Courage to Execute: What elite U.S. military units can teach business about leadership and team performance

Chapter 4

Mission Preparation: Moving from Strategy toward Accountable Actions

American strategists planning 1991's Operation Desert Storm undertook one of the largest, most complex planning challenges in recent U.S. military history. Their job was aligning soldiers, ships, aircraft, missiles, equipment, and supporting resources from 32 countries to achieve the goal of expelling Saddam Hussein's troops from Kuwait. Coalition leaders relied on a doctrine known as effects-based operations (EBO). Proponents argued that by identifying and bombing a limited number of strategic targets, you could achieve the precise effect you want. So what effect do you want?

In 1991, the coalition's ultimate goal was to get the Iraqi army out of Kuwait with a minimum loss of civilian life. To achieve that intended effect, planners blueprinted the country of Iraq. They mapped out the interrelated connections that made up the power grids, communication networks, roads and airports, and military command-and-control networks. Then they set out to identify the key nodes, the centers of gravity, the leverage points. Essentially they asked themselves, “Where would a precision bomb do the most overall damage? The loss of which asset would cause the biggest network disruption and give us the most bang for our buck?” Planners identified the power grid. Electricity powered the country's command and control facilities so planners worked backwards from a desired end state: an Iraq without electrical power. How ...