As a way to further flush out the military strategies outlined in the previous post, I was asked to elaborate on how these strategies can be used to establish a successful upturn for businesses and organizations. Taking a passive approach to influencing positive organizational behavior will only lead to exasperating results that you will regret later in life. So a question to ask yourself and those individuals with who trust in your leadership is this: what do we do to bail ourselves out of the economic turmoil to plan for the future picture that exceeds everyone’s expectations? The answer is simple; keep pace with today’s rapidly changing business environment by engaging seven military stratagems, known as the “Preemptive Strike,” (seven disciplines that require strategic and flawless execution) to win and thrive during the economic upturn for success.
So how does this short lesson on military strategy and doctrine relate to organizational renewal? Like warfighting, things and circumstances change, and the two have changed quickly in the business sphere – the “speed within the business marketplace” is matching the quantum increase in the “speed of life” – leading us to the need for a significant “revolution in business and organizational affairs.” This revolution requires the launch of a Preemptive Strike on the way business is conducted; a new state of mind also known as, business unusual:
Define the importance of the strategy forward. You must first master the art of organizational navigation – mission planning, methodology and Future Picture planning. Essentially, by first knowing what it is that you wish to achieve, or what your purpose is, you are able to decide on the absolute best means for achieving the objective (with contingency planning of course). Beginning with the organizational vision (Missional Map), or the Future Picture (how you expect the future to look before your arrival based on the work done in the present), you must first align the goals and perceptions to those of the people responsible for leading into victory. This requires the development of your code of conduct, or simply, your Memorandum of Understanding.
It is here that you must begin to articulate how the organization will support individual lifestyles and the organizations lifecycle. As a code of conduct, the Memorandum of Understanding provides a set of disciplines and resource: the Cardinal Rules, Guiding Precepts, Forms of Disposition (transformative and critical thinking), General Orders and Centers of Gravity, to assist people in their personal and professional development, growth, guidance, and assessment in the leadership of self. The Memorandum of Understanding establishes a strict perspective for instructing successful practices, theories, and beliefs that drives people to achieve a successful future (also, how you intend to conduct yourself into the future for others to emulate). The Memorandum of Understanding must be designed for people to learn broadly; to inspire the service out of generosity for others; and to prepare them to lead courageously into the future. A Memorandum of Understanding must encourage a perspective to become firmly grounded in the art of “success.”
From this point, you are able to begin to examine the methodology by which the organization will achieve its Future Picture. The methodologies statements are and provide stringent, yet flexibility to the actual application (as one thing you must realize is that things change, and they change quickly!). Finally the mission is the action part, giving you immediate direction and meaning within the organization.
Engage your preemptive strike measures. The importance here is to strike while others are distracted. To do so, it requires you to have a thorough understanding for what transformational leadership is truly about (changing situational awareness); understanding that people are now much smarter and more empowered, and that true leadership and transformation is tied into trust and empowerment. Transformational leadership and the application of the maneuver approach (the strike measures) in business are the intangible aspects. This is about LeaderShaping people, process and the business to achieve a desired outcome – either in a human resource environment, departmental function, effectiveness and efficiencies of process, loyalties between people or a greater opportunity for the business.
The key underlying principles to this concept is; an acknowledgement of the empowered individual, situational awareness, setting conditions and perhaps most importantly, thinking like a strategist who remains disciplined in his/her approach to tactfully win while keeping the end state at the forefront. Winning a swift victory by catching the enemy off guard is one of any leaders’ greatest dreams. Sometimes it can be a dramatic reaction to an opportunity, or it can be designed to remove a potential threat from the enemy’s arsenal. On a broader strategic level, preemptive strike can be a deliberate Battleplan used by a strategic and numerically inferior power to head off a situation in which ultimate defeat would be inevitable. Whatever the reason, the tough economic times calls for a non-traditional approach that in some cases, might seem ruthless, and carries enormous risks if not planned well in the Innovation War Room.
This strategy and its fundamentals set out the parameters of the Battleplan and examines why leaders should decide on this particular course of action to impact their centers of gravity. The same fundamentals were successfully used during two now infamous military engagements: the Japanese bombing and attack of Pearl Harbor on 6 December 1941, the most infamous preemptive strike of all and the Israeli preemptive strike which began the Six Day War of June 1967. Using this strategy, leaders can move their organizations into regional prominence by attacking fear in the marketplace – acquire opportunities and capitalize where others are afraid to venture.
