What is your "Commander's Intent"?

This week I've been revisiting one of my favorite books, "Made To Stick" by Chip and Dan Heath.  If you haven't read it, this book is about why some ideas survive and others die and was inspired, at least in part, by Malcolm Gladwell's book, "The Tipping Point".  The brothers Heath suggest that sticky ideas share 6 common traits -- they are:

1. Simple,
2. Unexpected,
3. Concrete,
4. Credentialed, and
5. Emotional
6. Stories

(Note the acronym of SUCCESs)

I highly recommend both books to anyone who is interested in effective written and oral communication in sales and in training.  The books "Influencer" and "Switch" are effective follow-on books.  If you'd like to know why I think so, please feel free to leave a comment or drop me a note asking for more information.  Enjoy!

Interestingly enough, the authors start their discussion of "Simple" with a concept known as The Commander's Intent, which is the US Army's approach to a common problem -- once you're in contact with the enemy, your plans often turn out to be useless.  Why?  Your opponent may respond to your tactics in ways that you didn't (or weren't able to) predict.  Unexpected things happen -- equipment may break, the weather may change, or a key asset may be destroyed in battle.  There are some things that you just can't control.

"More armies fail because they put all their emphasis into creating a plan that becomes useless ten minutes into the battle."

The Heath brothers go on to suggest that the Army's challenge is akin to writing instructions for a friend to play chess on your behalf.  You may know a lot about the rules of chess, and you may know a lot about your friend and the opponent, but if you try to write move-by-move instructions, you'll fail.  You can't possibly foresee more than a few moves.  The first time that the opponent makes a surprise move, your friend is going to have to throw out the plan and rely on his or her own instincts.

It turns out that the Army has learned that The Act Of Planning is more useful than the plan itself.  The planning process forces people to think through the right issues.  And, you guessed it, the key to an effective planning process is The Commander's Intent (CI).

"CI is a crisp, plain-talk statement that appears at the top of every order, specifying the plan's goal, the desired end-state of an operation."  At high levels (think strategy), the CI might be more abstract.  At lower levels (think tactics), the CI will be much more concrete.  Either way, the CI never specifies so much detail that it risks being rendered obsolete by unpredictable events.

"You can lose the ability to execute the original plan, but you never lose the responsibility of executing the intent."

An effective CI statement might start with "My intent is..."

I love that statement -- what is your INTENT?  Stephen R. Covey talks about this in his book, "The 8th Habit" in the section titled "7 levels of initiative or self-empowerment".  Declaring your intent is an effective way of preparing yourself to control what you can control.

Back to "Made To Stick", the book goes on to describe that, "The Combat Maneuver Training Center, the unit in charge of military simulations, recommends that officers arrive at the Commander's Intent by asking themselves two questions:"

• "If we do nothing else during tomorrow's mission, we must __________."
• "The single, most important thing that we must do tomorrow is __________."

Note how this correlates to step #2 of the Outcome Based Thinking Process.  Also note that The Sales Engine was developed to help people answer this question.

Much of what I've written suggests the idea of combat, and you should be cautious about applying the idea of combat to sales or to training.  Your prospects and / or students are NOT the enemy.  It's not about win-lose, lose-win, or lose-lose.  It's also not about sitting on the sideline -- you're not the referee.  It's about being IN it; you only win when they win, and that's what win-win is about.  Period.

If you'd like to understand more about what collaboration is about, take a look at the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (The TKI) and/or study the writings of authors such as Stephen R. Covey (habits 4 through 6).  If you have challenges with BE-ing Assertive, take a look at Robert Bolton's book, "People Skills" (see the section on the submissive-assertive-aggressive continuum).

Or, instead of doing all of this reading, you might just talk to someone who has already done that, so you can learn from that person what works and what doesn't.  That would be your Coach.  Got one?  Get one.  Period.