Auftragstaktik. Helmuth von Moltke the Elder set it out in his 1869 instructions for large-unit commanders and it was codified in the 1888 drill regulations: higher command defines what must be achieved, and subordinates decide how to achieve it when orders no longer match conditions on the ground.
Moltke defined it as the actions a subordinate takes in the absence of orders that support the senior commander’s intent. Officers were educated to think for themselves and to keep going when communication failed.
The doctrine passed into NATO practice and into US Army doctrine as mission command. Its origin is a German answer to a specific problem: the person on the ground can see something the person issuing the order cannot.