Detailed plans are worthless past first contact; what survives is intent, so subordinates must be given the intent rather than the plan.
Moltke's 1871 formulation. The organisational consequence is Auftragstaktik: give subordinates the intent and the constraints rather than the steps, since only the intent survives contact.
In practice
- A wedding schedule timed to the minute holds until the registrar runs twenty minutes late, and the day is saved by whoever knows what the day was for.
- A team told "keep the checkout working through the sale" adapts when the plan breaks; one told "run script four at 9am" cannot.
- Standing
- The origin of mission command and of intent-based delegation.
- Subject
- Organizations & Bureaucracy
- Essay
- Rules for running organisations, and for pressing them