Auftragstaktik | The Top Quality of Effective Leaders
Auftragstaktik | The Top Quality of Effective Leaders
“Everywhere I am not, there are blunders”*
Leadership is a tricky business. Being responsible for a team, an entire operation, a country or even just your family involves a complexity that few can manage. Maintaining control and guiding oneself in life is difficult enough and becomes exponentially harder when we take command of others whether in our personal or professional lives.
See, as good as some humans are at what they do, they can never do everything all at once. You can never be everywhere or know everything which makes leadership and the management of groups (families, armies, countries, teams, businesses) hard.
There are a multitude of techniques and tips to lead people effectively that can be applied universally or in specific situations. While these techniques can vary in effectiveness there is one that I believe stands above the rest in its ability to payoff over time and help leaders lead.
Auftragstaktik, or mission tactics, was (probably is) a German military methodology for conducting operations. It is a cultural military ethos that permeates German military society similar to how other countries have their own fighting styles unique to them. This is similar to how businesses, families, teams and even friends’ groups operate. They each have an ethos that is provided by the ‘leadership’ for example:
Your friends group may make decisions based on consensus vs another friend group which relegates decisions to a few head members
Your company may value staff input vs another which encourages zero feedback from its subordinates
Your family may value openness & communication whereas another may value secrecy and quiet
These differences are built by the leaders in each situation; if mum & dad set a precedent, the children follow. If the CEO rewards effort, staff are motivated and so on.
The culture and identity of a people shows through their leaders
So, what exactly is Auftragstaktik and why is it an excellent leadership tool?
Auftragstaktik or missions tactics is the German methodology of managing decision making and action on the ground during military missions. It concerns itself with tasking its officers with certain outcomes and leaves the details on how exactly to achieve this to the individual officers themselves. This relieves senior leadership from having to monitor every decision made and relegates decision making/action to the people who are best suited to it while empowering them to step up and perform their roles with confidence. For example, if you work in a grocery store, does the manager or the cashier know the fastest way to bag customers groceries? Who should decide how groceries are bagged? If we apply Auftragstaktik to this example we would say the cashier is the best person to manage this even though the manager may possess more overall skills.
Not only does this allow those under your leadership to take ownership over their roles but to also encourages and motivates them to truly take part - with passion - in the group (family, team, business etc) that they are a part of.
Since the days of Prussia, Germany has always been outnumbered and outgunned by its opponents and has used Auftragstaktik as a way of bridging the gap between any deficiency in raw military might. In WW2 Germany did not possess the manpower reserves of Russia, nor the economy of America or the technological superiority of Britain/France.
Yet when they met their opponents in battle (mainly France, Britan & Russia), Germany won astounding victory after astounding victory which can in large part be attributed to Auftragstaktik (the ability to delegate decision-making to subordinates). When a German army moved in for the kill their officers could operate with total control over their individual situations. When a British or French army officer was faced with a decision they would have to wait for the appropriate approvals before acting by which time the opportunity could be lost. When a Russian officer wanted to act they were often too terrified to do so without express permission for fear of punishments which resulted in manoeuvres that were cumbersome and predictable.
The German army in comparison would encourage Auftragstaktik from the lowliest of officers.
“Hanz I’m gonna lob this granate”
“Not without my permission you’re not….yeah go ahead”
Accepting Risk & Fallout
You might be thinking “but giving free reign to subordinates could results in failures!?” and you’d be right to think that because often it does result in failures, sometimes catastrophic.
The Germans were well aware of the risk of allowing generals and officers free reign over combat decisions but were not so risk averse that they allowed the fear of failure to stop this practice nor did they unjustly punish risk taking. Did German officers fail often? Yes, in spades! But they won far more often and the victories they did win often outweighed any other losses or tactical errors.
The officers and generals themselves could confidently bring their full intelligence and tenacity to bear knowing that the reward for pulling a risky manoeuvre was glory and the risk of failing would not end in unreasonable summary execution or unjust punishment. They could perform their duties knowing the state had empowered them to do so.
In short, the officer was encouraged to take risks and show boldness especially to overcome a numerical or technological disadvantage:
Germany beat France which was technologically superior
Germany pushed Russia to its limit despite being numerically inferior
Germany pushed Britain to the brink in North Africa despite having worse logistics & supplies
All through empowering its subordinates to act. No one general or leader alone could have managed success on this many fronts alone – it had to be a ‘team’ effort.
Supreme Command told us to take this town! I say we go in guns blazing!
How to empower others
As leaders, we are often tempted to interrupt subordinates, correct actions or hover over others when they are performing, out of fear of failure/risk. We fear they will fail and we as leaders will have to bear the consequences of their actions. We stop our children from taking brave and rash action because we feel we as parents we will be left to pick up the pieces.
We may often be correct however by doing so we miss the opportunity for growth , we create the false assumption that we know best in all situations, we build a culture of fear that promotes meekness over courage and above all we corrupt the mindset of those under our leadership by indirectly discouraging risk and killing creativity/growth.
As a leader consider:
Increasing your own risk tolerance to failure
Allowing those under you to play with insane ideas and wacky solutions
Allowing others to take chances and actively taking the fall yourself if they do fail
You will build a team that is willing to fight harder, longer and above all win without your need for oversight.
Higher leadership is entrusting subordinates and those under our care to operate with freedom and to share the risk when decisions go awry. True leaders build & empower subordinates to one day take their place.
*Napoleon once complained that ‘everywhere I am not, there are blunders’ when his marshals were losing battles without his presence and while this may outline his own genius, it also shows us that any one man who can be defeated because those below him have not been empowered to succeed, cannot truly be a great leader.