Design Theory and the Military’s Understanding of Our Complex World
Author’s Note: Before readers pull their hair out in frustration at yet another ‘Design’ article with too much philosophy, abstraction, and unorthodox thinking, I offer an intellectual olive branch of sorts. There is a reason hardly any of these Design concepts will ever enter Army doctrine, or become a step within a planning process…to think about Design requires us to think from a different perspective– a perspective that lacks the very things we hold dearest to how we function and plan as a military. Design logic requires us to let go of how we are used to thinking, and embrace uncertainty for a bit. If any of the post-modern and highly abstract concepts offered in this article help generate some discourse, creative or critical thinking, then these Design concepts have potentially armed the reader with another arrow for his quiver-albeit a ‘crooked’ arrow. And when the day comes that one must fire at an unexpected ‘crooked’ target, their planning quiver will hold just the right munition to fire away…
A comment here about Kuhn (and Paul Feyerabend, a close collaborator of Kuhn): The “Against Method” approach to scientific philosophy systematically refuses to throw away old concepts and ideas. They may be shelved, may go out of fashion, but they are never entirely irrelevant to the postmodern marketplace of ideas. Indeed, old ideas get resurrected in new theories. Platonism becomes Neoplatonism. Scholasticism becomes Neoscholasticism. And so on. Even disproven theories are valuable for the lessons they hold – some of which were not discovered when they were falsified in their original form. Ergo;
Before Descartes, “linear causality, reductionism, and mechanistic theory”, scholastic philosophy recognized material causation, and Galileo argues his case using this very language. How many Army officers today even know the Aristotlean/scholastic notions of formal, final, efficient and material causes – much less how they might be related to problems of complex operations and asymmetric warfare ? MAJ Zweibelson talks of detailed planning as “teleological” – but only in the more modest sense that the “end” or “goal” of an operation is its purpose. Ultimately, all wars must end, but the chain of causality does not end this side of Armaggeddon. In reality, this is an unavoidable constraint on the scope of military operations, a constraint which the logic of Clausewitz entertains without logical error.
To put the shoe on the other foot, how are the “unlimited variety of alternative approaches…dissimilar to the preferred detailed planning approach” to escape the problem of theoretical reduction ? Phenomenologically speaking, all ideas are reductive – the more coherent and well-defined the idea, the more reductive it is. Now, the state of theory when it comes to material causation is much better defined in Galileo’s ballistics than in the psychologies of Machiavelli and Hobbes. The question, one might pose, is whether postmodern social science offers any better tools by which expected and actual outcomes of one’s own actions may be measured ? Specifically, we need not assign the property of linearity to causation, since at least in theory, the function can be anything but a straight line (and one will need to learn calculus to analyze it). Another issue is that “mechanistic” is not the same as deterministic. People who assume – incorrectly – that kinetic results are deterministic don’t know any more about physics than they do about social and behavioral science.
In either case, the heuristics imposed by doctrine reflect the kind of simplifying assumptions we need to operate in the world without being able to perform calculus problems in real time, without benefit of computational aids. It does appear to me that appeals to “design” reflect a desire to slip homo scientificus – the rational actor – in the back door, without much prospect of creating conditions – perfect information and sufficient time to find an optimal solution – under which a rational actor model works satisfactorally. What one is left with is an increasingly complex search space for solutions to complex problems. How’s that working out for you ?
MAJ Zweibelson clearly has drunk the Naveh post-mod Kool-Aid. One wonders whether he actually read the entire DeLeuze and Guattari book on design, for the parts he uses are but a fraction of the content and not demonstrative of the overall focus. In fact, the D&L school of design is but one of many, and it is arguably the least constructive to the current artistic challenges for products or processes that use design.
Design needn’t be a capital D; design always has been an essential element of any planning methodology, including the quasi-rational model that the military uses under various names, but most commonly the MDMP. The real problem with the military, especially the Army, is that it has focused on the detailed planning logic as Zweibelson names it, and not on the precedent concept of design – known far more commonly to the military as command intent. If I were to oversimplify – and just a bit – I would state this: command intent is equivalent to design.
Except that for the US military, command intent has become a mechanistic element of the planning method (MDMP.) The result is an always predictable scheme that assumes the enemy will do what we expect him to do; it produces efficient plans and orders. Unfortunately, it often produces very ineffective results, especially at the tactical level – one very recent illustration seems to be the loss of the fighters and helo in the Tangi Valley (from the admittedly small amount of data points, it seems this was a predictable operation conducted in a predictable fashion into an operating area that left no alternatives for the crew in terms of approach and drop.) We have read of similar predictability with the fights at COPs Keating and Kahler. American tactical and operational leaders, particularly in the Army, demonstrate the most efficient and fail-safest approach, an idea that usually works and definitely CYAs those in command. But the approach places the entirety of risk on the maneuver elements, and assumes that traditional American superiority of integrated combat power and training will overcome whatever flaws and risks produced by the predictable intent.
If this sounds like a rant, it is. The American military, at the decision-making levels, has become intellectually lazy, preferring to grasp radical slogans like post-modernist Design, rather than facing directly the real issue: a fail-safe, CYA mentality taken into deepest combat. We can do far better: the bin Laden raid illustrates that we can think, design, plan and do in creative and effective ways. The trouble is that bin Laden-type raids are the exception, not the rule.
Ben-
this is a bold article. Too bad it was posted right when SWJ switched over, I do think this one slipped by everyone that might have read it if they could get on. You ought to ask them to repost it.
I would recommend next time you add in a historical example, I know you write that historical vignettes are part of the military way of thinking- system of logic as you term it. I think providing a conflict like the Gulf War and draw comparisions from each side on how they seemed to be thinking. But others might suggest a different conflict. I go with what I know. Since you kept the whole thing really academic and sort of philosophical, I had a tough time following along because I understand better with military examples. I bet I am not the only one here on that note, but I guess you would say that is a reflection of how I “prefer to interprete the world.” Your article also made me think about religions, but that is off topic.
I am always impressed by your footnotes. You sure do alot of them, but they make for good lists of some books and articles I am interested in checking out at the library.
Nice work.
HB
I second HB’s vote to repost/re-up this. I just got the time to figure out how to get my account running to post a comment and had to go searching for the article to do so. Overall, I like this one a little better than the previous design articles that really go heavy on the terminology and such. One thing I take issue with, though, is your discussion of teleology. First, I think of teleology as the mindset that something is progressing toward a determined end state, not so much as choosing and end state and working toward it. I.E., “the end of history” is a teleological conception, but deciding to create a plan to get to end state X is not teleological. That’s my interpretation, anyway. Not sure if I’m correct.
On that point, you criticize our planning efforts as selecting an end state then working in a linear manner toward that. I certainly agree that the end states we often choose are unattainable, or at least questionable, even when they are clearly articulated, which they often are not. I also get what you are saying with non-linear/non-reductionist thinking. Yet, isn’t it a bit decadently post-modern to say (imagine a cross between Oddball in Kelley’s Heroes and a Cali surfer dude), “Hey man, we don’t really know where we’re going, but we’re gonna use some positive waves to figure these things out and see where it takes us, you know?” Seriously, though, if you don’t have an end state to work towards, then what’s the point and how are you going to involve diplomatic or military power on such an adventure? I’m probably misreading you a bit, so clear this point up, please.
