To Design, or not to Design

Indeed, finding someone who can order a good presentation now is incredibly hard, and finding a special company here is more rational, because it already knows exactly what it does and does not alter it confidently. Because several shodders are now in operation, from which more issues occur later. No business should encourage misprinting, so better planning and I am very glad I found such details here, and refer to ppt presentation experts I approached them and I received real assistance.

Posted by Ken,

"To return to the thought and practice of Design, it probably would be beneficial if someone were to determine why Design is required when design should be and generally is applied by most of us in determining what we might do and how we might do it. One could almost deduce it is an attempt to unfetter minds that have somehow been fettered -- or are possibly merely presumed to be so."

The concept of design doesn't need to be complex, you just need to recognize complexity to understand design, and man is more than capable enough of doing this. As a matter of fact our foes are quite good at this type of thinking, while we on the other hand have developing mental process models that have in dumbed us down. I have never been an advocate for MDMP, logical lines of operation, etc. for the very fact that it restricts your frame of reference and significantly reduces your creativity. Our limited success in GWOT is largely due to a poorly executed MDMP process that we can't break away from, and from that process came a few lame lines of operation that are lines to nowhere.

Starting the early 90s the system started feeding MDMP down SF's throats in the school house and at the training centers. 90% of the focus was on your ability to "conform" to the steps of MDMP, and no really cared if your solution actually worked. They even built software that automatically builds your MDMP slides! You just can't go wrong if you follow these steps to enlightenment.

Quite a shock from the previously more unconventional approach of being given an area of operation and a mission to accomplish. You didn't have to get a CONOP to leave the wire approved by three levels of command disassociated from the fight, instead you acted based on your understanding of the situation based on ground truth and your tactical to strategic assessments and appreciation garnered by your study prior to entering the AO and then constantly updated while on the ground.

While design may be able to take this process to another level using the right technology to crunch data and visualize it in a meaningful way (not discussed in design doctrine, this is my two cents on top of it) to enhance understanding, we can actually do considerably better than we are now by just practicing common sense.

It's funny that many of those who broke the rules throughout history were generally successful tactically and strategically, but in the process of doing good they made a lot of enemies within the system they challenged. Being successful in combat isn't as highly valued as being a conformist and that is just sad.

My understanding of Ben's thesis is that in an attempt to make Design palatable to the institution, compromises made have diluted the Design concept to the point where it is neither useful nor palatable.

It is worth noting that Design started as its own FM, and even then the theoretical underpinning of the concepts extend well beyond what was contained in that FM. The intellectual energy needed to understand such a concept seems to run counter to our institutional, checklist oriented culture. The unstructured nature of Design stands in stark contrast to the highly structured MDMP.

American culture is working against Design as well. Dan Meyer, in his address to the March 2010 conference in New York, said:

<i>[W]hen people fill their mind with four hours a day of, for example, "Two and a Half Men," no disrespect, it shapes the neural pathways...in such a way that they expect simple problems. He called it, "an impatience with irresolution." You're impatient with things that don't resolve quickly. You expect sitcom-sized problems that wrap up in 22 minutes, three commercial breaks and a laugh track. And I'll put it to all of you, what you already know, that no problem worth solving is that simple.</i>

I'll be interested to see where Ben goes with this.

I agree with much of what Ben says, so I'll just comment on a few key points:

Z: "Essentially, U.S. Army adaptation of design methodology is currently unable to provide the military novel and understandable approaches to complexity."

The most frequent criticism of Design I have heard has been, "sounds interesting, but how can I use it?" I think that question points to a general misunderstanding of Design. Design isn't supposed to provide you with THE answer- like some doctrinal chapter on MDMP- perhaps the greatest "answers" are those that would be developed if staffers were forced/allowed to come up with novel approaches every time their commander/staff/unit identified a complex environment they had to deal with.

Z: "... Brigadier General L.D. Holder felt that "doctrine was traditional, not revolutionary. Doctrine was by nature incomplete, yet internally consistent... operations were dependent on tactical success."... "

This reminds me of a quote from a NATO officer who was even more negative towards his own army: "The U.S. Army is tactically deft, operationally dim, and strategically dull." (his own country: "Our Army is tactically backwards, operationally bereft, and strategically bombastic.") I wondered if he'd describe the Taliban as: "Tactically prudent, operationally poor, and strategically patient."

Z: "Unfortunately, the detailed processes that functioned effectively during man¸s transition from the agrarian (tactics fixated) into the post-Industrial (rise of operational art) now prevent military organizations from adapting these polemical conceptual devices that make design theory the next military paradigm."

Thought: Army senior leaders seem to think that if they went to Design it would be like they were in a football game wherein the other team has a playbook and a scripted set of plays for the first quarter, and our team would be sitting in a circle asking questions like, "why are we playing football?", "what is the essence of football?", and, "who are we, really?". Unfortunately, a counterinsurgency is more like a football game wherein the referees have gone home, the opposing players have put on civilian clothes and melted into the crowd, and the popcorn vendors are throwing nerf footballs onto the field with bombs inside of them. But "our" team is still on the field in jerseys looking to the sidelines for the coach to tell them what the 3rd scripted play is in the playbook...

Z: "... For design to function as a bridge between strategic aims and tactical action... "

Not sure if this is what "Design" is supposed to do. In my mind, the "Design" literature leads me to believe that Design would get one to a better description of complex environments and possible ways with which to approach these environments- regardless of the "level" (Design would have us question the framework of "strategic, operational, and tactical", etc.). However, I would agree that is what SAMS/CGSC's focus would be.

