Adapt or Die: Operational Design and Adaptation
Abstract
The operational level of warfare provides the logic and rationale that determines the tactical actions necessary to achieve strategic goals. The Australian Army’s approach to operational design—embodied in the Military Appreciation Process—has not kept pace, however, with the increasing scope and complexity of contemporary military operations. However, ‘design’—a new approach to operational planning now on the ascendant in the US Army and Marine Corps—promises to incorporate the elements of creative and critical thinking required to design operations that will succeed on today’s complex battlefields. Without this new approach to the operational level of war, Australia’s ability to pursue its own sovereign goals will diminish and eventually disappear entirely.
School trains us never to admit that we do not know the answer, and most organisations reinforce the lesson by rewarding people who excel in advocating their views, not inquiring into complex issues ... Even if we feel uncertain or ignorant, we learn to protect ourselves from the pain of appearing uncertain or ignorant. That very process blocks out any new understandings which might threaten us. The consequence is what [is called] ‘skilled incompetence’—teams full of people who are incredibly proficient at keeping themselves from learning.1
- Peter Senge
‘Adapt or die’ has a particular tactical immediacy on today’s increasingly complex, lethal, diverse and uncertain battlefield. We intuitively understand the enemy is adaptive, more than willing and readily able to change tactics, techniques and procedures in response to our actions. We also know the inability to adapt tactically will inevitably lead to failure and, on a personal level, perhaps death or serious injury. Witness the counter-IED battle in both Iraq and Afghanistan. But success at war and warfare depends on more than being adaptive to ensure we are doing things right. More so, success depends on us consistently and cumulatively doing the right things. This depends on a continuous and iterative adaptation of our operational approach to ensure its relevancy and effectiveness. This is an altogether different scale of adaptation than tactical adaptation.
The Australian Army typically has been proficient at tactical adaptation. Adapting our operational approach to ensure we are doing the right things does not come as easily. This article argues that getting the operational approach consistently closer to right than wrong depends on a methodology for applying critical and creative thinking to understand, visualise and describe complex problems and developing iterative approaches to solving them.2 This methodology is known as operational design and is currently an evolving approach to the array of complex problems the military is increasingly being called upon to manage.
The Australian Army’s own doctrinal approach to ‘design’, and indeed the ADF’s as well, is mechanistic, reductionist and inadequate for an increasingly complex battlespace and array of missions. Current doctrine relies on concepts such as ‘centre of gravity’ and ‘decisive points’, whose premise that ‘sufficient connectivity exists among the various parts of the enemy to form an overarching system (or structure) that acts with a certain unity’ must be questioned in light of what we now know about complexity.3 And, in practice, such concepts tend to be elevated above the need to define the true nature of the problem and associated operational objectives required to change the operating environment positively over time in our favour. As well as irrelevant doctrine, the Australian Army does not adequately educate its leaders or planners to deal with complexity. To ensure we are better able to design, plan and execute operations that are inherently relevant and adaptive and that achieve our operational and strategic objectives, the Army should incorporate the art of operational design into its everyday practice. In support the Army must:
- consciously promote a culture that continually challenges our understanding and perceptions, thinks long-term and holistically, and supports working with ambiguity and complexity
- institutionally enhance critical and creative thinking skills, and
- adapt our doctrine to incorporate operational design and make it relevant for the challenges of today and the immediate future.
Developing Design Momentum
In the US Army there has been significant intellectual effort expended recently towards developing a useful operational design methodology that is suitable for incorporation into doctrine and general practice. In 2004, the US Army’s Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) visited the Operational Theory Research Institute (OTRI) in Israel to discuss Systemic Operational Design (SOD). SOD is the Israeli Defence Force’s (IDF) methodology for operational design and is mostly the brainchild of retired Brigadier Shimon Naveh.4 This was followed by the annual US Army Title X Unified Quest Capstone Wargames of 2005 and 2006 incorporating SOD and, in December 2006, the much-publicised FM 3-24 Counterinsurgency manual was published, with an entire chapter devoted to campaign design. The IDF version of SOD was ‘Americanised’ in 2007/08 with the publication of the TRADOC Pamphlet Commander’s Appreciation and Campaign Design (CACD), which does an excellent job of distilling SOD into useful and practical language. This was followed with a more evolved and practical design methodology articulated in an issue paper released by Army Headquarters titled Issue Paper: Army Design Doctrine – Design (Final Draft - Pre-Decisional), 29 March 2009. The purpose of this issue paper was to promote Army-wide debate on an appropriate design methodology to be incorporated into the new FM 5-0 Army Planning and Orders Production doctrine, which was due for release in October 2009.
Throughout this period the US Army’s School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS) deliberately incorporated SOD and subsequent evolutions of operational design into their curriculum and encouraged debate on the utility of design as an approach to solving complex operational problems. In the last eighteen months SAMS has been at the forefront of the public debate on operational design.5 Currently, SAMS includes twenty-four lessons on design and critical thinking in its curriculum, as well as four weeks of design practical exercises based on real world operational problems. The US Army War College has also included operational design and design practical exercises into its curriculum, although not to the same extent as SAMS. On a practical level, US Combatant Commands have begun establishing discrete, purpose-built permanent design teams as part of the commanding general’s ‘inner sanctum’, and SAMS graduates are being encouraged to use design in a deliberate manner on operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Both the British and Canadian armies are paying close attention to the developments in operational design, knowing that should the US Army adopt operational design formally into its doctrine it will only be a matter of time before they do as well. Both armies participated in strength in the recent US Army experiment OmniFusion 09, which included as one of its major outcomes the examination of whether design was appropriate at the tactical level (US Army Division) in a time constrained operational environment. The Canadians are looking to incorporate design into their own doctrine in 2010. The recently released UK Joint Publication Campaigning devotes large sections to operational design consistent with the key themes detailed in the US Army’s Issue Paper: Army Design Doctrine, although without mentioning the word ‘design’.6 It is also worth noting the British Army has taken the deliberate step of posting all SAMS graduates into Brigade Chiefs of Staff positions (equivalent to a Brigade Major in the Australian Army). The consistent comment from these graduates is that the design methodology and associated critical thinking skills package taught at SAMS significantly enhances their confidence and competence in developing brigade plans.
