The Marine Corps Way – Using Maneuver Warfare to Lead a Winning Organization

The Marine Corps Way explains how to unlock the ingenuity and energy of an organization’s most precious asset: its people. Wannapreneur gives us the key learning points of this book.

Just managed to get my hands on this book and it sure is a good read whether your run an organisation or are just a part of a organisation. this book covers lessons that apply to both leaders as well as frontline staff in all types of organisations. I didn’t even know that there was a book linking maneuver warfare and business when I did this previous post of mine. But this book is great in that it offers case studies that substantiate the seven guiding principles of maneuver warfare, which are :

1. Boldness – The daring to move majority or resources behind a caculated opportunity to achieve maximum results.

2. Surprise – To make use of ambiguity and/or stealth to strike where the opponent least expects and hence, is least ready to counteract.

3. Focus – In line with the first principle of boldness, there needs to be a focal point where all efforts are targetted at to avoid spreading out forces too thinly, resulting in a short-lived breakthrough which the opponent can react to and catch up given time.

4. Decentralized Decision Making – To build up initiative and leadership from the lowest ranks who are empowered to make split-second decisions that can affect the organisation as a whole. The key here is to applaude well-meaning attempts that failed honesty while punishing opportunities lost to indecision and inactivity.

5. Tempo – Keeping up the momentum of efforts to force the opposition into a reactionary position constantly. This allows for you to manage and choose the scenario of confrontation to your advantage. Push the opponent up against the wall to succeed.

6. Combined Arms – The tight integration of complementary assets and resources to increase synergies as well as to create a lose-lose scenario for the opponent. This calls for the different departments of an organisation to work closely with one another to capitalise on combined strength while mitigating individual weaknesses

7. Reconnaissance Pull – Making decisions based on information from the frontlines and not from upper management who may not havea glimpse of the actual situation. This is takeaway from the military where recon scouts are used to gather battlefield intelligence and spot the enemy’s weak points then communicate with the followup forces to “pull’ them forward through the most advantageous routes.

[Official Book Site : The Marine Corps Way]