Review Essay - Transforming Command and Six Essential Elements of Leadership

Eitan Shamir, Transforming Command: The Pursuit of Mission Command in the U.S., British, and Israeli Armies, 
Stanford University Press, Stanford, 2011, 288 pp, ISBN 9780804772037, RRP US$24.95.

Colonel Wesley L Fox, USMC (Ret), Six Essential Elements of Leadership: Marine Corps Wisdom from a Medal of Honor Recipient 
(Leatherneck Original), Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, 2011,

192 pp, ISBN 9781612510248, RRP US$24.95.

Reviewed by: Brigadier Chris Field, Department of Defence

At initial consideration, these books don’t easily pair. However, upon deeper examination, themes resonate between Eitan Shamir’s mission command publication, and the pragmatic professionalism espoused in Colonel Wesley Fox’s leadership book.

In exploring the fundamentals of mission command Transforming Command: The Pursuit of Mission Command in the US, British, and Israeli Armies, Shamir has written a short and surprisingly lively book. Defining mission command as ‘the conduct of military operations through decentralized execution based on mission orders’, Shamir provides an excellent primer for officers attending, or on the cusp of attending, Command and Staff College.¹ For non-commissioned officers, Shamir is usefully read by people assigned to senior command teams and prior to assuming the responsibilities of warrant officer.

The crux of Shamir’s analysis, and this book’s real value, is that due to the impact of internal cultural factors and external strategic settings, the implementation of mission command across the US, British and Israeli armies demonstrates a ‘gap between theory [interpretation] and practice [praxis]’.² In other words, no nation can simply pick up and implement another’s conceptual thinking and practices, no matter how compelling, without applying their own societal, cultural and organisational biases and norms to the process.

Shamir argues that closing the gap between theory and practice, for any conceptual change in an army’s warfighting capabilities, is dependent upon: education, training and personnel policies; employment of technology as an enabler, not a panacea; and carefully defined and understood civil-military relations.³ In examining the theory and practice gap, Shamir’s book provides excellent context for students of warfare on how the US, British and Israeli armies:

• adopted mission command – made an organisational decision to embrace a foreign concept, in this case the German concept Auftragstaktik
• adapted mission command – integrated mission command into an organisation/ army
• practiced mission command – employed Shamir’s idea praxis, which ‘focuses on the factors that affect an organisation’s ability to implement a foreign concept in combat’.⁴

Military practitioners will be interested in Shamir’s comments on the lack of literature available on the ‘comprehensive study of command’.⁵ He notes that most books on command are: (1) biographies or autobiographies; (2) social sciences-oriented studies where command is considered as a subcategory of leadership and management; or (3) technically oriented studies devoted to command and control procedures, euphemistically simplified as command and control.⁶ Shamir identifies command as a ‘collaborative, rather than individual endeavour, involving an entire system’ ... [and] ‘command is an organisational activity exercised under the chaotic conditions of battle and that it both reflects and creates military and organisational cultures’.⁷

Shamir traces mission command to its Prussian origins following their humiliating defeat at Jena in 1806. From these origins, Shamir examines the conceptual tenets of Auftragstaktik; analyses Prussian reforms, 1806–1819, which converted mission command ideas into practice; and describes the institutionalising of Auftragstaktik through the leadership of Helmuth von Moltke the Elder. Shamir notes that ‘Moltke did not actually choose his style of command; it was dictated to him by the realities of his era’ ... ‘Auftragstaktik was the German response to both the genius of Napoleon and the unavoidable friction and fog inherent in the phenomena of war’.⁸ Shamir’s historical analysis of mission command’s conceptual underpinnings provides excellent context for practitioners seeking to understand the complexities and efforts required to adopt, adapt and practice mission command.

