Warfighting Book Club – Week Three

This is Week Three in the Warfighting Book Club, relating the Marine Corps doctrinal publication Warfighting to business agility.

This section is not my favorite, but raises a lot of good questions to consider organizationally.


Warfighting Week Three Leader’s Notes and Questions

[Page numbers and quotes are taken from Warfighting, MCDP 1, 2019 Edition]

  • Sections:  Force Planning – Organization – Doctrine – Professionalism – Training – Professional Military Education – Personnel Management – Equipping – Conclusion
  • Questions:
    • If you saw this chapter’s section headings in a table of contents, with just a couple of words changed (maybe “Force” for “Team”, and either remove “Military” or focus it more on your craft), what kind of book would you think it was?
    • What is the non-military equivalent of force planning?  How often do we do that?
    • Can someone summarize the “organization” section for us?
      • We could camp out in “Organization” all day and have a great discussion, but we won’t.  But the second-to-last paragraph caught my eye.  3-5 “Operating forces should be organized for warfighting and then adapted for peacetime rather than vice versa.”
        • Let’s pause there and ask what the equivalent of “warfighting” and “peacetime” are for us.  [Project work = warfighting; training, education, learning, retros = peacetime?]
          • That has interesting implications by itself—what happens to military units that are always on a war footing?
        • What would it mean for our “operating forces” to be organized for “warfighting” (= project work)?
        • How do you react to the last sentence:  “Units should be organized according to type only to the extent dictated by training, administrative, and logistic requirements”?
    • What does “Professionalism” mean to you?
    • Do you agree with the book that “trust is an essential trait among leaders”?
    • What effect do mistakes have on your ability to trust someone else?
    • Do you err on boldness or timidity?  Does [YOUR COMPANY]?
    • READ paragraph on 3-8 “Relations among all leaders…”.  What’s your reaction to that paragraph?  How does that apply in the workplace?
    • Training is interesting to dig into:
      • How much time do we allow for OTJ training?
      • How are our training programs structured?
      • What does training typically look like for your craft?
      • In what way—and level of frankness—are critiques provided for training (or actual) events here?
    • Whose responsibility is professional development?
      • (Three-tier:  education establishment, commanders, individual Marines)
      • If you’re not growing professionally, who is responsible for that?
      • If your employees are not growing professionally, who is responsible for that?
    • What do you think of “the mind is an officer’s principal weapon”?
    • “Doctrine provides the basis for harmonious actions and mutual understanding” — do we have “Doctrine” in the workplace?
      • What is the effect of having or not having doctrine?
    • In the workplace, how much time do we spend “waging war” — doing the work — and how much do we spend “preparing for war” — learning, growing, becoming educated?
      • And what’s the effect of that ratio on our effectiveness, growth, and long-term sustainability?

Warfighting Book Club – Week Two

This is Week Two in the Warfighting Book Club, relating the Marine Corps doctrinal publication Warfighting to business agility.

This was a great, meaty section. I left a lot of possible topics and questions off the list because we only had so much time to discuss.


Warfighting Week Two Leader’s Notes and Questions

[Page numbers and quotes are taken from Warfighting, MCDP 1, 2019 Edition]

