Plan like you are going into combat

How do you achieve what you set out to?

Have you ever heard the phrase “organised with military precision”?? If you are serving or a veteran that makes us smile – we know it’s not quite Swiss clock level precision! However, once you experience the reality outside the military, you see why people say it. If there was one saying that stuck with me from service that explains it: “Timings are critical, not flexible”

But how does the military actually plan? How is that relevant to the civilian world? Well I’m going to walk you through an abridged version of what we call the Combat Estimate – it’s 7 questions that military commanders are taught to ask themselves to come up with plans that are sufficiently detailed and don’t miss key considerations.

It should be noted – that although I think you can use this approach at all levels of business planning from strategy down to projects – the military actually has slightly different processes at the operational and strategic levels – but the main principles remain the same.

Assumptions:

Firstly, there is an assumption here that this process is being used in the middle of an organisation. I’ll talk about the nuance if you are at the top towards the end of this.

Secondly, I’m assuming that you are in a situation where you have some form of delegated authority – project leadership, line management or similar. Although I actually go through the process as an individual too.

The One Third / Two Third Rule

At all levels of the military, we try to adhere to a 1/3 – 2/3 rule with time. In essence, if we take the total time we have before we START something (ie an operation, a project etc) then the commander gets 1/3 of that time to plan and issue direction. The remaining 2/3 are for the subordinates to plan, organise and get ready for the operation.

So let’s put that into a simple example. Let’s say it’s 06:00hrs and we need to step off for a patrol at 12:00hrs. That is six hours of total battle preparation time.

As the commander, I must have issued direction no later than 08:00 hours. Because I have 1/3 of that time (2 hours) in which to plan, write my direction and have finished issuing that direction.

Now, the subordinate commanders have a total of 4 hours. So they get 80 mins of the remaining time to plan and issue direction – so we now know that each of their orders will be complete no later than 09:20 hours.

Warning Orders and Concurrent Activity

Now, we stand by the 1/3 2/3 rule, but we can make good use of the time in our own third by generating concurrent activity. We want people to understand as much as possible, as early as possible so that they can start thinking, start planning and start preparing as much as possible as early as possible..

So we issue a warning order. This is known as a ‘trickle feed’ of information.

Basically, if you know something, don’t hold onto the information unless you have to for security purposes. Tell people what you know as soon as you can so they can start acting on it. There will be no wasted effort, because any time spent in preparation will only make the force more ready for whatever comes up, even if that changes. Warning Orders follow a mnemonic SMTOCA.

Situation – what’s going on and what is the wide plan as far as we know.

Mission – what have we specifically been told to do?

Tasks – what tasks are likely to come up for each team on current thinking.

Orders – when am I going to give you a full brief and when

Combat Service Support – what equipment and supplies do you need to think about and go and get on current thinking. How is that going to happen in the wider plan?

Acknowledgement -sign this, tell me you’ve read it and understood it.

Now that I’ve got people working on their preparation and thinking about what is coming up, I can do my detailed planning and writing my own instructions.

Step One: What is the situation and how does it affect me?

In the very first step we look at the macro situation. In a combat situation I am analysing the ground; where are the routes? What does that mean for me? Are they any choke points or vulnerable points?

We also want to identify two key things: Key Terrain and Vital Ground.? Key terrain is anything in the environment that will be highly advantageous for us to control; normally it might be some some of elevated ground, perhaps key buildings or routes. Vital Ground is something that we absolutely must control – if we don’t control it, we will definitely lose.

There is a real nuance here: key terrain and vital ground can be conceptual as well as physical.? They might for example, ?be public opinion. What we are trying to do is work out all of the factors that are going to affect us.

When we have identified all of these factors, we write them down in a column. Next, we produce another column and we ask ourselves – So What? What does that mean for me. And we keep asking that question until we get to the end – which could be a Task I need to do, a Request for Information or even we identify a ‘Commanders Critical Information Requirement (CCIR) – if we get Rumsfeldian – these are our known unknowns.

