Book Review | The Art of Action: How Leaders Close the Gaps between Plans, Actions and Results.

Book Name: The Art of Action: How Leaders Close the Gaps between Plans, Actions and Results.

Author: Stephen Bungay

The commander in chief always develops a strategy to win the war. All though it is taken for granted that the soldiers in the field will obey the chief as planned to ensure they defeat the enemy.  The chain in command and alignment becomes very important so that they know Why, What and How it has to be done. Business is an interaction between human organizations. It is competitive, highly dynamic, complex and risky. Organizations develop strategy and review it every year. Command is as unavoidable in the business world as it is in the military one. Strategy is dynamic as it only defines the path that management has chosen. At times the organizations fail to execute the strategy.

The Art of Action is a thought-provoking and fresh look at how managers can turn planning into execution, and execution into results. The book is based on the historical knowledge of military campaigns going back to Napoleonic times and moves forwards into the 21st Century military application of strategy in the Western world. The author draws parallels to application of the Mission Command approach in private and public sector organisations today. In war everything is very simple, but simplest thing is difficult as for the complex organizations. Creating great organizations and devising great strategies is not a science but an art. In science our knowledge grows and builds on the past. The big issue is not strategy, but executing strategy and times organization appear to reward compliance rather than initiatives or creativity resulting into non-participation and fear.

A strategy is fundamentally an intent; a decision to achieve something now in order to realize an outcome; that is a, “What” and a “Why”.  The steps of the staircase define the organizations “main efforts: at a strategic level. Even if a strategy is not watertight, energetic leadership can make it work, however business strategy encounters frictions of uncertainty, errors, accidents, technical difficulties, the unforeseen and their effects of decisions, morale and actions. These result into 3 types of gaps (gaps in terms of expected results and reality: outcomes, actions, plans). The gap is described as the difference between what we know and we can do, as the gulf between plan and execution. They are

Knowledge Gap: The gap between plans and outcomes concerns Knowledge; it is the difference between what we would like to know and what we actually know. This means that we cannot create perfect plans. So the need is to formulate the strategy as an intent rather than a plan. Knowledge gap is to limit direction to defining and expressing the essential intent.

Alignment Gap: The gap between plans and actions concerns alignment; it is the difference between what we would like people to do and what they actually do. The need is to be clear on the intentions with the employees. The alignment gap is to allow each level to define what it would achieve to realize the intent.

Effect Gap: The gap between action and outcomes concerns effects; it is the difference between what we hope our actions will achieve and what they actually achieve. We can never fully predict how the environment will react to what we do. It requires the boundaries that are broad enough to take decisions for themselves and act on them. The effect gap is providing individuals freedom to adjust their actions in line with the intent.  The result is to make strategy and execution a distinction without a difference, as the organization goes through PDCA cycle.

A gap in alignment is often pointed to top level frustrations and lower-level confusion. Top –level managers feel increased pressure to specify exactly what they wanted people to do. The lower level imitates and identify problems on their own, which results in local initiatives. These result in creating dilemmas over what to do. Junior people lose the trust in decisions of seniors and they start delegating upwards.  Top level frustration goes up a notch as people thereby demonstrate that they really cannot decide anything for themselves and so the cycle goes on.

A gap of effect is typically responded by increase in control. The favorite control mechanism is metrics. Controls have a cost. Overhead builds up around the controllers, and the reporting burden increases for the controlled. Controls add costs, slow things down further, and increase rigidity. People become demotivated and keep their attention firmly fixed on their KPIs which they were supposed to measure.

People on the front lien are the ones who ultimately crate value since they are the one who determine the kinds of experience that the company generates for its customers. The higher the level of command, the shorter and more general the orders should be. The next level down should add whatever further specification it feels to be necessary and the detail of execution are left to verbal instructions or perhaps a word of command. This ensures that everyone retains freedom of movement and decisions within the boundary of their authority.

The real challenge is how to create an organization which enables average people to turn out above average performance. Most organizations could improve that performance significantly if they could unlock the potential to their existing people, whether or not they are unusually talented. Organizations can use OGSM technique, this starts with the corporate centre defining its Objectives and Goals and its Strategies and Measures. These are then translated down into business and functional levels instead of MBO.

High performing organizations tend to have a strong culture. The Morale drops when organization wastes people’s time. Using an effective briefing technique renders the motivational task of leadership far easier by making the connections between the individual and the collective and forming the basis of mutual respect. The organizational culture is set by two most important organizational processes, budgeting and performance appraisal. They form part of corporate body language.

Scorecard is only one source of information from which that picture can be formed. A scorecard should be used to support strategy execution by monitoring the effects actions are realizing, not to supplant strategy. 

Recommendation: A good book to read on strategy implementation.