MANEUVERING INTO THE FUTURE: WHY MISSION COMMAND AND GRAND STRATEGY ARE ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS FOR MANAGING BUSINESS COMPLEXITY

摘要

Effective management techniques depend on the nature of the system being managed. A business is a social system and thus should be managed as a social system. Particularly, businesses are social systems with high levels of social complexity, which increases with the size of the company. Significant research shows that certain characteristics are required to manage social complexity. As social complexity increases, communicative complexity must increase as well. Communicative complexity involves encapsulating more information within a given signal. In human organizations, communicative complexity involves higher levels of abstraction and increasing ambiguity. Managing in complexity involves the use of bounds and attractors to amplify or dampen emergent patterns. Success of a company is dependent upon the ability to effectively hold the constituent threads of the social network together, which involves preventing communication dysfunction, and is significantly aided through the use of a unifying grand strategy to grow allegiance to the organization and to pull allegiance away from rival organizations posing as a threat. The military principle of maneuver conflict provides two concepts, mission command and grand strategy, which show how to effectively utilize communicative complexity within the organization while mitigating its negative effects and how to craft grand strategy to allow the organization to flourish. When applied to business, maneuver principles create an environment which fosters responsiveness and agility.