 In this module we're going to explore the concept of leaders intent, the use of sand table exercises and after action reviews or AARs. Hopefully this module will help clarify the connection between command and operations. How often have you heard someone ask, does anybody really know what we're doing here? What's the big picture? The leadership development program addresses this in the leadership training curriculum by talking about the importance of understanding and communicating leaders intent. This summer, however, we talked to many of you in the field and there seems to be some confusion regarding these issues. We heard questions like, how does leaders intent play into the establishment of objective strategies and tactics? Does leaders intent change as we move up and down the chain of command? Who's responsible for leaders intent and what needs to be shared with subordinates? We were even asked how leaders intent differs from commanders intent. To help us clarify these issues, we talked to Mark Smith. Mark is a retired military senior non-commissioned officer for special operations and currently works for mission-centered solutions as an instructor for the Fireline Leadership Training Course. Let's hear his explanation of leaders intent. So concerning the confusion between commanders intent, leaders intent, what do they mean? I think, first of all, the bottom line, they're exactly the same thing. We're talking about intent and what is intent? It's providing somebody the task, purpose, and end state of what it is we're doing. And so from that perspective, if you're my boss, I can give you my intent in that same way. It's still leaders intent. I'm a leader just because you're my boss. How did we get commanders intent and leaders intent? Before we even had the words intent in the wildland fire lexicon, we were bringing ideas and things over from environments that seemed like they knew what they were doing or they were effective. And so these terms kind of came into wildland fire in different ways at the same time in multiple places. And of course, we picked the one we like and hence the confusion, the air chain on which one to use. But in reality, in the military context, there's no difference. So in the military, every leader is kind of a commander at their own level type of deal. And essentially, it is meant to reflect that you are providing not just the what to do, but the why you're doing it and how it fits into the overall big picture of the operation. The purpose of leaders intent is to, in the larger context, it's to unleash and empower a term called concentric initiative. Meaning this kind of an environment like wildland fire, like other high risk environments, is very subject to the laws of nature and unleashing of great amounts of chaos and energy and so on, which create conditions that Carl von Klauswitz called the fog of war. You know, friction, danger, uncertainty, all these types of things. And it is the accepted historical reality that in that kind of an environment, you cannot have effective centralized command and control in the traditional sense. That's impossible to get anything done because the head is going to get cut off from the body. And so it is only if those people at the ground level understand how their efforts are supposed to fit into the larger picture that they can be effective because during that time of maximum chaos is when we need them to continue to function, not stop and turn on a radio and wait an hour until they can get a hold of ops or the IC to find out what to do next. We need them to keep doing what they need to do and they need to understand what it is we want them to do. So again, if we've given them an assignment of build line from drop point one to drop point four, and the whole world has changed on them now, they can't do that. If we haven't given them the intent, they're dead in the water until they can get new instructions. If you provide the task, the purpose of the task and the end state of how we want it to look when it's done, that you will empower your subordinates to act and will be far more effective at getting the job done. Well, when you look at leaders intent as it filters down through a chain of command, and I'll give you an example from our experience in special operations, doctrinally as we went through our mission planning process, we had to articulate what we thought our leaders intent was two levels above us. So our boss and our boss's boss, we had to restate what we thought their intent was and have that validated so that we could then properly form my leaders intent to provide down to my people. Now, I would interpret that differently because obviously at the strategic level, the leaders intent when you talk about end state, it's a very big picture, talking about what is the end state of this half a million acre unit that this fires on. Now, when I'm down with a crew level or smaller, my leaders intent is only going to be concerning my chunk of ground, but I'm going to make sure that my leaders intent is based on me understanding what is supposed to happen several levels above me so that my actions as they move from directed to delegated and highly independent that what I'm always doing is in sync with what that senior leader wants. What is anyone's responsibility to understand leaders intent in wildland fire? And let's start at the newest crew member, first year crew member. What does that mean? On the most effective crews, what you'll find is that that first year firefighter understands the leaders intent of their squad leader, how that fits into what the soup wants, and ultimately what the division assignment and what the end state on the