The USMC is currently debating how best to incorporate design methodology into its doctrine. The Director of the USMC School of Advanced Warfighting (SAW), Lieutenant Colonel Alex Vohr, early this year published an article in the Marine Corps Gazette arguing that the design methodology advanced in Commander’s Appreciation and Campaign Design provided little enhancement to the Marine Corps Planning Process (MCPP) and was therefore redundant for the Marines.7 On 14 August of this year, Headquarters United States Marine Corps released a functional working draft of its revised MCPP with significant changes aimed at explaining design and exposing a wider Marine Corps audience to the design discussion preparatory to a formal revision of the publication in 2010. A primary change in this revised working draft is that Chapter 1 of the MCPP has been re-named from ‘Mission Analysis’ to ‘Problem Framing’. This chapter has been re-written in a similar manner to the UK Campaigning: ‘design’ is woven throughout and the point is explicitly made that design is appropriate to problem solving at all three levels of war.8 Unfortunately, the reality is many Marines (and US, British, Canadian and Australian Army officers) do not apply their respective planning processes in the spirit in which they were written. As one Marine Corps planner stated on return from his second tour of Iraq as a planner:
Before we deployed this time around [2008-2009] we ‘designed’ our campaign plan and operational approach. We didn’t call it ‘design’ but that is what we did. Unfortunately, once in theatre and underway, we never forced ourselves to re-visit this design, and commanders tended to quickly fall back on predictable planning methods ...9
Another USMC officer and a recent graduate of SAMS wrote in an email to the SAW Director that in his opinion:
... there are many erroneous criticisms of Design: systems theory is a pseudo science, Design is just MDMP/MCPP ‘on steroids’, Design is merely IPB ... Even though good commanders will intuitively design and frame problems, I believe a more formal cognitive methodology doesn’t hurt. From personal experience, I can confidently say that design is different than planning and the Design ‘process’ itself is effective at breaking down planning stove-pipes and improves the overall performance of an OPT [Operational Planning Team]... 10
‘Design’ features in both ADF and Army doctrine, but at nowhere near the level of sophistication compared with the latest methodology detailed in the US Army’s CACD or Design Issue Paper. Typically, in ADF doctrine, design is associated with campaign design; however, as will be discussed, it is reductionist, mechanistic, and too generic to provide any real utility.11 It certainly does not support dealing with complex operational problems in any meaningful way. Similarly, the attempt to write design into the draft of LWD 3-0 Operations (Developing Doctrine) and LWD 3-1 Counterinsurgency fails on all counts to provide a useful methodology or describe why design might be necessary.
Why Design?
Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them.12
- Laurence J Peter
Much of the motivation behind the US Army’s push to develop an appropriate design methodology to support solving complex operational problems comes from three main stimuli. The first is that with the value of hindsight a number of senior US Army officers have recognised that the planning for both Afghanistan and Iraq was not sufficiently comprehensive and failed to account adequately for the shift in the character of both of those wars. The second stimulus is the growing recognition that warfare today is becoming increasingly complex, operational problems are more ‘wicked’ than in the past, and that dealing with this complexity requires a different approach to problem solving. Finally, and related to the previous two stimuli, is the widespread recognition that to be successful in an era of persistent and complex conflict the Army needs to be inherently adaptive and become a true ‘learning organisation’. It is worth examining each of these in some detail in order to provide context before looking at what operational design is and how it facilitates adaptation. This context provides a number of stark lessons for the Australian Army as we continue to conduct operations, particularly in Afghanistan, and as we move towards an Adaptive Army.
The Right Operational Approach
Everybody likes to fight the war that he knows best; this is very obvious. But in Vietnam we fight a war that we don’t ‘know best’ The sooner this is realised the better it is going to be.13
- Bernard Fall, 1964
Tactics and strategy are symbiotically linked by the operational level of war. The operational approach undertaken within a theatre of war, such as Iraq or Afghanistan, Timor-Leste or the Solomon Islands, provides the framework for and purpose of our tactics. Designing an operational approach that translates strategic objectives into tactical actions that are coherently arranged by a commander in time, space and purpose is arguably the essence of operational art.14 If the operational approach is not appropriate, no matter how good your tactics you will not be successful.
The British in the early years in Malaya were convinced large battalion plus-sized sweeps designed to ‘break insurgent concentrations and bring them to battle before they are ready’ was the necessary operational approach to end the Malayan insurgency rapidly.15 As one historian of the Malayan Emergency explains:
The predilection of some army officers for major operations seems incurable ... On arrival in Malaya, they would address themselves with chinagraphs to a map almost wholly green except for one red pin: ‘Easy,’ they would say. ‘Battalion on the left, battalion on the right, battalion blocking the end, and then a fourth battalion to drive through. Can’t miss, old boy.’16
The British did not start having success until the Briggs Plan was operationalised in 1950. This plan not only restructured the British command and control apparatus in Malaya, but also placed a priority on winning the support of the population to separate the insurgents from their support bases rather than defeating the insurgents by force of arms.17 Small patrols, acting on precise intelligence, supporting or supported by British and indigenous police forces, became the order of the day. The Briggs Plan was subsequently adapted the following and successive years by Sir Gerald Templer as the situation began to change in favour of the British. In the end it became the operational framework on which British success depended.
