Winning Through Thinking and Delegating

For John, BLUF:  Delegation, but with a vision.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Former Washington Post reporter and author Tom Ricks runs a blog, Best Defense, under Foreign Policy Magazine.  He is bringing in guest bloggers to talk about how to the military can improve personnel policies.  Recently Donald E. Vandergriff put forward his ideas.  Here is the lede:

This is the one change I would make, if I could make only one:  I'd change the military culture from today's top-down, authoritarian, and centrally controlled linear culture to a superior command culture called Auftragstaktik.  It is the "how to," as they say, that is not so easy.  The techniques and principles are the baseline in developing adaptability in which a culture of Auftragstaktik enables an effective practice of the observe, orient, decide, and act (OODA) loop.  It is a constant motion recurring, evolving and improving.

Notice the OODA Loop reference.  That is a reference to the late retired Air Force Fighter Pilot and Colonel, John Boyd, aka "Forty Second Boyd".

Donald Vandergriff, retired after 24 years as a Marine Enlisted Man and Army Officer, led his presentation with this quote from the head of an Army with major limitations in size and weaponry:

The principle thing now is to increase the responsibilities of the individual man, particularly his independence of action, and thereby to increase the efficiency of the entire arm….  The limitations imposed by exterior circumstances cause us to give the mind more freedom of activity, with the profitable result of increasing the ability of the individual.

- Hans von Seeckt, Chief, German General Staff, 1925

In brief, power down to the lower levels, but with a unifying vision.

Regards  —  Cliff