Today’s guest is Major Donald Vandergriff (U.S. Army retired), a distinguished military thinker, educator, and reform advocate with over two decades of service across the U.S. Army, Marine Corps, and National Guard. As Director of Adaptive Leadership Training at Nemertes, and the author of multiple influential works, he brings a blend of operational experience and intellectual rigour.

In this episode, I speak with Don about his edited volume Mission Command: The Who, What, Where, When and Why. What I really enjoyed about Don's book, and why it was a great fit for Hypervelocity, was how his and the other essays in it delved into the philosophical underpinnings of mission command and current U.S military culture. We tackle the key questions: How did the Prussian's defeat at the hands of Napolean lead Helmuth von Moltke to develop the philosophy of Auftragstaktik - or Mission Command? Why is Mission Command a cultural philosophy and not a social technology? How does the influence of Descartes mean that U.S. Army culture is French? Should U.S. Army culture be less Jominian and more Clausewitzian? Can Weber's theorizing on bureaucracy be used to explain current U.S. Army culture?Does the vast amount of data collected by situational awareness technology weaken mission command by encouraging excessive micromanagement of troops?

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Major Donald Vandergriff

01:53 The Origins of Mission Command

14:38 Moltke's Leadership and the Evolution of Mission Command

23:24 Mission Command as a Cultural Philosophy

29:20 Challenges in Implementing Mission Command

30:19 Empowering Decision-Making in Military Training

31:49 The Influence of French Military Philosophy

39:49 Cultural Shifts: Clausewitz vs. Jomini

43:00 Bureaucracy and Its Impact on Military Culture

46:21 Technology's Double-Edged Sword in Command

51:00 Lessons from Historical Commanders: Rommel's Approach

55:38 Building Trust for Effective Leadership