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Comment by flukus | Hacker News Reader

Hasn't initiative been a hallmark of a successful military for much of history? I've heard it put forth as a chief reason for the success of Romans (phyric wars), French (Napoleonic wars), Prussians (Franco Prussian war) and Germans (WW2) to win engagements against their extremely rigid enemies.

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Indeed. Which is, according to some quite convincing arguments, one reason Arabs have not done too well in modern conventional wars. Especially when going up against e.g. the Israeli military, which takes junior-officer autonomy to an extreme even by Western standards.

See "The influence of Arab culture on Arab military effectiveness", Kenneth D. Pollack (https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/11219). Pollack pulls up examples that don't even involve materially superior Western armies, such as conflicts against ill-equipped Iranian, Kurdish, or Sub-Saharan African forces.

> e.g. the Israeli military, which takes junior-officer autonomy to an extreme even by Western standards.

Sounds really interesting, any examples?

Look in the section "Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Initiative: The Israeli and Soviet Armies" in http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a272857.pdf

An excerpt is below; what I can say from my understanding is that upper echelons of officers are deliberately understaffed, and superiors are encouraged to give general objectives (or sometimes even just areas of operation) to their subordinates rather than detailed orders; and much planning and communication is done peer-to-peer among officers of the same rank.

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Among the many lessons that can be taken from the history of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) in combat, one key issue is the high degree of officer casualties, often proportionally up to three times higher than enlisted casualty rates. Hence, leaders in the IDF regard initiative as not just a point of pride, but an absolute necessity to overcome leader casualties during battle. IDF Officer Candidates undergo training designed to force them to develop initiative (some of these training techniques will be recommended in the final chapter). In training, it is also emphasized that the commander will accomplish his mission according to the general spirit of the command. Additionally, IDF standing orders promote initiative (as well as aggressiveness an ' offensive spirit):

1. When orders can't get through, assume what the orders would be.

2. When in doubt, hit out. The short route to safety is the road to the enemy hill.

Thanks for the link and the excerpt.

The stat about 3x officers casualty rate is surprising, I would have imagined the enlisted would generally become cannon-fodder (for lack of a less demeaning word). I guess that's what makes the Israeli forces unique.

It's more common than you'd think actually. Another surprising one is the English army in WW1 where the officers mostly came from posh private schools, statistically they died in larger numbers than normal soldiers. It's intuitive to think it would be the reverse in that meat grinder.

Not so surprising. Same as how elite forces usually have higher casualty rates in wars - because they always go to where things are worst. No guarding a quiet front for the 101st Airborne or the Golani Brigade, and no hunkering down in a foxhole with a machine gun for the platoon lieutenant.

Yes, but they have permission to use initiative. Scope for initiative is expressly granted by superiors, with explicit bounds. And that freedom is expected to be used. It is part of the development of junior leaders in the military; they are given tests which can only be solved by lateral thinking.

That's not how I've seen "ask forgiveness" used in industry. Usually it's a self-confident maverick who goes off and does something that breaks the rules of organisation or process. I did it once; I thought I was doing the company a favour. Information Security came down on me like a ton of bricks, with good reason, and I nearly lost my job. There was no forgiveness. The Director ensured that it was well publicised and a lot of people learned from my hubris.

The phrase is a crock and should never enter your mind. If you're sure Your Way is best, ask for permission or get consensus. If you get neither, lodge your protest with your superiors and get on with something else. Then in a year's time perhaps people will look back and consider you a visionary, or a hot-headed fool...

Your experience serves as a valuable lesson that everyone should keep in mind. If you aren’t completely aware of the risks you’re taking you should be wary. Information security is something lot of folks are oblivious to in even the basic sense. So I completely understand how your situation happened and why you have an aversion to it. However, I still think there’s value in the phrase but it should be used judiciously. There are plenty of low/non-risk situations where the obstacles are entirely bureaucratic.