Peter- thanks, and I agree, SWJ had a rough transition, unfortunately my article got “lost in the sauce.” Perhaps they will re-post it. Let me respond to your observation on ‘teleological.’
I originally considered deleting that word out because it is problematic; it generally turns mainstream readers off, and with academic folks, we end up having interesting divergent discussions on the precise application of that word in relation to some highly abstract concepts on how military organizations think. I will diverge a bit, but attempt to return back to the overarching point here…
To define ‘teleology’, Webster’s offers: “a doctrine explaining phenomena by final causes” as the second definition for the word. For the military, a teleological position might be: “warfare exists as a persistent method for human societies to resolve political differences.” War exists to serve its role in continuous human interaction at a societal level, as in Clausewitz’s metaphor that war is a duel on a larger scale. War exists to serve human societies as they conduct foreign policy. Or as Aristotle explained it, animals exist to feed man. Just as farmers invest a great deal of thought and work into raising animals, their ultimate purpose is to feed humans (in this example- I do not want an invasion of Vegans to flood SWJ after I post this…). The military also invests a great deal of thought and work into conducting war, but the overarching logic that these organizations prefer is Clausewitzian based- the trinity of the army, people, and government essentially is a teleological position on the purpose of war phenomena. But what if we break free from this preferred logic? What does war become, if it does not necessarily serve human politics on a societal scale?
Let me return to how I used ‘Teleological’ in the following context of my article:
“Returning to how our military prefers to plan, detailed planning uses a teleological approach where the entire process is purpose driven; the ‘ends’ is determined first and then directed by action (ways) with means. Working from the desired end-state back to the present is such a pervasive concept that it is both a constant process and generally an accepted ‘root metaphor’ that defies critical introspection. We are hard pressed to question this methodology, and nearly all military doctrine reinforces this process so that it permeates all levels of military organization in both conceptual and detailed planning and execution. This type of thinking often oversimplifies complex systems and sets up the military organization for tactical success with strategic failure because the world is not as malleable as the detailed planning expects it to be.”
Granted, I have used the term ‘reverse-engineered’ in other situations to describe much of the planning logic for military detailed planning concepts such as MDMP, JOPP, and nearly all Effects Based Operations thinking (Operational Design). In this case, I referred first to James Schneider’s somewhat obscure work on operational art in a footnote.
“The future of operational art depends on today’s officer corps understanding the historical and theoretical basis of the concept. Only by knowing what has gone before can it hope to build a doctrine for the future which takes full advantage of the fruits of technology;”
– what Schneider appears to be saying, in my opinion, is that our military relies upon a certain logic that requires complete acceptance of how war functions, and we rely upon our known information within our organizational knowledge base, our ‘interiority’ of knowledge. Interpreting past conflicts and applying the preferred universal principles of war by Jomini (mass, maneuver, decisive points, etc) as well as Clausewitz’s persistent teleological trinity of warfare is the only approved method of thinking about complex systems such as modern military conflicts. We only squint through the doctrinally approved and hierarchically mandated (Flag Officers sign our doctrine to make it official) logic to interpret complex systems that do not necessarily conform.
Are there non-teleological military perspectives out there to consider? I cited a few; I recommend if you have not taken a look at ‘Unrestricted Warfare’ by Liang and Xiangsui, it is a relatively short read and is free on the internet courtesy of the Chinese government. They wrote it in 1999 as Chinese military officers offering their own non-western analysis (and in many ways, a synthesis) of how our western military prefers to make sense of the world:
“The enemy will possibly not be the originally significant enemy, and the weapons will possibly not be the original weapons, and the battlefield will also possibly not be the original battlefield. Nothing is definite. What can be ascertained is not definite. The game has already changed, and what we need to continue is ascertaining a new type of fighting method within various uncertainties.” P 141.
“[military conceptual planning] must go beyond all of the fetters of politics, history, culture, and ethics and carry out through thought. Without thorough thought, there can be no thorough revolution.” P 143.
“Some of the traditional models of war, as well as the logic and laws attached to it, will also be challenged. The outcome of the contest is not the collapse of the traditional mansion but rather one portion of the new construction site being in disorder.” P 13-14. How I interpret that is some elements of detailed planning logic are now no longer useful in the 21st century, while others should remain. The military ultimately determines which elements are still valid.
Americans “would rather treat war as the opponent in the marathon race of military technology and are not willing to look at it more as a test of morale and courage…they believe that as long as the Edisons of today do not sink into sleep, the gate to victory will always be open to the Americans.” P181. They are arguing that our largely teleological perspective on warfare has warped our thinking so that we seek a technological solution to everything. There is some validity to this- we deeply believe that the future of warfare requires the U.S. to maintain a large lead in technology, readiness, and capability. That is the entire justification (in my humble opinion) of many projects such as the J-35 fighter. Now the Vegans can compete with the angry Air Force folks on this blog…the more the merrier. But what happens when technology creates more problems than solutions, and what about when technologically inferior enemies defeat vastly technologically superior ones?
“It is not so much that war follows the fixed race course of rivalry of technology and weaponry as it is a game field with continually changing direction and many irregular factors.” P 95. Again, this non-western position emphasizes non-teleological positions; animals do not exist to feed man. War does not exist to serve societal interaction of foreign policy…. There are no fixed principles of war. Mass and maneuver might work in some conflicts, in some eras, against some enemies- but not everywhere and every time.
I also cited a decent mathematics book to support this position on military teleological logic in detailed planning.
“Goal-oriented research can deliver only predictable results.” – Ian Stewart, Nature’s Numbers. This goes back to the post-modern concept of ‘interior knowledge’- if we cast out a desired end-state into the future, and we anchor it down with our logic that stabilizes for us how the world functions (principles of war, the trinity, etc), then of course our entire planning process is going to dig up plenty of evidence for centers of gravity, critical vulnerabilities, and decisive points along lines of efforts that will get us to our strategic goals…except they have not been working well as of late. The Iraqi invasion of 2003 is potentially a decent example here. We did phases 1-3 quite well; but after the strategic and operational centers of gravity collapsed, things changed. We did not reach our original end-state; in some ways, we are still not there yet…
If anything, in future articles, I will continue to attempt to cut out too many complex terms because ‘Occams Razor’ is a fine principle in writing. I sliced up this article quite significantly, and I am doing the same to another Design article I am finishing up for SWJ concerning the highly abstract concepts of interiority knowledge and exteriority knowledge- great concepts offered up by Deleuze and Guattari in their fascinating book, ‘A Thousand Plateaus.’ But as for this article, I hope you enjoyed it outside of my fiddling with ‘teleological.’
V/R
b.z.
I really liked the article. I thought hit several excellent points. However, I would like to add one dissenting opinion on the “unlimited variety of alternative approaches” of Design.
As Design is based on complex adaptive systems I contend the idea of no common approach is actually contradicting a key complexity concept of the “edge of chaos.” This idea is best outlined by renowned Complexity Theorist Stuart Kauffman (At Home in the Universe). Too much structure stifles innovation and characterized US doctrine, think MDMP. However, no common frame, think current Design, prevents the leveraging of ideas in a unity of effort. The need to be “at the edge of chaos” is seen in all complex adaptive systems from the universe to the economy to military organizations. My preferred example is political economies. Communism stifles innovation and the system because of overbearing structure (MDMP), conversely anarachy stifles growth because individuals cannot rely on cooperative mechanisms to leverage superior ideas (Design without a commom frame). Design needs a perspective based on complexity theory to help the US Government put the data in a common framework that advises strategy and operations devised through Design.
