Communicate Why, But For Different Reasons: QMN064

Martial Mental Models: The Quartermaster, Tuesday, 15 October

(This week’s report is a 7 minute read)

BLUF: In his famous marketing book Start with Why, author Simon Sinek says, “People don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it.” - and he’s right, but he’s missing the real leadership value by focusing on the marketing value. Military leaders, as a part of their leadership process, communicate “WHY” not just because it’s a strong motivator, but because it enables and empowers everyone. Leadership includes directing people and good leadership allows people to lead for themselves as often as possible. Communicating “WHY” lets people act effectively when the plan fails and allows them to move toward accomplishing the mission. The next time you direct someone, give them the purpose behind the task, anything that absolutely must happen, and what the end state should look like, and let them achieve faster and better than you could on your own. 

Photo by Staff Sgt. Iman Broady-Chin, US Army 5th Special Forces Group

Brady here. In 2009, author and speaker Simon Sinek presented a concept at TEDx Puget Sound upon which he’s based a career. He said that people are inspired and motivated by a sense of purpose, and that companies should communicate that purpose before anything else. Today his TED Talk (according to his site the third most popular TED video of all time) has been viewed more than 28 million people and led to his book Start With Why - which has done similarly well. But his concept isn’t new, and it isn’t innovative. American and British military leaders have made communicating purpose a formal part of their planning and communication process for decades and their method comes from a German one that goes back centuries. In military terms it’s called Commander’s Intent, and it’s key to elite military operations because it allows those being led to use their own skill, creativity and initiative to accomplish the task the best way possible. 

Commander’s Intent is much more critical to leadership success than what Sinek puts across. Though his concept around “WHY” holds mostly for leadership matters, Sinek’s book and talk are marketing concepts. He’s focused mostly on brands communicating their purpose to customers, with the hope that by doing so in an immersive way, brands can motivate customers to make a purchase (or better yet, create a brand relationship that leads to a lifetime of purchases). In Sinek’s terms, communicating “WHY” before “WHAT” and “HOW” connects an individual more closely to a brand by doing so emotionally - in a way that’s stronger and more effective than appealing to logic and reason. He’s the one who famously said that, “People don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it.” It’s a more effective pitching technique. And here’s the thing - Sinek’s right, but he’s missing the real leadership value by focusing on the marketing value. 

Military leadership is focused on getting groups of people to accomplish a mission often under conditions of extreme personal danger and uncertainty. In it’s foundational publication for the Operations Process(PDF) the US Army calls Commander’s Intent: 

“a clear and concise expression of the purpose of the operation and the desired military end state that supports mission command, provides focus to the staff, and helps subordinate and supporting commanders act to achieve the commander’s desired results without further orders, even when the operation does not unfold as planned. [emphasis mine] During planning, the initial commander's intent drives course of action development. In execution, the commander’s intent guides disciplined initiative as subordinates make decisions when facing unforeseen opportunities or countering threats.” 

Military leaders, as a part of their leadership process, communicate “WHY” not just because it’s a strong motivator, but because it enables and empowers everyone. It helps planners concentrate their effort on what’s really important, it helps minimize that amount of communication that’s needed going forward, and when things change, and they always do, Commander’s Intent helps everyone make good decisions about what to do next in order to accomplish what must be accomplished. By training their people to work within the bounds of a Commander’s Intent, military leaders can expect their people to use a disciplined sense of initiative to seize opportunities as they arise and mitigate risks at the same time. The result is an organization that moves quickly and with an economy of effort that makes sure the right things are getting done at the right times. Former Green Beret officer Chad Storlie wrote a short explanation of how this works in Harvard Business Review in 2010. 