In a civilian context, we should be looking at the market place, or if we are pursuing internal change projects for example we are looking at our wider business context.? Which areas are struggling? What other change projects are going on? Who has recently undergone change? Where are there areas of high sickness and absence? Is there any vital ground for the business? What about key terrain?

If you are looking at the strategic level and you are in a competitive business environment – these terrain features may be market position for example. They might be related to market share. You will get a feel for this.

In the combat context we now look at enemy forces and friendly forces – basically what are the enemy doing? What are their capabilities? What are they trying to achieve and why? – This is detailed competitor analysis and what were are trying to identify is their intent and their key vulnerabilities. That’s what we are seeking to exploit. In essence, we want to do a SWOT from the competitor’s stand point.

And we analyse what our friendly forces are doing and why.

Step Two: What have I been told to do and why?

Now I’m going to look specifically at the overall all plan and my part in it. All the time I am looking at two fundamental things: Who do I need to support and what support do I need? If I can always answer those two things, I can liaise in all directions to ensure that we are working towards a common goal and that we have mutual understanding.

I’m looking for two things to which I allocate resources:

1.????? Specified Tasks – These are things I’ve been specifically asked to do in the orders

2.????? Implied Tasks – these are things I’ll have to do in order to achieve my specified tasks

Remember, with everything I see I’m asking myself “So What?” Does it create a task, an information requirement or something I need to know (request for information)

I’m also here looking for the boundaries and parameters I’ve been given. These are going to be in time (do it by a point in time) Space (physical boundaries) and Resources (you only have these particular resources to get it done. We may also have legal restrictions such as rules of engagement to follow.

This is no different to any business or civilian organisation.

Here I’ll be looking for time restrictions, budgetary, compliance, legal frameworks, system restrictions etc. Again, always ask So What? So What? So What?

Step Three: What effects do I want to achieve?

Now I’ve analysed the overall situation and I’ve understood all of the things I’ve been asked to do, I’ going to look at the effects I need to achieve. What are the outcomes I need to create to get mission success?

At this stage this is conceptual. I need to look at the definitions of particular effects (easy in the military, we literally have a glossary with a definition). So for example, if my effect is to “DEFEAT” I literally need to stop the enemy from achieving their objective – and that opens up multiple ways I can do that, which doesn’t even require violence at times…

We aren’t trying to superimpose a solution at this stage… that’s something we call ‘situating the estimate’ – ie making a solution fit the desired outcome.

We are just listing the outcomes we want.

Now I’m going to write my initial intent – a statement about what I want to achieve – the approach we are going to take.

Step Three A: Commander’s Back-Brief

It's an opportunity for junior commanders to talk their boss through their plan at that point; clarify what they've been asked to do and adjust what they need. So we’ve done our initial estimate and we have a fair idea of what our plan will look like. Before we progress, we get scheduled time with the boss to talk him through our thinking. This is scheduled - to ensure that it happens.

It follows a basic format that I' massively simplifying here for ease of understanding. "you asked me to do X - I've interpreted it to mean the following - is that correct?" "I'm currently planning to do Y - it will mean that I need these things to be true - would that fit into the overall plan?" "You've given me these resources and constraints - I can work within those, or I need some things to be different for my plan to work."?

And they then get a strait green light, or the commander can ask them to change elements and then proceed. But why is this important and relevant to civilian leadership?

This process empowers juniors to plan well, to make decisions and feel empowered to do so, whilst at the same time ensuring that the boss understands what they are planning and continues to provide supporting input. When it's done well, it creates a really cohesive and challenging (in a good way) team environment where people can bring their talents to bare for the good of the team. It also creates a truly developmental environment for leaders at all levels.

Step Four: Where and How do I want to achieve Each Action and Effect?

Now I’m really looking at my plan in more detail.

