Harvard Business Review
Frontline Leadership
Four Steps to Improved Frontline Execution
This post is part of an HBR Spotlight examining leadership lessons from the military.
For the past 10 years I have been helping managers improve their execution. Despite my efforts — and the efforts of other researchers and consultants — the problem of effective execution persists. A review of the July-August 2010 edition of Harvard Business Review confirms the challenge. In a survey of 1,075 readers, editors found the most significant execution obstacles facing organizations were those associated with making strategy meaningful to frontline workers. Activities such as translating strategy to execution and aligning jobs to strategy are among the most pressing issues; employees often times have little more than a foggy idea of what their organization's strategy is and how they fit into it. Given the burgeoning scale and complexity of the average entity today, one might conclude that personalizing strategy to any one individual employee is a problem that won't be solved any time soon. But while almost every organization wrestles with execution, there are some that have managed to simplify, and even codify, approaches to execution that have proven effective in even the most challenging circumstances.
For the past 235 years, the U.S. Marine Corps have been'making Marines and winning battles' — code for executing strategy. One contributor to its success is the combat order — a straightforward format for articulating the key components of any mission. Marine Corps Reference Publication 5-2A, Operational Terms and Graphics, defines an order as, "A communication, written, oral, or by signal, which conveys instructions from a superior to a subordinate." A specific type of combat order, known as the five paragraph order, is so fundamental to the Corps' success that every Marine must learn and use it in the planning and execution of every mission.
As the name states, the format consists of five separate but sequential sections:
- Situation: explains what's happening on the ground
- Mission: contains the task and purpose for the action
- Execution: describes how the leader intends to accomplish the mission
- Administration and Logistics: identifies the administrative and logistical information necessary for the operation to be successful
- Command and Signal: details the plan for command and control of the operation.
Step 1: State Your Intent. In a military organization, the commander's intent is simply what the leader wants to happen with respect to the mission at hand. A key part of that intent is the End State, the outcome. When Ford executives presented their business case in 2008 to the Senate Banking Committee, they described their End State as "Aggressively restructure to operate profitably at the current demand and changing the model mix." Congressional leaders understood that the aim from top team was to achieve profitable operations. So too did employees. Work that followed at the individual level would then be focused on changing skills that would themselves contribute to achievement of the end state. To improve execution, managers should think through their own end states and communicate to employees what they expect as an outcome at the end of the project, period or strategy at hand.
Step 2: Develop a Concept of Operations. Concept of operations describes the way in which the unit will accomplish the mission. It's the strategy at the unit level. While the concept of operations in a Marine order might describe the detailed movement of ground combat forces, at the individual employee level the concept of operations needn't contain more than a few simple statements describing how the employee will work toward the desired end state. Randstat, the global staffing organization, has 34,000 employees in 5,200 locations. Its strategy is based on four building blocks: strong service concepts, best people, excellent execution, and superior brands. This concept of operations is not just a high level scheme, it's intended to be relevant for all employees. Management states explicitly that it the concept of operations "extends to every branch in every country." Accordingly, individual employee actions need to be developed consistent with it.
Step 3: Specify Tasks. Tasks are actions taken by subordinate units or individuals. Collectively, tasks comprise the full concept of operations. Marine commanders identify tasks to lower levels that become lower level missions or critical success factors that must be accomplished in order for the overall organization to be successful. Central to effective frontline execution is identification of those tasks that an individual must accomplish. Alcoa has identified a series of goals which form their sustainability strategy. One of those goals is to "Achieve zero violation of Alcoa's anti-corruption policy." To improve clarity for employees, 'key actions' are listed which include monitoring and auditing use of self-assessments. This task — derived directly from the strategy — would be in addition to an employee's daily work. Managers should identify themselves or help employees identify those tasks vital to achievement of the strategy. Failure to do so could mean employees are working on activities that are incongruent with the overall concept of operations.
Step 4: Clarify Coordinating Instructions. Orders are incomplete without instructions clarifying how two or more subordinate units are to coordinate their efforts. For Marine orders this can consist of mission critical details such as reaching a vital location by a prescribed time or stating mission go/no go criteria. Marines don't work in isolation and neither do private sector employees; they both are on teams that must function smoothly in dynamic and unpredictable environments. BankPlus lists as part of its vision a focus on customer care. To achieve the vision, employees are expected to "work together as a team to build customer relationships." These explicit instructions are not just platitudes, they provide the guidance necessary to calibrate behaviors at all levels of the organization — especially the frontline. Thus, managers need to work with employees to clarify how they will operate together within the organization overall for success.
While their work is often times chaotic and unpredictable, Marines have overcome the execution problem by consistently applying the four steps above with their overall planning process. Corporate wanting to improve execution in their own organization can take a page out of the Marines' battle plan.
Edward A. Barrows, Jr. is a lecturer at Boston College and founder of edbarrows.com. He is a retired Lieutenant Colonel, Marine Reserve. He specializes in coaching executive teams to improve their strategy processes.
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http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
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