Application in Business

To employ a decentralized approach reminiscent of that of the Marine Corps in your organization, first establish clear guidelines for the degree of trust to be shared between seniors and juniors. With these guidelines in place, prepare your people to make decisions in the absence of direction. Devise creative ways to train them to make decisions and lead under simulated conditions of uncertainty and provide them with real-time feedback on their performance in these exercises. When possible, complement this bottom-up training with teach-ins, which reinforce your philosophy from the top down, and encourage your junior managers to do the same in their respective groups.

Prior to communicating detailed instructions, orient your people on the objectives you wish to achieve by issuing an accompanying statement of your commander s intent. And make your people aware of the objectives that your supervisor wishes to achieve by mentioning his or her commander s intent. Moreover, remember that commander s intent cannot be imposed solely from the top down; it requires the willing consent of those in your charge.

Once your people are oriented to the goals you wish to achieve, communicate to them what needs to be done and explain to them the larger context into which their actions fit; no one can exceed expectations that he does not understand. Then give them the latitude they need to use their judgment and initiative to deliver the desired results. But be sure to follow this delegation with vigilant supervision and a willingness to intervene where necessary, for, as previously noted, you can always delegate authority, but you can never delegate responsibility. Correct mistakes on the spot and punish violations of trust to reinforce honest, open behavior in your organization.

Finally, to increase the information available to and, thus, the decision-making capacity of those in your charge, develop systems that share information both vertically and horizontally throughout your organization. Many enterprise resource-planning systems, like SAP, already provide a common picture of sales, revenues , and expenses throughout an organization. Other systems integrate management support and route or network management data, to enable real-time pricing and capacity allocation decisions. Devise new and creative ways to leverage these systems.