strong. Okay, execution accelerates especially as people start to see their initiative rewarded and leaders can scale effectively. Okay? Because as we at the top of an organization use miss mission command to
54:06 empower our subordinates. As the organization grows, our subordinates who now have people subordinate to them can use the same methodology because they're immersed in it and they they'll see the value of it. Okay. So all of this requires disciplined leadership. Okay? Mission command is not easier, it's harder, especially in the beginning. Now, once you're used to it, it probably is easier. At least it's not
54:43 as big a burden on your time as micromanaging would be. Okay? But it's it's harder because we have to communicate clearly. We have to tolerate ambiguity. We need to accept controlled risk. And we need to resist the urge to micromanage. In other words, we need to have confidence and trust in our people even though we know things are not always going to go the way we want them to. And that requires discipline.
55:20 Discipline in the execution, discipline in the response. Okay. So, mission command is not about letting go. Okay. It's about a different way of leading our organizations. So, the strongest organizations are not the ones that are most controlled. They are the ones that are the most aligned and are the most effective at motivating their people to autonomously pursue
55:55 objectives in a disciplined initiative way. Okay? And if we do that then we unlock speed, we create more resilient teams and we can scale all without losing direction. Okay. So that that is the lesson of mission command. So I thank you very much for joining me today and let's see tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. is my show People Making Money. Reminding you Mondays at 10 a.m. Pacific time is my show Trust
56:30 and Estates Weekly. Of course, every Tuesday at 10 am, business lessons for the military. And every other Thursday at 5:00 pm Pacific time is my show, Jiggers' Place, where we have a cocktail and a smoo. So, lots of times to be together during the week. Looking forward to seeing you again. Thank you again so much for joining me. By the way, if you have comments, criticisms, uh questions, links to the show, uh links to social media will be in the show notes. Feel free to post your comments there. Always love to see them. Lammond, thanks for joining me this evening. Nice to to see you again. And
57:07 that just leaves me to sign off as I always do. Marie darling, you are my bell. Courage at all times, my