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In a recent post, "Complexity and Speed in Decisionmaking", I talked about the need to delegate responsibility to greater levels to respond to rapidly developing situations. One group that understands rapidly developing situations is the U.S. military's Special Operations Command, the group responsible to manage the Navy Seals. This article from the NYT, "Admiral Seeks Freer Hand in Deployment of Elite Forces", discusses the efforts of the commanding officer of Special Operations Command to get authority to pre-positions his assets based on intelligence and other data. The biggest issue in such a change is that regional military commanders resist having forces not under their command in their geograpghic area of responsibility.
The lesson to be derived is that when one delegates authority downward, one needs to explain it to the whole organization to prevent interference from other authorities. Focus on mission and not authority is the important theme.
