Field notes
Decentralised decision making requires that everyone understands why. The Strategy briefing captures exactly that (in as short and clear a form as possible) and can thereby govern the hundreds of micro-decisions taken every day by the people actually doing the job. Without a shared understanding of why, every partial decision becomes isolated, and the risk is large that the whole drifts away from what the initiative was originally meant to be.
There is no given order between the tabs in the tool, but if you have to pick a starting point when a new initiative is to be described, we recommend starting here.
We believe in collaboration, but also that a minimal overall structure and clear responsibilities help. This tab tries to capture that in as few words as possible. More words than necessary only risk creating misunderstanding. The text should normally fit on two pages.
The structure is inspired by mission command from military command philosophy, a method that has grown over roughly 150 years. It works at least as well in non-military settings, where self-directed teams are expected to make good decisions of their own, at high tempo and in line with a shared intention.
For team autonomy to work well, alignment on the overall purpose and goals is needed.
All six together should normally fit on two pages, and more words than necessary only risk creating misunderstanding.
The person who owns the intention for the initiative first writes section 3, from their own perspective. Then the situation (section 1) and the boss's and the boss's boss's intention (section 2). Last the high-level tasks (section 4) and the freedoms and constraints (section 5).
If you find it odd that Higher intent is written before My intent, that is because the format is optimised for the reader. They should get a clear and logical chain, top-down.
The person responsible for carrying out the initiative answers in section 6. First: does the brief still hold, or has something happened that means it needs adjusting? Then a description of how the initiative is imagined to be solved. The answer to that is really described on the tool's remaining tabs (but it is of course perfectly fine to emphasise other things here too).
The back-brief lets the intent-owner verify that the executor has actually understood the intention. It also forces the executor to think the intention through as a whole. Arriving at a reasonable solution requires an understanding of both intention and situation.
It also happens that the back-brief reveals that the intention itself is wrong. Then it is very valuable to discover that early.
Worth knowing: in its original military form the strategy briefing is often used across several levels. A general briefs their colonels, who in turn brief their majors the same way, and so on down the hierarchy. Our experience is that software initiatives rarely have that many levels between the commissioning party and the executing team, so one round of briefing and back-briefing is usually enough.