In today’s operating environment, we are challenging leaders with more complex scenarios that exercise the implementation of additional enablers across all warfighting functions. Bringing these enablers and internal assets to bear at a decisive point on the battlefield is the training objective, and failure is not an option. In most cases, this the first time these challenges are presented and expectations are high. Great units and leaders achieve success, and that is expected. Success breeds success, but what if, just what if, we changed our thought process and implementation of lessons learned throughout our careers? What if in fact failure breeds success and this thought process changes our perception of what makes a great unit or great leader. What if failure IS an option?
Units that arrive at the National Training Center are inherently at the height of their training and readiness and are more than capable of attacking the mission set placed before them. They have gone through countless hours of preparation for their rotation, their mission has most likely been rehearsed multiple times, and success is at the forefront of their mind. From the moment they disembark at the Rotational Unit Bivouac Area (RUBA), their perception of the battle is changed, the enemy now has a vote, and success begins to have a new meaning. Over time, operations become more decentralized and success begins to fade. In this instance, reality sets in, it is too late to change, and units adapt to simply surviving.
Leaders begin to descend upon key points of friction on the battlefield to give specific guidance and in some cases, take over completely. There is a missed opportunity to prove you are truly a learning organization, which started well before their arrival at the National Training Center. The implementation of a mission command culture early in a unit’s training progression can and will have significant impact on a unit’s success. In the following few pages, I will outline why the most successful units succeed at the National Training Center, and discuss the importance of practicing mission command while accepting risk and exercising disciplined initiative. It is hard to do, it takes commitment, and probably the most important takeaway, you MUST fail in order to learn.
What is Mission Command?
We are all familiar with Mission Command and ADP 6-0. In recent months, the Army has adapted its definition of Mission Command. Mission Command was previously defined as “the exercise of authority and direction by the commander using mission orders to enable disciplined initiative within the commander’s intent to empower agile and adaptive leaders in the conduct of unified land operations,” but has since morphed to include command and control. Current doctrine “defines and describes mission command as the Army’s approach to command and control that enables unified land operations.”
Although the definition has changed, the key elements and principles of Mission Command have not. The Army has adapted the principles a bit, but some of the favorites are still included. “Successful mission command is enabled by the principles of Competence, Mutual Trust, Shared Understanding, Commander’s Intent, Mission Orders, Disciplined Initiative, and Risk Acceptance.” In accordance with the new doctrine re-write, mission command now incorporates competence into the equation, amplifying the significance of a leader’s ability to do something successfully. We find success through repetition in a mission command oriented organization, and through repetition, there will be accepted failures. This is where risk acceptance becomes a focal point.
Risk Acceptance in Training
A unit that accepts risk at the appropriate level is a unit that can grow and ultimately achieve success. Accepting risk is probably one of the hardest things I did as a commander because it placed success and failure in a balance. Underwriting the risk down to the company level was a conscious and difficult decision to begin with that grew easier with time and experience. Allowing subordinate commanders to accomplish the mission at their own discretion as long as they met the task, and more importantly the purpose, was a perceived risk. Whether the commander was successful along the way or encountered failures was irrelevant to the growth of the organization. In fact, I would argue that the commanders who had failed learned the most and ultimately became the most successful. Empowering your subordinates to lead while they know you have their back is one of the most undocumented combat multipliers I have seen during command and while covering down on multiple rotations here at the National Training Center. It is impossible to be everywhere during training and on the battlefield, but subordinate commanders who accept risk at the lowest level see the most dividends.
I had the luxury of building on a battalion vision over the course of 18 months prior to a combat training center rotation, and the acceptance of risk I gave my subordinate commanders had developed their organizations into free-thinking, purpose-driven machines, built for meeting the commander’s intent. This luxury did not come without failures. Our brigade commander had built this mission command driven organization vision long before we all assumed command and it carried into execution long after we took the guidons. Understanding that risk acceptance is probably the most difficult part of being a commander, I paid more attention to it than anything else.
As difficult as it was to relinquish risk down to the lowest level, I believe it developed a generation of leaders that were primed to take over in my absence. Here at the National Training Center, I have seen the level of risk acceptance remain higher than necessary, which has ultimately led to poorer execution of mission sets and less successful operations.
While attacking across the expansive terrain at the National Training Center, it is impossible for battalion commanders to be everywhere, every time. Battalions rely heavily on the actions of their subordinate leaders to change the outcomes of the battle. More often than not, units struggle at the lowest level because leaders lack the ability to conduct operations that have risks associated with them. We find that these units have not empowered their subordinates to lead, and in fact, the units who struggle to identify and mitigate risk at the lowest level are less successful than those who do. Some of the most successful units that have come through in recent rotations have not only empowered their subordinate commanders and leaders to lead, but have underwritten risks associated with their actions.
Following successful units leading up to their rotation and communicating with leaders at the company level prior to their arrival, we have found that risk acceptance started early on in their training progression and built confidence in the unit’s execution. Successful battalion commanders have expressed their confidence in their subordinate leaders and explained the process by which they gained such confidence. They have empowered their leaders to identify and mitigate risk at the lowest level, and have underwritten their failures. With decentralized operations occurring more frequently at the National Training Center, powering down the level of risk acceptance remained a focal point for operational execution on the battlefield. To be clear, this training progression starts long before arriving at the National Training Center, and requires a conscious decision, deliberate plan, and most importantly, a whole lot of patience. It requires discipline to execute over time in order to build upon this principle of mission command.
