Stephen Bungay

The Art of Action, mission command applied to business

Former director at Ashridge Business School and a senior adviser at Boston Consulting Group, Bungay spent decades advising large organisations on strategy execution. His 2011 book 'The Art of Action' drew on the 19th-century Prussian army's doctrine of Auftragstaktik to argue that leaders should define intent and boundaries rather than prescribe actions. The resulting 'directed opportunism' framework has become a reference model in both corporate strategy and agile organisational design.