Commander's Intent.
Plans break. A team that knows the intent can invent a new plan on the spot that still serves the purpose.
The Creator's Journey · Chapter VII, Execution Under Fire
Plans break. No plan survives first contact, and when it fails, the people closest to the problem have to improvise. If they only know the plan, they freeze. If they know the intent, they can invent a new plan on the spot that still serves the purpose.
That is why military orders include commander’s intent: a short statement of what the mission is meant to achieve and why. The details of the plan come after. The intent comes first.
In companies, I have watched leaders hand out tasks without ever stating intent. “Ship this feature by Friday.” Why? For which customer? To prove what? When Friday arrives and the feature is half right, nobody knows which half matters. A team that knows the intent can make a hundred small decisions correctly without asking you. A team that only knows the task will ask you about all hundred, or worse, guess.
If I cannot write those three sentences, I am not ready to delegate the work. I am not even ready to do it myself.
When people know the desired destination, they’re free to improvise, as needed, in arriving there.
Intent at scale
After Lycos acquired WiseWire, I went from building with a small team to running a unit of about 350 people. I could not make every call. So I gave each product leader the purpose, the constraints and the definition of done. Then I stepped back. More often than I expected, their call was better than mine would have been. They were closer to the customer.
Current leadership practice has pushed the idea further. David Marquet, who commanded the submarine USS Santa Fe, trained his officers to stop asking permission and to say “I intend to,” followed by the action. General Stanley McChrystal’s Team of Teams pairs shared consciousness with empowered execution: everyone sees the same picture, and decisions move to the people closest to the work. Clear intent is what makes that safe.
Write it in three sentences
- What are we trying to achieve?One sentence. The outcome, not the activity.
- Why does it matter?One sentence. The customer, the proof, the reason.
- What does done look like?One sentence. How everyone will know the mission is complete.
- Ask for it backHave the people doing the work repeat the intent in their own words. Where their words differ from yours, you have found a gap in orientation.
Quick answers
What is commander’s intent in business?
Rob Frasca describes it as a short statement of purpose that comes before the plan: what we are trying to achieve, why it matters and what done looks like. When the plan breaks, a team that knows the intent can build a new plan that still serves it.
How do you write commander’s intent?
Rob Frasca uses three sentences, one for each question. If he cannot write them, he is not ready to delegate the work, or even to do it himself.
Sources
- Rob Frasca, The Creator’s Journey (forthcoming), Chapter VII, Execution Under Fire.
- Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die (Random House, 2007). Passage as excerpted by Eric Barker, Barking Up the Wrong Tree. Source
- L. David Marquet, Turn the Ship Around! (Portfolio, 2012). Interview with Ryan Hawk, The Learning Leader Show, as a secondary source. Source
- General Stanley McChrystal with Tantum Collins, David Silverman and Chris Fussell, Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World (Portfolio, 2015). Source