I recently ‘met’ Mark Bonchek through the discussions of a circle of folks interested in the ideas of a Responsive Organization. In one thread, Mark suggested that the modern notion of military doctrine might be a helpful concept to roll into our discussions. The premise is that companies, on one hand, wish to instill a high degree of autonomy,  so individuals and groups can take independent action without always referring plans up a chain-of-command, which both slows things down and minimizes initiative. However, companies — or armies — need to manage demands for assets and talent, so there needs to be a way to ensure heteronomy: subordination of the goals of the specific person or project to the overall needs or principles of the larger organization.

That’s the role of doctrine, in today’s fast-and-loose military:

Mark Bonchek and Chris Fussell, Use Doctrine to Pierce the Fog of Business

NATO defines doctrine as “Fundamental principles by which the military forces guide their actions in support of objectives. It is authoritative but requires judgment in application.” If strategy defines objectives, and plans prescribe behavior, then doctrine guides decisions.

Consider one example from U.S. Special Operations teams trying to get the most use out of their helicopters, assets with high demand and limited supply. One approach would be to centralize all of these decisions, but that would be too slow. Another would be to have a computer automate the process, but there would be no way to feed enough data into the system in real time. So Special Operations went with a third option … let the human network figure it out and create solutions.

This network became the fog lights, pushing decision-making closer to the ground. But how to ensure the human network made the right decisions? What were the lines to paint on the road?

Military leadership created a common doctrine to frame the organization’s understanding of how helicopters would and wouldn’t be employed, their range, their maximum load capacity, their refueling requirements, etc. With these principles and shared understanding, the network could quickly coordinate across silos and create collaborative solutions.

One observation is that much of the orientation of doctrine is to define the constraints of use on materiél and human beings, treating those like commons. Consider how critical resources like aquifer water or shared pasturage in the Alps have to be managed if they are not to be degraded. Shared cultural or legal agreements need to be put into effect that limit overuse, and constrain the individuals for the good of the community most closely linked to the commons.

In this way, helicopters are a commons in the military, and a set of rules about how they can be used and how they must be cared for constrains military leaders in their exploitation. That doctrine works because at its base it increases the likelihood that any use of helicopters that follows doctrine will increase the likelihood that at a later date, helicopters will be available for other missions.

A great deal of discussion in ecology circles in recent years has focused on how the concept of shared commons is perhaps the overarching metanarrative for all efforts to gather support for countering destructive policies, like CO2 pollution (climate change), fracking, water depletion, and the overfishing of the oceans. This is an example of how the basis of sane culture is a metanarrative that leads to options remaining open in the future, a commitment to posterity.

The same holds in business. Individuals and groups should take initiative — have a strong inclination to take action — but the doctrinal framework that carefully defines the ways in which shared resources can be used limits abuse, and leaves options open for others to pursue. And all without a central decision-making authority imposing heteronomy by fiat. Instead the degree and form of heteronomy necessary for the business to operate emerges from the independent decisions made by individuals.

The role of leaders in such a perspective is to set the context: to define the doctrine of use for critical shared resources, and the manner in which they should be employed. Note that this includes the use of people, and that side of today’s business doctrine includes the basic notion of maximal autonomy held in check by the heteronomy of the shared commons.

Bonchek and Fussell make a case for the scalability of doctrine:

One of the most powerful qualities of doctrine is its scalability. Like a Russian matryoshka doll, doctrine can be nested inside other doctrine. For example, the doctrine related to helicopters is nested inside doctrine related to the military’s network-centric approach to warfighting. This higher-level doctrine has four core tenets:

• A robustly networked force improves information sharing;
• Information sharing enhances the quality of information and shared situational awareness;
• Shared situational awareness enables collaboration and self-synchronization, and enhances sustainability and speed of command; and
• These, in turn, dramatically increase mission effectiveness.

At core, this doctrine says that effectiveness in any short period of time relies on a shared situational awareness, imparted through information networks, and enabling individuals to act, coordinate, and apply shared resources. This is tempered by the longer-range requirements of sustainability: protecting the commons.

So, doctrine is key to the fast-and-loose form factor of work, and leading the effort in defining and improving doctrine is one of the key aspects of leadership today: not making decisions that others closer to the action could make. Note, however, that context setting involves a give-and-take with all involved, and is another area open to experimentation and innovation.

And whenever someone zigs when they should have zagged, it most likely a failure of leadership: inadequate context setting — poor doctrine — is generally the culprit.