Troop Leading Procedures

Several weeks ago I met with a fellow West Point Grad to discuss possibly working together on an entrepreneurial venture. As this potential venture entailed providing executive management to multiple middle market sized companies we had a very lengthy and involved conversation around leadership and management philosophy and approaches.

A theme that quickly surfaced in our talk was the usefulness and applicability of several leadership concepts and approaches we learned in the US Army and how well they had served us both in corporate America. We both found enormous benefit from those lessons learned in our personal experiences as executives. I would imagine this is a very consistent theme among experienced executives with military service backgrounds.

One such approach that I have found very useful over the years is the Troop Leading Procedures or TLPs. TLPs were initially taught to us at West Point and reinforced for leadership in the US Army education system and publications for NCOs and Officers at all levels. I have personally used TLPs on countless occassions as a key element in my own personal problem solving methodology.

I have listed the Troop Leading Procedures below:
Step 1. Receive the Mission

Step 2. Issue a Warning Order

Step 3. Make a Tentative Plan

Step 4. Start Necessary Movement

Step 5. Conduct Reconnaissance
Step 6. Complete the Plan

Step 7. Issue the Complete Order

Step 8. Supervise

This quick set of steps is both simple and powerful at the same time. Whether they are applied to something as straightforward as solving a technical escalation with one of your products at a customer site or whether applied to a complex and comprehensive task such as creating an industry differentiated product. If you take a step back and consider this as an approach in your problem solving tool kit you can truly see the usefulness.

Some steps may not seem directly applicable to a business problem, but in fact are very good tie-ins. In the Army “Step 5. Conduct Reconnaissance” obviously involves using a map, aerial platforms such as a helicopter, scout teams and such…all oriented at seeing the terrain. In business, you use a variety of marketing intelligence tools to achieve the same result to view the market landscape you need to navigate through to complete the mission. Examples of this could be interaction with customers, review of macro marketing materials, discussions with key partners in the industry, etc.

As I mentioned earlier, this type of approach is one that becomes a part of how you think and act as a leader. It becomes not only a mental process but part of one’s leadership instinct and manifests itself in all aspects of your approach to decision making and problem solving.

Here is an example:

The COO at a former employer, who I reported to, called me one day and said “We have a potentially serious issue with a very large customer, there is a meeting scheduled this afternoon and I need you to attend, take over the engagement and solve the problem.” (Step 1. Receive the Mission)

I attended the meeting and after an initial introduction of the topic at hand informed the other executives at the session that I would be taking accountability for this customer problem and seeing it to resolution. I then informed each of them what I thought their role should be and the help we would all need as a team to solve the problem. (Step 2. Issue a Warning Order)

As this specific issue at hand involved intellectual property and potential litigation as well as the need to turn around a very negative customer situation we then worked together as a staff to identify different paths to resolution and vetted these options with each other. The meeting concluded with an agreed upon series of actions needed and assignees to be worked on over the next several days. (Step 3. Make a Tentative Plan) 


Since there were multiple functions as constituent stakeholders involved I then reached out to several of them and began to ask them to answer some key questions at hand, to include calling the account executive for this customer and asking for him to summarize his view of this specific engagement thus far and to set up a meeting with the customer for the following week. (Step 4. Start Necessary Movement)

Over the next several days we met a couple more times as a team and reviewed the information that each member of the team had gathered regarding the issue from a variety of different functions. Additionally, I personally called a senior level executive contact I knew at the customer to source their perspective and additional information they might have. (Step 5. Conduct Reconnaissance)

Our planned on site meeting with the customer was on a Tuesday. The staff met a final time on the preceding Friday, reviewed the problem statement, courses of action that were proposed and using the information gathered over the last several days we decided on the action we would take and subsequent proposal and associated presentation we would deliver to the customer. (Step 6. Complete the Plan)

At the onsite meeting with the customer we reviewed the issue at hand and summarized our view of both parties positions before launching into a formal presentation on our proposal to solve this problem and begin to work in a much more collaborative manner with this customer. Our proposal was accepted and implementation dates were aligned. (Step 7. Issue the Complete Order)

We implemented according to the planned timeline and had structured executive level meetings between key members of our team and the customer’s representatives over the next several months. (Step 8. Supervise)

The net of this was that by following a leadership approach learned approximately two decades ago and first used as a Second Lieutenant I was able to quickly organize a fragmented set of internal constituents, engage with the customer, gather the necessary information to make an appropriate decision and deliver a solution to the customer that was a win-win answer to a very difficult and contentious problem.