“Napoleon's revolutionary system of command was not the result of technological progress, but solely the result of better organization and doctrine. The technical means at his disposal were no more sophisticated than those of his adversaries. He differed in courage and wit with which he was able to cope with the limitations that technology had brought to commanders for thousands of years. While his opponents tried keep control and minimize uncertainty by keeping his military forces in close focus, Napoleon took the opposite route. Reorganized and decentralized its military in such a way that its individual parts allowed to operate independently for a limited period of time, and therefore he was able cope with a higher degree of uncertainty. To implement this decentralization of command, Napoleon had to organize an army into stand-alone strategic units (Army Corps) oriented to the assigned task, with its own commander, by staffs and balanced representation of individual weapons. He had to introduce system of periodic reports sent from the army corps to the main headquarters and orders sent in the opposite direction. He subsequently organized the staff of his headquarters thus, to be able to manage all generated in this way communicationand at the same time he had to prevent him as commander-in-chief from becoming a prisoner of this staff. He achieved this by introducing a system that he had according to his need at any time allow to penetrate the hierarchy of command and obtain any information according to his own will and need. In addition to the above organizational and technical improvements, it was key that Napoleon He was able to trust his abilities of their units and their commanders, that they can, for a limited period of time operate independently. Equally important was willingness of its commanders to take responsibility by its scope far exceeding the responsibilities of commanders in armies before Napoleon. Napoleon is considered by some to be a less significant tactician; he was significant primarily as a strategist. His revolution in command is more evident at Moving away from tactics and focusing on strategy. Instead of allowing the available technological tools and constraints to dictate the procedures of strategy and the operation of command, Napoleon exploited these very limitations to his own advantage.”

Key points that also occur in modern Agile terminology:

1. Acceptance of the fact that I am not able alone in one person to manage everything and the consequent decentralization and autonomous teams. (Tribes, Teams)
2. Autonomous teams have their own commanders (Tribe Lead, PO) and staffs (Agile Coach, Chapter Lead, Technical Tribe Lead) responsible for the performance of the assigned task
3. Provision of a standard flow of information both “down” and “up”. The team is assigned a task (OCHRE) and back we receive information on how to perform the task (Demos, Key Results, QBR).
4. Information system allowing the supervisor to receive information at any time according to their own will and need (transparency, persistence of information, JIRA/Azure DevOps..)
5. Crucially, the commander in chief must trust the commanders ability to function independently and these are willing to take responsibility (Tribal Culture 4)
6. The commander in chief looks away from tactics and concentrates on strategy (leadership instead of micromanagement)
7. Around this time, the military value of long-term professional armies was also appreciated (Tribe), as opposed to the short-lived mustered mercenary troops (Project teams).

In his day, Napoleon was a phenomenon, and the armies under his command were for a long time almost invincible. The situation changed only after surrounding states also adopted his ideas and approaches.

Source:

[1] People and History — The Role of Personality in History in a Multidisciplinary Perspective, Miroslav Bárta, Martin Kovář and a collective of authors, Academia 2017