That said I think your cautionary tale is really valuable and your uncompromising view toward the phrase actually serves to emphasize how serious everyone should take it. If I were you I wouldn’t change a thing. Actions can have real and sometimes dangerous consequences.

We should always try to understand what we’re putting at risk (as much as we can) so at the very least we can weigh the unknown risks even when asking permission. If you can’t even list the risks off mentally that’s probably a good sign that you should stick to asking permission.

I think this was based on corporate policy and maybe due to the field you're in. It's also symptomatic of a rigid corporate structure that prevents employee initiative without the expressive permission of executives. If you're a large institution, especially a bank, and they have a lot of oversight & compliance concerns, then that explains your hesitation, if you don't have a lot of compliance concerns & regulatory issues, then this was a red-tape situation which was not warranted in your organization and very likely can lead to the end of a large company when flexibility is not possible. Companies like facebook internally with regard to features would not grow as it has, and to some degree even companies like google would not be where they are today either. To my understanding, many organizations grow beyond expectations when they don't have all the red-tape that other companies do. Valve for instance, they have a flat management structure and they're people innovate like crazy, and they hire people who are actively innovative, which often require initiative / independent thinkers.

It's not a particularly convincing data set of a 'hallmark of success' given the end results of the Napoleonic or Germany-initiated wars.

In retrospect, it seems likely that no amount of officer genius could have won the Civil War for the South, but without it, they would have been completely crushed.

Perhaps the entirety of the European continent (or most of the world re: Germany) fighting back meant the war was essentially unwinnable no matter what, but perhaps the successes they did have were due to the process they used.

Right, but if we're going to wank poetic about the success of Auftragstaktik it's worth remembering that throwing people at the problem was repeatedly and conclusively even more successful. Should we draw deep business practice conclusions from either of those? The whole thing seems a bit silly.

Success is based on many factors, and if you're evaluating military cultures and command styles you have to control for those variables. In individual battles or campaigns with equal forces and materiel, German and Napoleonic and Israeli tactics have been very successful, it's just not enough to outweight any disparity in forces.

I do agree that trying to draw business practice conclusions from the very different military setting. This includes the quote of the OP.

> wank poetic

Stealing that.

(Assuming you didn't actually mean "wax poetic"?)

Well they over extended themselves eventually, that doesn't mean they didn't dominate the battlefield early on. The Germany was very successful in the Franco Prussian war.

I could have used the US as an example too, as well as Russia by the end of world war 2, they went on to have a bit too loose of a command structure with their nuclear arsenal.

I feel like that's part of the strategy though. Arguing that the strategy was sound but they just overextended themselves seems facetious; didn't the strategy cause them to overextend themselves? Therefore, wouldn't it be fair to argue the strategy was doomed from the start?

I don't know that I agree with any of this argument trying to relate business practices to military practices -- civilians and soldiers have some fundamental differences -- just trying to imagine it philosophically.

It depends on whether the motivations for those overexertions were realizations or corruptions of that strategy.

I could have used the US as an example too, as well as Russia

In what way were these successful warfighting organizations exemplars of the merits and nurturing of independent thought and initiative, though?

whose initiative though, the soldiers or the generals?

In this context 'initiative' means explicitly not the generals, but on all lower levels, extending as low level as reasonably possible - though often not to the individual soldier level, but to the smallest unit (given that time/era/technology/tactics) that can be effective on it's own and is expected to stay together at almost all times.

In WW2 that generally was up until the squad level, with a focus on NCOs (non-officers leading ~10 men) taking initiative; in earlier times infantry required a bit larger formations to be able to fight efficiently, so initiative of relativerly lower-ranking officers.

Generally, junior officers or higher-ranking NCOs. Some people are too narrowly focused to understand the big picture; upper management is too focused on the big picture to micromanage. It's up to middle management to both have a grasp of bot the overall goals of the organization, and their specific organizational unit's capabilities and tasks.

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