shadow of the hegemon by orson scott card is where the shark gets jumped, i think. but it is still a quite good book.

bean, our lead character and child military genius, goes on a bit about how he organizes his small army so that each platoon (and other level of organization) can operate independently — usually with full information, but that is so that they can have the confidence to act when they have incomplete information. later he talks about how he has learned to trust his instincts when something is wrong. the parallel between those two ideas is never made explicit in the book, but i think they really are two facets of the same idea.

and it brought me back to on intelligence and the notion of hierarchical memory and how the neocortex works (or may work). maybe a lesson to draw is to trust, and train, your instincts.