Swift, Silent, and Deadly: Strategic Planning Meets Maneuver Warfare

S.M. Milstein
Chief of Operations
Mobile TLMH America

For over 230 years, the United States Marine Corps has been fighting and winning the Nation's battles. In an unforgiving business where the bottom line is measures in blood and National prestige, strategic planning is crucial to victory while keeping costs to a minimum. In rapidly changing environments where all participants play to win, a mindset and culture that promotes effective planning and rapid decisions while retaining the flexibility to adapt to change is as important as sound planning procedures.

Business is a constant battle: supplies want to charge you more, customers want cheaper prices and higher quality, and competitors want you out of business completely. This presentation will provide a new approach to strategic planning with an eye toward execution: maneuver warfare applied to business. It will not "turn the participants into Marines," but it will give them some applicable tools for preparing, planning, and executing strategies that have been proven repeatedly in practice. The discussion will include:

Preliminary and theoretical considerations - initial concepts and definitions that frame assumptions and considerations prior to preparing an organization to go into action and the planning and executing of any strategy. These will include the Principles of War as applied to business, the concepts of friction, uncertainty, fluidity, and disorder, moral versus physical forces, the complimentary nature of offense and defense, and considerations of art and science.

Preparation - any organization moving toward implementation of a strategic vision undertakes to be ready for the opportunities and challenges expected-it looks inward. This ongoing process shapes the ultimate degree of success or failure of the strategic plan. The process involves organization, doctrine, leadership, training and education, and equipment, all to be addressed.

Plans and execution - the culmination of forming and implementing a strategic plan is when an organization sets out to conquer a realm beyond itself. Concepts essential to this phase include philosophy of command versus control, shaping, decision making, mission tactics, commander's intent, focus of effort, surfaces and gaps, and combined arms.

Military jargon will be kept to a minimum and examples from business will be used to illustrate the points explained. This presentation is meant to give participants some new perspective on how to prevail in their business in simple and effective terms without undue esoteric concepts.

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