In framing readers’ understanding of the circumstances that shaped approaches to warfighting by US, British and Israeli armies, Shamir’s book narrows in his examination of land forces as armies rather than as core elements of wider joint, coalition and interagency warfighting capabilities. If Shamir chose to widen his examination of how armies fight, noting that such an analysis would make for a longer book, he could draw into his argument the complexities of applying mission command in inter-Service, international, and interagency environments. Friction, uncertainties and discontinuities caused by such environments further emphasise the need for armies to lead, learn and adapt in all conflict environments.

Once Shamir frames US, British and Israeli armies’ approaches to warfighting, the book examines how each army adopted and adapted mission command. All three armies sought to introduce mission command following shocks to their existing military systems; for the US it was defeat in Vietnam, for the British it was the tough fought victory of the Falklands War, and the Israelis were jolted into action following their decline in performance during the 1973 Yom Kippur War and subsequent wars in Lebanon.

Shamir notes that for the US, British and Israeli armies, ‘mission command was not adopted independently but rather within the context of broader doctrinal transformation’ and this new framework became known as ‘manoeuvre warfare’.⁹ Shamir also notes that, for all three armies, manoeuvre warfare’s development was ‘facilitated by, if not dependent upon, the efforts of individuals within the army who were convinced of [manoeuvre warfare’s] necessity and adaptability’.¹⁰ These individual agents of change did not always agree and included General William DePuy, Mr William Lind and Colonel John Boyd for the Americans; Field Marshal Sir Nigel Bagnall and Mr Richard Simpkin for the British; and Colonel Hanan Shai and Shimon Naveh for the Israelis.

Shamir’s examination of the three armies largely trails off in the 1990s, which somewhat limits his analysis of US, British and Israeli adoption and adaptation of mission command, especially in this last decade’s era of persistent conflict.¹¹ In a quick 25 pages, Shamir ‘tests’ mission command, briefly examining US, British and Israeli warfighting experiences in the last 20 years. Shamir’s almost cursory analysis of mission command in recent conflicts, arguably, weakens this otherwise excellent book.

While the Australian Army is not mentioned by Shamir regarding the implementation of mission command, critically minded readers who served in the Australian Defence Force (ADF) in the late 1980s and 1990s will recognise some of the challenges faced by all three subject armies in adopting, adapting and practicing mission command. As the ADF trains to meet and defeat national security challenges into this decade and beyond, understanding and recalibrating ADF approaches to mission command are necessary. Shamir’s book provides an excellent base from which to begin this work.

Six Essential Elements of Leadership: Marine Corps Wisdom from Medal of Honor Recipient is written by Colonel Wesley L Fox, USMC (Ret), who was awarded the Medal of Honor for actions as a 1st Lieutenant, commanding Company A, 1st Battalion, 9th Marines, 3d Marine Division, in Quang Tri Province, Republic of Vietnam, on 22 February 1968. He defines the six essential elements of leadership as: care, personality, knowledge, motivation, commitment and communication. Colonel Fox has vast experience as a Marine and a leader during the Korean War, in three deployments to Vietnam, and as a trainer of Marines. Colonel Fox retired in September 1993 having completed 43 years service as a Marine.

This is a book on leadership, which naturally encompasses aspects of command, and as Shamir notes, many books on command are biographies or autobiographies. In Colonel Fox’s case, this is definitely an autobiographical book and seems a companion book to Colonel Fox’s memoir Marine Rifleman: Forty-Three Years in the Corps (Memories of War) (2002). His style is easily read, and the Six Essential Elements of Leadership contains excellent anecdotes to explain and provide context to Colonel Fox’s points on leadership.