So I guess the question might be: “WHY” did elite militaries come up with this method? In the early 1800s the Prussian Army (previously the best in Europe) was crushingly defeated by Napoleon near Leipzig in two battles on the same day. The French Army was led by a genius who had created a revolutionary (literally) sense of initiative in his forces that made them impetuously seize opportunities as they came - meaning that they were faster and often more effective than anyone else they came across. A few junior Prussian officers knew that genius is God-given and rare, but excellence can be learned, and decided to create a set of systems that empowered leaders at lower levels to make quicker tactical and operational-level decisions, and let senior leaders concern themselves with strategy and big-picture concepts. It became practice to for leaders communicate purpose in their plans in order to let their people to make their own decisions once things on the battlefield changed drastically. Not long after proving these methods in Europe (and especially after Prussian successes against France in 1870), most western militaries attempted to copy what Prussia had created on their own staffs. And following the Second World War, the US and UK have attempted to work it into operations at nearly every level. 

Today in the American orders process, Commander’s Intent includes not only purpose, but key tasks and the end state. The key tasks are any specific actions that must occur in order for the operation to be successful. The end state has three parts: the end state for enemy forces, the end state for friendly forces, and the end state with regard to the environment or terrain. Here commanders explain what they require of the condition of the adversary, what the state of their own forces need to be (usually “ready for more operations”) and how their surroundings should look - which often also includes the state of the civilian population in the area. End state helps gives junior leaders bounds on what they can and can’t do, and makes them think about second- and third-order effects in their own plans. And American leaders don’t start their orders with Commander’s Intent - they start with background, then the mission (WHAT) then give Commander’s Intent (WHY) before explaining the concept (HOW), using purpose to link the WHY and HOW. Majors Jonathan Chavous and Rich Dempsey go into more detail on how this is all laid out in Military Review.

Leadership isn’t just about motivating people, and it’s certainly not about motivating people to buy something. Leadership also includes directing people and good leadership allows people to lead for themselves as often as possible. Communicating “WHY” lets people act effectively when the plan fails and still move toward accomplishing the mission. Leaders can’t be everywhere all the time and people are sick of micromanagement - the next time you direct someone give them the purpose behind the task, anything that absolutely must happen, and what the end state should look like, and let them achieve faster and better than you could on your own. (BJM)

*****

FROM THE MINDS OF BABES: The Ultimate Learning Machines (9 min) “With a machine learning system like Google Deep Mind’s Alpha Zero, you can train a computer from scratch to play a videogame or even chess or Go. The computer gets a score, and after it plays many millions of games it can learn how to maximize that score, without explicitly being told about the strategies of chess or Go. The problem is that these new algorithms are beginning to bump up against significant limitations. They need enormous amounts of data, only some kinds of data will do, and they’re not very good at generalizing from that data. Babies seem to learn much more general and powerful kinds of knowledge than AIs do, from much less and much messier data. In fact, human babies are the best learners in the universe. How do they do it? And could we get an AI to do the same?” (BJM)

THE SECRET TO MILITARY OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE, REVEALED: Unlocking the potential of frontline managers (15 min) “At best-practice companies, frontline managers allocate 60 to 70 percent of their time to the floor, much of it in high-quality individual coaching. Such companies also empower their managers to make decisions and act on opportunities. The bottom-line benefit is significant, but to obtain it companies must fundamentally redefine what they expect from frontline managers and redesign the work that those managers and their subordinates do.” (BJM)

SO HOT RIGHT NOW: Fail Fast, Not Twice: DoD’s Push For Agile Software Development  (5 min) Rather than have developers labor in isolation to develop something that looks complete, only for the operators to finally see it and find flaws, DevSecOps races to produce a “minimally viable product” early on that the user can actually try out and give feedback on. The developers can then take that feedback, make improvements, and roll out the next version — improved but still imperfect — for another round of operator feedback. When you add cybersecurity experts to this process, working alongside both the developers and the users/operators from the beginning to ensure the code isn’t easily hacked, DevOps becomes DevSecOps. That methodology makes DevSecOps especially useful in developing software that can resist evolving cyber threats from hackers, rogue countries like North Korea, and nation states like Russia. It’s what organizations like the Air Force’s Kessel Run project in Boston are already doing, albeit on a relatively small scale. (BJM)

Remarks Complete. Nothing Follows.

KS Anthony (KSA) & Brady Moore (BJM)