Smart Leadership: Delegating Bravely Leads to $50 Million Innovation

I had the genuine honor and pleasure of working with Wally Bock over the last week as he prepared for and then brilliantly served as Guest Host for Leadership Chat on Tuesday night. Our Topic was, “Military Leadership Lessons We Are Truly Meant to Learn.”

Wally has an exceptional summary of important military history and leadership lessons that he wrote following Leadership Chat to make sure that everyone who participated took away some key learnings. 

The lesson that stood out the most to me, because of how difficult I find it for leaders to bravely implement it, was called, “Mastering the Mission Order.”  Wally described it this way (excerpts):

American military manuals define a “mission type order” as an “order to a unit to perform a mission without specifying how it will be accomplished.” Marine doctrine puts the same thing this way:

“We leave the manner of accomplishing the mission to the subordinate, thereby allowing him the freedom and establishing the duty for him to take whatever steps deemed necessary based on the situation. The senior prescribes the method of execution only to the degree that is essential for coordination…” 

In business we often call this “delegating,” where we assign a task to qualified people without specifying the details.

When we do this well, the results are increased productivity, morale, innovation, and agility. Military units, especially elite units, do a better job than most businesses of doing this consistently.

I believe this form of “Mission Order” delegation is not only brave and inspiring; it is a true gift from a leader to their team.

To truly delegate in this manner requires:

• High levels of expectation from one’s team, in and of itself a gift because people rise to the level of expectation upon them
• Confidence in the capacity of the team
• Significant trust
• Investment in equipping your team for excellence
• Bravery

If only these qualities were as pervasive in business as they are in the military…

My $50 Million Experience

I was very fortunate as a brand-spanking-new Product Manager during my corporate days to be blessed with the challenge of a marketer’s lifetime: an assault on my product by Greenpeace.  Now, I’m not saying I in any way advocate for drawing the ire of this organization, only that it tested my marketing mettle very early in my career and provided leadership lessons I will never forget.

One of the most important lessons?  Well, the C-suite (CEO, COO) at Baxter didn’t call it a “Mission Order” per se, but when they put the team in place to address Greenpeace’s affront, led by me, they gave us full rein to come up with a solution.  As a young product manager I didn’t realize what a tremendous and brave leadership decision that was at the time.  Millions of dollars were at stake, hundreds of millions actually because Greenpeace was questioning the safety of our “base business.”

Although it would have been easy for the C-level to address the challenge solely from a public relations perspective, as a “PR nightmare” as we’re used to hearing about today, they were braver than that.  They wanted to show that they were taking the concerns seriously by investing to find an environmentally-friendly solution.

What our team created was a genuine innovation unlike any I’ve ever had the pleasure to work on since.  We created a system for safely and economically recycling I.V. bags that was so impressive I was invited to speak about it at a United Nations conference in Geneva, Switzerland on Baxter’s behalf.  Even the presentation itself was a chance for executives to take over, but they didn’t.  They let their newbie product manager go and present the initiative that I had put my heart and soul into for more than a year.

They had given my team a “Mission Order” and full rein to carry it out, bring it to life, and then to reap the benefits as well.  We not only saved hundreds of millions of dollars of business, we gained a new, $50 million environmentally-conscious account.

Every one of the “Mission Order delegation” qualities I mentioned earlier: expectations, confidence, trust, investment and bravery, was demonstrated by the leadership team I served.  It was a true gift – to me, to my team, and ultimately to the company and our customers. 

Do you have a “Mission Order delegation” experience to share?

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Photo of One Million Dollars from TimesUnion.com.