This is part two in a series based on a great book by David H. Freedman entitled Corps Business (Freedman, David H. Corps Business: The 30 Management Principles of the U.S. Marines. New York: HarperBusiness, 2000. Print.).

In the book, Freedman studies the principles that have made the U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) successful in life-and-death situations for more than 200 years in order to apply them to business.

Freedman accurately observes: “All organizations face crises sooner or later. A competitor slashes prices in half; the firm's biggest customer jumps ship; a key supplier goes off-line.” [p. 4] Does that sound like your business, or like something that has happened in your supply chain?

The Corps knows that it is not possible to avoid, or even plan for, every crisis or potential crisis with which your team may be faced. So, they work to slash the time it takes to make effective decisions that keep them moving forward toward their goal.

"If your decision-making loop is more streamlined than your enemy's, then you set the pace and course of the battle," says Major General John Admire, who commands an infantry division at Camp Pendleton. [p. 8 – emphasis added]

The author does not ignore the hazards imposed by reducing the decision-making cycle time, nor do the Marines. Freedman continues:

The drawback to fast decision-making, of course, is that the decisions may have to be rendered while the information is still sketchy or not yet filtered and analyzed. This fact leads to a sort of organizational uncertainty principle: the faster your decision-making cycle, the less assurance you can have that you are making the best possible decision. "If you're going to have a higher tempo than the enemy, you have to accept a higher degree of uncertainty," says one colonel, adding that there can be a benefit to the uncertainty: it leads to breaking challenges down into more manageable chunks. "If you strive for low uncertainty, you'll have a longer decision-making process that is more likely to be driven to big win-or-lose decisions," he explains. "Small, frequent, rapid decisions will save you from having to come up with a big decision at the eleventh hour." [p. 8 – emphasis added]

This makes a lot of sense. Making incremental decisions along the way—decisions that may be more reversible than the eleventh-hour “big decision”—can help you test your plan for success incrementally and allow you to rapidly change course where the outcomes differ from your expectations.

[M]aking quick decisions in the face of incomplete, uncertain, or undigested information is not easy, and it's especially discomfiting when you know that a mistake could cost you your own life and the lives of your colleagues. But Marines get used to it, says [Colonel Thomas Moore]. "Everyone is always looking for perfect truth, but you never have it," he says. "Even if you did have it, the other guy is up to something, so by the time you execute... your truth isn't perfect anymore." [p. 8]

I hate to be the one to break the news to you, but there is no such thing as “perfect truth” in the world of business.

So-called “big data” is not going to give you “perfect truth.” The “other guy is always up to something,” whether that “other guy” is your competitor, your supplier, your customer, or someone in your own organizations. Face it. Since you got your information, things have changed!

For... these reasons, Marines speak of the "70 percent solution," by which they mean an imperfect decision whose saving grace is that it can be made right now. [p. 8]

 Principle #1: Aim for the 70 percent solution

And this brings us to Principle Number 1, of the 30 principles set out by Freedman in Corps Business. We won’t touch on all of the 30 principles in this series, but we will touch on a few of them. (It’s up to you to read the book to discover the rest of them. Sorry.)

By promoting the 70 percent solution, Marines do not advocate shoot-from-the-hip decision-making. Neither do they condone fast, foolish plans. But they do caution against waiting until all the angles are figured out. Instead, when time is of the essence, Marines act as soon as they have a plan with a good chance of working. [pp. 8f]

That’s what your business needs, isn’t it? A plan with a good chance of working—of moving you incrementally towards your goal of making more money tomorrow than you are making today.

As I have stated elsewhere, the human mind is an amazing “computer.” It is the most power computer you have in your business today.

The human mind is able to calculate with reasonable accuracy the trajectory of a baseball off the crack of a bat and coordinate actions to place the glove in the path of the flying ball. And, it does so without knowing the formulas from physics for calculating the trajectory, or the measurement of the forces working on the ball itself.

Furthermore, the human mind is able to incrementally learn and adjust rapidly when it encounters errors in its calculations. The baseball player is more likely to catch the next ball, even if he missed the last one due to misjudgment.

“Big data” and computers are wonderful, but sometimes we rely too heavily upon them and fail to give human beings the credit due them for intuition in the conduct of business.

Your firm’s battlefield isn’t changing any less rapidly nor more dramatically than the battlefields the Marines face—although the changes may not be so readily visible to you. Isn’t it worth considering “the 70 percent solution” that can move your firm incrementally toward improved profits and a leaner, more effective supply chain?

Read the third blog in this series.