Planning Checklist
- Analyze the mission. Understand higher headquarters’ mission, Commander’s Intent, and endstate (the goal). Identify and state your own Commander’s Intent and endstate for the specific mission.
- Identify personnel, assets, resources, and time available.
- Decentralize the planning process. Empower key leaders within the team to analyze possible courses of action.
- Determine a specific course of action. Lean toward selecting the simplest course of action.
- Empower key leaders to develop the plan for the selected course of action.
- Plan for likely contingencies through each phase of the operation.
- Mitigate risks that can be controlled as much as possible.
- Delegate portions of the plan and brief to key junior leaders. Stand back and be the tactical genius.
- Continually check and question the plan against emerging information to ensure it still fits the situation.
- Brief the plan to all participants and supporting assets. Emphasize Commander’s Intent. Ask questions and engage in discussion and interaction with the team to ensure they understand.
- Conduct post-operational debrief after execution. Analyze lessons learned and implement them in future planning.
Discussion Questions
- Decentralized command: Does everyone know in what areas and to what extent they are allowed to make decisions?
- Where does our organization have conflict between teams?
- Where do we have clear, simple priorities? Where do we have fragmented, ambiguous aims?
- Do our leaders and our teams understand the decisions that are being made? Are they comfortable questioning them?
- In what parts of our mission do we have strong belief & buy-in? In what parts do we lack belief/committment?
- How well do we plan now? What methodology do we use? Do we debrief afterwards? How can we plan more effectively?