Going Into Battle Prepared

“Hey Dad, do exams actually ever stop”?

Like many students at this time, my son has completed his last exam. I pondered my answer here, it had to be good. Do I give him the harsh reality that in life we never really stop being examined or reassure him that life after school is a breeze??

I opted to tell him a story instead.

A group of Uni students had partied a little too much the night before their final exam, so they decided to be all in on a story that a flat tire prevented them from getting to the venue on time.?

The lecturer took pity on them and reassured them they could take it the next day instead. The students were delighted at getting away with this and asked other students what was on the paper. The next day, however, they discovered that the exam questions had been changed and consisted of only two:

Question ONE: Your Name __________ (1 Points)

Question TWO: Which tire burst? (99 Points)

Front Left

Front Right

Back Left

Back Right

Agility.

"Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth."?

Mike Tyson.

In the old world, leaders wrote down what they wanted people to do in quite a precise way. People were given tasks that fit within an overall operation or mission. A mission today is not a set of tasks, because, in a dynamic situation, people should revert to the purpose rather than the task. Situations change; the enemy’s done something. That’s my purpose, that’s what I’m going to go after, rather than in the old system, where people would literally do their task and wait to be told what to do next.

For example, in the old world, you could say to someone, “Take and hold the bridge by midnight tonight.” In the new world, you would say, “Our intention is to cross that river. To do that, I see you securing that bridge by midnight tonight. And the reason we want you to do that is that we want to put 20,000 soldiers on the far side of that river by the close of day tomorrow.”

If you imagine that philosophy being replicated across an organisation of 80,000 people at every level, it dramatically changes the performance. Everyone at every level is thinking, “What if it changes? How do I respond?”

In a business environment, people often express annual targets as percentages of growth or the amount of cost they must take out without any real articulation of how those feeds into the overall success of the business. What they should be saying is, “We need you to take out this much cost because we want to put that into the R&D program for the next model that’s going to win us a new market.” It’s very disempowering to have targets without any real context of how that target fits into the bigger picture.

Review Constantly.

Increasing leadership agility and, in turn, the agility of the wider organisation is difficult. It requires changes to ingrained mindsets and behaviours of senior individuals who have been successful in their careers. Managers who recognise the need for organisational change usually fail to see?themselves?as one of the things that needs changing.?

They may set the goal of increased agility for the organisation, but then neglect to establish a feedback loop for insight into how their own leadership behaviours may be interfering with achieving that goal.?

Military leaders would be the first to say that their institutions can represent both the very best and the very worst in terms of agility, and that they don’t necessarily have the full answer to the challenge.

They do, however, invest significant resources in discussing the question and experimenting with innovative solutions. Business organisations need to adapt a similarly urgent rethink, on the mindset and behaviours required for sustained organisational agility.

The military has a chain of command, and everyone knows their role. In business we tend to hire people with similar skillsets and knowledge, but this is not always the case. Most people are expected to do a few things well, but they aren’t necessarily prepared or expected to take on other roles as needed.

This can leave a team vulnerable because there’s no backup plan when someone isn’t available.

The Army uses a “Two Up/Two Down” process. This means that each person is familiar with those who are two up and two down from them in the hierarchy. And, crucially, they’re also familiar with those people’s strategic goals.

I not only have to understand my mission, but I’ve also got to understand my boss’ mission—and my boss’s boss’s mission—and where my goals fit into that. What that does is it helps prevent me from doing something that works great at my level but ends up causing a bigger problem in the overall organisation.

?Tactics and Strategy.

Efficient teams do things right, whereas effective teams do the right thing. Ideally, you want to empower your team to be both efficient and effective, to ensure they’re doing the right things right.

Managers need to understand human behaviour, how to motivate, how to develop, provide coaching and deal with conflict. They must be observers and able to assess a situation, provide motivation and identify problems that interfere with performance.?

In addition, managers must understand that individuals at different levels of comfort, ability, and experience with their jobs will require different levels of input, support, and supervision.

?A manager who feels adequately prepared to provide and receive feedback and conduct a performance evaluation meeting will be a major contributor to a successfully functioning process.

Working the element of surprise.

“A true leader always keeps an element of surprise up their sleeve, which others cannot grasp but which keeps the public excited and breathless.”

Charles de Gaulle

Leadership often follows a pattern and when leadership has routines predictability kicks in. An element of surprise can throw out the pattern or predictability that’s built-in.?

Both positive and negative surprises can affirm our assumptions, but typically it's the negative surprises that challenge our assumptions.

Negative surprises challenge our mindsets because in business there is an assumption that anything which falls outside of the plan is bad. Anything negative, a negative surprise, is typically seen as bad because it disrupts our plans. On the surface, this makes perfect sense.

It's those negative surprises that give us the insight to do something different that allows us to get to the breakthrough.?

Life is unpredictable. Things happen that we can't anticipate, and we need to respond to those things. Why should it be any different when we lead a team? The first step is to recognise that surprise is an integral part of being in business.

The more we're open to unexpected events and see them as opportunities rather than threats, the more we'll be able to find the kind of breakthroughs that will make a difference.

'Reserve stores'. The Art of Contingency Planning.

Creating executable contingency plans is an essential part of organisational management, whether you’re a small business or a large corporation. Your management team must identify risks, categorise, and prioritise them, then develop procedures for dealing with these contingencies. But the best plans are meaningless if they are not thoroughly tested.

If you’re in senior management, you set the tone for the importance of contingency planning. If you don’t make this a priority, don’t miraculously expect your staff to come up with these plans. There are a million other priorities in their lives. If you don’t make this a priority, it won’t get done.

The Risk, Assumptions Dependencies, and Issues (RAID) model helps you identify the risks to your business. It also helps you manage them effectively.

Even if your company is doing well now, it's important that you stay on top of any potential problems or issues that could affect your success in the future. By using a tool like RAID, this will help with planning for a more successful future.

By aligning your defences according to RAID, you can better understand how changes in one area of your business impact other areas. In addition, by using a model that identifies all possible risks you can develop an effective strategy for managing those risks before they have a negative impact on your bottom line.

Each of these categories requires a different follow-up approach. For example: ‘Issues’ are problems. Small or large, they are discrepancies or disagreements which have taken place within the project and must be resolved.?

They may require conflict handling, negotiations, or management involvement. On the other hand, ‘Risks’ are events that may or may not occur. Arriving at risk mitigation requires brainstorming alternative approaches, yes, but may never even have to be deployed.

For these reasons, think carefully about keeping one RAID log, or keeping separate Risk, Issue, Action, and Dependency logs to be monitored at different times.

The secret to good RAID lists is to record the right risks, assumptions, issues, and decisions at the right level of detail. Too many and in too much detail simply create unnecessary bureaucracy. Too few in too little details does not provide actionable insights.

A Good Defence is Great.

Life is not one combat situation after another. It’s mostly joyous, however, you do need to be ready for the odd surprise. Exams are a bit like leading a project.

You know the topic, have an outline of what might happen, plan and prepare as much as you can but you never really know what the questions are until you sit the paper, just like you don’t know how the project will actually go until you are into it.?

What is true is that the more your surround yourself with skilled people whom you support to be part of the team as the tests come, your defenses are unlikely to break. Solutions will be found with great tactics, as well as an essential review at the end for next time.?

At least that’s what I told my son and I now have a good 12 months before I need to think up more words of wisdom.?