In classic military fashion, one cannot offer criticism without offering solutions so I offer my own and that of a peer collaborator (Eddie Brown) work as an exmaple. This article was also published in the Small Wars Journal – “Population As Complex Adaptive Systems – A Case Study of Corruption in Afghanistan.” I would argue that the intelligence method, the “Emergent States Assessment” (ESA), outlined in this article is one way (definitely not only way) to leverage the science of complexity to devise an intelligence method to support Design. (The IPB of Design so to speak)
The article was fantastic however, I caution against rebelling too far from a common frame as success is found neither solely in structure or in anarchy but at the edge of chaos.
Tom Pike
finally a design article that is easy to read and brings home the bacon without requiring me to study rocket surgery. ‘systems of logic’ is a bit too cumbersome a term though- and so the big military will reject it outright unless you work it into a silly acronym. How about world-view?
Ben—this is my second read of your article for a number of reasons—this para caught my eye;
If a system of logic fails to make sense of an increasingly complex world for the military, how does it adapt a new methodology for thinking? In other words, when saber charges and vividly colored uniforms transitioned from assets on the battlefield to liabilities, how does the military institution discard one logic and adapt novel ones?
I have spent the last year again watching battle staffs cope with their CTC rotations and have trained battle staffs at home station and I keep coming up against what I call a distinct lack of understanding by battle staffs of the concept called military decision making—any form of it.
One can get a Divisional battle staff in a room and in another room you could have a BCT battle staff and they all will exhibit the same problems. Meaning if you ask both groups are they doing MDMP—you will get positive answers from both. But if you asked both groups to define such military terms as “battle rhythm, synchronization, integration or say what is a running estimate and why do we do it” you will get back blank stares. Yes they all know of and or heard something about MDMP, but they know nothing of the “how does it work” “what are the inputs and outputs needed”, “how do I do running estimates and why do I wargame”–ask any battle staff to conduct nodal analysis around the problem sets they are defining—what is nodal analysis comes the response-until we get battle staffs to a common level of what the heck is MDMP and why do I do it and then truly understand why one does it—we will never get this current group of staff officers regardless of command level too design.
If say a BCT staff deploys and are having initially a difficult time with military decisionmaking they usually at the end of their deployment have a good handle on it—then they are as a staff ripped apart and we start all over again with a new battle staff—there is never a developed solid base of institutional knowledge remaining in most BCT and Division staffs so the concept of design will never really get off the ground until we have battle staffs that at the least fully understand some form of military decisionmaking.
Outlaw 9-
What you describe is what I like to call the “levels of organizational knowledge production.” – what all military staffs exist for: to take raw information, compile it, organize it, analyze it, and produce gold from straw; or at least, that is the intent. I use three levels to get my point across to military personnel:
Level 1: description. At this initial level, we as the military excel: SALUTE reports, categorization (political, military, economic, security…), the 5x W’s, BOLO reports, jackpots…the list is infinite and growing. We are masters of description; we could literally fill volumes of books with just TIGR reports on one Baghdad neighborhood over the past year with description from hundreds of patrols; but our doctrine and ultimately, our decision-making processes (which are often perverted into procedures) become shackled to ‘description-centric’ thinking. This results in PowerPoint presentations to staffs and decision-makers that have hundreds of descriptive slides (not to mention “hide-slides” which are intuitively counter-productive), that describe the WHAT in great detail, but never get to the WHY. I think this is why most Battalion, Brigade, and most of a Division Staff will follow doctrine and procedures for MDMP/JOPP, but look at you with blank stares when you attempt to get them to think critically about the process.
When you ask them to think critically- these are WHY questions, and since they are operating in the organizing logic of description (lowest level of knowledge production), they can only follow the steps in whatever doctrine or TTP they are familiar with. This is description, re-gurgitation, and non-analytical. This is also why staffs make massive slide presentations that never get to the “so what” because instead of solving a problem, they are only admiring it.
To think critically is essential for any staff, in any decision-making process, and is in my opinion, a cornerstone for Design thinking.
The second level of knowledge production is ‘analysis.’ This still involves categorization, reductionism, or “binning” of information, but it has utility in that as a seperate process for producing refined knowledge for an organization, analysis helps an organization prioritize information and identify trends, patterns, and ‘chunking.’ This is useful sometimes because analysis requires some critical thinking- we are starting to move away from WHAT-centric questions and towards WHY-centric thoughts- but more often than not, staff thinking will ignore outliers and concentrate on the chunks, the bell-curves. Nasim Talib’s ‘Black Swan’ book hits this point perfectly. But analysis is useful because it avoids what I call the “Tiger Beetle” phenomenon of description-centric actions:
The Tiger Beetle is the fastest creature in the world, when scale is considered. It moves at 300mph (scaled to size), and because it moves so fast, it’s brain and eyes cannot process information fast enough while moving- so it moves blind. Scientists state that the Tiger Beetle identifies a food target from a stationary position, then moves toward it blindly at full speed with its mouth open. It stops approximately where it calculated the target would be, and then the beetle checks its mouth. Food in there- eat. No food- use eyes to seek where target is now, then blindly move towards new location. Repeat- at 300mph. There is no analysis here, only description!
I refer to ‘tiger beetle’ actions by staff officers when they get information (such as a SALT or SALUTE report), and they move at 300mph blindly according to whatever procedure or doctrinal step that tells them where to move next. They arrive at their destination and dump that information into the next bin, and repeat. When you ask them to think critically about the process, they are unable to- they are ‘tiger beetling’ and comfortable doing that. This happens across the entire MDMP spectrum in every staff section- and it “feeds the beast” by producing many slides, charts, maps, and products with nice colors- but no analysis; we fail to understand WHY and can only speak to WHAT. When a staff is full of tiger beetles, they spin at full speed, but get nowhere, and do not understand why. They continue to move at full speed, but never get beyond description, or they trap themselves in analysis that categorizes WHAT (description) but they never get to the third level of knowledge production- the WHY.
The third level of knowledge production- synthesis. Synthesis gets to WHY- but I feel that it uses a different process to approach knowledge production that differs from description and analysis. Synthesis requires some description and analysis, but there is not a linear causality that links one to the next. Synthesis requires us to not be Tiger Beetles- to blindly race along following indoctrinated steps in MDMP…you must become the critical and creative thinker; recognize the WHAT but ask questions that lead to WHY. This ought to be done throughout all decision making processes by all staff sections; to replace all tiger beetles with synthesists;
A synthesist still does MDMP- but they approach it from a critical and creative perspective. As opposed to the tiger beetle that snatches information and races blindly with ‘what’-centric thinking, the synthesist learns MDMP and all staff processes by learning doctrine, but asking ‘WHY’ questions along the way. Why do we think the way we do? Why is a procedure structured as it is? Why do we collect CCIR, and why is some information critical while other information is not? What does critical mean? Is there a decision space here for our commander- or is this tied to the campaign plan in a manner that holistically helps accomplish our objectives? The synthesist uses critical thinking to go beyond merely learning and obeying the staff processes of MDMP, and questions their utility. If an aspect of MDMP or staff action is illogical or inefficient, the synthesist uses creative thinking to improvise something novel- a new approach that is beyond and outside of traditional structured decision-making…this happens when a staff officer recognizes that an existing procedure fails to get at what the Commander wants or needs; we frequently use the term “non-doctrinal solution”- it is a new process that functions better than the existing doctrinal approach because a synthesist used critical/creative thinking and applied it to the complex environment on hand. But in our perpetual military institutionalism, we tend to take these unique and tailored adaptations and “proceduralize” them for general use- they are in fact assimilated into either doctrine or TTPs. This often breaks the utility of a tailored improvisation by a synthesist because complex adaptive systems are not tame-able; what may work in one instance will not translate into EVERY instance for EVERY staff.