Not surprisingly, Vietnam provides an excellent case study of the inherent dangers of a non-existent or inappropriate operational approach failing to provide the right context for tactics and aligning tactical actions to achieve operational and subsequently strategic objectives. This is no better illustrated than the reported conversation between US Army Colonel Harry Summers and a North Vietnamese counterpart in Hanoi in 1975: ‘You know, you never defeated us on the battlefield,’ said the American colonel. The North Vietnamese colonel pondered this remark a moment. ‘That may be so,’ he replied, ‘but it is also irrelevant.’18
Of course, as the bridge between strategy and tactics it makes sense that the appropriate operational approach depends on an equally appropriate overarching strategy. As a retired US Special Forces veteran of Vietnam suggests:
When you’re facing a counterinsurgency war, if you get the strategy right, you can get the tactics wrong, and eventually you’ll get the tactics right. If you get the strategy wrong and the tactics right at the start, you can refine the tactics forever but you still lose the war. That’s basically what we did in Vietnam.19
But, as we will see, the methodology of operational design promotes a continuous, frank and robust dialogue between those responsible for the strategy and those responsible for the operational approach. This dialogue has the potential to mitigate any such disconnect between tactics and strategy.
More recently, according to Dr Michael Evans the ‘lost victories’ of the 2001-03 US-led ‘first phase’ campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq respectively are a cautionary warning of reliance on strategy empowered by information-age tactics.20 The operational approach adopted once the centre of gravity—the Iraqi Republican Guard—had been neutralised, was heavily weighted towards force protection and counter-terrorism at the expense of protecting the population. Later, under General Casey during 2005-07, the operational approach was adapted slightly to emphasise fast tracking the development of Iraqi Security Forces while concurrently reducing the presence of US forces in the cities.21 Neither operational approaches worked, and there was a reluctance to make any significant adaptations. In effect, up until the celebrated ‘surge’ in Iraq during 2007-08 and General Petraeus taking command of the war, the operational approach undertaken by Coalition Forces in Iraq (primarily US forces) was the totally wrong approach.22
In Afghanistan, too, the operational approach has not promoted best practice tactics that are contextually appropriate. Many coalition forces do not actively and consistently patrol their areas of responsibility or, when they do patrol, they sally forth from Forward Operating Bases for a quick-order patrol that has very limited enduring effect due to a lack of reinforcement of ‘holding’ operations and often inflames local tensions rather than creating an atmosphere of progress or stability. In too many cases, the tactical methods employed by coalition forces focus more on self-protection rather than on protecting local communities. Actions such as aggressive driving of up-armoured vehicles in built-up areas, defaulting to the use of air-delivered weapons when contacted by enemy forces rather than adopting a more proportional response of dismounted fire and manoeuvre, and a reluctance to share information or lessons learned with ANA and ANP partners contribute to psychologically separating the Coalition Forces from the people they should be protecting.23 This does not represent best practice tactics within a sound operational approach.
Some in the Australian Army and wider ADF would suggest that this is all well and good; however, it will be a rare turn of events that leads to responsibility for an operational approach falling on an Australian Army Headquarters. Our focus, unless in the rare instance we are required to lead a regional intervention of choice, is almost always going to be tactical and operational design is therefore an unnecessary distraction. This argument is highlighted by a Canadian officer:
It could be argued that middle-powers [such as Australia] are incapable of exercising operational art, and perhaps do not require an independent operational level at all. In this case, their small, tactically focused militaries would only require an understanding of operational doctrine to the extent that permits them to integrate tactical forces into larger alliance or coalition operations, and to effectively participate in coalition headquarters (HQ)—a requirement limited to a small number of senior commanders and staff officers.24
Besides, if the comments in 2008 from Land Headquarters regarding proposed amendments to the MAP are anything to go by, it would appear that the MAP is more than adequate for meeting Army’s needs for any situation. 25
Together, this sort of thinking highlights Michael Evans’ central argument that ADF operational art is conceptually weak and has been characterised by an intellectually restrictive framework, resulting in a ‘closing of the Australian military mind’. Operational warfare is not a factor of size, but rather one of function. Without an operational framework, middle powers such as Australia are not capable of pursuing sovereign interests.26 The reality is Australian Army battle groups deploying to Afghanistan are attempting to balance the tactical expectations placed on them by Regional Command South and the NATO International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Headquarters with the strategic expectations placed on them by the ADF. Nobody is providing support to the battle group commander to develop an operational framework to manage these competing expectations. As one returned Afghanistan Reconstruction Task Force Commander acknowledged, ‘80% of my job was operational, 20% tactical; my sub-unit commanders were 20% operational and 80% tactical. Success demanded operational art. I was setting my own operational objectives to meet Australia’s intent.’27
Complexity, Wicked Problems And Systems Thinking
[Complex systems’] most marked feature is a departure from the idea that our world can be reduced to simple models, that the real dynamics of the world make prediction nearly impossible and demand a different way of thinking.28
- Joshua Cooper Ramo
Today, rapid advances in technology, globalisation and the spread of information and communications technology have promoted greater interconnectivity and interdependence, resulting in modern forces being larger, more specialised, more networked, with decisions being more distributed than ever before.29 Alongside this, although the nature of war has not changed since Thucydides wrote The Peloponnesian Wars, our aspirations for the use of military force to further political ends have. Rather than using military force to defeat an enemy military force in order to seize geographic or economic strategic objectives as in days past, today military forces are being used to attempt to solve all manner of vague and ill-defined ‘strategic problems’ that often do not have a neatly definable solution and more often than not require much more than just the application of military force and many more actors than just the military. Our enemy, too, are proving to be increasingly innovative, diverse, adaptive, agile and lethal, proving to be more difficult to defeat than anticipated. And, an increasingly pervasive media ensuring the accelerated dissemination of any negative action as well as the interpenetration of politics throughout each of the levels of war add additional complexity to the operating environment. This entire melting pot of technology, increasing interdependence, ill-defined strategic problems, multiple actors, and an asymmetric enemy have together created an extremely complex environment that consistently defies prediction.
