What is ‘Leading through intent’?

How do you give people enough direction to act decisively, without telling them exactly what to do?

This is one of the fundamental challenges of leadership.

In complex organisations, leaders cannot possibly anticipate every situation their people will encounter. Yet many organisations still try to do exactly that: they create detailed strategies, plans, processes and instructions designed to ensure that everyone knows what to do. The problem is that reality rarely follows the plan. This is where Leading through intent comes in.

Inspired by Prussian military thinkers like Carl von Clausewitz and Helmuth von Moltke, Stephen Bungay presented the leading through intent approach to leadership and execution in his seminal book ‘The Art of Action’ from 2010. The thinking behind the book had been developed and refined through years of advisory experience in collaboration with Mark Bouch and other practitioners.

The basic idea was simple:

“Tell people what you want to achieve, explain why it matters, and give them the freedom to work out how to achieve it.”

It sounds straightforward. In practice, it requires a very different way of thinking about leadership, strategy and execution.

The problem with plans

In The Art of Action, Stephen Bungay examines a problem that military commanders have faced for centuries: the gap between what we want to happen, what we plan to do, and what actually happens.

The same problem exists in modern organisations. A leadership team develops a strategy. It communicates the strategy to the organisation. Managers translate it into plans, initiatives and targets. Employees then execute those plans.

At each stage, something can be lost or misunderstood. Bungay describes three fundamental barriers to effective action:

1. We can never know everything about the situation we are acting in.
2. Other people — competitors, customers, colleagues and stakeholders — are acting at the same time, creating an environment we cannot fully control.
3. Even when we know what we want to do, things inevitably get in the way. Information arrives late. Priorities conflict. Resources change. People interpret things differently. Unexpected events occur.

The result is a familiar organisational phenomenon: the further a decision travels from the people who made it, the greater the risk that its original meaning is lost.

Trying to solve this by adding more details and specific instructions often makes the problem worse. 

From detailed instructions to intent

Leading Through Intent offers a different solution. Instead of trying to specify every action, leaders provide a clear intent. A strategic intent answers three fundamental questions:

• What are we trying to achieve?
• Why does it matter?
• Which outcomes are you accountable for?

Once people understand this, they can make better decisions when circumstances change.

This creates a different relationship between leaders and teams.

The leader does not say: “Here is exactly what you need to do.”

Instead, the leader says: “Here is where we need to get to and why it is important. You decide how best to get there.”

That distinction is at the heart of leading through intent.

Alignment and autonomy

Leading Through Intent is therefore not simply about giving people more freedom – autonomy without alignment creates chaos. If everyone is free to pursue their own interpretation of the strategy, the organisation may become highly agile — but it may also move in different directions.

Equally, alignment without autonomy creates bureaucracy. If everyone has to wait for instructions before acting, the organisation may be highly aligned, but it becomes slow and incapable of responding to changing circumstances.

The leadership challenge is to lead for both alignment and autonomy at the same time. People need to understand the overall purpose and direction well enough to make decisions independently, while leaders need to trust them to exercise judgement.

This is particularly important in large organisations, where no leadership team can see everything that is happening on the ground.

Read more in Leadership between alignment and autonomy  

The power of the back-brief

One of the practical techniques in this approach is the back-brief. Instead of asking someone simply to repeat the instructions they have received, the leader asks them to explain what they believe the intent means for them and how they plan to contribute.

For example:

“What do you think we are trying to achieve?”

“What are the most important things you will do?”

“What could get in the way? And what do you plan to do then?”
“How can I support you in doing things the way that you deem best?”

This creates an opportunity to discover misunderstandings before they become execution problems. It also changes the communication between leader and employee from one-way instructions to a meaningful conversation that can strengthen both shared alignment and trustful autonomy.

Read more in Backbriefing for empowerment.

The leader’s job changes

Leading Through Intent requires leaders to let go of some traditional ideas about management and control. If your leadership model is based on knowing the answer, giving instructions and monitoring compliance, Leading Through Intent can feel uncomfortable. The leader’s role becomes less about controlling individual actions and more about creating the conditions for good decisions.

That means being clear about:

• Purpose — why are we doing this?
• Intent — what do we ultimately want to achieve?
• Priorities — what matters most when trade-offs are necessary?
• Boundaries — what must not be compromised?
• Freedom to act — where should people use their own judgement?

The paradox is that giving people more autonomy requires leaders to become more, not less, clear.

You cannot expect people to make good independent decisions if they do not understand what success looks like.

From strategy to action

This is also why Leading Through Intent is particularly relevant to strategy execution. Most organisations do not suffer from a lack of strategy. They suffer from the difficulty of translating strategy into thousands of decisions made every day.

A strategy document might say: “We will become more customer-centric.”

But what does that mean for a salesperson deciding which customer to prioritise?

…for a product manager deciding what to develop?

…for a service worker dealing with a difficult customer?

…for a country manager deciding where to invest?

A strategy comes alive only when people can use it to make autonomous decisions. Intent provides a bridge between the strategic direction set by leaders and the decisions made by people throughout the organisation. Instead of trying to translate strategy into an exhaustive list of instructions, leaders can share the outcomes and create alignment behind the principles that should guide action. This makes strategy more resilient when circumstances change, and we need colleagues to do what needs to be done, rather than just what they have been told to do.

Read more in The strategy activation model.

Leadership in an unpredictable world

The relevance of Leading Through Intent has increased as organisations have become more complex. Markets change quickly. Technologies evolve. AI is transforming how work gets done. Geopolitical uncertainty affects supply chains and investment decisions. Customers behave in ways that are increasingly difficult to predict. In such an environment, leaders cannot have all the answers. Nor can they afford to make every decision themselves.

The organisations that can respond effectively are those where people understand what matters and why, and are trusted to act when the situation changes. It is about moving leadership closer to the point of action. 

The Art of Action

Stephen Bungay’s The Art of Action provides a powerful foundation for thinking about this challenge. Its lessons come from military history, but the underlying problem is universal: how do we coordinate purposeful action when we cannot predict exactly what will happen?

The answer is not to produce better and more detailed plans. Or to enforce detailed instructions and controls. It is to create clarity of purpose, communicate intent, align people around what matters, and give them sufficient autonomy to respond intelligently to reality.

Or, put more simply:

Be clear about the destination.

Be clear about why it matters.

Be clear about boundaries and mandates.

And then trust people to work out how to get there.

That is the essence of Leading Through Intent.