Commander's Intent

Watching a baseball player get a hit w/ a functional (but not technical) swing and how it relates to hockey

“Commander’s Intent. If the team knows the intent, the team can make decisions and execute with no further information needed.”

-Jocko Willink

A topic that has emerged more than once this week in more than one context is the idea of Commander’s Intent. There will be more talk about this topic in the book but I have some other thoughts I’d like to share here.

Let’s talk about the ecological term that is very similar to Commander’s Intent. Functional Variablity.

In live, chaotic environments (2v2, 3v3, 4v3 SSGs) there will be different opportunities to act, different passing and shooting angles, and different pressure at all times inside of the rep. This creates rep without rep. If skill is not stored (which EcoD doesn’t believe skill is stored) then this variability is used to train athletes to find solutions in the chaos.

When coaching in a principles-based way, the commander’s intent leaves space for all this functional variability. You leave all of the solution space open for players to find the solution that works in the moment.

Traditional coaching sounds like a walking, talking, non-integrity:

If you over-technicalize this guy’s swing, your communication and coaching will close down the part of the solution space that allows him to get a hit on this pitch. This is the principle of ‘Force creates Counterforce’ on full display. If you force a player into a ‘perfect’ swing, the counterforce is he doesn’t hit this pitch. Commander’s Intent frees your players up to more possibilities.

Over-technical, obsessed coaches don’t like seeing a one-handed, over-extended, off-balance flip of the bat go for a hit.

But when seeing the game through Commander’s Intent, the goal is to get on base and move/score baserunners… How you do that is up to you.

It’s not a ‘perfect’ swing, but it’s perfect for that moment. And it’s a functional solution in the solution space.

Here’s another example that will rub the wrong coach the wrong way:

Here are more Commander’s Intent examples on your way out:

My belief is that if you walked into any dressing room from 12u to the Florida Panthers and just outlined shot selection principles (what and where the high value shots are in the sport) they’d come up with better and more versatile ways to score than the coaching staff.

This is much of the value of Commander’s Intent.