With Auftragstaktik, or “mission orders,” the leader disseminates his authority with the mission, David Grossman (On Killing) explains, and the piece of authority that is passed down with the mission empowers subordinates at all levels:
Patton understood this concept when he directed his subordinates to tell their men what to do but not how to do it, and then to “let them amaze you with their ingenuity.” A subordinate leader who is told precisely how to do something no longer has any obligation, accountability, or even legitimacy in accomplishing the task by an alternative method when the initial plan becomes impractical. Auftragstaktik empowers aggressive behavior by:
Increasing the proximity and number of authority figures. Ideally, under Auftragstaktik, every soldier becomes an obedience-demanding authority. The last line of the U.S. Army Ranger Creed is “I will go on to accomplish the mission, though I be the lone survivor.” That mentality, and the cultivation of subordinate leaders and soldiers who can make it come alive, is the ultimate objective of Auftragstaktik.
Increasing a subordinate’ subjective respect for the authority figure, since the authority and initiative of the highest commander have been passed to the lowest subordinate.
Increasing the authority figure’s demands for killing behavior. Since the subordinate
leader becomes the originator of his own set of mission orders, which are built upon the
framework of his superior’s mission orders (as opposed to being an errand boy simply passing down messages from on high), he accepts ownership of the mission and becomes strongly invested in demanding mission accomplishment from his subordinates.Increasing the legitimacy of the authority and the demands of subordinate leaders by
institutionalizing a process in which it is the norm for subordinates to assume broad discretion and flexibility. Only then will you have a true, pervasive, mission orders environment.