Hence, the cycle repeats, and a staff must apply critical/creative thinking as synthesists when they perform MDMP instead of merely being good tiger beetles. A good tiger beetle staff follows MDMP and churns out data (WHAT) without grasping WHY; and as units redeploy and staff personnel and leadership get replaced with fresh faces, the tiger beetle process starts anew. For those that advance into becoming synthesists, they move from unit to unit and hopefully share their ability to think critically and creatively- but this largely depends upon leadership…if a leader is a tiger-beetle, he/she will drive their staff to perform as tiger beetles, and they will remain largely at the description or unproductive analysis level of organizational knowledge production.
If a leader is a synthesist, they will drive their staff to learn MDMP and apply it, but through critical and creative thinking that transforms tiger beetles into synthesists. Why are we doing this? Why does our organization prefer information categorized, and what are the limitations to doing that versus a holistic appreciation? Why do we disregard outlier statistics and label them ‘anomalies’ instead of looking at the process critically? Why do humans love to “chunk” data? Why do Commanders feel more comfortable with slides that show upward trends, red coded items moving to green, and “progress” in more jackpots, more IED sites discovered, more ANSF recruited, or some other descriptive measure that is WHAT-centric but never approaching the WHY of a complex system?
A bit of rambling from me; I hope that my response illustrates the point that MDMP and Design are not separate- but completely nested…one does not shift from Design thinking to MDMP- one is a synthesist (that appreciates Design) while performing MDMP; but the synthesist approaches MDMP with a critical and creative eye, and is not a tiger beetle. The tiger beetle cannot grasp Design because they cannot even recognize that the way they perform MDMP is devoid of self-awareness…and therefore one must spend the bulk of one’s time mentoring a staff to just learn MDMP correctly without getting them to think beyond the procedure, and about WHY they are doing (or not doing) what they are taught to do.
-BZ
BW—only one thought to your response—and no you are not rambling is WOW. Really liked the response as it matches way to many of the same things I have seen in the last few years.
I have spent countless BCT rotations (39 to be exact in the NTC) holding the hands of both BCT and BN level battle staffs and have wondered for years just where everything and why everything was falling apart. Recently had the pleasure of a desert rotation with a leading BCT from a great Div–after completion of the first complete targeting cycle the BCT Cmdr threw everything overboard and went straight to RDMP as the complete BCT was totally out of synchronization in it’s B2C2WG processes—was not a pretty picture.
Honestly the last time I saw a fully functioning battle staff was with the 3/3 in Iraq in 2005/06 but that staff had been together for over three years.
Did not want to give the false impression in previous comments–you are right both MDMP and design are closely tied together-was just trying to point out that due to the ongoing faliures in staff battle rhythms, MDMP and B2C2WG –battle staffs cannot even get to the concept of design.
Example: currently there is a tight relationship between a BCT doing extremely well in using ISR if their target planning process is clicking on all cylinders–and I have seen a direct relationship between doing poor MDMP/B2C2WG and being poor on the targeting and ISR side- and vice versa being great at B2C2WG and MDMP reflects excellent targeting processes and ISR. The Army has thrown and is still throwing tons of effort/money/defense contractors at improving ISR but even that effort is failing as it does not answer just how one is going to improve MDMP/B2C2WG in the battle staffs. Improve the overall MDMP/B2C2WG and you will get the ISR/targeting improvements—the system thinks that money and contractors will fix it-it has not. We are seeing the trend that and I hate saying this ALL battle staffs simply do not know anymore what “right” is.
AND yes it goes to the WHY when one is willing to ask the question–walk into a battle staff, look at their NAIs and then ask the CM or the S2/G2 just why is that NAI there—what was the thinking behind it and how do they change it during their assestments. Nodal analysis—an extremely rare event these days or for the most part non-existent. Decision points—what are those?
Assesments—one of the hardest things for a battle staff to perform–running estimates very rarely done these days outside of maybe the first one done after RIP/TOA.
You are preaching to the choir—just not sure the choir is ready to hear it.
Example—we have literally thrown millions of dollars at the ISR problems seen in BCTs,spent literally millions in using defense contractors to hold their hands, spent millions on new ISR assets to support the BCTs with tens of new capabilities but after six years we are still seeing the exact same problem.
No one has taken the time to simply ask the question WHY? When one understands that now most young officers really do not get a heavy dose of MDMP until they get into their Advance Captain’s Course–way to late if you ask me but I am just a civilian. When one understands exactly what you have just described WHY are we not seeing it being transferred into a serious senior leader discussion starting with Divison Cmdrs?
BW—just a couple of questions.
1. Based on your thoughts in the reply what do you think of OODA–in some ways it has been the underlying thought process for the targeting process of JSOC—can it in your opinion shorten the counter insurgent decision making responses to the insurgent and his actions—meaning can it get inside the decision curve of an insurgent group? Any idea as to why it has been dropped by Demsey other than it came from the AF side of the house—as some tended to think it was part and parcel of EBO which it was not.
2. Can it be that we have not been able to train battle staffs to critically think in terms of say, observables and indicators in order for them to be able to even begin to “observe” and understand. Sometimes I thing they really do not understand the OE they work in and that leads to the inability to ask WHY—only after say 9 months in an area does it seem that they have acquired enough understanding to start asking WHY and by then they are packing to go home. With the shortened 9 month deployments being envisioned the battle staff problems will only get worse not better as the learning curve will be difficult to overcome and then they leave before they really start leaving the crawl/walk phase.
See the 2007 Frans P.B. Osinga book for a really elaborated theory of John Boyd. Worth perusing.
BZ—slogged through Boyd’s 2007 Patterns of Conflict and noticed this slide which kind of sums up some of your thoughts? It was also interesting to research Boyd as he appeared to like whiteboarding via a PPT.
“In a tactical sense, these multi-dimensional interactions suggest a spontaneous, synthetic/creative, and flowing action/counteraction operation, rather than a step-by-step, analytical/logical, and discrete move/countermove game.
In accepting this idea we must admit that increased unit complexity (with magnified mental and physical task loadings) does not enhance the spontaneous synthetic/creative operation. Rather, it constrains the opportunity for these timely actions/counteractions.”
or put another way
“Complexity (technical, organizational, operational, etc.) causes commanders and subordinates alike to be captured by their own internal dynamics or interactions—hence they cannot adapt to rapidly changing external (or even internal) circumstances.”
I would think that Boyd’s above comment underlines that by remaining close to current doctrine/MDMP explains why many battle staffs have difficulties with the complex adaptive systems they see daily in Afghanistan.
