

In the July/August HBR, Roger Martin argues that business is being held back by the idea that strategy development and execution are separate, and he recommends a choice-cascade model to overcome it.

The spotlight on the military in the November issue may be the place to pursue this important theme further. As may have become apparent to readers from some of the pieces written by officers in this issue, the military have worked out how to use a choice-cascade approach to deal with the problem Martin raises. They have also worked out what other elements are needed to make a choice-cascade effective. Readers may not be aware how long ago they did so and just how much of value can be learned from the approach, known today as mission command.

Some of us in business have got some of the bits but few have pulled them all together. I believe the reason for that lies in our history.

The first business organizations to emerge out of the Industrial Revolution were built around factories, at the heart of which were machines for mass-producing cotton, pottery, or iron. The people who worked there were the proverbial cogs in those machines. In 1911, Frederick Winslow Taylor sanctified the model and unlocked the door to massive increases in productivity with the system of scientific management. The ideal worker was a robot, and the ideal manager was his programmer. The goal was efficiency. Managers were to plan and workers were to execute and never the twain should meet.

As long as a business was about producing predictable quantities of predictable products in a predictable market, Taylor’s approach worked wonderfully. As the environment became more complex and unpredictable, the approach began to break down. From the 1980’s we have been modifying it to make it more flexible, with some success. However, its legacy endures. Now, in the 21st century, it is holding us back. We need a different model.

Fortunately, that model exists. It was developed before Taylor created the problem. While early businesses were turning workshops into factories and craftsmen into robots, the nineteenth century Prussian Army went in the opposite direction. After the disaster of Jena in 1806, Scharnhorst began his reforms with the officer corps, placing people selection and development at the heart of the new army. Clausewitz’s analysis of friction pricked the bubble of epistemological hubris behind the perfect plan and put a premium on managing uncertainty.

From 1857 onwards, Helmuth von Moltke the elder built an organization capable of executing strategy in a fast-moving, unpredictable environment by fostering both high alignment and high autonomy. The organization was not a machine, but an organism, a set of human relationships.

Battlefield success depended on incisive leadership and a sense of personal responsibility for achieving collective outcomes. Senior people had to articulate their intent, give clear briefings, and leave well alone. Junior people had to understand the intent, appraise their own situation, and make rapid decisions to realize it based on partial information.

The culture and practices the Prussians developed became known as Auftragstaktik. We know them today as mission command, and the practices have been adopted bymany military services. Getting the culture is more difficult, and takes longer. The Prussians themselves took decades. But the path is clear. Its principles have imbued many (all?) outstanding military organisations from the Roman Army to the 18th Century Royal Navy. Businesses can adopt it, too.

I have worked with many groups of managers who are seeking to escape the confines of their 20th century legacy. For them, mission command is like manna from heaven. The armed forces have been urged for many years to learn from business. Perhaps it is time for the teachers and the pupils to swap places.

Stephen Bungay is a Director of the Ashridge Strategic Management Centre
In London. His forthcoming book,
The Art of Action — How Leaders Close the Gaps Between Plans, Actions and Results, is published by Nicholas Brealey.