Colonel Fox’s views are simultaneously challenging and thought provoking. He defines leadership as ‘being able to influence others to reach deep down inside themselves and pull up that something they didn’t know they had’, or as stated by US President Harry S Truman ‘a leader is a [person] who has the ability to get people to do what they don’t want to do and like it’.¹² Colonel Fox stridently distinguishes between leadership and management by stating ‘care and concern for subordinates mark the leader; the subordinates of such a leader become followers. Management does not necessarily care about the people hired and fired; they are only the means’.¹³

It is through Colonel Fox’s differentiation between leadership and management that the strongest theme resonates with Shamir’s mission command publication. Colonel Fox argues that leaders are concerned with ‘esprit’ and leaders ‘create and maintain esprit in the hearts of their people’.¹⁴ For Colonel Fox, ‘true esprit de corps is founded on the great virtues of unselfishness, self-control, energy, honour, and courage’.¹⁵ Arguably, mission command as ‘the conduct of military operations through decentralized execution based on mission orders’ also needs esprit de corps to ensure that teams will fight, adapt and win, often in changed and changing circumstances, without close supervision.

Colonel Fox also addresses practicalities of mission command when examining ‘motivation’ as an essential element of leadership. During his Marine service, orders were his orders to his Marines and not ‘the colonel wants us to’.¹⁶ Simultaneously, Colonel Fox encourages the execution of mission command ‘depending on the situation and the details of the order ... [leaders] have the option to add and modify to the mission as [they] move forward’ ... ‘situations change as we begin to accomplish a mission, and allowing subordinate commanders the freedom and opportunity to change as required is a sound principle’.¹⁷ With these thoughts, Colonel Fox reflects Shamir’s idea that mission command is partly necessary based on the uncertainties of combat where ‘friction and fog [are] inherent in the phenomena of war’.¹⁸

A key thought that current and future leaders can borrow from Colonel Fox’s book is the observation that every leader comprises ‘five people’. Colonel Fox encourages leaders to look at themselves, and quotes General Perry Smith’s view that a leader is really five people: ‘you are who you are; who you think you are; who your subordinates think you are; who your peers think you are; and who your superiors think you are. Colonel Fox’s bottom line: ‘you are probably not as good-looking ... brilliant, witty, or charismatic as you sometimes think you are ... [and] there are times when you will be perceived, by yourself or by others, in a much less favourable light than deserved’.¹⁹

While this book contains multiple anecdotes on warfighting, Colonel Fox includes significant emphasis on families, values and integrity as foundations of leadership ... ‘teach, train, guide, and take care of your Marines, including their families to the degree that you can ...’.²⁰ Colonel Fox’s emphasis on ideas beyond warfighting gives this book universality, making it a useful reference, beyond warriors, to wider sections of society.

Endnotes

1    Eitan Shamir, Transforming Command: The Pursuit of Mission Command in the US, British, and Israeli Armies, Stanford Security Studies, 26 January 2011, p. xi.

2    Ibid., p. 5.

3    Ibid., pp. 157–89.

4    Ibid., pp. 3–5.

5    Ibid., p. 10.

6    Ibid.

7    Ibid.

8    Ibid., pp. 39, 52.

9    Ibid., pp. 129–30.

10  Ibid., p. 130.

11  General George W Casey Jr, US Army Chief of Staff, ‘the US military is involved in a “persistent conflict,” and the Army must be prepared to handle the commitment’, quoted in Jim Garamone, ‘Gen. Casey Says Army Must Be Prepared for ‘Persistent Conflict’, American Forces Press Service, 15 May 2007, <http://www.army.mil/article/3219/gen-casey-says-army-must-be-prepared-f…; accessed 13 May 2012.

12  Colonel Wesley L Fox, USMC (Ret), Six Essential Elements of Leadership: Marine Corps Wisdom from a Medal of Honor Recipient (Leatherneck Original), Naval Institute Press, 15 September 2011, pp. 7, 53.

13  Ibid., p. 18.

14  Ibid.

15  Ibid.

16  Ibid., p. 94.

17  Ibid.

18  Shamir, Transforming Command, p. 52.

19  Fox, Six Essential Elements of Leadership, p. 75, quoting Major General Perry M Smith, Rules and Tools for Leaders; A Down-to-Earth Guide to Effective Managing, Perigee, New York, 2002.

20  Fox, Six Essential Elements of Leadership, p. 7.