‘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…
Ceramic Matrix Composites at Cranfield is in good hands
It’s been a couple months since we got going on the ACCORD project, led by myself (Dr Geoff Neale) and Dr Alex Skordos, which aims to kickstart a fruitful collaboration between the Composites and Advanced ...
From vision to venture: How the Cranfield Seed Fund helped Zeroox redefine renting
In an industry where tenant voices are often overlooked, Zeroox Ltd is on a mission to shift the narrative. Founded in February 2022, Zeroox began as a free digital toolkit for private landlords. Today, it ...
The recipe never tastes the same – and that’s the whole point
Lately, I’ve been sitting with a thought that’s been quietly simmering in the back of my mind. You know how sometimes something small like a failed dish or a casual memory suddenly starts feeling a ...
Bank holiday hours for Library Services: Monday 26 May
Library Services staff will be taking a break on Monday 26 May for the early May bank holiday. You will still be able to access all the resources and help you need via our library website. ...
Want to know more about research methods?
Research methods are the strategies and tools used to gather, analyse and interpret data or evidence to uncover new information or create better understanding of a topic. Research methodology is the theory, justification and assumptions ...
How do I cite…. items with multiple authors in APA7?
This post follows on from our post on using 'et al' in citations but has a slightly different focus - do read them both! As you may know, in-text citations can be written either as ...