SUMMARY

• Any dollar or hour of time spent on things that aren’t advancing your biggest opportunity should be pulled, until your biggest opportunity is well-funded and staffed. 

• You will need to say no to good teams with good ideas. 

• It is the leader’s responsibility to ensure that the entire team knows why shifts in funding and people are being made.

 

WAR

 

Economy of force is one of the nine principles of war. 

MCWP 3-10 MAGTF Ground Operations defines it as:

“Economy of force is to expend minimum essential combat power on secondary efforts in order to allocate the maximum possible combat power on primary efforts. Economy of force is the judicious employment and distribution of forces. It is the measured allocation of available combat power to such tasks as limited attacks, defense, delays, deception, or even retrograde operations to achieve mass elsewhere at the decisive point and time.”

Economy of force is the consequence of massing. To mass is to apply overwhelming firepower to a distinct place and time to gain a significant advantage over your enemy. To do that, you need to direct all necessary resources to ensure that the mass is successful. 

Minimum combat power should be left in the less important areas. Those teams should be left with just enough to not fail. The teams that have their resources reduced are experiencing economies of force.

The decision to remove resources from a team to allocate elsewhere is very challenging. This is especially true when everyone is depending on those resources to keep them alive in a gunfight. 

This situation can be illustrated by an example.

Imagine that you’re an infantry battalion commander with three infantry companies. All three companies are heavily engaged by the enemy and are requesting more artillery fire.

You currently have your artillery cannons spread out, so each company gets an even share. The problem is that no company has been able to advance their attacks with the artillery allocated evenly. You’re in a stalemate. 

As the commander, you know that to win this engagement, you need to take the key terrain which is a large hill on the right flank. You determine the only way to do that, is to use all of your artillery in support of that attack. 

Minimum combat power should be allocated to Friendly Company 1 and Friendly Company 2. Everything they had needs to be diverted to support Friendly Company 3 in their attack of the Key Terrain.

Everyone who is not attacking that hill will get stripped of their artillery support. This will mean that they will certainly take more casualties because of it. The reason you are willing to take artillery away from them is because it will increase the chance of success for the entire battalion. 

Members of the team must sacrifice for the good of everyone else. 

Everything has tradeoffs. Every organization has limited assets. The principle of economy of force tells you to apply the most assets to the things that matter most and the least amount of assets to the things that matter less. 

The hard part is that everything matters, especially in combat. It just may not matter as much to achieve overall victory as something else. What matters most is also fluid. As soon an objective is achieved, what matters most could quickly shift to something totally different. It is also fluid based on what the enemy is doing.

Applying economies of force involves risk. It is necessary to judge the minimum amount of assets your less important teams require. You want to give as much as possible to the priority team but not cause the other teams to collapse.

Having overwhelming assets 

Another key point is the organization with a larger or overwhelming force makes their decisions on the allocation of assets easier. 

If 100 infantry Marines show up to a gun fight against 10 grandmas, the allocation of assets will be simple. If 100 infantry Marines show up to fight 100 Army Rangers, then the assets will need to be applied perfectly. Even if that is done, there are still likely to be huge losses. 

In an even fight or as the underdog, economies of force are much more important than when you have a clear asset advantage. In simple terms, if you have bad cards you need to play them perfectly to beat someone who comes in with a stronger hand. 

Key takeaways:

• Economies of force is the deliverable and ruthless assessment of the minimum amount that will allow your less important teams to survive.  
• The resources that you free up will be allocated to your most important team to increase their probability of success. 

 

BUSINESS 

 

Economies of force is an extremely important concept in business. It’s easy to find good opportunities and to start directing money and time towards them. It is substantially harder to do the opposite, and remove funding and time from good opportunities. 

It is more exciting to say yes than it is to say no. 

“Every unnecessary expenditure of time, every unnecessary detour, is a waste of power, and therefore contrary to the principles of strategy.” – Carl von Clausewitz -GRAPHIC 

Everyone is trying to validate their own existence, by building their own team and their own budget. Most will have a very compelling story about why they need more money and staff. 

The principle of economies of force would say, unless they’re working on the most important opportunity in the company, then they should be assessing if they can reduce their team and budget; not increase it. 

The teams that are responsible for delivering your team’s most important projects should be so well-staffed and funded that they have some idle time and excess money. The teams not working on the most important projects should have just enough people and money to not fail. 

There are a few key pieces of information that you need to make a decision to apply economies of force:

1. What is your most important opportunity to be successful?
   1. Is that opportunity funded and staffed at the level needed to ensure success?
   2. If the answer is “no”, where can you pull people and money to add to your best opportunity to ensure its success?
      1. What are the consequences of pulling that money and people from the other teams?

The intent of economies of force is to minimize waste of money and time on things that are not the most important opportunities. Any money spent on things that are not your biggest opportunities, has a lower return on investment. 

Once you know that your biggest opportunity is funded and staffed as well as possible, then you can start filling out other opportunities. You want to be as successful as possible in all places. 

Secondary goals should receive minimum effort possible to sustain.

Communication to teams who get fewer resources

You will eventually get to a point where you are constrained by a resource. At that point, you will need to inform teams that they will not be getting any more help or  that you will even be taking people and money away from them. 

This is not likely to be an easy conversation. 

The teams that do not have priority should be informed that they need to find a way to get their work done. Extensive social praise should be placed on the teams that aren’t the priority but are still accomplishing their goals. 

The balance is between giving your most important opportunity enough resources to have the best chance of succeeding, while also not neglecting other opportunities to the point that you fail. 

Conclusion 

Economies of force is the principle that any resources not being allocated in support of the main effort are being wasted. 

Think hard about what your most important opportunity is. Make sure that it is funded and staffed for success. Many of your other good ideas will need to be sacrificed, in order to move resources to where they will be more effective. 

Key takeaways:

• Determine what your team or company’s biggest opportunity is and make sure that it is adequately staffed and funded. 
• You will likely have to pull people and money from other areas or  reject other good ideas so you don’t waste resources there. 

References:

Headquarters United States Marine Corps. 2018, April. MCWP 3-10 MAGTF Ground Operations. Link