Commandos & Crisis Communications
summary (video length: 20mins)
This video was produced for Propel‘s webinar series, providing a lesson in crisis communication techniques developed by the Royal Marines. Major Scotty Mills (Ret'd), who in addition to a 30-year military career has also served as a performance coach to Gareth Southgate and the England football team among others, is joined by ex-Frankie & Benny's managing director Ollie Humphries to apply the Royal Marine's operational communications principles directly to hospitality leadership and current challenges presented by coronavirus such as labour changes; reopening logistics; and expected falling sales.
The above video is a 20minute edit of this extended conversation we had with Scotty & Ollie.
“Be the first to understand, first to adapt and respond & first to overcome”
And, for those who don’t like video, here is a written summary of what we learned when we asked Scotty for a lesson in crisis comms & leading through adversity:
Meet Scotty
Scotty Mills has led the kind of life that others can only dream of. From the backstreets of South London, he has since gone on to serve his country and lead Britain's' Commandos around the globe as a Royal Marines Officer. More recently, as an advisor to the FA, he inspired Gareth Southgate, Harry Kane and the England Football Team to the World Cup Semi Final through innovative leadership and team cohesion training that saw them able to come together and to perform when the pressure was on in Russia.
Known as "Gareth’s Secret Weapon'', a term coined by the renowned TV Presenter Lorraine Kelly, Scotty has built up a strong reputation for being able to inspire others to reach their full potential. He has been involved with the England Rugby Team prior to their World Cup success in 2003 and he has led Olympians and elite level sporting heroes to Gold Medal success. As a Royal Marines Officer, he led the Royal Marines to smash a long standing 19-year old Endurance Marathon World Record. He is now a highly sought-after life, sports and business coach.
Recruitment and development of exceptional leaders
Scotty says that the Marines’ sustained success as an organisation comes down primarily to exceptional recruitment and development of talent capabilities. It is critical not to overlook this foundation for success when studying their operational techniques - proven processes and systems would stop working in the hands of the wrong, or poorly trained, people.
The Marines have invested heavily in developing carefully targeted marketing campaigns, using key messages aimed at specific recruiting demographics in order to attract the right kind of candidates.
Like the retail, hospitality and care sectors in the civilian world, the Marines have sometimes struggled to recruit talented youngsters (the core demographic for Marine recruiting is 17-26 years old) in Cities like London, where a £16k starting salary may look unattractive compared to apparently ‘higher status’ (but also invariably more boring!) office roles for similar or better pay. No matter how challenging recruitment becomes, the Marines have always refused to let standards slip. Recruitment marketing invariably involves making a calculated tradeoff between attracting ‘enough’ people vs ‘the best’ candidates.
In years gone by, The Marines focused primarily on appealing to candidates who self-identified as ‘elite’ (with slogans such as “99.99% need not apply”) but changed to more inclusive messaging (‘it’s a state of mind’) after realising they were causing too many less confident, but still potentially great, young candidates to self-select out.
When you’re drawing from a wider talent pool - where people come in with different degrees of natural cultural fit - Scotty notes the importance of coaching and mentoring to build and change culture. According to Scotty, culture - even an extreme and strong culture like the Marines’ (see below) - can be learned. It just requires relentless focus on and investment in personal development.
Developing leaders, who will stand shoulder to shoulder to shape the next generation of Marines, is accordingly critical. Every Marine receives training to at least 2 levels above his current station, which creates a deep sense of trust and empowerment throughout the organisation.
Whilst the Marines has traditionally been a male-dominated institution, this is now changing. For example, this is Scotty’s friend Dr Lara Herbert, then a Royal Navy Lieutenant, who was the first woman to complete the All Arms Commando Course in one attempt (and the second woman overall).
Culture at the core
Culture is at the core of the Marines, drawn from 356 years of history and lessons learned through the generations. Marines are not only trained extensively once in post. They’re rigorously tested prior to initial admission and those who don’t fit - after every effort has been made to coach and mentor them to the required level - are systematically removed during selection.