For the overall outcomes, I want to look at three completely different ways in which I can accomplish the actions and effects. I don’t mean nuanced differences, I mean completely different. A lot of military people get this wrong too so let’s spell it out with a military example:

Let’s say we have been tasked to DESTROY a target. In the military this has a very specific meaning based on % of combat power no longer available to the enemy. Three totally different ways I could potentially do that:

1.????? I can get into an area where I can observe the target and I can strike it with a stand off weapon (could be a guided munition such as an airstrike) or unguided like artillery

2.????? I could decide to conduct a deliberate assault and destroy the target that way (ie attack it with ground forces)

3.????? I could provoke them to attack me taking advantage of their low ammunition levels and my superior weapons range – basically meaning that I make them combat ineffective and force them to surrender. (we might call this a logistical defeat)

So – within the restrictions we have placed on us, what are three very different ways in which we can achieve this? In this example, I have three ways I can DESTROY them – now I need to pick the one that is most likely to succeed, with the lowest possible risk within the restrictions placed on me.

At this stage, each task will also get combat power assigned to it. At this stage, it’s a wish list. For this action, I’ll need a team, or a platoon etc. I’m not giving that task to anyone, I’m just assessing the level of resource needed to accomplish it.? In a programme environment, you might look at “that will need a PM, a change manager, an IT developer etc.)

At this stage, I’, also confirming y own Main Effort – the one thing that must go right for the whole plan to succeed.

Step Five: When do the actions need to take place in relation to each other?

Now here is the biggest difference in the way in which the military plans compared to most other methodologies. In the military, we produce what is called a synchronisation matrix (Synch Matrix for short).? This is different to a gantt chart for example, and I’ll explain how.

A Synch matrix is a timeline that is based on the sub-units (resources) available to you. I’m going to explain this in more detail in Step Six. But in essence, on the top axis we write a timeline with H-Hour (the time we begin the operational effect) somewhere in the middle and the time we need to be complete at the far right, the time now at the far left. On the Left vertical axis we have a list of all of our sub-units (or teams). Why? Because we allocate missions and tasks to teams rather than looking at a product and building a timeline around it. That’s the subtle difference here.

Now, I work back from H-Hour and I go through how long each task will take before we launch. How long will it take to get there? How long will rehearsals take? How long will it take to get equipment ready etc? Remember, we’ve already crossed off 1/3 of the tie for our planning and orders.

For each task, I used to allocate a fudge factor. This was time for stuff that I knew might go wrong – if it can go wrong it will, so factor it in. As a rule of thumb, add 10% to start with to EVERY task you need to do. You begin to get a feel after experience of what the fudge factor will be.

Step Six: How do I need to allocate my resources?

Now I’m going to create my synch matrix.

I’ve got all of my tasks to allocate to resources and by first plotting those tasks on a timeline, I can see immediately who can achieve them. So let’s say I need to secure my Line of Departure for an attack (this is literally the point on the ground I’m going to attack from.) I’m going to allocate that to one of my teams. That team is now taken up for the first part of the attack.

Next I know I need an Assaulting element and a Fire Support Element. So team two will me my first assault, team three will be my fire support element for the first objective. I need a reserve now, so I move Team One from security into reserve for the first assault.

As the operation progresses, some elements may need to do multiple things. By plotting this on the timeline, I can see where I am allocating resources to tasks and who is available to do what in each phase. In this way, I don’t overload any particular element and I also identify where I might be short of resources to achieve a plan – in essence I’m highlighting risks.

Once I have it all plotted out, I can now write the missions and tasks for all of my teams.

You are to X in order to Y.

Be Prepared to ….

Step Seven: What control measures do I need to impose?

Now comes an often neglected, but actually vitally important element of the plan. What are the boundaries I need to put in place to make sure that people can achieve their missions without inadvertently getting in each others way.

1.????? Time – do it by this time

2.????? Space – do it in this area

3.????? Resources – do it with these things

4.????? Legal parameters. – do it following these rules.

And now – we have a really detailed plan. We know what the overall situation is and how it affects us. We know what our part in the wider plan is and why we’ve been asked to do it. And we have come up with a detailed plan that means we can do what we’ve been told to do, we’ve allocated resources to it and each of our subordinate teams has it’s own mission and tasks .