War has always been complex. Even a casual reading of Thucydides highlights that war is a social phenomenon that occurs within an intricate and interconnected web of politics, economics, societal dynamics, culture, religion, ideology, geography and the international relations between states. Clausewitz, too, understood fundamentally the inherent complexity in war which is evident in his emphasis on interaction, friction and chance. As Alan Beyerchen argues, On War ‘is suffused with the understanding that every war is inherently a nonlinear phenomenon, the conduct of which changes its character in ways that cannot be analytically predicted’.30 But there is now a widespread growing realisation that due to increasing complexity our traditional approaches to solving problems through the use of military force, grounded in Newtonian logic and linear determinism, do not work.31 This growing realisation has come about through practical experience most recently in Iraq and Afghanistan and through an increased awareness of advances in the science of complex systems.
A system is complex in the sense that there are a great many independent agents interacting with each other in a great many ways.32 Not only do these independent agents interact with each other, but they individually and collectively interact with their environment. Human society is a complex system, made up of many, many complex systems. The Army, too, is a complex system made up of many other complex systems. A key property of a complex system is it will tend towards non-linear behaviour. This means that changes in system output are not necessarily proportional to changes in system input as they would be for a linear system. Small causes of change do not necessarily result in small effects. 33 The so called ‘strategic corporal’ effect is an example, as is Clausewitz’s assertion that success ‘is not due simply to general causes. Particular factors can often be decisive—details only known to those who were on the spot ... while issues can be decided by chances and incidents so minute as to figure in histories simply as anecdotes.’34 Second, non-linear systems can not be broken into smaller pieces, analysed, and then put back together with the expectation that the sum of the analyses will satisfactorily explain the whole. This requires a holistic view of the system, not a reductionist view. As Huba Wass de Czege, the founder of SAMS and lead author of the famous US Army FM 3-0 Operations (AirLand Battle) suggests:
Where merely complicated systems require mostly deduction and analysis (formal logic of breaking into parts), complexity requires inductive and abductive reasoning for diagnostics and synthesis (the formal logic of making new wholes of parts).35
Unfortunately, the MAP is firmly grounded on deduction (IPB, Mission Analysis) and analysis (COA selection) rather than any explicit synthesis.
Two other properties of complex systems worth noting are emergence and adaptation. Emergence essentially describes the condition where the whole is different to the sum of its parts.36 That is, emergence is ‘the arising of novel and coherent structures, patterns, and properties during the process of self-organisation in complex systems’.37 A simple example is that humans, attempting to satisfy their material needs by buying, selling and trading with one another create an emergent structure known as a market. According to complex systems science, the key to even beginning to understand emergence lies in the connections between the ‘nodes’ or parts of the systems, rather than just focusing on the nodes themselves.38 The second property of note in complex systems, and one intimately connected to emergence, is adaptation. All living organisms on earth are complex adaptive systems. Such systems are self-organising because they have the capacity to ‘learn’ from their interaction with their environment; over time, there is a trend toward increasing sophistication, complexity and functionality.39 According to the Nobel Laureate Murray Gell-Mann, a complex adaptive system:
... receives a stream of data about itself and its surroundings. In that stream, it identifies particular regularities and compresses them into a concise ‘schema’, one of many possible ones ... In the presence of further data from the stream, the schema can supply descriptions of certain aspects of the real world, predictions of events that are to happen in the real world, and prescriptions for behaviour of the complex adaptive system in the real world. In all these cases there are real world consequences ... All these consequences then feed back to exert ‘selection pressures’ on the competition among various schemata, so that there is a strong tendency for more successful schemata to survive and less successful ones to disappear ...40
In essence, complex adaptive systems are continually adapting to improve their fit to the environment based on their ‘perceptions’ of the environment. Army’s Future Land Operational Concept, Adaptive Campaigning, recognises this when it describes warfare as a competitive learning environment between multiple complex adaptive systems, requiring emphasis on consistent context appropriate behaviour if these systems are to be changed in our favour.41
Complex human systems produce ill-structured, or ‘wicked’ problems. Wicked problems were first defined by two US city planners, Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber in the 1970s. Rittel and Weber were motivated by the understanding that the professionalised cognitive and occupational styles that were refined in the first half of this century, based in Newtonian mechanistic physics, are not readily adapted to contemporary conceptions of interacting systems and to contemporary concerns with equity.42
There are ten distinguishing properties of wicked problems, but of most import for armed forces called upon to deal with wicked problems is the realisation that there is no definitive formulation of a wicked problem. This means that the information needed to understand the problem depends on one’s idea for solving it: the problem cannot be defined until the solution has been found.43 This in turn means that both the nature of the problem and the appropriate response are unique and fluid.44 In the face of a wicked problem, defining the true nature of the problem becomes both essential and problematic. Often, the true nature of the problem does not emerge until we create change in the system, and even after change is created the true problem does not emerge until an indeterminable period of time has passed. How we frame the problem is therefore fundamental to success—we solve the problems we frame. 45
Typically, though, there is a tendency to not even recognise the relevance of the complexity and ‘wickedness’ inherent in many of the problems we are called upon to solve and to leap straight into what we know and attempt to ‘tame it’. As Gary Klein argues in his popular book, Sources of Power, decision-makers usually look for the first workable option they can find, not necessarily the best solution. The emphasis is more on being poised to act rather than being paralysed until all the evaluations have been completed.46 Our own culture exacerbates this ‘can-do’ attitude, as does the MAP with its upfront analysis of the mission which is generally provided to us by our higher headquarters and accepted as the mission that needs a solution. In his excellent book The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge points out that:
