Tag: Leadership

  • Main Effort: The Discipline of Prioritizing What Matters Most

    “In war, the first principle is to concentrate the strongest possible force at the decisive point.” — Napoleon Bonaparte

    My last post, on applying the Execution portion of an Army Operations Order (OPORD) to higher education, needs a bit of expansion. I alluded to the idea of Main and Supporting Efforts, but there is more that can be said. Much more.

    Every operation, no matter how complex, depends on identifying the one activity that must succeed for the mission to succeed. In Army doctrine, the main effort is the unit, task, or activity that receives priority of resources and support because it is most critical to accomplishing the mission. Everything else in the organization is aligned to support it.

    I have seen the relationship described this way: the Main Effort belongs to the organization, unit, or department that “wins the fight,” while Supporting Efforts are conducted by those who make that victory possible.

    A Lesson From Convoy Operations

    Preparing for a convoy mission required attention to every detail

    Remember my unit’s mission from the previous post? During Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2008, my cavalry squadron conducted convoy security missions moving supplies from Kuwait into Iraq. It was demanding work. Multiple patrols were often on the road at the same time, and some missions extended far into Iraq for days at a time.

    The operational details varied constantly. Patrol routes changed. Maintenance demands shifted. Intelligence updates and weather affected how we prepared our gun trucks and when we could move.

    But one priority never changed: our mission depended on the safe movement of supplies north into Iraq.

    That was the main effort.

    Every other activity supported that outcome. Mechanics worked long hours repairing vehicles. Staff coordinated convoy movement and tracked patrols across large distances. Troop headquarters maintained communications with their elements on the road. Different parts of the organization performed very different roles, but everyone understood the same priority: the convoy had to arrive safely.

    Why the Main Effort Matters

    The main effort does more than allocate resources. It provides clarity.

    I wrote in my earlier post that plans rarely unfold exactly as expected. Conditions change. Problems emerge. Leaders must constantly make decisions with incomplete information.

    When people understand the main effort, those decisions become easier. Leaders at every level can adjust tactics while still protecting the mission’s most important objective.

    Without that clarity, organizations often struggle. Teams spend energy solving problems that are important but not decisive. Resources become scattered across competing priorities. Identifying the main effort helps prevent that drift.

    To those of you working in higher education, do these consequences of unclear priorities sound familiar? They apply to us just as much as they applied in combat.

    A Note on Supporting Efforts

    Once the main effort is identified, the rest of the organization is structured to support it.

    In military operations these are called supporting efforts (sometimes referred to as shaping operations). Their role is to create the conditions necessary for the main effort to succeed.

    Some supporting efforts may provide security. Others provide logistics, communications, intelligence, or planning support. Their success is measured by how effectively they enable the main effort.

    This structure ensures that the organization works toward a common outcome rather than a collection of individual priorities.

    The concept may seem obvious, but I am convinced there is significant room for improvement, and many opportunities to create a more cohesive operation, throughout the organizational structures of higher education institutions.

    Practical Application

    At my college, our mission is:

    Kalamazoo Valley Community College creates innovative and equitable opportunities that empower all to learn, grow, and thrive.

    We often shorten this to say we give everyone the opportunity to learn, grow, and thrive. As I noted in my previous post, the main effort in this mission is likely found in faculty instruction. They win the fight for us. Faculty delivering high-quality learning experiences is the core activity that defines institutional success.

    Many other offices, however, perform essential work. These include Admissions, Advising, Financial Aid, Information Technology, tutoring and success coaching, etc. Their purpose, ultimately, is the same: to enable students to learn, grow, and thrive.

    When institutions clearly recognize this relationship of main vs supporting efforts, decision-making becomes easier. Leaders can ask a simple question when evaluating processes, policies, and investments: Does this support our definition of success?

    Clarity Aligns Organizations

    One of the lessons military leaders learn early is that clarity of priority simplifies leadership. When people understand the main effort, they do not need detailed instructions for every situation. They can adapt, solve problems, and make sound decisions because they know what matters most.

    The concept itself is not complicated. But it requires leaders who are willing to make hard choices about priorities and communicate them clearly. It requires leaders to understand the mission, what defines success, and their role in achieving that success.

    Organizations that do this well gain something powerful: A shared understanding of what success looks like. In both combat and higher education, leaders who clearly identify the main effort give their organizations the focus needed to succeed.

