Combating Current Business Challenges
Amidst COVID-19 Pandemic

Victor Abbey

Jun 05, 2021

Ancient Laws

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Leadership Lessons from the Military for Corporate Leaders

“In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.”
— Sun Tzu

Background

The unparalleled scale, complexity, severity of the global COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with the myriad of issues punching all companies today since its inception is escalating rapidly as the economic impact spreads. The entire humanity across the globe is feeling like living under occupation as a result of lockdowns and other travel restrictions in many countries, thereby curtailing freedom of movement and assembly. Not only has the pandemic threatened our individual lives, but also the very survival of most organizations and the global economy at large. After overwhelming healthcare systems, the pandemic continues to have very devastating effects on businesses across the globe, and the business community seems to be heading for an economic quake greater than any since World War II.
This state of affairs presents both significant challenges and opportunities that are evolving at an exponential speed and giving birth to warlike conditions with a battlefront that is moving faster away from safeguarding our lives to safeguarding our livelihoods as humans. This requires a unique or novel approach, new operating models, and bold leadership, and decisive action, which no one has more experience in than the professional military leaders. Undoubtedly, many corporate leaders have already taken some decisive actions in responding to the current crisis with speed and resourcefulness, and are now increasingly shifting attention to planning (amidst significant difficulty) not just for the days ahead but also for an extended period of uncertainty, and potentially, a very different world post-COVID-19.
But there are great lessons corporate leaders can learn from military leadership principles and approaches, since military leaders are known to be accustomed to operating under a miasma of uncertainty and great time pressure, and to making myriad decisions with fateful consequences (some tactical, for winning a battle, and some strategic, for winning a war). These lessons hinge on time and battle-tested war-fighting and leadership principles/philosophy. It is my objective within this article to bring to the fore these leadership principles/philosophies for the benefit of corporate leaders in their concerted effort at combating the current challenges facing their individual and/or collective businesses or organizations.

Leadership Lessons from the Military for Corporate Leaders

1. Planning

Without a doubt, military leaders are quite obsessed with planning. They remain very conscious and fascinated about the fact that the battlefield is constantly an uncertain environment, so they continually plan and test their ideas. As General Dwight Eisenhower once remarked, “plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” To prepare for war, military leaders put together teams of planners with diverse backgrounds and expertise, drawn from different departments/units. The process of swiftly amalgamating and iterating divergent perspectives goes on constantly. Quite often, two teams of planners are engaged simultaneously: one focused on contingencies in current operations, and the other with a focus on future operational requirements.
This approach does not only create better plans, but also ensures that the personnel responsible for execution share a mutual understanding of the assumptions, objectives, and contingency options. Corporate leaders equally require similar extensive planning at all levels including the consideration of possible contingencies, which is a key requirement amid the rapidly developing COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, wargaming, which is part and parcel of planning in the military, occurs at three levels: Strategic, Operational, and Tactical. The strategic level focuses on national priorities, while Operational and Tactical levels tend to deal with regional operations and specific battles/engagements respectively. Whereas tactical level crisis can escalate into Strategic level crisis, national priorities (strategic level) can culminate in tactical engagements. Thus, swiftly evolving events affect each of the three levels. Similarly, in the corporate world, organizations operate at three levels: Strategic (Corporate level), Operational (Business Unit level), and Tactical (Functional Unit level). As such, a crisis at any tactical level such as the loss of a specific account (tactical) may hurt a business unit’s annual plan (operational), which may cause an organization to re-evaluate its portfolio (strategic). This requires corporate leaders to synchronize their planning cycles and assumptions to account for the rapidly changing economic circumstances by constantly reassessing and refining their plans and actions in order to surmount the extant challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

2. ‘Mission Command’ Leadership philosophy

Contrary to a popular misconception that military leadership philosophy is largely defined by top-down decision making where commissioned officers supposedly make decisions and the troops do what they are told, modern military leadership philosophy is grounded on what is known as ‘mission command’ philosophy. Also referred to as mission-type tactics, mission command is a style of military leadership philosophy derived from the Prussian-pioneered mission-type tactics doctrine, which combines centralized intent with decentralized execution, subsidiarity and promotes freedom and speed of action, and initiative, within defined constraints. At its core is the empowerment of team members (subordinates) to seek action and/or take initiatives in line with the intention behind the order and not the order itself when it becomes difficult to execute. This requires flexible structures, well-defined intent, and trust. The philosophy of mission command is hinged on seven (7) interdependent principles: competence, trust, shared understanding, mission orders, commander’s intent, disciplined initiative, and risk acceptance.
By this philosophy, military leaders, at all levels, make clear their intent (the outcomes to be achieved) coupled often with a “main effort” – a clear intent initiates a force’s purposeful activity and represents what the commander (leader) wants to achieve and why (the principal criterion for decision making which binds the force together. The idea is to ensure that people working on other priorities know it is their duty to support the main effort and that they may not receive all the resources they hope for until its goals are achieved. They should also understand the metrics used to define mission success.
For this to work, leaders have to trust that their subordinates will do their best and ask for help when they need it, and subordinates need to trust their leaders to give them tasks that they can accomplish and support them as needed. Similarly, the head office needs to redefine its role vis-àvis branches, field offices, or plants. While it sometimes makes sense to give specific direction, often it will be better to support those closest to the action, who are making and carrying out decisions. In the mission command philosophy, the limits on field commanders are echoed at every level and the military makes it very clear where decisions are to be made and who is responsible for making them. On this basis (flexibility combined with structure), it is possible to delegate effectively.
In the corporate world today, teams managing the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic have had to make more and faster decisions than they do under normal operational circumstances. Corporate leaders need to ask themselves whether their team members have that level of capabilities and freedom of action. For instance, if the videoconferencing system goes down or a major supplier can no longer deliver, will team members sit around in paralysis or devise ways to keep moving? Do team members have the training to react and take appropriate decisions?