  • Sections:  War as an act of policy – Means in War – The Spectrum of Conflict – Levels of War – Initiative and Response – Styles of Warfare – Combat Power – Speed and Focus – Surprise and Boldness – Centers of Gravity and Critical Vulnerabilities – Creating and Exploiting Opportunity – Conclusion
  • Questions:
    • Let’s start with the von Clausewitz quote at the beginning (“The political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and the means can never be considered in isolation from their purposes.”).  How often do we reach back to the “purposes” we are trying to achieve to make sure we’re aligning our craft–our “means”–with those purposes?
    • How do politics, policy, and war map into our corporate world?
      • “Commanders must recognize that since military action must serve policy, these restrictions on military action may be perfectly correct.  At the same time, military leaders have a responsibility to advise the political leadership when the limitations imposed on military action jeopardize the military’s ability to accomplish an assigned mission.” (2-4)
    • This book talks about “the enemy” a lot.  What is “the enemy” when we are talking about our development projects?
      • When trying to understand “the enemy”, think about what we are exerting energy against. Hopefully it is not internal departments; instead it should be something external like competitors, market forces, inertia, entropy, …
    • Would someone summarize the difference between “attrition warfare” and “maneuver warfare”?
    • What would an “attrition warfare” style of development look like?
    • What would a “maneuver warfare” style of development look like?
    • What are the relative strengths and weaknesses of those styles of development?
    • Let’s talk about “Levels of War” and apply that to our work. 
      • “The lowest level is the tactical level.  Tactics refers to the concepts and method used to accomplish a particular mission…”  What are the tactics used in your discipline/craft?
      • “The highest level is the strategic level.  Activities at the strategic level focus directly on policy objectives.”  What does “strategic” mean to you?
        • [This is a great place to expand and discuss if time permits.]
        • Is “strategy” something we need to concern ourselves with?
      • What is your focus?  Does your job have you focused on strategy, operations, or tactics?  Where are you most useful?
      • Where are most of the discussions you have?  Strategic?  Tactical?
    • Let’s dig in on “Speed and Focus” for a minute.  Speed is rapidity of action; focus is convergence of effects in time and space on some objective.  What level of speed and focus do you see in your work?
    • Do most people have a “theory of [projects / development / work]” that structures their approach?  Or just experiences and assumptions?
      • DO YOU?
      • What is your “Theory of [software, product, graphic, etc] Development”?
      • Have you ever tried to articulate it?  [FWIW, I haven’t.  But it might be useful.]

Warfighting Book Club – Week One

One of the best books on agile development or business agility is Warfighting, Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication #1. It takes a little bit of work to translate from the military domain to the business domain, but it’s worth it, in much the same way that The Art of War is.

I recently led a book club / discussion group on Warfighting for a group of leaders (including both managers and individual contributors) at WP Engine.

I’m posting the leader’s notes and questions for anyone else that would like to lead their own discussion group. If you do, drop me a line and tell me how it went!

(Or, if you’re considering leading one and you’d like some guidance, I’d be happy to help!)


Warfighting Week One Leader’s Notes and Questions

[Page numbers and quotes are taken from Warfighting, MCDP 1, 2019 Edition]

  • Sections:  War Defined – Friction – Uncertainty – Fluidity – Disorder – Complexity – The Human Dimension – Violence and Danger – Physical, Moral, and Mental Forces – The Evolution of War – The Science, Art, and Dynamic of War – Conclusion
    • The von Clausewitz quote at the beginning of the chapter (“Everything in war is simple…”) is pretty applicable to software / product development.
  • Questions:
    • What does “war” have to do with “software development” or “Agile”?
    • If you substitute “development” in for “war”, what do you think of the intro?  “A common view of development among Corporate Marketing is a necessary base for the development of a cohesive doctrine because our approach to the conduct of development derives from our understanding of the nature of development.”
    • Product development is typically not violent, and the parties involved are not always hostile.  Is there anything from “War Defined” that seems to be applicable to web dev projects?  (“Not an inanimate object to be acted upon…”, bottom of 1-3)
    • “In this dynamic environment of interacting forces, friction abounds.” (1-5)  What types of friction have you / your teams experienced over the past month?
    • What is your response to uncertainty in development projects? 
      • Are development projects uncertain?  How so?  What sources of uncertainty bother you the most?
    • “The occurrences of [development] will not unfold like clockwork.  We cannot hope to impose precise, positive control over events.”  Do you believe that?  Why or why not?
      • What is the alternative?
      • This dovetails with Complexity (1-12), “Efforts to fully centralize [development] operations and to exert complete control by a single decisionmaker are inconsistent with the intrinsically complex and distributed nature of [development].”  How do stakeholders that want to be that “single decisionmaker” respond to finding out they can’t be?
      • There are two common responses to uncertainty, fluidity, and disorder in corporate settings:  impose order, or create systems that can respond to disorder.  What are the trade-offs involved?
    • Most of the parts about violence aren’t terribly applicable to what we do.  We’re not facing physical danger, causing destruction, and needing physical courage.  So, that said, how are things like courage, leadership, unit cohesion, and esprit applicable to development activities?
    • What do development projects depend on most:  science, art, or social dynamics?
      • “We thus conclude that the conduct of [development] is fundamentally a dynamic process of human [interaction] requiring both the knowledge of science and the creativity of art, but driven ultimately by the power of human will.”  Is that a reasonable paraphrase?
    • What else in this chapter resonated with you?