[from] a very early age, we are taught to break apart problems, to fragment the world. This apparently makes complex tasks and subjects more manageable, but we pay a hidden, enormous price. We can no longer see the consequences of our actions; we lose our sense of connection to a larger whole.47
A striking example of an attempt to tame a wicked problem is offered by Keith Grint in an analysis of leadership, command and management during D-Day. Grint highlights the 1942 raid on Dieppe by the Canadians. He suggests the planners were so confident that they demanded that no Canadian unit commander use his initiative since this itself might undermine the guarantee of success. The Canadian Commanding General of the raid, Major General JH Roberts, was quite optimistic about the whole affair, for ‘the plan is good, the men are keen and they know what to do’. This just before landing 5100 troops only to see 3648 fail to return.48
Effective action in an environment where problems tend to be ill-structured and are the result of multiple complex adaptive systems competing with each other requires significant insight into the relationships defining the wider system.49 A systems perspective acknowledges there are multiple levels of explanation in any complex situation and looks at the situation holistically, avoiding the temptation to break the perceived problem down into manageable chunks. A predilection of the military, however, is to focus on ‘events’. This in turn leads to ‘event’ explanations— who did what to whom (incident reports for example). While such explanations may be true for the particular incident captured at a certain point in time and from a certain perspective—our own—they ‘distract us from seeing the longer term patterns of change that lie behind the events and from understanding the causes of those patterns’.50 Typically we ignore the deeper, more fundamental questions associated with the structure of the system or systems with which we interact. That is, we fail to ask and answer: ‘What causes the patterns of behaviour?’ Connected to this is the typical response when faced with a failing course of action of finding someone to blame or assigning responsibility to one individual to oversee ‘the system’, to coordinate and control what is happening. Ironically, the ‘system’ includes how we work together; putting somebody in charge by its very nature makes things worse because no one person can understand ‘the system’ and its multiple interactions well enough to be responsible.51 A collaborative approach to problem solving that deliberately and with focus includes a variety of perspectives is essential.
The Learning Organisation
Learning organisations are ... organisations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to see the whole together.52
- Peter Senge
The final stimuli behind the push for enhanced operational design is the realisation that, in order to prepare its leaders for the challenges and complexities of the contemporary operating environment, the US Army must develop an institutionalised culture of innovation and adaptation. In an influential article in 2004, then Brigadier General David Fastabend and Robert Simpson passionately argue that ‘if we were to choose one advantage over our adversaries it would certainly be this: to be superior in the art of learning and adaptation’.53 Specifically, the US Army must become a true learning organisation.
According to Fastabend and Simpson, ‘learning organisations routinely overcome the impediment of centralised responsibility by instilling within the organisation a thirst for creativity and a hunger for challenge’.54 This requires significant cultural change because an organisation’s culture is a ‘persistent, patterned way of thinking about the central tasks of and human relationships within an organisation’, and typically organisations favour policies that reinforce the essence of the organisation and provide a clear roadmap to success for its members.55 According to John Nagl, the key to organisational learning is ‘getting the decision-making authority to allow such innovation, monitor its effectiveness, and then transmit new doctrine with strict requirements that it be followed throughout the organisation’.56
History has proven that tactical competence does not necessarily translate into operational competence. Similarly, and also because complexity is multi-scale phenomenon, adaptation and innovation cannot be confined to just one of level of war. The culture of the learning organisation must transcend the levels of war: a true learning organisation will learn at the tactical, operational and strategic levels simultaneously (although not necessarily at an even pace across the three levels). The recognition within the US Army that this was not occurring in both Iraq and Afghanistan, that learning was not occurring quickly enough at the operational and strategic levels, has led to the conclusion that the traditional methods for determining an appropriate and relevant operational approach were somehow incomplete.
The implications of these hard won ‘lessons’— the need for a relevant and adaptive operational approach, the realisation that many of the problems that Army is called upon to solve are ‘wicked’ and occur within an increasingly complex environment, and that success in such a context demands a true multi-scale learning organisation—are significant, and directly influence the development of the methodology of operational design.
First, our traditional methods for problem solving are no longer as relevant because they tend toward the linear reduction of a problem that might not even be the right problem. But we solve it, or try to, anyway. Second, doing things right is not enough; we need to ensure we are also doing the right things. Problem definition is therefore key, and problem definition only comes through understanding the context of the situation through interaction and iteratively adjusting our behaviour as appropriate. Third, this in turn depends on our ability to constantly challenge our own perceptions and understandings. We need to treat each of our mental pictures or frames of the environment and the situation as provisional. Next, we need to realise that the operational problems encountered today are too complex for one person to understand and overcome. Therefore, successful approaches to dealing with these complex problems depend on a collaborative approach based on deep and shared understanding incorporating a wide variety of views. This understanding is only likely to be generated through deliberate and focused discourse that generates creative tension and allows synthesis. Fifth, a systemic response is required: not just holistic understanding but also an operational approach for systemic transformation. Finally, a learning system that is inherently adaptive is required. All of these themes are captured in the current methodology for operational design.
What Is Operational Design?
