Next the group determines those aspects of the mission that require clarification from headquarters. For example, is the mission supposed to provide a range of medical treatment or just enough to keep the sickest people alive? Will more food be shipped to the group? Are the rains that produced the flooding likely to continue? There are a number of such key questions. But the group isn't going to wait for the answers, because they could be a long time in coming, and the team needs to start drawing up detailed mission plans in an hour. If and when the answers eventually come in, the marines will adjust their mission on the fly.
The End State
Making decisions in the face of incomplete information is especially discomfiting when you know a mistake can cost lives. But marines get used to it, says Moore. "Everyone is always looking for the perfect truth, but you never have it," he says. "Even if you did have it, the other guy is up to something, so by the time you execute it, your truth isn't perfect anymore." Marines speak of the "70%" solution, by which they mean an imperfect decision whose saving grace is that it can be made right now. In an environment where the opposition can regroup and take the advantage in a heartbeat, indecisiveness is considered a fatal flaw--worse than making a mediocre decision, because a mediocre decision, especially if swiftly rendered and executed, at least stands a chance.
The group, now close to the end of the process, determines a mission "end state"--a reasonable and measurably achievable goal that reflects the team's capabilities and understanding of the obstacles. The end state the group agrees on is to get MREs into the hands of as many starving people as possible and to provide at least minimal medical aid to the sickest members of the population. True, the MREs are a far-less-than-ideal food, and the medical aid will be inadequate--but it's better than nothing, and there's the hope that better resources will become available soon.
The end state is a critical concept for the marines because outside of training, marines don't as a rule tell their subordinates how to do things; they merely specify what the situation is now and how they want it to end up, leaving the details of the execution up to the doers. If a corporal wants a private to stack a bunch of pallets, the corporal won't tell him or her to get a forklift or grab two other privates; the corporal will simply say to make sure the pallets get stacked. The reason is that in an environment where events unfold quickly and unpredictably, a particular means to an end can suddenly become unfeasible; but if the end is well understood, then other means can be enlisted.
Most business managers, of course, prefer to spell out exactly how they want employees to do a task, and with good reason: if you don't, you face the risk of having the employee carry it out in an inefficient or even disastrous fashion. That's a risk the marines take consciously. Failure is not the worst thing that can happen to a marine, and it's not even necessarily treated as a bad thing. True, managers like to say they give their subordinates a certain measure of room to fail, but the marines practice failure tolerance to a degree that would raise most managers' hair.
One marine told me how shortly after being promoted to corporal, he took a squad out on a live-fire drill, in which he decided on the spur of the moment to let a relatively inexperienced private run one of the teams. But the private promptly missed a cease-fire signal, and in the few horrifying moments before the corporal realized the slipup, the private's group continued to fire, while other marines had put down their weapons and were preparing to come out from their cover. There are few mistakes that have more serious repercussions in training; marines are injured or killed every year in accidents. The corporal quickly found himself explaining to his lieutenant what had happened, even while picturing his career going down the drain. But the lieutenant said that since no one had gotten hurt, it was a good learning experience. The corporal went to the private and told him much the same.
Having specified an end state, the group's last responsibility is to propose three (of course) alternative missions that might achieve the end state. Moore will make the final decision among the three, though he not only allows disagreement but practically demands it. This is standard marine thinking; enlisted men and women and officers alike are expected to express concern about questionable decisions and orders, and one of the biggest mistakes an officer can make is to ignore or squelch such questioning. Moore recounts the time a second lieutenant pointed out during one exercise-planning session that the plan Moore had picked would subject a covert landing party to a high risk of discovery. Moore acknowledged the concern but overruled him; what Moore couldn't explain was that as one of the people who had devised the exercise, he knew that the landing party wouldn't be discovered at that point. The second lieutenant objected again, and Moore again overruled him, but more brusquely. When the second lieutenant objected yet a third time, Moore finally realized that the young man was right. "I had been 'fairy-dusting' the exercise--using information I wouldn't have had in the real world to make decisions," Moore says. "I was wrong, and here was a second lieutenant calling a full-bird colonel on it in front of the entire group." Moore let the landing party use a different approach.