  • Executing the Plan: OPORD Step 3 — Execution

    “The commander must decide how he will fight the battle before it begins; then he must trust his subordinates to carry it out.” — Gen. George C. Marshall

    Supporting the main effort

    I wish I had a copy of the Operations Order (OPORD) my cavalry unit wrote for our convoy security mission during Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) in 2008. It did not change much in the nine months we were there. We protected supply convoys leaving Kuwait for Iraq. Usually we handed the convoys over to other units in southern Iraq, turned around the next day, and did it all over again. It was not unusual to have over six convoy security patrols on the road on any given night. When missions went farther into Iraq, they could be gone for a week or more. Those were long days for everyone—from the troopers on the road to the ones ensuring vehicles were safe, maintained, and ready to roll again.

    While the Mission section of an OPORD emphasizes what and why an organization is doing something, Execution is where you get into the weeds on how it will happen. In my unit’s case, it is where the rubber literally met the road. This section identifies the main effort, assigns responsibilities to subordinate units, and explains how their actions combine to achieve success. Most importantly, it establishes what success must look like so that when carefully built plans fail to account for something unforeseen—as they inevitably do—the team can continue to operate and accomplish the mission.

    That shared understanding of success is where the Execution portion begins. Its first subsection is the Commander’s Intent. Commander’s intent describes the broad conditions that define success at the end of the mission through three elements: expanded purpose, key tasks, and desired end state. By clearly articulating how the friendly force, enemy, terrain, and civil environment should look when the mission is complete, it gives subordinate leaders the understanding they need to act decisively when plans inevitably change. Done well, commander’s intent aligns initiative across the force by clarifying acceptable risk, empowering disciplined flexibility, and keeping everyone oriented on the same operational vision. The commander is essentially saying: This is how you will know we have succeeded. When in doubt, keep this vision in mind and help us get there. The details that follow matter—a lot—but this section is foundational. In a community college, it is just as critical.

    For the 1-126 Cavalry in 2008 the main effort was moving supplies safely to Iraq

    Other elements in the Execution section include the Concept of Operations, a high-level description of how the mission will unfold; the specific Tasks to Subordinate Units; and Coordinating Instructions that apply across the force. In combat, these might include rules of engagement and phase timelines. The level of detail grows with the number of units involved and the complexity of the mission.

    How might an Execution section apply to a community college? The president might provide a narrative for the institution as a whole. In most cases, the main effort is instructional faculty teaching classes. Many other offices support this effort and must understand their roles clearly—Student Financial Services, Student Success Services, Information Technology, Admissions and Registration, cafeteria services, libraries, and others. An overarching order that explains how each office contributes to the main effort would be extremely valuable, and it would not need frequent revision. Like our cavalry squadron’s order in OIF, it becomes a standing reference and a tool for assessing institutional effectiveness. Strategic plans already exist and remain essential, but what I am describing is complementary: a mission-focused framework informed by the strategic plan and the college mission that clarifies roles and supports meaningful assessment across departments.

    Subordinate areas can—and should—build their own OPORDs and nested Execution paragraphs. I work in Student Development Services (SDS). At our college, this division is overseen by a cabinet-level vice president and includes Advising and Counseling, Event Services, Wellbeing and Thriving, Recruitment and Outreach, Workforce Readiness, and others. While nested under the college-level order, the SDS OPORD, and Execution paragraph, would specify how our area supports the president’s mission. SDS would identify its own main effort (likely advising), articulate the vice president’s intent, and publish coordinating instructions and shared SOPs. Capturing this in a deliberate format, following deliberate decision-making (see my posts on MDMP), would provide a powerful tool for executing Student Development Services role in the college mission.

    There is one more section of the OPORD that is especially important in higher education: Command and Signal. I will discuss that in my next post.

  • Communicating the Plan: OPORD Step 1 — Situation

    “The first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act of judgment that the statesman and commander have to make is to establish the kind of war on which they are embarking.” — Carl von Clausewitz

    Lots of things impact mission success, including the temperature in Iraq!

    “The art of command lies in making intentions clear.” In the last post, I argued that clarity begins not with tasks or timelines, but with shared understanding. That is why every Operations Order (OPORD) starts not with the mission, but with the Situation.

    At my community college, nearly all employees take the CliftonStrengths assessment. It identifies preferred ways of thinking and behaving, with the idea that if we understand one another’s strengths, we can work together more effectively. My top strength is “Context.” Gallup defines it this way: “People who enjoy thinking about the past. They understand the present by researching its history.”

    I have occasionally wondered whether that tendency is innate or learned. My suspicion is that it is largely learned. The Army trained me to begin every serious discussion with context. Before we ever talked about what we were going to do, we talked about where we were and what conditions shaped the problem in front of us.

    In a formal OPORD, the Situation section describes the operational environment: terrain, weather, population, friendly forces, enemy forces, and key assumptions. It explains who is present, what capabilities exist, what constraints apply, and what uncertainties must be accounted for. The purpose is not to overwhelm with detail, but to ground everyone in a shared understanding of reality before assigning tasks or setting expectations.