Establish Achievable Aims. Understand what it takes to make business and organizations function with greater capacity than it has in the past – as early as yesterday! Establish a code or set of principles that ensure a level of conduct (code of conduct) to extend the life cycle of the organization – helping to define what’s most important to the organization and eliminating what is not. When this can be achieved, organizations can challenge deeply-held orthodoxies about who their customers are and how they interact with them. When establishing achievable aims, it is critically important that leaders understand strategy and tactics, the many differences between them and their influences on the organization. For example, in planning the invasion of Pearl Harbor, had the Japanese leadership only listened to Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, one of Japans more experienced commanders in the fleet, they would have succeeded Pearl as a flawless strategy by launching a third attack. History now shows that the third attack was never launched. As it relates to tactics for the attack, the Japanese was highly successful, yet strategically, the only result was the awakening of a sleeping giant that lie waiting in the United States’ military might.
Just like a good old SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threat) analysis, establishing achievable aims requires the complete acknowledgement and integration of specific and focused Centers of Gravity: Leadership, infrastructure, processes, populations and action units to map out the capabilities, strengths and weaknesses across the organization. Not only as they are now, but also as they “must be” to achieve the mission! So, the lesson for business leaders is this: do not start what cannot be successfully completed with well throughout plans that ultimately lead to goals being achieved and the organization’s life cycle being extended.
Identify means and ensure intelligence. I'd like to start this segment off with a question; what’s the purpose of your organization? Or, perhaps more specifically, what’s the purpose of your organization’s leadership within its industry? Do you ever think about that throughout the course of the day? When identifying means for your organization, three words come to mind: purpose, focus and connection.
Focus involves a discovery, or at least rediscovery, of what you want most out of your organization and its leadership. That knowledge then must become the focus of your thoughts and the basis for your business decision-making. See, unless you know and focus on what more success and more effective freedom really means to you (or looks like), only then will you be able to strive for a winning outcome. Purpose is the stimulus that defines momentum in transformational thinking: “you are what you are because of the way you think.” If you believe that there is more waiting you in the future, at that point, you’ll be able to focus on that purpose for moving forward to execute your effective thoughts.
Connection is the systematic application of your purpose in life to the day-to-day function of your organization. This is where intelligence works its way into the equation. Organizational leadership must ensure intelligence by leveraging core competencies and strategic assets using a “Five Paragraph Order” approach to generate opportunities and eliminate risk of compromising new growth. The five paragraph order provides guidance to the leadership and outlines a strategy forward using the acronym known as “SMEAC.” This acronym allows an organization to ensure that everyone is striving towards a well established purpose: S: they keep an eye on the current “situation” and they fully understand the reality of their circumstances to plan a course of action; M: they are able to identify a clear “mission” – goals and objectives – to engage high and low ground; E: they are able to target critical successes and “execute” towards the future picture, while expecting the unexpected and knowing how-to deal with it accordingly; A: they remain fluid in their priorities to ensure the organization’s “administrative needs and logistics” are firmly acknowledged and moving in the right direction to affirm growth strategies and finally, C: they complete a succession process through “command and control” measures and when complete, they effectively document lessons learned to ensure generational excellence and linkage to legacy.
Here’s the lesson; when leaders identify means and ensure intelligence, they sanction effective decision-making to act on the transformative organizational behavioral measures and identify key actions that foster goal accomplishment. They harness emergent trends and discontinuities to substantially change the way things are done in and across their industry by leading the way change is realized. And finally, they positively influence their people and organizations to leverage core competencies and strategic assets in novel ways that generate new growth and focus the organization and its purpose to connect with success. When you are able to do this for yourself and your organization, you will achieve the means to ensure intelligence to win over adversity.
Enforce Security. Leaders know that their success depends upon how well their organization understands and addresses the deep customer needs, internal and external, that are currently going unmet. It is important to develop a cadence of accountability by building an organizational planning and accounting platform to establish a significant measure of merit to meet future obligations. Life does not provide all of the answers on a silver platter nor can I provide answers to life’s most persistent questions in the span of this article, but I can tell you this; enforce security of process, business process, and open your eyes to be willing to accept change or else. Dwelling on the “or else” is not worth the energy, as I suspect the economic times over the course of the past year has made you realize the effects of what could be if you do not.
Get rid of the processes and things that have outlived their usefulness. Turbulent times demand that your most coveted resources go to the high potential areas to get the greatest return. If you, as the leader, has allowed the wrong type of leadership to govern your decisions and the organization is filled with clutter (in some cases, the wrong people and talent) that proliferated unnoticed, the time has never been better to get some spring cleaning done. This is the hardest task of leadership, making the decision to shake things up for the “absolute” right reasons! In the end, everyone will understand, or not deserve to be in your successful future picture when you arrive.
