Mission Command: Questions for the Army Personnel System

Mission Command:  Questions for the Army Personnel System

Don Vandergriff

So, how do we create strategic corporals, strategic lieutenants, strategic majors, and strategic colonels?  The trick is to instill a culture like the one embodied in the Army’s new TRADOC Pam 525-3-0, The Army Capstone Concept Operational Adaptability—Operating Under Conditions of Uncertainty and Complexity in an Era of Persistent Conflict.[1]  The emphasis is on evolving toward the practice and culture of Mission Command.  The essence of this approach is to ensure that we lead through Auftragstaktik, a German word that implies that once everyone understands the commanders’ intent (two levels up), then people are free to and indeed duty-bound to use their creativity and initiative to accomplish their missions within the intent. Within such an environment, teams will largely self-organize within the doctrinal framework to accomplish the mission. Such a military culture that supports Mission Command takes time to develop, must be embraced across the entire spectrum of the Army, practiced in every institution—operational and generating forces—while decrees from above cannot magically decentralize operations conducted by Adaptive leaders.[2]

Irregular Warfare and Adaptive Leadership

Irregular Warfare and Adaptive Leadership

Paul Yingling

When I was a battalion XO in Iraq in 2003, I served with a company commander whose vehicle was struck by an early version of an IED. The fragmentation shattered his windshield and severed his antennas, the smoke and dust obscured his vision and the blast temporarily deafened him. In the first critical seconds after the blast, the commander saw the ubiquitous white pickup leaving the blast area, but didn’t pursue it. His battalion commander was furious, and later harangued the captain for his failure to act. The company commander was crushed; he felt the battalion commander was questioning his courage, and in fact he was.

A Review of The Pentagon Labyrinth

A Review of The Pentagon Labyrinth

By Werther via Don Vandergriff

In a recent radio interview, the British historian Timothy Garton Ash stated that his overall impression of the United States was one of dynamism and entrepreneurial spirit, such as in the Silicon Valley. But Washington, D.C., he said, reminded him of Moscow in the former Soviet Union.

In the context of the interview, he probably intended that as a criticism of the U.S. capital as being stagnant, status quo, and wedded to obsolete theories. But in a more pointed way he may not have consciously meant, it is equally true that Washington is remarkably like late-Brezhnev era Moscow in the sense of being very visibly the capital of a garrison state. With its billboard adverts for fighter aircraft in local Metro stations, radio spots recruiting for “the National Clandestine Service,” its ubiquitous Jersey Wall checkpoints, and its electronic freeway signs admonishing motorists to report suspicious activity (whatever that may be), the District of Columbia quite accurately simulates the paranoid atmosphere of a cold war era capital of Eastern Europe, say, East Berlin or Bucharest, albeit at two orders of magnitude greater cost.