Not sure which is better- the article or the top half of the comment thread… either way, learned more on design discussion with this well-written article and the very insightful comments below than I did in several “mobile design team” expert groups of retired folks that wandered into our division and tried to teach us design with a bunch of confusing slides and overly complicated discussions…well done to all! Stuff like this needs to be captured and published for division staffs.
Folks,
1-OODA Looping is one very small part of the Boyd theory.
2-You are way to logical in your use of the OODA loop, try thinking of being inside somebodies OODA loop as showing them something that will fool them.
3-It’s like that John Travolta movie where he is Boxing and tells this opponent he is going to show him his left jab(get inside his observation point) BUT hit him with his right cross….that is OODA looping somebody.
BZ—picking up your 23 Dec thread—based on your comments how would you envision handling the following as I am coming to the slow realization that just maybe all the current terms we throw around ie COIN, FID, SFA, UW, IW, pop centric COIN etc are in fact causing most of the confusion as many battle staffs can no longer critically think as they are simply trying to get through the “process” of MDMP due to trying to fit a square peg in a round hole due to the complexity of the different terms with their different definitions.
Example:
Say a battle staff is presented with the following scenario:
——we have an individual who is the leading bomb maker on the RC side as early as Jun 2003, he is handling all bookkeeping for multiple groups, he is handling the IO side and participated in a Spanish journalist interview in 2004, he sets up training sessions for rockets, purchases weapons/IED materials and distributes them, handles legal importing of vehicles out of the UAE in 2003/2004, maintains a wide reaching series of contacts with other groups in other cities, has a major contact in Sweden in 2004, participates as an observer in a number of attacks from 2003 through to 2007, has a large group of individuals around him and travels extensively from south to north and Google has nothing on him as do none of the US databases—AND he finds time to pray 3-5 times a day
Can any battle staff sit down with the high level information and “war game” or “see” 1) does the person even exist? 2)who is he/what is his importance, 3) what does his ecosystem potentially look like, 4) what is the potential center of gravity or are there more CoGs, 5)what are the potential drivers of individual, 6) are we facing multiple groups with a single leader or a series of independent sub groups getting just guidance and leadership from a central figure, 7) is he a key “threat” to our efforts and the list goes on.
Have we as battle staffs reached a point that such war gaming is virtually impossible to due to the stress of trying to hold to MDMP and B2C2WG?
Just a thought.
Outlaw 9:
I agree that our military lexicon makes staff communication rather problematic. I wrote an article last year for SWJ (actually a series of articles on Design); one was called “There is a Problem with the Word Problem”- it approached design theory and how language continues to get double-tapped for use in different logics which creates staff and leadership confusion. SWJ has some excellent forum threads on just the confusing and long list of “asymmetric” terms for “irregular” warfare. I want to say Dave Maxwell even posted a long list of them in one of the forum threads which highlighted our military organization’s current state of paralysis in explaining what we are observe in the world.
On your hypothetical question of wargaming, I would offer a few points to consider.
1. Design Theory uses a fundamentally different logic than the traditional reductionist and post-positivist approach to warfare (Clausewitz, Jomini, and company). When we discuss a battle staff conducting MDMP, we are in the traditionalist logic and thus are not discussing Design Theory. MDMP and the wargaming process (just a subset of reverse-engineering reductionism) seeks to control a system, to seek decisiveness through destructive action instead of seeking cognitive synergy and appreciation of a complex system that defies control, seeking what Design Theorists term “operational shock” to deconstruct some aspects of the system so that it will configure in a novel and self-organizing form that offers future advantage to one’s organization. So if we want to discuss a staff doing MDMP, I think we should frame the condition as a group of individuals that are building a house atop a pre-determined foundation that is cemented in Clausewitzian war theory and Jominian linear logic. MDMP generates its strength rooted in the hierarchical structure of traditional military organizations that use linear causality logic, reverse-engineered approaches to attempting to “control” complexity, and using mass and symmetric action to apply uniform and universal proceduralism through military action.
2. For the individual you describe with the intelligence breadcrumbs in the hypothetical example, I find that staffs will use MDMP-style proceduralism to attempt to rigidly forecast the HVI’s pattern of behavior- in the attempt of predicting their next action in a “most dangerous” and “most likely” COA format. Design theory rejects this entirely. I find that military professionals are highly uncomfortable with throwing out the MDMP bathwater for fear of losing the baby- but the baby does remain in a novel and non-linear asymmetric approach.
3. Were a staff to take the breadcrumbs you provided for example, and apply some Design Theory to their understanding of their bounded environment- they might consider the following:
a. Why are people from that culture (whatever culture the bombmaker is from) motivated to join the rival movement and attack us with bombs?
b. What is the overarching logic of his IO campaign, and why is it more effective than ours in the target population?
c. Why do illicit commodities continue to prosper in the observed economies, and why do criminal enterprises that prosper through profit also support non-economic risks such as supporting ideological or political insurgent action? Or, why do heroin cartels aid bomb-makers?
d. Why is the rival organization (or organizations) functioning as we observe them to be; how are they organized? How do they continue to adapt and innovate under the strain (or presumed strain) of our application of destruction via military targeting and execution?
4. Those were just a few of the Design-logic “why” questions that take a more holistic perspective for a staff to gain greater understanding (cognitive synergy) of a complex system…they are not just running down the tactical rabbit holes of “HVI 3 used cellphone 123456 on 12DEC2011 to call contact Y concerning topic Z…” –this is where we drop bombs without really knowing what we might be doing to a complex system. But if we encase these actions within a cocoon that uses the MDMP logic and the hierarchical decision-making processes we prefer- we continue to “target” without really understanding what we are doing, or why.
5. A comment on centers of gravity- always a challenging topic because so much of our military organization grew up on Clausewitzian logic and US Army doctrine espouses the single universal theory that all things follow Uncle Carl’s maxims…I prefer some non-western approaches to understanding warfare and conflict such as Deleuze and Guattari and Jullien. D&G offer the post-modern concepts of smooth and striated space; striated space reflects the military organization’s attempt to apply universal maxims such as gravity to a system. Gravity, in theory, influences all things- hence in physics it is universal. With military conflict, when one attempts to establish COGs, they are striating space so that they can overlay their linear logic such as MDMP and B2C2WG- so one striates the space, identifies those points which support their preferred narrative (perhaps EBO based, or post-EBO such as modern MDMP with mission command), and then they target critical vulnerabilities of stated COG…but even the preferred COGs at the strategic and operational level in my neck of the woods remain tangible, quantifiable (read targetable or bombable) concepts. How does one target something intangible and fluid, such as a movement or an idea? What if that idea continues to adapt and self-organize in ways that actually strengthen it when you attack it militarily? This raises a metaphor for the hypothetical staff to ponder…
6. What if the rival system has an operational COG that is like the Lernaean Hydra. Following Greek mythology, if one strikes at a head and cuts it off, two more grow back. Despite how Hercules supposedly kills it (with the Greek version of an asymmetric approach built upon critical thinking), the point is that if one faces a rival that generates strength that uses military action against it as a critical requirement instead of a vulnerability, it is a Lernaean Hydra. Traditional military targeting processes are incapable of dealing with the hydra because the rigid nature of MDMP and prescriptive proceduralism within post-positivist reductionism drives the “apply destructive force decisively through symmetry and mass via. Clausewitzian universal maxims and Jominian linear logic.” The targeting staff might apply Design theory and critical thinking to the HVI as well as the bounded system holistically- break away from seeking COGs that obey gravity; gravity might be our own invention instead. Western military theory is one logic, but not a universal one.