    That same logic applies in higher education. If we want people to understand the mission, they must first understand the conditions under which that mission must be executed. Agreement with a plan is not enough; people need to see how the plan fits the world they actually operate in.

    Macro- political and social realities, wildlife, terrain. All these were part of the situation on deployment.

    If you have used a deliberate decision-making process—such as MDMP or a close civilian equivalent—your Situation section will largely write itself. In an earlier post on Mission Analysis, I described how we adapted that step at Kalamazoo Valley Community College. That work provides most of what a strong Situation paragraph needs. For a community college, it might include:

    • The institutional mission and strategic priorities
    • The specific problem being addressed
    • Leadership constraints and non-negotiables
    • Available internal and external resources
    • Critical facts and data shaping the issue
    • Key assumptions
    • Risks and likely second- and third-order effects

    These sections can be written into a document and form the basis for a slide presentation provided to all involved departments.  A brief word on dissemination. Whenever possible, an OPORD should be briefed in person, then reinforced in writing. Questions, clarifications, and even disagreements are part of the process. In the Army, we expected plans to evolve and had a formal mechanism—Fragmentary Orders, or FRAGOs—to adjust them. I will return to that concept in a later post. Doing a formal slide presentation and following that up with a document of the entire OPORD, is the most efficient way dissemination can occur in my opinion.

    Context is not a luxury. It is the foundation. Whether or not “Context” is one of your natural strengths, your team needs it. When everyone understands the situation, the mission makes sense. And when the mission makes sense, the execution plan is no longer an abstraction—it becomes a coherent response to real conditions.

  • What the Military Got Right About Execution

    The art of command lies in making intentions clear. – Bernard Montgomery

    Operation Enduring Freedom 2012

    Most of us can think of a committee report or department directive that everyone agreed with—and then quietly moved on from. Execution is hard.

    The final step in the Military Decision Making Process (MDMP) is issuing an order to execute the agreed‑upon course of action (COA). In the Army, the most formal way to communicate that plan is through an Operations Order, or OPORD. Creating and disseminating a commander’s approved plan is its own demanding process.

    One practical advantage the military has—especially before a deployment or during extended training cycles—is time. We were not constrained by an eight‑hour workday or the assumption that weekends were off‑limits. When the work needed to get done, we stayed until it was done. That reality makes producing something as detailed as an OPORD possible in a compressed window. Higher education quite reasonably operates under different constraints, and that places limits on how literally we can adopt the tool. But even in a simplified version, this is not trivial work.

    The underlying need remains the same in a community college. Having an executable plan for an approved course of action—one where everyone understands their role, the expectations placed on them, and how both individual performance and mission success will be assessed—is just as critical as coming up with a thoughtful strategy in the first place.

    Higher education institutions are full of good ideas: strategic plans, task forces, committees, initiatives with carefully crafted names and polished logos. And yet, execution often falters. The reasons are familiar—competing priorities, unclear roles, unshared assumptions, fuzzy communication, or a lack of clarity about what success actually looks like. An OPORD helps bridge the gap between planning and execution.

    At its core, an OPORD is structured without being rigid. It is designed for imperfect conditions. It assumes teams are distributed, busy, and not all sitting in the same room. Used well, it can be a powerful tool.

    Writing an OPORD does not guarantee success. History offers plenty of reminders of that reality, including the U.S. military’s withdrawals from Vietnam and Afghanistan. But a well‑written and well‑disseminated order does guarantee something important: no one on the team is confused about what is supposed to happen. Think of it as the transition point from vision to action.

    Action itself is never automatic. But one thing I see consistently in community colleges is strong leadership. Strong leadership combined with shared understanding of the mission will take you most of the way toward achieving meaningful outcomes.

    For the purposes of this series, I’ll use a simplified OPORD structure:

    Situation: The context, front and center.

    Mission: The short, specific, and time‑bound objective.

    Execution: Who does what, when, and why.

    Sustainment / Command and Signal: Resources, communication, and continuity. Remember the PACE plan from the last post? What happens when leaders move on in the middle of an initiative?

    I’ve written this before, but it bears repeating: the military does not automatically do things better. What it does have is experience earned in the ultimate school of hard knocks. There are lessons there that can be selectively and thoughtfully borrowed.

    Operation Enduring Freedom 2012

    One of those lessons is this: agreement is not the same as understanding. A course of action coming out of MDMP reflects alignment at the leadership level. Understanding is achieved only when everyone knows what the plan means for them. That is why we issued OPORDs—and why the concept translates so well beyond the wire.