Z: "The current practice of using military terms and phrases interchangeably and without discipline inhibits institutional understanding of design. ¾To Design or not to Design¸ recommends that heavily-used words such as ¾problem¸ and ¾end state,¸ traditionally associated with detailed military planning, should not continue their dual-use roles in design theory."

100% agree! But, I was told by the doctrine writers that they were pressured to fit vocabulary into the Design literature in order for it to be understandable and usable to military practitioners. There seems to be a very negative view in the upper tiers of our military's leadership towards military officers' ability to grasp complex topics.

Z: "The West, with its own kind of theoretical equipment, which is of a formalizing and technical nature, has proven itself to be singularly inept at thinking about the conduct of warfare, taking account only of secondary matters (preparations and material data) and failing to consider the phenomenon itself"

This doesn't just apply to how we view warfare- but across the board on every subject. The "preparations and material data" (or how we prioritize actions and allocate resources) are based on assumptions we refuse to question and theories that are paradigmatic in nature. The majority of our time- perhaps as much as 99.9%- is spent on prioritization and allocation analysis- and reporting on the information of that analysis (and a constant shifting of those resources based on short-term pressures) and very little, if any, time spent on questioning underlying assumptions in my experience.

Z: "Granted, organizational conservatism does perform an important role preventing radical and ill-conceived change. However, critical thinking and complex system synthesis are not fads."

Agree. Whether we call it something else in 10 years or not- eventually we will have to deal with these issues- or cede capability to a peer competitor.

Z: "Design doctrine¸s reliance upon linear processes demonstrates the powerful institutional forces that codify detailed planning and attempt to ¾tacticalize¸ operational art. "In the military sphere, we train almost exclusively to the tactical level of abstraction;"

I think this is what COL Gentile has also been arguing: that we are allowing tactics to run strategy in COIN (I'd argue we do that because of our painful realization that our strategy and operational art are lacking in this complex environment).

Z: "At the tactical level, detailed planning should continue linear processes because they work; however, operational art when using design theory should avoid the prescriptive and sequential nature of linear processes."

To me this is the hardest thing to answer wrt Design, "well then how do we plan in complex environments?" Many people have commented that in terms of identifying the requirements to attack conventional armor divisions, buying the equipment needed, training to a standard, deploying in a small amount of time, arraying ourselves, and then defeating that conventional force- we are indeed impressive. We use that same force structure, however, to attempt to apply the same linear/engineering tools (MDMP, JOPP, TPFDD, etc.) to do complex operations such as COIN.

Design's literature would recommend (possibly) changing one's structure, tools, principles, etc.- when confronted with any complex environment (with the thought that no one environment- whether it is COIN or not) is the same. Outside of assigning priorities and collating all of the tactical levels' "micro" efforts (and interpreting what is going on, re-interpreting and adjusting resources as they go), I'm not sure what else the higher levels would do (what we now call the operational level). If you believe strongly in "emergent" solutions and emergence in general, then top-down-inspired efforts are probably bad anyway...

Z: "FM5-0 Chapter 3 Design follows military doctrinal etiquette and is devoid of any allegorical content due to codifying principles that functioned for previous military requirements. The traditional military profession holds that the military audience might misinterpret metaphors and analogies, if placed into doctrine, in a prescriptive or pedantic manner."

I have heard numerous times that there was much pressure to "dumb down" the Design doctrine. Specifically the words I have heard numerous times were, "we need to shorten it and insert concepts we use now like lines of effort, end-states, and centers of gravity." That these concepts at the least were problematic when merged with Design concepts (at the most- contradicting of them) seems to have been ignored in favor of a greater chance of buy-in from the rank and file.

Grant Martin
MAJ, US Army

I have tried to portray "systems thinking" --with concepts such as interiority and exteriority and, as Bousquet extends the concepts into the "chaoplexic" framing of war -- as a valuable heuristic (and not the "answer" as would a positivist).

In other words, borrowing the logic of biological (complex adaptive) systems as a framework for explaining warfare is just one way of framing (and, in a postpositivist way, multiple frames are better than just one "settled" on). There will more heuristics (as you indicate as "allegorical constructs") available as the natural sciences continue to reframe and extend/displace old frames.

The competition of frames presents the fallacy of doctrine -- fueled by the assumption that the institution has to settle on one. This indicates doctrine as a political process, not a "scientific" one. We "elect" dominant frameworks (such as AirLand Battle, EBO, full spectrum/ROMO, and so on) through a kind of oligarchical system of governance (where the "powers that be" curtail debate, decide, and publish the next iteration of "3.0s").

I look forward to reading your series (and I'll be patient now in that you will attempt to answer these speculations through them)!

As Thomas Kuhn indicated(and I paraphrase as I do not have the book in front of me) that new paradigms cannot communicate with the existing ones. Ben is boldly trying to prove him wrong.

I think it interesting that Ben has a masters degree in the liberal arts -- perhaps that should indicate interpretive (appreciative, hermeneutic, aesthetic, etc.) skills and such that would not be stressed in the "sciences." This may give Ben a leg up.

In my view:

oo Design is a metaphor in and of itself (and Ben speaks to the importance of metaphoric thinking).

oo Design is an unstructured process (that when we try and place structure on it, it loses its "creative mystique."

oo Design is interdisciplinary (it does not reject multiple views on the same phenomenon, but wants to "see" through as many as possible).

oo Design, then, would include Eastern/Confucian logic that is so remarkably different than Greco-Western thought (while not rejecting the latter). An interesting book I am reading right now relates well: Treatise on Efficacy: Between Western and Chinese Thinking by Francois Jullien.

Ben--we should someday seek to partner on a writing project!!