From military to civilian use
A few months ago I wrote a text called “Dual-use” about how civilian concepts and thinking is being utilised with great success by the militaries. The example was DOT-Chain Defence in Ukraine. I promised there to share some thoughts of when the opposite is true, that is when military concepts are used with great success in the civilian business world too.
As a matter of fact, I think we are very much affected in the civilian world by military thinking, just look at the business language as an example. I’m not saying that we are all using those phrases all the time, but they are common. I’m thinking about phrases like “land and expand”, “on the frontline” and “divide and conquer”. But that wasn’t too helpful, more like jargon.
Something truly useful in my opinion was when I first read the book “The art of action” by Stephen Bungay and started applying some of its concepts. It’s a very interesting and inspiring book overall, for example regarding leadership. When I first read it, Many of us were trying to make microservices work well in appropriate settings. The seminal paper Microservices by James Lewis and Martin Fowler was released 2014 and that was very helpful. Then I got an epiphany moment by Stephen’s book, when I realised that an influential part of the military world had known how to organise for microservices (at least the coarse grained-/bounded context-style) in...150 years! Totally mind blowing!
Let’s have a quick look at three of the many important areas of the book.
1.
Bungay identifies three gaps which are seen in every complex organisation: The knowledge gap, that the top leaders don’t know enough of the reality below them, at least not how it is right now when things have changed. Or in a minute, or… Therefore they can’t know what should be done. The alignment gap, what is ordered is not what will be done. The effect gap, what is done won’t lead to the expected results. A solution to this is that responsibility needs to be decentralised in a good way to where the action is. Mission command can be the method.
2.
For mission command to work, there must be alignment on the purpose and the goals. Only then can autonomy be used in a good way. The autonomy also requires strict borders with clear responsibility and constraints. Paradoxically, that creates freedom and an environment for effective action.
3.
Finally, the book discusses a template for strategy briefing. Used well, it’s brilliant in providing just the right information of a directive, without a single word too many. As we all (I at least) know, clarity doesn’t necessarily increase with more words.
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