‘Turn This Ship Around’ and acting your way to new thinking, or ‘fake it till you make it’! (Part one of four)
12/03/2018
David Marquet tells us about the time he was rapidly running out of time and needed to raise morale quickly. He had two choices, “Change your own thinking and hope this leads to new behaviour, or change your behaviour and hope this leads to new thinking” – he chose the latter. In a past life I’ve observed that the latter approach (what I refer to as “fake it till you make it” or FITYMI) works over the short-term, but you better have a longer term plan to underpin and substantiate the change in behaviour, otherwise people will revert to type under pressure.
Over the past few weeks we’ve been blogging about “Mission Command” and “Centralised Intent” – and we’ve seen some organisations in the early stages of attempting this. There will be some FITYMIs in the crowd, and we wanted to make sure there is some substance which people can fall back on when they need it.
So, as promised, here’s an overview of the method we work through in helping organisations implement Mission Command.
The approach is based on work by Arnoud Franken, Stephen Bungay and others. An easy and interesting read can be found here: https://hbr.org/2010/11/web-exclusive-how-the-uks-royal-marines-plan-in-the-face-of-uncertainty
We’ll explore this approach in more detail over the next few weeks, but the common mistakes we see are:
1. Jumping to conclusions (one of some executive management’s favourite sports), and attempting to work through Stage 5 without properly working through Stages 1 – 4
2. Some executive management believing they have to have and supply the answers and thus trying to work through Stages 1 – 7, rather than stopping at Stage 3 and handing over to the next management level down to take the strategic intent out into the field.
3. Many not knowing what Measurements (Stage 7) to put in place to know if execution of strategy is actually working.
More anon….
Categories & Tags:
Leave a comment on this post:
You might also like…
Academic writing and being critical
Academic writing is daunting. Capturing all your thoughts and analysis and putting them down onto paper in some sort of understandable fashion is a challenge. Did you know we have resources in our Cranfield Study ...
Bank holiday hours for Library Services: Monday 6 May
Library Services staff will be taking a break on Monday 6 May for the early May bank holiday. You will still be able to access all the resources and help you need via our library ...
Cranfield’s Manufacturing and Materials Students’ Showcase Innovation at Project Day
On 26 April, Cranfield University buzzed with excitement as students from across our Manufacturing and Materials MSc programmes presented their group projects at the annual Group Project Presentation Day. This annual event presents ...
Come to a virtual study session in May
What are virtual study sessions? These are online study sessions facilitated by Library staff, where you can study independently alongside other students via Teams. They are a great way for you to dedicate specific time ...
Getting started on your School of Management thesis
Writing a thesis, business plan, internship project or company project can be a daunting task, and you might have some uncertainty or questions around how to get started. This post will share some ideas and ...
Sustainability by royal request: Managing an event fit for a King
The Coronation of King Charles III on May 6th 2023, was watched by millions of people around the world with tens of thousands of people travelling to Central London to witness the pageantry firsthand. ...