Mission Command: Leadership for the Agile Organization

​Organizations are constantly looking to become more agile and streamlined. Each organization would love to be the one exploiting every opportunity that presents itself. Executive leaders would prefer to focus on the far out plan rather than worry about the short term issues. There’s a way to accomplish all of this, it’s through Mission Command. Mission Command is the ability to decentralize control and simultaneously empower the whole organization to work in achieving the mission. Mission Command is the philosophy that every person will help the organization to accomplish its goals by taking initiative in their respective lanes through a clearly communicated vision and intent.
Mission Command is not an excuse to get things off your plate and onto the plate of others to make things easier for you. Mission Command requires a great deal of background work and development of your whole team before you can implement it. It’s based off of mutual trust: that the people on your team will use their ingenuity and initiative to solve the problems in their lane, in a manner that’ll be beneficial to the overall vision, and that you’ll empower them and trust them to do so. This way of doing business focusses on “what” has to happen and “why,” leaving the “how” up to the people doing the job. Mission Command, when used correctly, will greatly enhance an organizations effectiveness if growth, timeliness and tenacity are things your organization values.
The philosophy of Mission Command follows certain principles, which are:

1. The Leader’s intent is clearly communicated. This is crucial. The clearly understood vision is the foundation of all the work that your team will conduct. This will be the overarching principle that will guide the teams actions.

 

1. Build your team through mutual trust. This is essential to work. If you cannot trust your people, you cannot employ them effectively in the Mission Command context. If they don’t trust you, they will not work in the Mission Command context. They require the proper training, tools and authority to get the work done effectively.

 

1. Unity of Effort. This means that all of your functions will work to complement and enhance each other. This is the classic management vs leadership. The staff, management and administration functions need to come on line with the leader’s intent and vision. They need to work their function to best allow the greater team to accomplish their tasks.

 

1. Deliberate Initiative. What this means is that Mission Command isn’t just grasping at low hanging fruit or looking for easy wins. The initiative that people take must be deliberate, well thought out in order to produce the right effect, all within the parameters of what the Leader intended on achieving, at the right time.

 

1. Give Proper Direction. This is giving a clear “what.” What needs to be accomplished, what are the limitations, constraints, what are the resources available and what are the coordinating points? Clearly understood orders or direction is what will ensure that your people are doing the right thing at the right time.

 

1. Accept Risk. This does not mean accept all risk, it means manage risk, and accept the risk that is necessary in order to accomplish the mission. This is what allows the organization to create opportunities through managed and deliberate risk taking. This is the difference between playing a solid defense vs using offensive manoeuvres to take back an initiative and force the other team to react to you and make mistakes.

 
Getting Mission Command right is not easy. A lot of people try to incorporate it but usually only do a quasi mix of Mission Command and Centralized Command (where everything is dictated by the leader). Mission Command requires a strong organization from the bottom to the top and requires everyone have a leadership and initiative based mind set, some would say entrepreneurial. This way of running an organization will keep it very dynamic, will foster growth, and will help promote leadership within the organization.
 
Mission Command Training can be found at Leader School. Visit www.leaderschool.ca to learn more.
 
 
Biren Bandara, BSc, CD
Founder and CEO
Leader School
@leaderschoolca
www.leaderschool.ca