7. Perhaps staffs find it “impossible” to grapple with design theory along with MDMP because we have created such a vast and intricate MDMP procedure that it takes years for military planners to even get good at that logic. Throw in Design (which rejects all of MDMP and applies critical and asymmetric thinking), and now you have a cluster- some professionals are seasoned in only MDMP while others are just learning it. Some also are new to Design, while others might reject it entirely; some folks deeply understand both- but in our hierarchical organization one must impose yet another layer of complexity onto this already complex inter-personal dynamic. What if the person that understands MDMP and Design deeply is the lowest ranking person on the staff? What if they are the highest ranking? Or perhaps they are in the middle? What if the highest ranking person only understands MDMP? Our rigid hierarchy makes this even harder- we do it to ourselves. And we communicate through static forms of communication such as PowerPoint- to the point that we have endless meetings with thousands of slides, yet folks still struggle with basic concepts on what the heck the staff is doing, and why.
I probably answered none of your questions- but this is always an enjoyable distraction from work.
bz
– Bz:
At first I would like to thank all of you for this very impressive discussion.
You put Clausewitz and Jomini in contrast to Design Theory.
If I understood you correctly, there is – in your point of view – a general contradiction between Clausewitz/Jomini and Design Theory.
From my point of view there is much more a basic contradiction between Clausewitz and Jomini.
The Clausewitz interpretation in the US Army is often quiet narrow (due to the simplistic and even false understandig of Clausewitz in different books in English, especially van Creveld and Keegan).
Clausewitz does regognize the fog of war (he introduced the term in war theory). Is approach is not rigid or – it is much more a “state of mind” in a non-linear world (see Beycheren’s works on that).
Based on his thinking the German Army in the 1860 introduced mission command (pushed by Moltke).
So my conclusion would be: Clausewitz is not contrary to Design – he is the “grand-father” of it.
Or do I misunderstand Clauswitz and Design Theory totally?
Looking forward to a reply.
VB
VB-
I agree with you that our military institutions have a narrow interpretation of Clausewitz, and perhaps I ought to revisit his work again if this discussion provides another perspective on him. However, here is my take on what many call the “Dead Carl Club.”
1. Fully concur that Jominian theory is different than Clausewitzian. Jomini is prescriptive, and highly linear with a ‘reverse engineering’ and control approach to military operations. But Clausewitz does share many things that Jomini offers within the western military logic. Clausewitzian theory differs from Design Theory, as well as eastern military logic (or Soviet, if one takes the Naveh School of Systemic Operational Design (SOD) into consideration.
2. How is Clausewitz not in the Design Theory worldview? For starters, Clausewitz, in my opinion, is a tactician- but this may ruffle some feathers so I will try to lay it out here. There will be disagreement on this, but that of course is the point of academic discourse.
3. Clausewitzian theory approaches conflict by seeking tangible and universal attributes (although he does discuss the ‘fog of war’ and ‘genius transcends all rules’ which are intangible. Much of ‘On War’ follows structure such as the trinity, destruction of the enemy, and the metaphor of ‘dueling’ on a grand scale. There is a tremendous amount of focus on mass, maneuvers, and terrain is viewed from the tactician perspective of seeking decisive terrain, superior maneuver, controlling space to place your opponent at disadvantage.
4. Design Theory differs from Clausewitzian Theory in that operational space is both intangible and context dependent- there are no universal attributes one might apply in any generalist approach to conflict. In other words, every “law” that Clausewitz dictates; each of his many maxims are essentially his attempts at comprehending the future of warfare through control. War is an extension of politics- hence human conflict is unending and perpetual while inextricably linked to political behavior. Universal attributes in Clausewitzian Theory are manifested in things such as the ‘center of gravity’ concept. Gravity is a universal law- everything in the universe physically conforms to it (keeping this simple of course and not getting off-topic into theoretical physics…) which understandably was why Clausewitz and Jomini sought the same sort of complementary logic in a war theory. Universal attributes are appealing, because it helps answer the “how’s this war going to turn out” critical strategic question that we must always ask.
5. While a COG is an aspect of what Deleuze and Guattari offer as ‘striation of space’ for the military organization, Design Theory deals not with universal attributes that seek to control something uncontrollable, but in harmony with a chaoplextic ecosystem. If we accept that warfare is not universally governed by maxims or attributes; if we understand that a COG is artificial- just a preferred narrative that our military organization generates to attempt to comprehend the logic of a system- we begin to appreciate non-Clausewitzian logics; the importance of emergence, potential, transformation. We become less destruction-focused, less tacticized, less linear. We stop thinking about what rules there are to follow, and more about why so many things violate these rules.
6. Heresy is an aspect of Design Theory that Michel Foucault, termed ‘problematization’ in his series of Berkley post-modern philosophy lectures titled, “Discourse and Truth: The Problematization of Parrhesia.” One must become the critical thinker in order to understand not just the chaoplextic emergence of an ecosystem, but to look inward to how our military organization thinks- what our logic is, and why. That was the thesis of this article I wrote- that Design helps us understand why we like Clausewitz so much, why it works in some traditional and conventional state-on-state conflicts, and why it does not in other conflict. If even the most ardent defenders of Clausewitzian war theory are not the most critical thinkers (heretics) of Clausewitz’s work, then they are merely reinforcing the root metaphors and preferred narratives that our military organization seeks to define itself by; despite our shortcomings and failures.
7. Design Theory takes ‘effective heresy’ (whereas ineffective heresies are either design failures, or flawed logic; or hybridization of both)…and with this critical thinking, Design creates and destroys organizational logic. It continuously transforms- so the maxims and universal elements of Clausewitz are eliminated; war may be an extension of politics, or it may not. D&G even flip this maxim in their section on War Machines in ‘A Thousand Plateaus’ by suggesting that politics are an extension of total war…Design destroys those aspects of a military organization’s thinking that do not apply- and creates novel approaches that transform over time. I think that this makes many individuals uncomfortable because they prefer certainty- even if it is false. Many considered OBL to be the strategic COG of sorts for radical Islamic Ideology; some consider it instead to be the existing senior leadership of the more dangerous movements. However, as drone strikes and HVI raids whittle down these “COGs”, the movement and idea continues. Sageman writes on this in ‘Leaderless Jihad’- yet military organizations, especially the intelligence community, prefer tangible COGs for targeting because there is certainty associated with that logic. It reinforces the concept of the Clausewitzian Duel- instead of shooting with pistols we are exchanging IEDs and drone attacks…but where Clausewitzian theory seeks universal attributes such as a strategic enemy COG in every conflict for the US military, our organizations struggle with considering conflict in another logic that has no COGs. This is where Clausewitz is not Design Theory, nor the ‘father of Design.’ His theory of war is a western model…but there are others.
8. One copy of ‘On War’ was printed by Penguin Classics in 1968 and has an introduction essay on warfare by Anatol Rapoport. I really enjoyed his essay because he offers up a Soviet-centric analysis on why the west prefers Clausewitz while the Soviets shifted from what he offered as a ‘messianic eschatalogical’ war theory into a later ‘global cataclysmic eschatalogical’ war theory. What Rapoport wrote in the 1960s is actually quite applicable for today; he offered variations of these with a ‘divine messianic eschatalogical’ war theory option- which nests rather well with radical Islam; I also think he provides the framework for ecoterrorism logic with an ‘environmental global cataclysmic’ war perspective as well. The important point here is that Rapoport provides non-Clausewitzian logic for nations and groups of people that we did go to war with during the Cold War, Vietnam, Gulf War, and today’s conflicts. These groups do not subscribe to Clausewitzian logic; and it is not because they are ‘crazy’ or ‘backwards’- they see the world and make sense of it differently, to include warfare.