Here’s the lesson: Understand what makes the business tick functionally and how your strategy forward impacts your business operating protocol. Business operating protocol is the place by which you are able to document the processes, intellectual property and the reason, purpose, and means to do business. These will almost certainly change regularly as things evolve (new technologies, battlefields, people and personalities, new customer needs and wants, etc). Enforcing security means that you must tighten the bootstraps across the board; influence the physical system that develops assets out of the business, rather than a job out of the business. If you are able to establish enforced security, you will achieve a standardized and workable solution that requires limited supervision to allow you to focus on other critical areas of the business (realizing your efforts as capital gains on business offerings and revenues).
Engage the Strike; the time to behave accordingly is now! Develop a deliberate Battleplan that can be used by a strategic and numerically inferior power to head off a situation in which ultimate defeat would be inevitable to your advantage. One way of developing such the plan is to engage the disciplines of “warfare” and act. These disciplines are paramount in defining the true meaning of leadership, execution and prosperity.
An extraordinary organization is one that is driven by extraordinary people who make a distinctive impact and deliver superior performance over a long period of time. There are some striking characteristics of the leaders who achieve sustained success along their journey within the lifecycle of their organization. They experience an increased level of personal mastery. These leaders have gone through a process. The process serves as a guiding framework, solely based on the inevitability for making significant change to influence greatness. This process is one that defines the performance outcomes that exceeds expectations – the opportunities that become unveiled due to the influenced greatness that is driven by the extraordinary people who make-up a great team.
If an organization is only as good as its people, organizations today have much to worry about. The reason: The associates are under unprecedented strain. In an economic environment that demands increased productivity, leaders are tightening control over their organizations, creating smaller environments that ask the associates to do more work in less time. At the same time, employers are paying less attention to their associates’ individuality and more to their ability to work within team environments. Preparing to engage an effective strike upon the enemy requires effective team building maneuvers. These maneuvers or disciplines of warfare must suggest that leaders at all levels can cope with a situation by employing two specific tactics: “Fearlessness” and “Business Warfighting.” When leaders learn to integrate these two tactics as their warfare disciplines across and within a team building strategy that is driven by quality and the values of the people, great actions will follow. I believe that very few organizations have the ability to lift themselves above the short-term fray to get this message, but those who do are the very few needed to lead us into the future.
For several years I’ve noticed a deep disappointment and despair, even among business people whom I had formerly thought of as engaged, capable leaders. Since 2003, my time has been spent working on environmental systems change for organizations and leadership types. My goal was to help organizations become more committed and productive with the full engagement of people across all levels. Many of these people were heroes to me that I have tried to emulate specific qualities to become great myself. They knew about the value of participative and democratic leadership. They made great gains in both the traditional measures of profitability and in innovation and viability. They understood what I have recently become aware of – the strategy of the “Blue Ocean:” Comprehending the requirements to affect change when others cannot see the future through the unique set of lenses you are wearing. To do what has never been achieved to affect a large mass using energy that creates momentum for change. They helped me to define what fearlessness means as a leader and how-to use it as a discipline of warfare for business and change.
Business warfighting is all about balance. Bringing balance to a situation causes for relaxed, yet disciplined behaviors to be present. Balance offers a greater sense of purpose, rather than going against it to tear down, destroy, or disembark the competition. Embracing conflict in the face of complex situations that seem disillusioned (terrain that are untamed), that is directly in front of you, creates opportunities to control the future picture. Business Warfighting calls for change from the inside-out. If this is the case, you must begin within yourself first then engage others to help them with finding their voice. Balance offers a significant leadership advantage that provides a philosophy, the experiential quality, and the strategic methodology to help users with successfully applying the inherent tools to achieve an increase in efficiency and effectiveness to their leadership and team capabilities. As a framework, the various disciplines each combine the entire team’s warfighting process into a unique configuration that results performance management value.
So, how do you effectively engage the strike? You do it with a team that has embraced fearlessness and business warfighting as the blitzkrieg that cannot be seen by the enemy until the time is too late to react.
