I recently reread Corps Business (Freedman, David H. Corps Business: The 30 Management Principles of the U.S. Marines. New York: HarperBusiness, 2000. Print.) and was glad that I took time to do so.
In Corps Business, author David H. Freedman studies the clear success of the United States Marine Corps (USMC) over its more than 200 year history with a view to how the principles the Corps applies may also be applicable to business. It makes for valuable and fascinating reading.
In the introduction, Freedman says this:
For many managers, business has become a nightmare of velocity and complexity. In the technology sector, companies leap into existence and steal significant market share from established companies in a matter of weeks. And in every industry, better informed and more demanding customers are proving their willingness to switch their business at the blink of a banner to any company that can muster up a slight edge in price, service, selection, or quality.
The result: companies are desperate to be nimbler. [p. xvii]
Although these words were likely penned in the late 1990s, matters have only gotten worse for most business enterprises. In addition to all that is mentioned above, SME (small-to-mid-sized enterprises) have also had to face the challenges of a worldwide recession and ever-increasing uncertainty around politics and economics.
Freedman points out that “[t]he [U.S. Marine] Corps' ability to react quickly and effectively in environments seething with complex, unpredictable, and fast-changing threats and opportunities would make the average Silicon Valley start-up seem hidebound.... If [the Marines] weren't good at it, they would, at best, have been subsumed by the Army or, at worst, become casualties in large numbers.” [p. xviii]
Highlighting their success, he continues, “[T]he Marines have specialized in operating under chaotic, fast-changing, high-intensity conditions that provide not only little way of knowing what the opposition is going to throw at you but perhaps no way of knowing exactly who the opposition is going to be. Reaction plans have to be drawn up and implemented on the spot, under fire, and with little margin for error.” [p. xix]
The terms Freedman uses to describe the conditions Marines face on a routine basis would be equally apropos in describing some of the SMEs I’ve consulted over the last several years. The problem is generally that their management teams too frequently lack that special something that allows them to “draw up and implement” effective plans while “under fire.”
What are some of the differences between how the Corps approaches “management” and the way most businesses do so?
The author goes on: “Everything about the Marines—their culture, their organizational structure, their management style, their logistics, their decision-making process—is geared toward high-speed, high-complexity environments…. [W]ith no less than their survival as an institution and as individual human beings at stake, the Marines have had to examine, discard, redefine, refine, and rerefine their approaches to achieve the ultimate in rapid, effective response to dynamic challenges.” [p. xix]
One of the big differences appears to be “leadership”—even those in middle management and below—and how they are trained and prepared for it.
In the forward, entitled “The Leadership Imperative,” General Charles C. Krulak, Thirty-first Commandant of U.S. Marine Corps, explains how the Corps views leadership and preparation:
Leadership cannot be learned in the same manner in which competency is developed with a piece of equipment. There are no checklists, matrices, or shortcuts to effective leadership. It is truly a lifelong work-in-progress. The Corps has recognized that the qualities of individual character revealed in the crucible of entry-level training must be polished, strengthened and sustained. A challenging yet supportive environment, conducive to the expression of initiative, tolerant of mistakes, and unsullied by any vestige of a 'zero-defects' mentality, is essential for that purpose. Our method is surprisingly simple: Marines are thrust into such an arena and compelled to lead. They are given meaningful responsibility and a modicum of supervision, and they are held strictly accountable for their actions. The results of this most basic of approaches speak for themselves.
It is worth noting that in the Corps leadership is not the purview of an elite—it is the business of everyone. [p. xii]
Sadly, many of the businesses I visit on a regular basis are very nearly the antithesis of what Krulak describes above. Too often the environment is not “supportive” nor “conducive to the expression of initiative.” In fact, it is frequently unsupportive of anything except by-the-book execution of policies and procedures (many times unwritten policies and procedures) that have their origins in a time—perhaps a decade or longer ago—when the business environment was neither chaotic norfast-changing.
Such organizations are, generally, not “tolerant of mistakes” and seem willing to follow a ‘zero-defects’ mentality right to their demise for lack of any real innovation.
Freedman’s compelling book goes on to cover 30 principles that the author believes are translatable in one degree or another into the business world. Several of these principles, I believe, will find broad application within the four walls of many SMEs, and even more compelling application across the supply chain, as well.
Over the next several publications, I will touch on a handful of these principles. I think you will find them valuable and I hope you will join in the conversation by responding with comments or feel free to contact us directly.
Read the second blog in this series.