3. Haste and Carefulness

Military leaders sit at the center of information-gathering networks fed by their subordinates, human and technical intelligence, allies, and plan-ahead teams. Good leaders work continually to maintain situational awareness. Through experience and character, they learn when they need to intervene. Then they act and move on. But hard choices are still hard choices, and even under pressure, consulting fellow leaders or colleagues in a different context will improve decision making. Moving too quickly often leads to messes that can take time to clean up, so taking ten minutes to think about potential issues and, if possible, to discuss them can save time later. These rhythms are embedded in military processes. Having a plan-ahead team that works through such issues reduces the number of surprises.

4. Expectations and Perfection

Good enough is usually good enough, and going with a less-bad plan is often much better than waiting for a chance at perfection. In war, the enemy will exploit indecisiveness, so leaders seek to establish a tempo that overwhelms the enemy’s ability to make decisions. The hardest call for crisis leaders is to move ahead knowing that they may have it wrong. Given the inherent uncertainty of the profession, military commanders keep forces in reserve should initial assumptions prove wrong or unit performance falters. This reserve provides the flexibility for responding to unforeseen events quickly.
During the war, both sides continually search for an edge. In World War II alone, this accelerated the development of rocket science, radar, digital circuits, and many other important technologies. During the present crisis, we already see new applications of old technologies. As always, innovation is likely to bring long-term advantages—to society as a whole and to individual businesses.
But this cannot be taken for granted. Everyone wants to have the perfect team, the best experts, and plenty of time. Perhaps the most important lesson from the military is that you almost never have these happy conditions, so constant change and evolution are needed to outmaneuver the opposition. Leadership up to and down the ranks, adaptability, and a clear understanding of the mission make the difference.

5. Laconic Communication

Military commanders have techniques for simpler, more transparent communications. For instance, taking the time to engage with soldiers is a tried-and-true method of ensuring that the messages are cascading and that the flag officer is getting first-hand anecdotes. This happens in wartime even when it is dangerous to move around the area of operations.
Commanders also make it a priority to establish what is known as a ‘Common Operating Picture’ (COP). Thus, a single display of relevant operational information (such as the position of troops) is shared by all commands. A COP ensures that all members of the team have situational awareness, aids collaborative planning, and helps units come together to execute plans. The COP is consistently updated, with staff providing daily briefings for leaders. The best military leaders take personal responsibility for ensuring that they have the essential information, which then takes on predictive meaning as it is analyzed. It is the fusion of intelligence with the common operating picture that enables them to decide on a direction.
Communication matters most when everyone is in a hurry. In the current environment, many employees are getting information from half a dozen or more social and digital channels. They have too much to pay attention to and not enough time to go deep. Many different sources of truth and information will be scattered across an organization. Leaders need to do two things:
1.             a. To make the message simple, and repeat it often with clear directions via short emails, not long memos. Put the main points at the top and make it easy to see what teams need to execute.
2.             b. To establish a single, trusted source of information.

Conclusion

This is the time to show that, like military leaders, corporate leaders can equally empower their organizations to rise to the occasion collectively. Urgently launching a plan-ahead team, staffed by some of the organization’s best brains removed from their day-to-day jobs to work closely with top executives, will enable leaders to make timely decisions across multiple planning horizons. As the current crisis continues to evolve, opportunities exist for corporate leaders to reshape their organizations to be leaner and stronger. By adapting the way in which they operate and adopting the lessons from the military, they can help assure their leadership legacy. Above all, the following three principles should remain paramount:
•       a. Maintenance of morale. Under challenging conditions, this is crucial to success. High morale is characterized by steadfastness, courage, confidence, and sustained hope.
•       a. Retention of flexibility. To leverage the strength of an organization fully, a certain level of flexibility is needed to encourage people to think creatively and be resourceful. This can be measured by individuals’ speed of action and reaction or how quickly a commander seizes the initiative.
•       a. Fostering of cooperation. Cooperation relies on three interrelated elements: mutual trust and goodwill, a common aim (or unity of purpose), and clearly divided (defined) responsibilities. Team spirit and training are fundamental in achieving this and the overall response objective.