How the UK's Royal Marines Plan in the Face of Uncertainty

Despite shocks such as the Gulf oil spill and the global banking crisis, corporations still treat the world as a predictable place. Instead, they should emulate the UK's Royal Marines, an organization whose success has much to do with its agility in the face of unexpected adversity. For the Royal Marines, planning a mission is about shaping strategic thinking and figuring out how to reach the desired end state while allowing for improvisation. As the UK's amphibious commandos, they don't always know what they will find when they arrive on land, yet they must achieve their mission regardless of conditions. They must also be prepared to change plans when disruptive events occur. For those reasons, it's essential that individuals can fall back on common procedures in response to the unforeseen-and can rely on their colleagues to do the same. So the organization uses a military planning technique called the Seven Questions. All members apply it, which means they all approach and analyze their missions in the same way, no matter where they are in the hierarchy. Planners develop a working understanding of the situation on the ground and their mission by answering the first three questions and then decide how to proceed by answering the remaining four. They revisit the questions as events unfold, to see if they need to change anything or even abort the mission. To illustrate the technique, the authors describe how Royal Marine Brigade planners used the Seven Questions to put together a mission plan for an assault on Iraq's Al Faw peninsula.

• Strategic planning
• Crisis management
• Change management
• Decision making