9. Design Theory enjoys non-western conflict concepts such as Eastern ‘Dao’ of which Jullien and D&G write about frequently. Naveh’s SOD makes this a cornerstone, and Naveh wrote extensively on Soviet operational art as a non-western approach that differed from Clausewitz in many aspects.
10. Why is the Dead Carl Club so powerful in military circles? This goes back to Design Theory and the concepts of simulacra (Baudrillard; a post-modern philosopher) as well as Organizational Theory’s ‘root metaphors’ and ‘field assumptions’ for organizational knowledge preservation. Since we use metaphors, language, and concepts to make sense of the empirical items that compose the physical world, our culture and values morph this conceptual framing- some to our advantage, some to our disadvantage. Clausewitz is sacred because our professional military education system uses (or over-uses) it at all levels. Moreover, at the ILE and War College level where folks are starting to offer Design, they are combining aspects of Clausewitz and Jomini into Design and salami-slicing different logics into a giant sandwich. Such a meal is creating indigestion because our own institution is confusing itself. We are also obsessively protective of the throne we have created for Clausewitz/Jomini. I combine them here because our doctrine and PME does so…despite both theorists being quite different. They are, however, firmly in a western conflict logic and not Design theorists.
11. Perhaps an easier way to explain it is that Clausewitz teaches you to think inside the box because the “box” becomes the structure of his theory built with universal maxims. Conflict will always occur inside the box because politics drives war; if you destroy the enemy in the box, you win the war and impose your will on the enemy. Everything in the box may be clouded over with fog and friction, but they all obey the universal laws such as gravity. Do not concern yourself with anything outside the box- that is not war. Design offers a process of recognizing the box, as well as the outside of the box. It can uncover other boxes; your rival might be using a different box for conflict; Design creates novel “non-boxes” for unique conflicts that lack maxims- that transform, adapt, self-organize.
Well, this was quite a rambling- I wonder even if I answered your question; but if I triggered more questions than answers, we are heading on the right journey anyway.
-Ben
Ben,
I missed this article when it first came out also, so I’m glad the recent posts resurfaced it. You make some excellent points in this article. I still think those who are promoting design thinking need to do more than say the military should embrace it, and propose how they can embrace it.
Perhaps one way to get more buy in is to give examples of where our current methodologies have failed. I have actually been sold on the idea of design when I first read about it a few years back, and hope to attend design training later this year. As you know the real test is putting it to use, as success tends to generate followers, while talk about paradigm changes is interesting more is needed. I think more people in the military see utility in design than you give them credit for, but it will take a few real world examples to get us to the tipping point where design thinking becomes the norm instead of an abberration.
Does anybody know why the Old Staff Study Format fell out of favor? That has a lot of Design mehtodology in it.
Old Staff Study Format:
1-Statement of the Problem
2-Assumptions
3-Facts Bearing on the Problem
4-Discussion of the Facts
5-Conclusions
6-Recomendations
BillM, yes some old SF analysis techniques seemed a lot like design, they were also more offensive in nature as opposed to always being reactive (politcally correct)in nature.
Outlaw-
I try to limit the Design Theory terms, but I do apply ‘synergy’ and ‘holistic appreciation’ because there are not too many words out there that convey the same thing. Then I use metaphors to help guide them towards really understanding the reason for using those words- and the importance of not confusing them with other words. I often see folks use ‘synergize’ and ‘analyze’ interchangeably- which I find fundamentally different.
– for synergy; I use the popular ‘assemble the bike’ metaphor. We as a military organization tend to be reductionists as I discussed in this article and others like Chris Paparone and Grant Martin go into great explanation on using concepts like ‘post-positivists’ and such in their articles/blogs on SWJ. We prefer to disassemble the bike, and get into profoundly detailed yet highly categorical procedures involving bike parts. Example: SOF conducts night raids and deal exclusively with bike pedals. Our COIN focus for conventional ISAF forces in Afghanistan are dealing with the bike spokes…while mentor/advisor teams specialize on the bike tires. NTM-A deals with the inner-tubes, while our USAF target the bike seat. Our PRTs handle just the handlebar (pun intended), while our State Dept and associated pals deal with the bike frame. Each organization specializes and does a fantastic job targeting and understanding their bike part, yet we are largely unable to bring them all together and assemble the bicycle.
If the staff is focused on bike parts, we have to nudge them towards considering not just their specialized section of the bike, but how that incorporates into the holistic appreciation of an assembled bike and what the entire bike does. A fully assembled bike works; but the parts alone are just parts…hence the whole is greater than the sum of the parts (holistic appreciation versus post-positivist reductionism).
Analysis- which military staffs tend to run for like a comfort blanket (because our PME teaches primarily in the post-positivist reductionist system of logic) is not about the bicycle, but about bike parts. You know when you are getting briefed on bike parts because, for a Design practitioner, it becomes clear that there are many ‘what’ details but not much ‘why’ explanation. For ‘jackpots’ that the measuring stick for ISAF and SOF, we get very much wrapped around how many pedals we found, how many are out there, where they are, and how they are linked…but we just do not seem to rise above the chess board to see beyond the pieces- to consider the meta-phenomenon that exists above and beyond the chess pieces themselves…and we measure success in the short-term with counting and categorizing our pedals- there is an interesting article on this that came out in late 2011 on this issue: see Alex Strick van Linschoten, Felix Kuehn, A Knock on the Door: 22 Months of ISAF Press Releases , (Poverty Afghanistan Analysts Network, 2011) 26. “ISAF may continue to hold that the capture-or-kill raids are the safest and most effective tool against the insurgency, but this remains to be proven, particularly in the context of the data cited in this report.” Clearly a debatable issue- but their article frames their argument with some valid points that demonstrate critical thinking; it is good to question our organization- our institution; why is a ‘jackpot’ a ‘jackpot’ and what does it mean to us? Analysists come do far different conclusions on this than synthesists. Their products are different, as are the logic they use to make sense of their ecosystem. PRTs do the same, as does the State Department- everyone becomes experts on their own bike part and keeps excellent track of how many parts they have, where they are, what their next short-term target is; but they are unable to combine everyone’s parts into the bike we are seeking in Afghanistan…
-Ben
All, here is a link to what appears to be the(new or newer version than I learned)of the Army problem solving methodology
http://www.amsc.belvoir.army.mil/interim/bc/docs/Problem%20Solving%20Steps%20Defined.pdf
The British recently published their Joint Doctrine Note 3/11- available here: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=4&ved=0CDMQFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mod.uk%2FNR%2Frdonlyres%2F913D4EE0-8779-40E7-8203-74A02B22AD51%2F0%2F20110706JDN311_FINAL_WEBAWB.pdf&ei=mU8aT8CvF-Lq0QGiqIicCw&usg=AFQjCNGTbs5mWrpvgoLDAiI4RJm0XyOIzw&sig2=N6JrwTvfsfrkNdX_KDxy6A
They call it “Decision-Making and Problem Solving: Human and Organisational Factors.”
