Thursday, January 31, 2019

“Management by objective works – if you know the objectives. Ninety percent of the time you don’t.”
– Peter Drucker –

The fifth principle of the U.S. Army’s “mission command” philosophy is “Use mission orders.” The Army further defines this as “directives that emphasize to subordinates the results to be attained, not how they are to achieve them.”

The beautiful simplicity of this directive as that it is: 1) outcome focused and 2) the ultimate empowerment of those tasked with achieving the result. So the next time you ask your team to hit a goal, open a new market or take a hill remember that there’s tremendous power when you point them toward the objective and let them figure out how to get there.