    In the next post, I’ll start where every good OPORD starts: the Situation. Before we talk about tasks, timelines, or metrics, we need to be clear about context—what conditions exist, what constraints matter, and what assumptions we may be carrying without realizing it. Fortunately, a solid MDMP provides most of the context an OPORD needs. In higher education, getting the situation right is often the difference between a plan that looks good on paper and one that actually survives contact with reality.

  • Step 2: Mission Analysis — Turning Information Into Understanding

    “It is not enough to do your best; you must know what to do, and then do your best.”
    — W. Edwards Deming

    I first encountered the second step of the Military Decision-Making Process (MDMP) as a staff officer with a Michigan National Guard cavalry squadron preparing to deploy in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. As I shared in my previous post on Step 1: Receipt of Mission, I didn’t take it seriously at first, and my inattention to detail showed. It was a lesson I took to heart—and one that I’ve shared often in my work at the community college: researching a problem and paying attention to detail early in the decision-making process matters as much, or more, than anything else you will do.

    In the military, the second step of MDMP is called Mission Analysis (MA). We call it that because in Step 1 we receive a mission from higher headquarters. In higher education, what usually happens in Step 1 is that a problem—or opportunity—is identified. What some of us have been practicing at my college is something similar: problem analysis.

    We conclude this step with a mission statement that we craft from our analysis and the problem statement we were given in Step 1. In the Army, Mission Analysis begins with inputs such as the higher headquarters’ order, any initial guidance from the commander, details about the area of operations, relevant higher-level information, and current data about your unit (often called “running estimates”).

    These inputs can be voluminous. With this information, the commander’s team goes to work. That team includes personnel, intelligence, operations, communications, and logistics staff—as well as the chaplain, engineers, civil affairs, and anyone else with relevant expertise. Under the leadership of the battalion (or squadron) executive officer, this group prepares a formal briefing for the commander.

    Leaving the commander out of the room at this stage is intentional. The goal is to allow the staff to analyze freely and prepare an organized presentation so that, when briefed, the commander receives the best information possible—and can ask informed, targeted questions of a well-prepared team.

    When the time allotted for Mission Analysis ends, the staff conducts the Mission Analysis Briefing. When I served on that cavalry squadron staff, this was the most comprehensive briefing in the entire MDMP process—and one we constantly referred back to during later stages. It included the area of operations and interest, anticipated weather, enemy forces, civil considerations, and the friendly forces situation, among many other factors. We also briefed key facts and assumptions, critical information requirements, potential risks, constraints, and finally a proposed mission statement and timeline from the present moment through mission execution.

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    Adapting the Framework to Higher Education

    At my community college, we’ve adapted this military model to our own context while keeping its core strengths: disciplined analysis and a shared understanding before moving forward. We call ours a Problem Analysis Briefing. It’s not yet a formal procedure, but more and more teams are beginning to use it.

    Our current Problem Analysis Briefing format includes:

    • Mission Statement of the College
    • The problem statement we’ve been assigned to solve
    • Constraints from leadership
    • Leadership’s criteria for evaluating proposed solutions
    • A proposed decision matrix or rubric for leadership’s use
    • Implied tasks
    • Available resources internally and externally
    • Research and case studies showing how other institutions addressed similar challenges
    • Critical facts related to the problem
    • Assumptions being made as we frame solutions
    • Risks and potential second- and third-order effects of our proposed solutions
    • A proposed mission statement to guide us in developing those solutions

    Leadership is seated for this briefing and asked to approve the proposed mission statement. As in the Army, approval is not guaranteed—they may ask for more data, modify our language, or even rewrite the statement themselves. Once approved, they may issue updated intent, constraints, or priorities.

    Why the Leader Should Stay “Out of the Room”

    Just as the commander remains out of the room during Mission Analysis, it’s often wise for the leader to remain out during the Problem Analysis phase. This isn’t about exclusion—it’s about clarity.

    When the leader steps back, it allows the team to examine the issue honestly, without shaping their findings around what they think the leader wants to hear. It encourages creative thinking, balanced critique, and a full airing of data and perspectives. When the leader later reenters the process, they encounter a cohesive, prepared team—one that has wrestled with the complexity, organized its findings, and can now brief the leader confidently and clearly.

    In both the Army and higher education, that separation builds trust. The leader demonstrates confidence in their team’s analytical ability, and the team, in turn, delivers sharper, more objective insights. The result is the same in both worlds: better understanding leads to better decisions.

    And then, just like in the field, we move on to Step 3: Course of Action Development—where artistry and creativity meet the discipline of analysis.
    That’s where ideas begin to take shape, built on the firm foundation of shared understanding.