... if considered seriously and used responsibly, design should be the crucial anvil on which the human environment, in all its detail, is shaped and constructed for the betterment and delight of all.57
- John Heskitt
It is suprising it has taken this long for the Army to recognise the need for an explicit and codified methodology for design in the context of military action because design features so fundamentally in all other parts of our lives. In Design: A Very Short Introduction, John Heskitt suggests:
Design is one of the basic characteristics of what it is to be human, and an essential determinant of the quality of human life. It affects everyone in every detail of every aspect of what they do throughout each day. As such, it matters profoundly. Very few aspects of the material environment are incapable of improvement in some significant way by greater attention being paid to their design.58
Most other professions in life see design as fundamental to their existence. According to Bryan Lawson in How Designers Think: The Design Process Demystified, designers suggest how the world might be, unlike scientists who describe how the world is. Designers are therefore ‘all “futureologists” to some extent. The very essence of their job is to create the future, or at least some features of it’.59 Given the Army is all about creating a future, usually in somebody else’s land and usually against stiff opposition, it makes sense to clearly articulate and codify a methodology for doing so. Typically, good commanders have always intuitively developed designs that have allowed their staff to produce plans using the MAP to achieve their intent. But, there is danger in assuming that this will always be the case and, as we have seen, the complexity inherent in the operational environment today is so great that there is risk in depending on a single individual to understand the environment and then to come up with a comprehensive plan to change the environment. There is also the associated risk that comes from assuming the commander’s staff will understand an implicit design. These risks multiply when problems cross boundaries and when coalition and host nation forces are involved.60 So codifying the methodology of design provides significant benefit to a headquarters wrestling with complex operational problems. According to Wass de Czege, systematising collective critical and creative thinking in a headquarters through a collective design approach:
... attains a broader, holistic, and shared understanding of the situation. It benefits from multiple perspectives introduced in a rigorous and disciplined way. The ‘problem’ is more likely to be a shared view within the headquarters, better defined, and more rigorously documented, making re-definition easier and faster. Planning to solve the problem is likely to proceed more effectively and more rapidly.61
Design in the military context is not, as is stated in ADDP 5-0 Joint Planning (Second Edition), ‘the analytical and logical extension, which produces an operation plan. It is the science that supports the [operational] art [which is the creative process].’62 Nor is it simply problem framing—conceptual, even abstract, hypothesising about underlying causes and dynamics that explain events in the contemporary operating environment—as the draft LWD 3-0 Operations defines it.63 More comprehensively, design is defined as: an approach to critical and creative thinking that enables a commander to create understanding about a unique situation and to visualise and describe how to generate change.64 Operational design is not simply about defining the problem or generating a deeper understanding of the operating environment than Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield; it is equally about proposing a framework within which actions can occur to create transformative systemic change in our favour, over a specified period of time, taking into account available resources. Design can occur as a prelude to planning; concurrent with planning, in the sense that design can inform follow-on actions once an immediate crisis has been resolved; and may emerge while executing ongoing operations. It is iterative, which means it does not cease once a plan is developed, but establishes and then depends on feedback in order to regularly assess its relevancy and effectiveness in light of a continually changing environment. The output of design is a planning directive or guidance from the commander that outlines the nature of the problem as it is understood and the operational approach to resolve that problem. This enables greater shared understanding, stakeholder buy-in, and facilitates more comprehensive planning.
It is not in the scope of this article to detail at length the methodology of operational design, and Banach and Ryan’s article ‘The Art of Design: A Design Methodology’ and the US Army’s Issue Paper: Army Design Doctrine are recommended as primary sources. In short, however, the methodology for operational design that is currently being taught at SAMS and other US Army institutions focuses on three primary artefacts: an environmental frame, a problem frame and a design concept (an operational approach). These artefacts capture the shared understanding of the environment, the problem and its broad solution. The design takes place within three related cognitive spaces—the operational environment, the problem space and the solution. Because of the yin and yang relationship between problem and solution that is evident when dealing with complex and wicked problems, designers will not necessarily follow a prescribed sequence as you would when following the MAP, but rather tend to bounce in and out of the three cognitive spaces as new ideas are presented, new information is revealed, shared understanding increases and synthesis occurs. In essence, the environmental frame, the problem frame and the design solution relate to three fundamental questions: What is the context in which the design will be implemented? What problems should be addressed and what must be acted upon? How will the design resolve or manage the problem? 65
In the environmental space designers focus on generating a systemic understanding of the environment, the existing conditions relative to desired conditions, and accounting for all of the actors (including, importantly, ourselves), their relationships and their tendencies, the patterns of conflict and cooperation, and the potential for change. The environmental frame sets a boundary for inquiry and aims to identify what is new or different in the emerging context that implies the current level of understanding is no longer sufficient to comprehend and explain the problem. Importantly, this includes a robust dialogue with higher headquarters in order to clarify objectives and higher guidance, and to refine collectively an understanding of what is required versus what is possible. Diving straight into Mission Analysis amounts to receiving higher guidance uncritically, in effect framing the problem in accordance with the higher headquarters in a way that potentially ignores relevant environmental contexts. In the problem space designers examine the tensions in the environment, both the existing tensions and potential tensions that may emerge as patterns of resistance, opposition or support as we create change in the system. The problem frame articulates what the problem is by identifying what needs to change. In the solution space designers examine areas for intervention and exploitation, remaining cognisant of time and resource issues. The design concept or operational approach is the framework for changing existing conditions articulated in the environmental frame towards the desired conditions. Unlike current doctrine—ADDP 5-0 for example—it does not focus all actions on ‘neutralising, weakening, defeating or destroying the enemy COG’.66 Instead, the operational approach focuses on the desired environmental conditions; destroying an enemy COG may be just one of many actions required to create successful systemic change.