Disciplined Initiative vs. Disciplined Disobedience
As important as underwriting and accepting risk is at the lowest level, disciplined initiative goes hand in hand. Disciplined initiative is described as “when subordinates have the discipline to follow their orders and adhere to the plan until they realize their orders and the plan are no longer suitable for the situation in which they find themselves.” This best way I can describe this is having mission execution flexibility. Units that struggle at the National Training Center lack subordinate leaders who exercise disciplined initiative.
As mentioned earlier, with the frequency of decentralized operations, leaders are finding themselves farther and farther away from the decisive point at particular phases of the battle. It is here that the subordinate leaders are trusted with making the right call and utilizing disciplined initiative. We find that most units fail to train under this philosophy at home station and also find leaders at significant points of the battle stopping short of overwhelming enemy forces simply because their last orders and instructions did not take them to that point. There is an affinity from my perspective of leaders “waiting on the word” to execute versus using disciplined initiative to go beyond the last order to achieve success. This correlates with home station training and the centralized execution of METL tasks.
Units that are the most successful integrate decentralized operations into home station training and allow their subordinate leaders to make decisions outside the scope of the set parameters of a particular training event. We have seen situational training exercise development at home station integrating decision-making exercises into the overall scenario as a way to get after this. This builds the comfort level of subordinate leaders in training to make decisions and learning from their mistakes while advancing the trust commanders have in them. Building upon this principle at home station gives an enormous advantage to a rotational training unit upon arrival. Whereas a significant amount of units rarely train disciplined initiative and demonstrate mediocre success, those who commit to training disciplined initiative while focusing on their METL tasks see a higher level of success during decentralized operations at the National Training Center.
This relates closely with task and purpose. Which is more important, the task or the purpose? I would offer that the task is a way to get after the purpose making the purpose the single most important part of the mission. It may appear the best way as your staff plans a mission and may make sense at that given point in time, but taking battlefield effects into account and then enemy reactions, operations and operational execution must remain flexible and disciplined initiative will be required. Initiative must be disciplined, but we can account for some level of disciplined disobedience.
In order for a unit to succeed, this judgement will be built through repetition, and along the way, through failure. In order to trust your subordinates to make the right call at the right time, you must test their aptitude in training and force them to make any call, right, wrong, or indifferent, and learn what does and does not work for their formation. Other than the enemy on the battlefield at the National Training Center, we have observed indecisiveness as a root cause for casualties in the arena. Leaders that feel they cannot make a decision without being told exactly what to do becomes detrimental to a unit’s mission accomplishment.
We see the most successful units adapting to the situation while leaders at the lowest level are making decisions at the decisive point in the larger battle. The units that adapt to the ever-changing dynamics of the fight and power down their decision-making abilities to the lowest level have higher success rates during their rotation. It is imperative for a battalion commander to decide early on in training what decisions they are willing to power down and what decision they retain at their level. Once this is clear and training in this manner progresses, the disciplined initiative of an organization will thrive and initial failures will develop into future success.
Conclusion
In a mission command led organization, emphatic trust must be placed in our subordinate leaders to execute missions in a decentralized manner in future large-scale combat operations. Risk acceptance and disciplined initiative is maximized during training. Many units operate under the thought that success breeds success and for the most part this is true. In order to arrive at these initial successes, units and leaders will fail, and risk acceptance must include the risk of failure. Leaders must accept the fact that these failures will ultimately lead to success.
It will be an uncomfortable process for most as we rarely accept failure. In fact, our evaluation system demands success through its focus on achieving to get results. What we rarely capture is the process along the way that got us to the desired endstate, to the desired level of success. In 20 years of service, I have rarely succeeded without failing at some point. Those failures have taught me valuable lessons and in turn adapted my approach to executing similar tasks and missions moving forward.
As unit commanders plan training to support success at the National Training Center, consider failure as a lesson rather than a rule. More often than not, we see rotational units conducting operations with limited success against a formidable enemy. If units fail to conduct an operation to a desired level, that unit is given an additional opportunity to achieve mission success. They initially failed at some or all of the key tasks, are re-introduced to the same scenario, and they now have experience on their side. Their initial failures have adapted their execution and during secondary execution of their mission, they succeed. In these cases, failure bred success. The lessons learned from failure shape the battalion’s future operations and their growth during a rotation. As units fail, they learn, and along the way morph into a more cohesive fighting organization. Success eventually breeds success.
Battlefield leadership is tested at the National Training Center, but is developed long before the battle. Every day is a lesson, and as students of our craft, we never stop learning. As most successful units have learned at the National Training Center, and long before they arrive, you must fail in order to learn, but you must never learn to fail.
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This is part of a series of posts focused on Leader Development in Contact. Click HERE for the rest of the series. Footnotes are annotated in the PDF version found on the Series homepage.
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