All forms of mission-oriented leadership, from maneuver warfare to the Toyota Production System, share a common foundation: Fire up the creativity and initiative of all members of the organization and harmonize their efforts to accomplish the objectives of the organization. Such an orientation allows them to create and exploit fleeting opportunities before their opponents can understand what is going on.
As Don Vandergriff quotes one of the principal architects of the German blitzkrieg:
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 army. . . .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, Commander of the German Army, 1920 -1926
This approach is often called Auftragstaktik, and it is hard to find any military organization that doesn’t claim to be using it.
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