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

by Stephen Bungay

We are helped here by the fact that as a set of practices which are themselves taught, techniques and processes have been developed which make it easier for other organizations to adopt them. There is a method for developing plans, breaking them down, and using them to brief subordinates. There is a procedure, which the military calls “mission analysis,” to help subordinates to draw out the implications of what they have been asked to achieve. The subordinates then go through a process of “backbriefing” their superiors to check their understanding of the intent and its implications before passing it down the line to their own subordinates in a cascade.