One equipment lender is pulling back from laundromats. The other is lending more. Today’s Signal reads both. Open to everyone this week. Members read every Signal in a private Telegram community of laundromat owners who talk through what each one means for their stores.
A client's order went to another client's house. The bags got switched in the queue at our store somehow.
I wasn't at the store when it happened. The manager and the attendant on duty figured out what happened and took action.
Here's how it went down. I got a Slack from the manager that afternoon with the short version, “client bag mix up, we are working on it now”. The full story came the next morning when I got to the store.
An attendant working the counter took a call. A client said the bag she'd just received wasn't hers. The attendant and the manager traced the mix up within the hour. They realized two, two bag orders got one bag from each delivered with the other. They called both clients and apologized immediately.
The manager then got in her car, drove to the first client, picked up the bag, drove to the second client, swapped it, apologized again in person, and brought the second bag back to the first client's house.
She told both of them a store credit was coming and that we'd issue a partial refund for the order. She didn't commit to a specific amount. She said she'd speak with her manager and we'd make it right. Both clients were satisfied by the time she left their doorsteps.
When I got the full picture, I put the credit on both accounts and approved a refund amount we both agreed on. I told her great job. When the clients next order came in, she included a short apology card and a $10 coupon in each client's bag.
I'd never told her to do any of that and at that time we didn’t have a written procedure for that type bag mix up. She operated against a mission I'd never actually put in writing.
What she was operating on had a name
The thing she was running on has a name. The Marine Corps has been formalizing it since 1775. The doctrine covers how to run small teams of 3 to 13 people when the leader isn't in the room. The stakes are higher than a bag mix up, but the mechanics are the same.
The Marines publish this doctrine in Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 1, titled "Warfighting."¹ The current version was first issued in 1989 and refined through the 1990s. It costs nothing. You can download it from marines.mil right now.
Four concepts from the Marine playbook map onto what the manager was doing when she drove across town. They also map onto what every owner/operator wrestles with when they aren't physically in their store. Each one has a civilian proof and none need any equipment to run.
The commander describes the outcome. The field decides the how.
The main concept in MCDP 1 is Commander's Intent. The idea goes back to Prussian military theory in the 1800s. The Marines turned it into their core operating principle.
The commander describes the outcome and the reason for it. The subordinates in the field decide the how. The Marines call this mission tactics instead of detailed orders.
The reasoning is practical. By the time a leader can get a message to someone on the ground, the situation has usually changed. The person on the ground has to adapt without checking in. They can only do that well if they understand the mission.
In 1999, Captain David Marquet took command of the USS Santa Fe, a nuclear-powered attack submarine ranked worst in the fleet for retention and operational standing.² He got the assignment at the last minute after the previous captain quit, and he knew this particular submarine and its crew less than many of his own enlisted men did. He couldn’t give confident orders on a submarine he barely knew.