Design is command-led, collaborative and depends on robust discourse involving multiple perspectives (including interagency perspectives) to constantly challenge existing mental models of the environment, the problem and the solution. It is best done in small groups, with wider participation encouraged at various points in the design to broaden perspectives or continue momentum. In the Australian Army context, design is most likely to be a complementary action to planning conducted as a deliberate and focused activity by the commander (unit, formation or higher) and his plans staff. It does require time and is unlikely to be of use in a crisis where immediate action is required. To be most effective, designers should be well-versed in critical thinking techniques and have well-developed effective thinking skills. The quality of the result depends on the commander’s willingness to entertain and consider challenges to his or her understanding and therefore depends on a climate of trust and acceptance. 67
HOW DOES OPERATIONAL DESIGN PROMOTE ADAPTATION?
Nearly all missions this century will be complex, and the kind of thinking we have called ‘operational art’ is often now required at battalion level. Fundamentally, operational art requires balancing design and planning while remaining open to learning and adapting quickly.
- Huba Wass de Czege, 2009
By being explicitly iterative, operational design promotes continual learning. By explicitly focusing on systemic transformation through shared holistic understanding, operational design promotes greater opportunities for organisational learning. By including ourselves firmly within the environmental and problem frames and examining the potential changes and tensions we may create through our actions, operational design creates what Peter Senge calls a ‘shift of mind—from seeing ourselves separate from the world to connected to the world, from seeing problems as caused by someone or something “out there” to seeing how our own actions create the problems we experience’.68 And, most importantly, by explicitly acknowledging the requirement to reframe when changes in the operational environment render the operational approach no longer suitable or when we can no longer adequately explain actor behaviour in the operational environment, operational design enhances our ability to adapt beyond just tactics, techniques and procedures.
According to Banach and Ryan, reframing is the most important but most difficult part of design. Reframing is:
... an intellectual activity to identify new opportunities and overcome obstacles to progress when interactions with the real world situation or new sources of information reveal issues with a current problem. Reframing shifts attention from trying to solve the current problem right to asking whether the right problem is being solved. It is a way for designers to pull back and reassess the operational environment, allowing them to challenge their situational understanding and review expectations of actor behaviour against the evidence.69
At the heart of operational design is the fundamental recognition that there will be inevitable changes to the environment resulting from our actions. These changes will be impossible to predict and many will be impossible to anticipate. Change is inevitable, and the likelihood of our operational approach changing is high. Reframing is an explicit action to shift perspectives and reset the problem in the face of changed circumstances and new knowledge. Setting reframing criteria as part of designing the operational approach is therefore essential, and the reframing criteria needs to account for successful actions on our part, not just unsuccessful ones.
Reframing is deliberate and purposeful action. To be effective reframing needs to be underpinned by sound critical thinking skills because it requires appreciating the values, perceptions and biases of ourselves, allies, adversaries and others, including those seemingly ‘non-rational actors’. Critical thinking also assists in choosing between competing explanations of events, providing a holistic context, ensuring hypotheses within an existing frame are weighted in proportion to the evidence, and to assess potential longer term consequences of our actions.70 Challenging existing beliefs and perceptions is difficult and one of the strongest impediments to overcome in executing relevant adaptation.
A Cautionary Tale?
Operational design demands a sceptical posture that continually challenges accepted beliefs and perceptions. It is important the same degree of healthy scepticism is applied to the methodology of operational design itself as it evolves, lest it go the way of Effects Based Operations (EBO), Systems of Systems Analysis (SoSA) and Systemic Operational Design (SOD) as the latest fad that will guarantee sure-fire success on an inherently uncertain battlefield. The Israeli Defence Force’s (IDF) reliance on SOD (and EBO) as the doctrine for developing their operational approach and executing actions against Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006 is instructive. SOD has formed the basis from which the current version of operational design has evolved.
According to Matt Mathews in his influential study We Were Caught Unprepared: The 2006 Hezbollah-Israeli War, Shimon Naveh’s SOD, which had formed the core of recently disseminated new IDF doctrine, proved highly disruptive:
The new language and methodology severely handicapped many commanders in the field. A large majority of IDF officers simply did not grasp the SOD-inspired doctrine. When the terminology made its way into at least one division’s operation orders, the brigade commanders were at a complete loss to understand them. 71
According to one former IDF operational planner, the new doctrine inflated the
focus on the cognitive side of war and the media war. Instead of killing the bad guys like in the good old days, they wanted to create a ‘consciousness of victory’ on our side and ‘cognitive perception of defeat’ on the other side. 72
The current evolution of operational design has moved beyond the abstract, obscure, post-structuralist language of SOD and is receiving positive feedback from both students and practitioners. Nevertheless, there is the danger of its utility becoming over-inflated and it becoming an end in itself. Equally, there is the possibility of overreacting and ‘dumbing down’ design to the extent that it becomes a new set of buzz words without a solid educational foundation. This too must be avoided and requires an investment in intellectual capital to ensure an appropriate methodology for operational design is codified.
Conclusion: Implications For The Australian Army
... the real challenge is not to put a new idea into the military mind but to put the old one out. 73
- Liddell Hart
First, the Australian Army must come to the realisation that its current doctrine and professional military education does not best prepare its leaders to operate in an increasingly lethal, diverse and complex environment. Solving complex operational problems requires a different approach to traditional, linear, reductive problem solving approaches, and our soldiers and their leaders need to become even more comfortable with operating in an ambiguous, uncertain and unpredictable environment. Doctrine needs to be revised for relevance in light of experience gained from recent operations by ourselves and especially our coalition allies, who are doing more fighting and dying than we are in a complex operating environment.
