Don Sull's blog

My recent posts have all dealt with organizational agility. The US Marine Corps is one of the most agile organizations around, and over the years I have learned a great deal in discussions with former Marines who bring their point of view to business. One of these is John Brown, who studied history at Harvard, served as an officer in the  Marine Corps, helped the newly-formed Department of Homeland Security develop a platform to share data across agencies, and co-founded tech start-up Verical. John kindly agreed to share some of his thoughts on leadership, strategy, and agility in turbulent markets. John’s thoughts follow:

“Some of the most admired leaders in business have failed spectacularly to adapt to the growing complexity of today’s turbulent market – some for firm-specific reasons, but many due to fundamental flaws in their organizational design and leadership. Turbulence is not a one-off crisis but an ongoing fact of life, and that difference will require many companies to completely rethink their cultures.

In a fluid and uncertain setting, decision makers do not have the luxury of detailed planning and deliberate allocation of resources in response to the unexpected. To thrive in turbulence, companies and leaders must have already anticipated the scenario before them and act in a concerted manner with the utmost of speed. Speed here is not a function of intensity or a sense of urgency – it is the result of a carefully planned out system of activities, namely in how the team is recruited, developed and lead. Making considered decisions in the face of uncertainty depends on firms to recognize that culture is a competitive differentiator.

Everything begins with leadership. The primary purpose of a leader is to give his or her people the information, resources, and protection to do their jobs. You manage a process, but you have to lead people, and to do that you need their trust. Servant leadership is essential – without it, the organization cannot survive in the face of sustained complexity. For leaders to be effective, their ego must be grounded in team success – not individual achievement. Elite competitors have powerful egos, and the smart organization embraces them. An ego grounded in self-promotion prevents a team from forming properly and is dangerous liability that will destroy a group’s ability to adapt to rapid change.

Managing in turbulence requires a high level of planning, awareness, and cohesion to create an informed and coordinated response quickly. Success will require company-wide buy-in, but managers can start with the following:

• Strategy matters: Leaders need to understand their competitors want to do and what they might do. Every business model has strengths and weaknesses, and leaders must establish and maintain a high level of awareness of the competitive landscape and their own vulnerabilities.
• Explain the “Why”: Employees should understand explicitly how their actions support their team’s objective and how their team supports the organization. Without this knowledge, people stand around and wait for orders.
• Delegate: Teams must develop the habit of letting junior people make decisions and be held accountable for them in periods of relative calm, because when things heat up, the team will win or lose based on the quality of their snap judgments.
• Purge the Jerks: Bullying managers may get results in the short term, but their behavior retards the flow of information, destroys initiative, and pushes capable people away. Tolerating jerks practically guarantees failure in an environment of sustained turbulence.”