The Art of Action: How Leaders Close the Gaps between Plans, Actions and Results

by Stephen Bungay

The intelligence of an organization is never equal to the sum of the intelligence of the people within it

A high volume of activity often disguises a lack of effective action.

The environment we are in creates gaps between plans, actions, and outcomes:

The very business of getting an organization made up of individuals, no matter how disciplined, to pursue a collective goal produces friction just as surely as applying the brakes of a car.

no one should develop a strategy without taking into account the effects of organizational friction.

We experience friction because of our cognitive limits as human beings.21 We have limited knowledge about the present and the future is fundamentally unknowable.

Systems are nonlinear when the state they are in at a given point in time provides the input to a feedback mechanism which determines the new state of the system. Some such systems are sensitively dependent on the starting state. If so, future states are unpredictable. Such systems are called “chaotic.” The term is misleading because their states are not random, merely unknowable.26

Our plans are imperfect because we lack knowledge.

Our actions are not always those we plan because it is so difficult to align everybody who needs to act.

the effects of our actions may not be the ones we wanted because the environment is nonlinear and hence is fundamentally unpredictable.

Without theory, all one can do is to observe what goes on in companies.

Friction manifests itself when human beings with independent wills try to achieve a collective purpose in a fast-changing, complex environment where the future is fundamentally unpredictable.

Do not command more than is necessary, or plan beyond the circumstances you can foresee

Specifying too much detail actually shakes confidence and creates uncertainty if things do not turn out as anticipated.

It also creates uncertainty about what really matters. Far from overcoming it, a mass of instructions actually creates more friction in the form of noise, and confuses subordinates because the situation may demand one thing and the instructions say another.

an order should contain all, but also only, what subordinates cannot determine for themselves to achieve a particular purpose.18

as long as the intentions of the higher levels are made clear, individual initiative can be relied on to adjust actions according to the situation.

the more alignment you have, the more autonomy you can grant.

Intent is expressed in terms of what to achieve and why. Autonomy concerns the actions taken in order to realize the intent; in other words, about what to do and how.

A German officer’s prime duty was to reason why.

“a failure to act or a delay is a more serious fault than making a mistake in the choice of means.”

“What would my superior order me to do if he were in my position and knew what I know?”

Auftragstaktik is not popular with tyrants.

A German officer, confronted by some task, would ask: worauf kommt es eigentlich an? (what is the core of the problem?). An American one, trained in the “engineering approach” to war, would inquire: what are the problem’s component parts?74

His answer to the knowledge gap was to limit direction to defining and expressing the essential intent; he closed the alignment gap by allowing each level to define what it would achieve to realize the intent; and he dealt with the effects gap by giving individuals freedom to adjust their actions in line with intent.

Strategy is a framework for decision making, a guide to thoughtful, purposive action

The intelligent way to manipulate luck is to observe the effects of actions and exploit successes.

Operations are about doing things right. They involve reacting to problems and eliminating weaknesses, because in conducting operations you are as strong as the weakest link. You can improve by imitating others, because achieving operational excellence means adopting best practice. Strategy, in contrast, is about doing the right things. It involves proactively shaping events and investing in strengths, because in creating a strategy you have to make choices, to decide to do some things and not to do others. You can shift the odds in your favor by differentiating yourself from others, because a good strategy seeks uniqueness.

Rather than a plan, a strategy is a framework for decision making. It is an original choice about direction, which enables subsequent choices about action. It prepares the organization to make those choices. Without a strategy, the actions taken by an organization degenerate into arbitrary sets of activity. A strategy enables people to reflect on the activity and gives them a rationale for deciding what to do next. A robust strategy is not dependent on competitors doing any single thing. It does not seek to control an independent will. Instead, it should be a “system of expedients” – with the emphasis on system.

A good strategy creates coherence between our capabilities, the opportunities we can detect, and our aims.

Developing strategy is an intellectual activity. It involves discerning facts and applying rationality. Leadership is a moral activity. It involves relating to people and generating emotional commitment.

There is an enormous difference between knowing that something is important and realizing that it is the basis of competition.

Strategy is essentially an intent rather than a plan, because the knowledge gap means that we cannot plan an outcome but only express the will to achieve it, and the effects gap means that we cannot know for certain what the effects of our actions will be, and that we will probably have to modify our actions to achieve the outcome we want.

A strategic intent need not articulate an “animating dream” to be effective. It simply has to provide a coherent framework for action within which the organization develops the strategy as it goes.

Even if our destination is unclear, we need some sense of the end-state to be achieved which gives our current actions a purpose.

even if the current situation is volatile, we need to decide what to do next in order to get into a better position than we are in at present.

The main effort is that single thing which will either in itself have the greatest impact or on which all other things depend. It has resourcing priority. Defining main effort creates focus and energy, helps people to make trade-offs, and cuts through complexity.

Tell me what you want – what you really, really want

The Spice Girls question

Unless you deliberately practice giving direction, you are unlikely to be much good at it, no matter how talented you are.

If people do not know the boundaries, a few of them will go off like loose cannon, making undeliverable commitments and spending money like water. Most, however, knowing full well that there are boundaries somewhere, will stay rooted to the spot and do nothing. Specifying boundaries is like marking out minefields – it enables the troops to use the space between them. If they are known or even rumored to be there, but are unmarked, advances usually come to a halt.

unless the structure of the organization broadly reflects the structure of the tasks implied by executing the strategy, the strategy will not be executed.

people’s convictions tend to correlate with their interests. Their interests are largely determined by the structure and the compensation system. Both, therefore, must be examined in order to identify and remove any conflicts.

Confronted with a task, and having less information available than is needed to perform that task, an organisation may react in either of two ways. One is to increase its information-processing capacity, the other to design the organisation, and indeed the task itself, in such a way as to enable it to operate on the basis of less information.

If there is not enough hierarchy, effort fragments, local interests are optimized, scale and focus are lost, and cohesion dissipates. A hierarchy only works if it encompasses appropriate decision rights and responsibilities. Decision rights are appropriate if the person or group with the best knowledge and expertise in any given area is able to act in a timely manner without asking for permission.

If you are a soldier you will call a “what” and a “why” your “mission.” If you are an executive you can call them a “goal” or an “objective,” if that is more in tune with your company’s terminology. The word I have used is “intent.”

The purpose of briefing is to enable people to act independently.

Good guidance allows us to make trade-offs.

The essence of briefing is not a process, but a skill. Although the strategy briefing template looks like a form, it is really a set of concepts to help to structure thinking.

Unless and until the thinking skills are in place, a briefing cascade will be stillborn.

Understanding gets compliance. Only belief gets commitment.