In it, their ‘annex B’ is called: Heuristics: thinking strategies.
Interesting and short read- it goes to much of the heart of the recent discussions here on this thread, to include Slapout’s contributions. As stated in this article and below in the thread- it addresses how and why humans think the way they do- and why it works in some cases, but not in others; regardless of the problem. It has more to do with the self; or as his Holiness Guru Pidka once said, “intimacy, or into me I see (TM)”…
Hubba Bubba
– BZ:
A short (late) reply to your view on Clausewitz.
Concerning design you are eager to think out of the box.
Concerning Clausewitz you stick to Rapoport, although the modern Clausewitz research goes beyond his reductionist (!) or even false interpretaion:
“Penguin Edition (1968). AVOID. The most widely available version of the Graham/Maude translation (…) is the weirdly edited and seriously misleading Penguin edition (still reprinted and sold today), put together by Anatol Rapoport in 1968. Rapoport was a biologist and musician—indeed, he was something of a renaissance man and later made some interesting contributions to game theory. However, he was outraged by the Vietnam War and extremely hostile to the state system and to the alleged “neo-Clausewitzian,” Henry Kissinger. He severely and misleadingly abridged Clausewitz’s own writings, partly, of course, for reasons of space in a small paperback. Nonetheless—for reasons that surpasseth understanding—he retained Maude’s extraneous introduction, commentary, and notes, then used Maude’s errors to condemn Clausewitzian theory. Between Graham’s awkward and obsolete translation, Maude’s sometimes bizarre intrusions, and Rapoport’s hostility (aimed more at the world in general, and at Kissinger in particular, than at Clausewitz personally), the Penguin edition is badly misleading as to Clausewitz’s own ideas. The influential modern military journalist/historian John Keegan apparently derives much of his otherwise unique misunderstanding of Clausewitz from Rapoport’s long, hostile introduction—necessarily so, since he has obviously never read Clausewitz’s own writings, not even the rest of the text of this strange edition. If you have any version of the Graham or Graham/Maude translation, but especially this twisted Penguin version, we advise you to get the modern Howard/Paret edition (discussed above).”
http://www.clausewitz.com/bibl/WhichTrans.htm
This is also true concerning the application of Clausewitz in an non-western environment: Different studies showed that Clausewitzian theory can also give a deep insight in non-western conflicts (e.g. Africa: Duyvesteyn, 2004, Clausewitz and African WarPolitics and Strategy in Liberia and Somalia). There are further studies in German out of the last years.So just give the view of Beycheren and others a fair chance.
Back to Design: in my POV the MDMP is much more Jominian, than Clausewitzian. So Clausewitz is blamed for the wrong thing.
Clausewitz gives a very wide framework to understand wars and conflicts (due to the holistic trinity and the non-rigid approach of thinking) and therefore can also help in Design. But I agree with you this is bound to human conflict.
But I really don’t understand the need for a non-human conflict theory.
Yet, if we would understand human conflict better – this would be a lot in my POV.
Here a German perspective to Design – and the German planning process.
Maybe interesting for the discussion:
http://usacac.army.mil/CAC2/MilitaryReview/Archives/English/MilitaryReview_20091031_art007.pdf
Hope I don’t annoy you with the Clausewitz stuff!
VB
Just a side comment on the link sent by Hubba Bubba—the Brits are attempting to get close to design and at least they are writing in a way that is understandable.
Noticed their quote highlighted below that actually goes to a previous BZ comment referencing “Generalists”.
‘The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind a faithful
servant. We have created a society that honours the servant and
forgets the gift.’
Albert Einstein
BZ is correct in his observations that it is the “Generalist” who has the ability to detect the shadows of outlines and who tends to ignor the data flows that hit every battle staff these days as it is the shadow/shadows he pays attention to.
If we look at the Assessment WG which has been the traditional starting point for MDMP we always see the 5Ws and 1H at work, Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How in that sequence—this has been the standard question (in the same sequence) pattern for staffs since the 70s. Just a side note the 5Ws and IH sequence is used across all WfFs
Since the reality of adaptive complex ecosystems hit us in full force in 2005—just maybe the “Generalist” is the person who should be the driver of design. The question then is how do you train a “Generalist” or how do you recognize a “Generalist”?
If we equate the “Generalist” to the single question WHY maybe it is time to invert and remix the standard 5Ws and 1H sequence to be led first by the single most important question a battle staff can ever ask— WHY?
Then at least up front the staff is starting the thought process necessary for shifting from the traditional MDMP process to a hybrid model closer to Design.
Just a thought.
BZ—know you are busy but could you think about this and pass back thoughts when you have a chance and time.
If we say accept the article you wrote in FP as a “basis” of a good Design problem discussion, if we accept that the resistance from current battle staffs to get off of MDMP is high as we both know it is as it is the “Known”, if we know that Design is the key way forward for transitioning to “seeing” and “understanding” and that change is a fearful process in a military, if we know that a hybrid model (bridge) is the weaning process over to Design.
Then maybe we need to define the ideas around a “Generalist”, really relook your FP article for use as a training model, look at how we define and use the question WHY, relook where MDMP/B2C2WG is failing us in an open and honest fashion especially when dealing with adaptive complex ecosystems. I would argue that even in tank on tank Design opens the road to the battle tactic “Swarming operations” since Design would allow for an adaptive complex Strategy to be developed that is constantly adapting to the OE and without an adaptive Strategy “Swarming” cannot work.
Just my thoughts.
Secondly–went back over your article on the use of Design as applied to DTOs.
Had interesting recent conversations with several DHS agencies that have responsibilities on the monitoring of DTOs (as well as their related gangs in the US) and the conversations turned to Design as a way forward meaning what can be taken from the experiences gained by the military in dealing with adaptive complex ecosystems and applied to say DTOs, TNCOs, or even what is now being referred to as 3rd Gen Criminal Orgs.
Their ability to grasp the concept was amazingly fast as they do not seem to have the same hang ups as say a military institution has. Yes they tend to use the D3A targeting model, yes they may in fact be using a modified MDMP decisionmaking process, but they appeared far more open to critical thinking and that surprised me (maybe also due to a lack of manpower vs DoD and they have to get more done or be more adaptive in their approaches than say DoD)–it could also be due simply to the fact that the reality on the ground is extremely concerning to them as it goes to the defence of the homeland.
Could you modify the FP article to focus say on DTOs/TNCOs using the FP three phase cycle as a quick model to discuss as much as you can within OPSEC limits—maybe first just as a theoritical model using the three cycle approach (meaning taking the diagram and reworking it to a DTO styled approach) to get the conversation going?
Just a thought.
Really like your work as it it coming from a group of officers that have “seen” the issues first hand and are trying to position the force for the change that has to come in the coming months and years.
http://afpak.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/03/07/the_afghan_trust_deficit
Interesting article recently posted by a former NTM-A senior strategist; he apprears to be reinforcing many of what this article offers as flawed planning assumptions based upon the military’s prefered logic system. If COIN/FID/SFA’s core narrative on “advise and mentor” national security forces is build upon some significant faulty planning assumptions, what does this do from a design perspective on the entire ISAF Campaign Plan? The previous posts in this blog also seem to anticipate this same thesis.
Hubba Bubba