New marines are stretched mentally and physically to expose their raw characters, so that recruiting commanders can check for values (excellence, integrity, self-discipline, and humility) and spirit (courage, determination, unselfishness, and cheerfulness).
The importance of culture when operating in adverse situations
Leaders of organisations which are completely clear on their values have a tremendous advantage in turbulent times. They can be sure that team members will remain cohesive under stress and self-determined decisions at every level will, more often than not, be made with integrity and intelligence.
Only on top of this raw, cultural advantage do Marines lay organisation processes and systems. But, as noted above, Marines believe that culture can be learned - so do not despair if you’re running a civilian organisation with a portion of cultural or operational under-performers. With the right investment in and empowerment of local leadership, you have a good chance of correcting the culture of many low performers. And, Scotty says, the difficult minority who do need to be discharged will often ‘self-select’ out once it becomes clear that they cannot meet the expectations of their peers and immediate managers.
‘Warning orders’ - preemptive briefings from the top to allow battle preparation
We will soon get into the detail of how Marines meticulously develop operational plans via their ‘Seven Questions’ model, which each Marine Commander at every level of the hierarchy uses to develop individual plans which are also coherent with an overall mission plan. The Seven Questions model is a ‘cascade’ framework, which rolls down from the most senior Marine commander to troops on the ground during a mission planning process.
Before we get into the details of this cascade framework - which hopefully will feel relevant to multisite business leaders who also have to manage large groups of distributed people on a cascade basis - it is worth noting one of the key practises of the Marines, which prevents sluggishness and confusion creeping into their formal cascades: warning orders.
Marine commanders issue warning orders at various times to give subordinates the opportunity to begin developing local plans whilst master plans are still being finalised. For instance, when a Marine leader first receives an order he will immediately push it down (not delegate it - just share the fact an order has been received and is being processed up stream) along with any accompanying intelligence. Further warning orders will then subsequently be pushed down as plans evolve.
In order to ensure that adequate time is left for planning at lower levels, Marine leaders will generally follow a ‘one third, two thirds’ rule for time management. This means that after calculating the overall amount of time a given plan needs to be executed within, the leader will allow himself only 33.3% of that time for planning, giving the levels below him 66.6% of available time for their planning.
The Marines’ Seven Questions
The Seven Questions framework is the system by which Marines balance the seemingly conflicting goals of maintaining organisational cohesion whilst optimising for extreme empowerment at lower levels.
1. What Is the Situation on the Ground, and How Does It Affect Me?
This is the first question a Marine should ask himself when a new order is received.
In order to answer, he must gather data relevant to the mission. For a high street leader receiving orders to reopen a business after lockdown, equivalent data gathering might involve studying local rates of C-19, whether she is operating in an area with an unusually elderly population, considering City workers who’re migrating to long-term work from home etc.
It is normal to experience important gaps in information early on in a planning process - the trick is to be explicit about your assumptions and be prepared to change them as more information becomes available. All that is important to begin with is that the assumptions are credible.
2. What Have I Been Told to Do and Why?
This is a four-step process:
2.1 analyze the “commander’s intent”.
In order to do this, all Marines need to have access to a statement from the very top of the organisation describing the intent behind a mission - in Yapster this would generally be delivered by an all-staff broadcast Yap or a News post. Further, throughout the Marine hierarchy, divisional Marine leaders have to understand the intent at least ‘two levels up’ in the hierarchy and be able to reconcile those higher intents. Again, in Yapster this might be delivered by way of a Yap from Operations Director to both Area Managers (the level immediately below her) and Site Managers (the second level down in the hierarchy). This is how a Marine understands the full context of his role in the overall plan.
The Marines do not micromanage - lower level commanders will generally determine ‘the how’ of plans at their level for themselves.
2.2 identify the implied tasks by examining those that are specified.