division is. Because we see all the time little modules going off, things happening. One person can get an assignment to go move cubies of water or go get saw gas. If they understand that the division assignment is that a certain amount of line has to be ready by nightfall to conduct a burnout and they're faced with a decision back in camp because they're picking up gas from logistics and they meet a roadblock and they understand, well, I know that the big plan is that this has to be there so that this line can get tied in tonight before we start the burnout, then that's going to guide their decision making. It's going to guide how much risk they might be willing to take to try to get that job done. It's going to guide how hard they push the system. It's going to guide whether they let division C get the gas versus try to make an argument for our division to get it based on the intent. All those kinds of things can guide one person's decision making that just got sent to get 10 gallons of gas. You may not get leaders intent from your leader for a wide variety of reasons. What is your responsibility to have leaders intent before you, quote, walk out the door or walk away from camp or whatever it is you're going to do? You are responsible for leaders intent, not your leader. I mean, that's the perfect world, but we all know the system breaks down. There's no way you should go start an assignment without an understanding of leaders intent. And if you don't understand leaders intent, you have an obligation to go get it, to attempt to restate it. So what I'm hearing is this, that you want us to do this and this is why and this is how it should all look at the end of the day. And if you can't get that, then you have an obligation to formulate your own leaders intent to your people as best you can that minimizes the risks that gets the job done as best as you understand. Is it the criteria for refusing an assignment? It could be. It depends on the risk. That's a judgment call. That's what leaders get paid to do. So as a leader, understanding leaders intent helps me determine how to use limited time, limited resources, limited energy, limited money, all those types of things to maximum effect. I can't do everything. So if I understand leaders intent correctly, then I know that the actions of my people and my actions are going to be consistent and delivering the biggest bang for the buck for what the leaders above me want to achieve. So part of how I would begin to develop leaders intent, say as a type one IC at that level, is the land management plan, the existing documents that are out there. To some extent, the mission of my agency would help frame and formulate my leaders intent, meeting with the agency administrator, understanding the needs of the local landowners and the constituents. All these things would frame my intent that I would communicate to my staff to help develop those incident objectives and prioritize those incident objectives. So that then, at every level of the organization below me, people can take those, interpret them, and then formulate their own guidance, go through exactly the same process for their little chunk of real estate and so on and so on. So that at the lowest level, that Firefighter 2's actions are going to be consistent with my intent. To see how this information plays out on a fire line, we're going to take you through a sand table exercise or STECS. Sand table exercises give people the opportunity to practice communicating leaders intent and their decision making process without the associated risks normally involved with the actual fire operations. But before we proceed, let's go back to Mark Smith and let him talk a little bit about the effectiveness of using sand tables. Well, use of the sand table as a tool, sand tables are fantastic tools because anything that helps recreate a three-dimensional environment is an effective tool for everybody to talk about because they can see where they are, where they're going to be. We not only use them, and when I say we, I mean in the military, we not only use them for after-action reviews to talk about what happened, but we use them as planning tools to talk about what's going to happen, to mentally rehearse and visualize what the plan is and how it's supposed to unfold and where everybody's at and who's supposed to go where first. Here's the main effort, here's the supporting effort and our objectives. You can actually visualize the objectives and what they mean in a three-dimensional form ahead of time, as well as then in the after-action review everybody's standing in that circle looking at the same piece of ground visualizing that and telling each other this is where we went, this is why we went there, this is what happened at this point in time. So then you can naturally go even farther back before planning to a training tool and that's why they're so effective as training because you can literally, you know, you know on your forest what units are likely to burn more than others or maybe what's going to happen that or if it's a prescribed burn and so you can train on that same ground that you're likely to go fight fire on. Sand tables are becoming a popular training tool for the wildland fire community and a number of pre-written exercises are available in the tactical decision games library on the leadership website. The following scenario, which focuses on communicating leaders intent was taken from that library. Your facilitator will either run you through the exercise on your own sand table or you'll complete the group exercises in your student workbook while watching this scenario kind of play out with a group of fellow firefighters.