Sean Horgan

Managing strategic uncertainty

The more I deal with uncertain business situations, the more I find value in what I learned in the Marines. Operations orders, also known as

five paragraph orders⁠

, can be used to manage everything from setting up observation posts in small villages in Iraq (my experience) to entire national invasion plans. Obviously templates and process only take you so far and a bad strategy won’t survive regardless of how well it is executed. At best you’ll fail faster.

In its most basic form, the five paragraph order breaks a plan into 5 steps: Situation, Mission, Execution, Admin/Logistics, Command/Control. One of the most important separations in the plan is between the situation and everything else. Mixing up the context of the situation with your actions can be catastrophic in early-stage planning. If your team doesn’t agree with the current predicament and your diagnosis of your problems, you’re not ready to evaluate various scenarios.

I really appreciated the articulation of courses of actions in the Situation section, specifically the Enemy Most Dangerous Course of Action (EMDCOA) and Enemy Most Probable Course of Action (EMPCOA). Basically, what is the worst thing that could happen and what is the most likely? Have plans for both and you are off to a great start.

This is a blast from the past but I was able to find the old field template I created to issues orders back when I lead a Machine Gun Platoon. Lots of acronyms but there was a time where those were just part of our natural lexicon. Most of the orders were either given in person or over the radio, normally from some chicken-scratch on a notebook.

⁠

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