Commander's Intent
“Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do, and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.” - General George S. Patton
Drawing on the Cynefin Co's extensive body of work on narrative, including military work on Commander’s intent... how do we communicate a sense of direction without determining outcomes, so that the system has strategic responsiveness that can operate without the need for prediction?
In the Military 'Commander's Intent' gives clear guidance as to strategy that is easy to articlulate accross all levels of command.
Metaphor based command languages use commonly understood historical situations or metaphors and, using counter factuals, allow intent to be conveyed in a few simple words, with necessary ambiguity.
As with most narrative techniques this carries the "essential ambiguity" required to manage complexity. In this case, Strategic intent is not the same thing as goals. This links to the reality of combat, where even the best meticulous plans rarely survive first contact (paraphrasing Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, writing in German in 1871). Taking this into account, Commander's Intent instead accepts that we simply don’t know exactly what will happen, when, where or what the entangled consequences and impacts will be, and we cannot be completely certain about the resources we will have available to us to respond.
"Use semiotics and/or use metaphor-based languages (to be clear this is not just to find a metaphor and repeat it) to convey intent which is better than purpose and very different from what can be foreseen (Philosophers will recognise the link to Elizabeth Anscombe and I am currently revisiting her classic book Intention). I’m picking up here on work originally done in the context of Commander’s Intent which conveniently also has a Star Trek theme to it. Intent, identity and intelligence are distinguishing features of anthro-complexity and this is one way to make it tangible in communication. Intent carries necessary ambiguity with it." from blog https://thecynefin.co/purposeless/
"The difference is like an exoskeleton versus an endoskeleton. An ordered system is like the external skeleton of an insect — it has a rigid shell that is not going to change but within it things may change. An endoskeleton is like our spine — it gives coherence but doesn’t contain completely, so you get huge amounts of variation around it. This is of huge importance for governance. How do you create enabling constraints that effectively allow locally valid solutions to emerge within the governance framework? People confuse this, they think that all constraints must be governing constraints, actually they can be enabling constraints." https://medium.com/@brixen/dave-snowden-how-leaders-change-culture-though-small-actions-766cd2bf5128
"An illustration of this is the difference between rules and heuristics. Napolean famously told his commanders to march to the sound of the guns. That was a revolution in warfare. People now knew what to do when the battlefield plan breaks down. Not only that, they know what their colleagues will do, so there is now a degree of distributed intelligence within the network. The American Marines have a variation on that — if the battle field plan breaks down, capture the high ground, stay in touch, keep moving. Notice that these are not abstract new-age fluffy platitudes. They are hard, measurable heuristics: 1. did you capture the high ground? 2. did you stay in touch? 3. did you keep moving?" https://medium.com/@brixen/dave-snowden-how-leaders-change-culture-though-small-actions-766cd2bf5128
Dave’s Gettysburg example, taken from his time working on counter-terrorism at DARPA
In the Battle of Gettysburg, Union Major General George Meade's Army of the Potomac defeated attacks by Confederate General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, halting Lee's invasion of the north and forcing his retreat.
Using metaphorical situations with counter-factuals, to give a sense of direction that is narrative-based, rather than goal-based. Gettysburg is a key battle, the first time the South go North - and it is an accidental battle, not a deliberate battle. If it had been deliberate then chances are that Lee would have won it. The two armies coincide by accident at Gettysburg, and the first day is inconclusive. The second day, Lee realises the strategic significance of a hill called Little Roundtop, and so he sends a regiment up to capture it. At the same time, a guy called Chamberlain who is emergency trained in the MidWest recognises the significance at the same time, and gets a troop up to the top there and defends it. If that hadn't been the case, the South would have conquered that hill, they would have had a commanding field of fire over the whole army of the Pontomac and the reserves, not only would that battle have been over, the war would have been over - so it's a key turning point in history.
So if I say "Little Roundtop, no Chamberlain" then in four words I am conveying a highly complex strategic situation, but I'm adding a counterfactual to make you think.
How to apply
This is one of those well established military practices which had evolved to handle uncertainty and moving the approach over into Industry and Government, in general, is a lot better than trying to make leaders better communicators or better storytellers; both have utility but are neither sufficient nor necessary capabilities if you can get the wider process right.
If you have a body of common narrative then it’s easy to communicate - but you can also build a body of common stories and experiences that, with the addition of counterfactuals allow for effective communication of Commander’s Intent. This is best done in the metaphor approach to Commanders Intent Dave Snowden developed years ago working with US Military partners and also Singapore
So the way you do Commander's Intent - or Leader's Intent now - is you identify seminal moments in the history of the org that everybody understands. You construct them as a taught history, introduce counterfactual points. And then you have an exceptionally effective way of conveying direction but leaving necessary ambiguity in place.
References
- Marine Corps Warfighting Publication (MCWP) 5-1
- https://www.mca-marines.org/gazette/commanders-intent-easy-to-understand-tough-to-articulate/
- “No Battle Plan Survives Contact With the Enemy” - April 6, 2016 Tim Riecker, The Contratrarian Emergency Manager, at https://timothyriecker.com/2016/04/06/no-battle-plan-survives-contact-with-the-enemy/
- https://unforgiving60.podbean.com/e/s2e16-%E2%80%93-understanding-complexity-with-dave-snowden-comfort-in-chaos-and-uncertainty/