It’s crucial when planning under stress to consider potentially hidden (implied) tasks, as failure to do may render a specified task impossible. For instance, pivoting a restaurant business to take away will involve procuring packaging for transit, as well as attending to setting up an ordering and fulfillment system.
2.3, understand operating constraints—such as time, space, resources, and rules of engagement—outlined by higher command.
For instance, hospitality leadership instructing sites to reopen should also be attaching a “put team and public safety before all else” constraint.
2.4, take a step back (now and periodically going forward) to ask whether the situation has changed.
Sometimes situations change to such a degree that a commander’s original intent is rendered invalid. In such cases, there is no point in continuing the original order. For instance, in current high street terms, if a second wave of COVID-19 causes the Government to return us to lockdown then reopening would need to be paused at every level and reconsidered.
3. What Effects Do I Want to Have, and What Direction Must I Give?
This is where the rubber meets the road for any mid-level leader. Having considered the situation, mission, the commander’s intent and constraints, a leader must now make his own intent clear.
Clarity is absolutely crucial at this stage, given that subordinates will have to refer to these statements (just as the Marine has relied on prior statements made up the chain). Arnoud Franken writing for HBR refers to the use of “verb-object” constructions as particularly effective. For instance: “deep clean the site” or “yap a reopening briefing to your teams”.
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4. Where and How Can I Best Accomplish Each Action or Effect?
Marine Commanders, with their planning teams, typically try to come up with multiple “courses of action” available to them to fulfill their part in a given plan. Working methodically through all the risks attached to each identified course of action, the Marine commander has three choices regarding each risk: address its cause and eliminate it directly; incorporate the risk into the main plan; or develop a contingency plan.
5. What Resources Do I Need to Accomplish Each Action or Effect?
When a Marine answers the second question (“What have I been told to do and why?”) the most important effects should be relatively clear, which in turn makes it possible to allocate resources by priority. For instance, if the priority is to reopen profitably a chef might chose to open with a reduced menu to exclude low margin or less popular menu items.
6. When and Where Do the Actions Take Place Relative to Each Other?
Marines recognise that their chances of victory over an opponent go up when they coordinate to focus their power at decisive times and places. They do this by creating “schemes of maneuver” - comprehensive timetables of activities, key functions and decision points across the team.
7. What Control Measures Do I Need?
Like business executives, Marine commanders need to retain ultimate control of what’s happening on the ground without micromanaging. Scotty does this by referring to cultural and operational “arcs of fire”.
The concept of ‘arc of fire’ relates to establishing a fighting position, whereby each person in a military unit has designated areas to shoot between. When we use ‘arc of fire’ as a metaphor for cultural or operational boundaries, what we mean is each subordinate has to understand the boundaries within which they are free and expected to act. These boundaries are critical to aligning the actions of many people.
In answering the 7th question, a commanding Marine must consider the arcs of fire to set for those under command.
Final thoughts - performing under pressure
If you have great people, working within a strong, positive culture in a calm and coordinated way you have the raw ingredients for success. Performing under pressure ultimately comes from putting in the work to get the most out of these raw ingredients - it doesn’t happen by accident or overnight. The Marines have been at it for over 300 years.
Scotty says that most failures to perform come from fear - the fear of failure. And fear of failure is something Marines don’t often feel, because so much work has been put in from day 1 of their training to ensure they have unshakeable faith in each other.
Fear of failure can be reduced fairly quickly in a civilian context with focused effort by leadership. For example, new England manager Gareth Southgate famously realised this prior to the last football World Cup, after years of disappointing performances by the England national team. He realised he needed to find a way to bring a ‘club’ mentality to a national set up - so that his players would trust each other and feel empowered under pressure.
Southgate achieved this by pairing up with Scotty and giving his team a shared experience at a Marine training centre.
“In some businesses you have colleagues, and in some teams you have teammates” says Scotty, “but in the Marines we have brothers and sisters - and that ultimately is the secret to achieving clarity in crisis and performing under pressure”
