The Art of Action

How Leaders Close the Gaps Between Plans, Actions and Results

De: Stephen Bungay

Narrado por: Andrew Hunt

The 10th anniversary edition of the leadership classic

The surprisingly common-sense approach to leading a global company, based on a theoretical framework first used by the 19th-century Prussian army.

For over a decade, the approach known as 'mission command' has been taught at the leading HULT Ashridge International Business School and has been applied in transforming businesses as diverse as pharmaceuticals and F1 racing.

What do you want me to do? This question is the enduring management issue, a perennial problem that Stephen Bungay shows has an old solution that is counter-intuitive and yet highly practical. The Art of Action is a thought-provoking and fresh look at how managers can turn planning into execution, and execution into results.

Drawing on his experience as a consultant, senior manager and a highly respected military historian, Stephen Bungay takes a close look at the army, which built its agility on the initiative of its highly empowered junior officers, to show business leaders how they can build more effective, productive organizations.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2010 Stephen Bungay (P)2021 Hodder & Stoughton Limited

Clear and practical

This title provides a clear and easy to understand rational for the framework and details a practical approach that can be implemented very quickly within an organization.

strategies from the Past presented in new century.

an excellent argument for leading by intent and the positive outcomes in doing so balanced against the need to be flexible in where the decisions and action really takes place.

This is good book, but you need to summarize it

It gives a good explanation of strategy.

I like most that it gives many quotes from the book "On war" by Clauswitze.

You need to dissect from this big book , the exact formula on what instructions you give to your employees, so they function well.

It is exemplify the concept that you need to tell the person what you want him to do, but also state why you want him to do it (what is the intent behind it) and he needs to figure out the HOW given the constrains he have.

I exemplify for myself, lets say you say an employee to create Instagram page with 100K followers (this is the what), if you don't tell him the why (the intent) he can do it in ways that are counter productive to the intent, he can upload everyday half naked pictures of bikini model, then he get 100K followers, but your initial intent was to sell an online course, so now all those followers are not relevant to buying the course. This is because you did not tell him the WHY (the intent).

This skill the book calls as to COMMAND, not everyone knows how to do it properly so the soldier understand exactly what the commander wants him to do.

After he knows why you need 100K followers, now he is more aligned with the intent and he is more likely to do what you actually wanted (how you have behaved if it were you). So he will upload content related to the course in an intent for you to sell a course once he reaches to 100K followers.

A strategy is you knowing what you want to achieve, and you see what is the environmental opportunities and what are your advantage capabilities. This is how you intent to compete.

He also talk about FRICTION. This means that imagining things work out perfectly is false, and making everything work together is not as easy because people don't completely understands what you want. The same applies to the enemy, so you probably overestimate their power and ability because you imagine it in your mind as happening perfectly for them, this is unrealistic bias.

Also he gives the difference between giving a COMMAND and LEADING, which is a skill that means issuing the RIGHT orders that answering the WHAT needs to be done, by WHO, and WHY (intent) for doing it, leaving the HOW, for the person who gets the command.

THIS SKILL (commanding) IS VALUABLE and very important and is different from LEADING.
LEADING is more psychological ego boost and motivation, for doing the action, like saying follow me to fight those evil monsters, while COMMANDING is telling them, "You (WHO) need to destroy that bridge(WHAT), so the enemy cant pass and think their allies did it (INTENT+WHY)"

No action in the Art of Action

The author just drags the narrative on and on. Does he ever get to the point?

Some good points buried within

…But requires too much digging to uncover them. Making up new definitions for existing words is a poor expository technique IMO.