The military has long made use of Warning Orders to give advance notice of operations to troops. Once a unit commander receives orders they’ll issue a quick Warning Order to their troops outlining the situation, their mission, the scope of operations and the time and place of the O Group where they’ll brief the team on the detailed plans. They’ll usually include a No Move Before time and basic details of required personnel & equipment, as far as it’s known. This gives the troops a chance to start preparing for the mission while the commander works out a detailed plan and prepares his orders for them.
A warning order (WARNO) gives subordinates advance notice of an upcoming operation. This gives them time to prepare. A warning order is brief but complete – US Ranger Handbook
Warning Orders in Business
This concept can be useful in a business setting, too. It’s a way for leaders to tell people that there's a change that they will have to action, but we don't have a fully-formed plan yet. It gives people a chance to prepare, but is explicit about the fact that details will probably change once the full plan is worked out.
While I’ve seen one company use WarnOs quite formally (they even called them that), I often see the concept applied more informally as a kind of expanded version of a “heads up”. In remote companies, it’s very normal to use this concept to prepare for meetings (see ).
It’s also possible to use WarnOs to give advance notice about other stuff though, in which case they should probably include…
- Headline: What’s happened / is going to happen
- Situation: Very brief background, including a clear why.
- The Change: What’s going to change or the options being considered, if know.
- Actions: What do people need to to prepare.
- Timeline: Explicit no move before date so folks know how long they have to prepare.
Here’s a made-up example…
Situation
A combination of dwindling internal demand for both team’s services and increasing convergence of their technology and products has led to a lot of duplicated work in recent months. It no longer makes sense for these teams to exist as separate entities. You can find more background in Kirki’s original proposal.
The Change
The Platform and Infra teams will merge into one team led by Rob Walley, probably with a slight reduction in headcount (no more than 3, who will be moved to other teams).
The details are still being worked out and will be shared in full by the end of next month.
Actions
- Team leads and managers, please ensure you have read the proposal in full (if you haven’t already contributed), along with the pre-reading for our planning meeting on 16 May.
- Team members, please start preparing for this now and raise any specific concerns with your team lead.
Timeline
An exact timeline will be shared in due course, but there will be no changes to current operations before 1 July.
The podcast below (39 mins) gives some more context on this…
