Summary:

• Assigned a single person who’s responsible to solve a problem 

• When it’s a cross functional team setup a project team that has a singler leader with a team that has the capabilities to solve the problem 

 

WAR

Unity of command is one of the nine principles of war. It is the theory that overall responsibility should be assigned to a singular person. This gives that person the authority to sequence and allocate everyone on a team to be most effective at achieving a goal. 

The US Marine Corps defines unity of command in MCWP 3-10 MAGTF Ground Operations as:

Unity of command means that all forces operate under a single commander with the requisite authority to direct all forces employed in pursuit of a common purpose… Unity of effort, the coordination and cooperation toward common objectives, even if the participants are not necessarily part of the same command or organization, is the product of successful unified action. Commander’s intent, what must happen and a description of the end state, is the foundation for both unity of command and unity of effort

The need for a single commander was learned frequently in combat. Operations failed because no one had the authority to put all of the pieces together to maximize the team’s capability.

 

Allocation of scarce resources 

 

It is very challenging to get complex teams to work together without a single designated leader. Even with selfless and competent leaders, there will always be disagreements about what the priorities should be. Those disagreements stem from the inevitability that some team members will have to sacrifice more than others. 

Every leader will want their team to be successful. To be successful, they’ll want as many resources allocated to them as possible. There are always limited resources for all teams to share. The decision to allocate resources to one team or another is where sacrifices will start to be made. 

The prioritization of those resources has to fall on a decision for a single leader. 

 

Sequencing of teams  

 

The sequencing of teams is another decision that a single designated leader needs to make. The timing of when teams execute their work is important and delicate. 

If you consider what perfect execution would look like, it would be a perfectly orchestrated sequence of work. Each team would hit their timeline exactly when they’re supposed to, which would allow the next team to start their share of the work. 

Perfect sequencing likely won’t ever happen in real life. That means that every team is trying to sequence as well as they can. Bad sequencing generally happens because no one is holding any teams back. If all teams are pushing full bore towards a goal, a bottleneck will eventually develop. One team will prevent everyone from progressing. 

A singular leader will have the responsibility to hold their teams back to sequence them to as close to perfect as possible. 

 

Decision making with or without unity of command  

 

The decision making needed to prioritize and to sequence resources is best done by a single responsible person. 

If there isn’t a single leader, those decisions must be made by mutual agreement.  This can be impossible. It also takes considerable time and effort to mutually agree on every decision as a leadership team. 

It’s much more efficient to have a single leader who can take all of the inputs and drive the decision making. 

 

Example

 

Let’s walk through a simple example.

Imagine that you’re a Marine Sergeant who is leading a squad of 12 other Marines. You are assigned a task to go set up a small forward operating base with another squad which is also led by a Sergeant. When building out the security plan for the base, you and the other Sergeant have a disagreement on how to set up the machine guns. You are both the same rank and neither was assigned as the leader for this task. This leads to friction and slows down decision making, as the power struggle ensues. 

That is a lack of unity of command. 

When no responsible person is assigned the task, it either doesn’t get done at all or doesn’t get done to a high standard. 

This applies at all levels. It can be a small task or a large operation. The size doesn’t matter. What matters is that one senior person is put in charge and all decisions and responsibility stops with them. The authority of that person has to be understood by the entire team. 

 

BUSINESS 

 

Unity of Command can be clearly translated to the civilian world. 

Ideally, when you assign a task or a project you make sure it’s clear there is one responsible person who is as close to the problem as possible. 

In the business world this can be very challenging. There are many different teams that are involved in a project. Most of them work in different departments. The first person who would have the authority to be involved with all of those teams would be a Vice President or higher. 

That is a problem. Vice Presidents are generally pure leaders, who will not be very involved in a cross functional task or a project. 

In that type of situation, the Marine Corps would put people in direct support of a project and still assign one leader. That leader would usually be the ground commander closest to the battle. 

In the civilian world,  it should be a leader who is closest to the problem. That leader will be assigned a cross functional team assigned to them, so they can be successful. 

This is what that would look like:

1. Your priority projects will have a dedicated team with every key department represented (procurement, finance, marketing, operations, engineering, etc.)
2. All of those people would report to one leader, who is given decision making authority 
3. That project would be their highest priority. All other work would be stopped for this project. 
4. The project team would not get tasked with anything that impacts their work on this project. If they had extra work capacity they could ask for more work from their department lead. This would need to be agreed to by the project lead. 
5. The team would get their work prioritized through the project leader. They would get assistance and advice from their department leader, who has similar expertise.  

The only argument against this type of setup would be “we don’t have enough people to dedicate to projects.” This means that you’re doing too many projects.  You must focus on your most important ones with the people that you have. 

The ideal state is that your highest priority project has a dedicated team with every type of expertise necessary to be successful. The team works together and reports to a single leader, who is responsible for their success. That leader may not be in their department. A marketing person could get their work priorities from an operations person, if they are the correct leader. 

This is very similar to scrum project management in the software development world. 

 

Key takeaways:

 

• Assign one leader to fix a problem and give them a team with all of the knowledge and capabilities needed to succeed. 
• The entire team should know that person is their new leader and all responsibility stops with them.  

References:

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