Corps Business [Hardcover]

David H. Freedman

Freedman firmly believes Marine methodology creates a strong and effective organization. For those who read this book, you will probably agree. As you might expect from a book that parallels the military and business management, there are many references to training, discipline, order, and sacrifice.

However, a vast majority of the book gives a perspective of the US Marine Corps which is radically different than most people would expect.

Provided that Freedman is correct in his analysis, the US Marine Corps is an extremely focused group which is both fast, versatile, and effective in complex situations.

1) Marines aim for the 70% solution because in the battlefield, speed and boldness is more important than perfection. Put another way, indecisiveness is a fatal flaw. It is better to make small, frequent, and rapid decisions.

2) Marines find the essence of any mission. It should be made very clear. In the process, all the assumptions, boundaries (what shall we NOT do) should be questioned and explored. Dissension is invited prior to the final decision.

3) Marines are a capability based organization. They are defined by what they are able to do, and how they do it.

4) Marines push decision making to very low levels in the organization. Bureaucracy does not work in the battlefield. To quote. "The best soldiers are ones who follow orders from above, but do not depend on them."

5) The Marines are very competitive. Marines hire through trial by fire. Boot camp is a form of Darwinian natural selection. The best and fittest survive. Even after boot camp, many officers leave the Corps because they cannot be promoted, because they are not the best.

6) Leadership is defined as the ability to have others follow you. If a Marine does not follow an legitimate order, he / she can face disciplinary action, but the superior who gave the order will often find their career stop too. (It demonstrates a break in their leadership ability.)

7) Marines glorify the lower levels of the organization. The most training is at the lowest level of Marine leadership - Corporal. Even in the dress, there is little difference in dress from the officers and the privates.

8) Marines focus on the end statement. Marine leadership focus on WHAT TO DO (Mission), not HOW to DO (Details).

9) Marines reward failure. The best way to learn is through experience, and if someone does not fail from time to time, they are not pushing the envelope. Marines are focused on continuous improvement, and that requires temporary failure.

10) The Marines have passion for what they do. The Marines have an expression to describe people who just go through the motions of their job: "Going Admin"

As a profile of the Marine Corps organization, the book is a great read, but as an organizational study, the viewpoint feels compromised and devoid of any real analysis. Eventually objective criticism is introduced but even then it is relatively mild; on discussing the subject of the Marines offering a cult-like or street gang experience to its members, the author chooses to dismiss what would appear to be a central aspect of their organization out of hand - and conveniently the one aspect that would be difficult to repeat in a lawful business setting. In the final paragraphs of the book, we discover how wide the gulf is between the two worlds. The author discusses a Marine visit on Wall Street to help them better understand how financial traders deal with the fast flow of information through monitors in a scenario similar to that of future battlefield engagements. To quote from the book: "The traders are happy as long as they win more than they lose... When losing means you bring home bodies, that's not good enough". This aspect - how little was gained by the Marines from the experience because of the differences in organizational objectives - illustrates what was generally left out of the book: the challenge of applying these structures to the business world.

The meaningful insight the book does succeed in driving home is this: the U.S. Marine Corps is not a business, and if it is, it is like no other; its economy consists of life and death; its objective is not profitability but rather avoiding any loss. It is necessarily a risk-averse activity, quite different from the risk-seeking challenge of capitalism.

No doubt, some organizational aspects mentioned are worth attempting, if only because they run against the grain of conventional business wisdom. Others, such as managing by intent and end state rather than through detailed planning and micromanagement, open up bigger issues related to corporate liability given the litigious business climate today, and this is acknowledged by the author. Many examples of these techniques applied in the business world are dubiously weak - can Webvan (now out of business) and the others mentioned here be considered successful and good application of Marine-style management techniques? What are the long-term benefits of such an approach in business? Does organizational scale have an impact on the success of these principles?

The book is most successful and insightful when it sticks to the topic of how the U.S. Marine Corps operates, and for that it is a great book that I highly recommend, but it is not necessarily a great business book.