Flawlessly Execute the Exit Strategy. Just as everything has a beginning, all things have an end. You must be prepared to execute your well planned, thought-out and established exit points that were defined in your Innovation War Room at the start. There are five disciplines of greatness to consider here in order to face fierce challenges in short time frames to flawlessly execute the exit strategy. This is the most critical part of developing your Battleplan and the one area that everyone gets wrong. Going back to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the tactics within the attack would have been flawless had they launched a third attack. The United States would have had to send its remaining carriers and battle group away from Pearl and the setback would have been at least a year before reaching the appropriate levels to manage an effective attack. But, with all great plans that are flawed, the execution within the exit strategy was not planned well and the U.S. emerged as sleeping giants often do. There are five disciplines of greatness that will help you to flawlessly execute the exit strategy you are planning for is: a positive attitude, an understanding that “power” is not “conformity,” influence, risk and luck.
A positive attitude; it is critically important that you achieve a winning and open minded positive attitude about yourself and those influenced by your behaviors, personality, and speak. What about an understanding that “power” is not “conformity;” you have to be discrete in you personal behavior to become great, but this does not mean that you must become a conformist! All ambitious people in history have had to take their share of hard knocks. If you are trying to go along with the flow within popular culture, you will be looked at as just another “Joe.” So, you might as well be the trail-blazer of a person and blaze new trails for others to follow – and be “you” along the way.
As for influence, at the end of the day, you should be able to do an audit of the day’s outcomes to see a lineage of successful outcomes that were partly influenced by your behaviors. Do what is important to be exposed to different things that can take you to higher levels of performance – increase the talent capital to market yourself into the future – and ensure that you are exposed to different disciplines. Contribute in new ways that allow others to become great because they attempt to emulate you as a significant influence in their life. Make sure that you do all that you can to prove yourself, and then make it known that you are willing to go the extra mile to achieve the future picture.
Risk; one of the most important adjustments for most people who are trying to accomplish greatness is their attitude to exercise fearlessness and take risk. This is tricky, as the outcomes are unknown in most cases. If you have played it safe thus far in your approach to life and in your career, understand that greatness does not allow for this approach – specifically, in the days ahead. To win big, you must play big! Greatness is all about handling risks responsibly, intelligently, and in a calculated manner. And finally, luck; in this world, there’s no such thing as a pure meritocracy. Nobody gets ahead in life without experiencing a little luck along the way. Luck happens to the most deserving of people and some of the most undeserving. The key to having luck come your way is to make your own luck happen. It’s that simple! These five disciplines of greatness might not deliver immediate results now, but you’ll be well-positioned for the future and a much better individual and organization in the end.
It is my belief that as people and organizations begin to reshape their inner circles, way of thinking and cultures; it’s not hard to recognize how the principles found within the military-style ideation and methodology of the Battleplan for Preemptive Strike apply to the many burning platforms people and organizations are facing today. Isn’t it time you subjected your own business model to some “creative reconstruction,” aimed at making it better suited to today’s shifting customer needs and new economic realities?
For those not comfortable with the military analogy, I offer this more simplistic view. Like a law enforcement officer, he/she begins their shift with the understanding that at the end of the day, all is well, and they are able to go home to their families and loved ones safely (Future Picture). They need all available resources to deal with the conditions and the climate of the public – its behaviors, personalities, attitudes and nuances (Centers of Gravity and SMEAC). A course of action is determined during their routine briefing session and contingencies are set in place to deal with expected changes within the climate (Method Planning).
The members on the team, while on the shift, must be trained in the procedures and drills for an effective and safe journey (Business operating system). Each officer must have the knowledge of trust for his/her fellow officers, the knowledge that everyone understands, that in order to protect and serve, they must also protect and serve one another as well (Mission), and be able to take ownership, when needed, for the team to excel as one unified voice (Leadership). With all these things in place, the agency can ensure its citizens that they are safe (Profit Drivers), improving the community (Centers of Gravity), looking to decrease crime with the help of its citizens (Battleplan), improving situational awareness (Tactics and Maneuverability) and setting out for an idyllic vision (Doing business).
Certainly, these military principles alone do not provide business with all the answers, but they do help us create a framework that begins to engage the realities of business today in an enabled global marketplace where people, processes and products have been forever changed by the economies of scale, markets, leadership and organizational behaviors. Mixed within this framework are the conventional, and unconventional traditional military approaches used by military tacticians throughout history. The Battleplan for Preemptive Strike provides a nontraditional attack mode for business and organizational development that anyone leader or decision maker can engage today’s battlefields that demand more now than ever before; only now, these same leaders and decision makers can do so with more understanding and control. And, with a set of tools (strategies) that have been used to shape successful organizations and leadership commands that are filled with the progressive thinkers of our time.
For additional information or to get a copy of the book, "Business WARFIGHTING For GREAT Teams" (BookSurge Publishers, 2009), please email Dpitts@thebisongroup.com or visit http://www.thebisongroup.com.
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