[folli]

The tough part is to find the right balance between top down management that usually results in paralyzing micromanagment, preventing quick and dynamic reaction, and a possible loss of control over the single acting units turning into rogue actors.

As the article correctly states, this is an issue of trust, but trust can only be earned with experience, which is lacking in such a complex environment.

[yagyu]

This trust is a result of intentional training towards enabling everyone down to private to know when to make a decision and when to bother chain of command. It's not only training of management, it's more like a culture.

I guess this post in part has some traction with hn because mission command seems like a wonderful management technique. Just let the people who knows best and have first hand information make efficient decisions, fast, right? But it actually takes good people and a lot of training to work in practice. On every level there has to be a "feeling" of what's reasonable. And management, in turn, must learn when to step back, and maybe more importantly not punish afterwards when equipped with hindsight.

(Served two years in swedish army, too young for Bosnia myself but couple of my officers were in nordbat2)

[jonke]

Everyone involved has to know the objective, which is a lot of more work than most people understand. Besides that I think that the selection and training for the BA0X where uniq for the swedish army who could pick from a large volunteer base.