When I joined the British army, I was taught that trusting my subordinates was critical to good leadership. At the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, instructors told me that I should aim to give commanders working for me as much freedom of action as possible. I should tell subordinates what I wanted them to do and why but, where possible, leave them to figure out how to achieve the goals I had set them.

My instructors reasoned that this battle-tested technique was the most effective way to lead in the fluid and dangerous environment of military operations. It proved to be good advice that served me well. However, as I climbed up the career ladder to work in larger groups, I found that subordinate leaders were not always the best sources of information on what was going on within their organisations.

In an army, subordinate commanders tend to emphasise successes and underplay failures. Their reports rarely include assessments of intangible factors, such as the morale of their soldiers. They inevitably focus on their area of operations and provide little insight into the physical gaps between them and neighbouring units. These reports are then analysed, filtered and commented on by each layer of command, which delays any response.