Specifically, intellectual capital needs to be invested into incorporating an appropriate operational design methodology into the MAP and LWD 3-0 Operations (Developing Doctrine). Army has been attempting to revise the MAP since 2005. This process has stalled due to an attempt to incorporate Army Risk Management throughout the publication. Now is the time to develop a design methodology that transcends all three levels of war and is relevant for the wider Australian Army and look to incorporate this methodology into the MAP in much the same way the USMC has before the MAP goes to print. Similarly, the current passage on design in LWD 3-0 Operations requires significant amendment which can occur in the near future before this publication goes to print. Doctrinal change then needs to be supported by a robust plan to ensure the revised doctrine is taught (Grade 2 and 3 Career Courses, Australian Command and Staff College for example) and used in the wider Army, including by deployed forces. It is hoped that this in turn could generate professional discussion on the merits or otherwise of design supporting complex problem solving.
By definition, design depends on critical thinking to support complex decisionmaking. The Army needs to re-evaluate its approach to educating critical thinking skills. Currently, short modules on critical thinking are offered at both the Royal Military College, Duntroon, and Australian Command and Staff College. However, instead of critical thinking being considered as a foundation skill, it tends to be dealt with as simply one of many modules to be covered in the curriculum. The modules offered tend to only introduce critical thinking, barely skim the wave tops and then, once completed, rarely if ever used again in a deliberate and focused manner. And it is rare for the staff to participate in these modules. Improving our critical thinking skills requires a deliberate and focused cultural change in the Army, in a manner similar to the cultural change called for by Fastabend and Simpson for the US Army.
Finally, the right command and leadership culture is fundamental if we are going to be successful in solving complex operational problems. Establishing a ‘design team’ where the commander is a central but not dominating figure, where group think is avoided and where robust, rigorous discourse is permitted to take place will be a challenge for the Army. It is noteworthy that although the overwhelming majority of participants at the Chief of Army’s Conference of 2006 agreed the culture of mission command required deliberate and focused fostering and encouragement, very little substantive action has been taken to date to facilitate this.74 Yet, a mission command culture, one that relies on implicit trust between superior and subordinate, and one that promotes learning from mistakes and trial and error is exactly the type of command climate required to best leverage design.
About the Author
Lieutenant Colonel Trent Scott is an infantry officer with operational experience in East Timor, Solomon Islands, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is a distinguished graduate of the USMC Command and Staff College and School of Advanced Warfighting. Lieutenant Colonel Scott holds a Masters of Military Studies, a Masters of Operational Studies and a Masters of International Relations. Lieutenant Colonel Scott is currently the Chief of Defence Force Fellow.
Endnotes
1 Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, Doubleday, New York, 1990, p. 25.
2 This is the definition of design in Chapter 3, ‘Design’, of the soon-to-be-released US Army FM 5-0 The Operations Process.
3 Antulio J Echevarria II, Clausewitz’ Center of Gravity: Changing our Warfighting Doctrine - Again! US Army War College Strategic Studies Institute, Carlisle, September 2002, p. 16.
4 For a less than satisfactory introduction to SOD and Naveh see Shimon Naveh, In Pursuit of Military Excellence: The Evolution of Operational Theory, Frank Cass, London, 1997. For a fair attempt at explaining SOD see William T Sorrels, et al, Systemic Operational Design: An Introduction, School of Advanced Military Studies, United States Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, 2004-05.
5 Stefan J Banach, ‘Educating by Design: Preparing Leaders for a Complex World’, Military Review, Vol. 89, No. 2, March-April 2009, pp. 96-104; and Stefan J Banach and Alex Ryan, ‘The Art of Design: A Design Methodology, Military Review, Vol. 89, No. 2, March-April 2009, pp. 105-15.
6 Joint Doctrine Publication 01 - Campaigning, Second Edition, The Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre, Ministry of Defence, Shrivenham, December 2008, Chapters 2 and 3.
7 J Alex Vohr, ‘Commander’s Appreciation and Campaign Design: A Critique’, Marine Corps Gazette, March 2009, pp. 13-17.
8 MCWP 5-1 Marine Corps Planning Process, Functional Working Draft, Headquarters United States Marine Corps, Washington DC, 14 August 2009.
9 Interview with USMC Infantry Officer deployed as a Plans Officer with I MEF Forward in Al Anbar, 2008-09, 25 June 2009.
10 Email, Blair Sokol to Alex Vohr, 19 April 2009, copy in author’s possession.
11 See Draft Australian Defence Doctrine Publication 5.0 - Joint Planning, 2nd edition, Defence Publishing Service, Canberra, June 2009, Chapter 3.
12 Jeff Conklin, ‘Wicked Problems and Social Complexity’, CogNexus Institute, <http://www.cognexus.org/wpf/wickedproblems.pdf>, accessed 27 June 2009.
13 Tom Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, Penguin, London, 2006, p. 195.
14 This is an adaptation of a discussion on operational art in Michael Evans, ‘The Closing of the Australian Military Mind: The ADF and Operational Art, Security Challenges, Vol. 4, No. 2, Winter 2008, p. 108.
15 John A Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2005, p. 67.
16 Richard Clutterbuck, The Long, Long War: The Emergency in Malaya 1948-1960, Cassell, London, 1966, p. 51.
17 Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife, p. 72.
18 Harry G Summers, Jr., On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War, Presidio Press, Novato, 1982, p. 1.
19 Colin S Gray, Fighting Talk: Forty Maxims on War, Peace, and Strategy, Praeger Security International, Westport, 2007, p. 50.
20 Evans, ‘The Closing of the Australian Military Mind’, p. 110.
21 See Tom Ricks, Fiasco on ‘How to Create an Insurgency’, pp. 149-202; and Tom Ricks, The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008, The Penguin Press, New York, 2009 for the discussion on Casey’s operational approach.
22 Ricks, The Gamble. Bob Woodward arrives at similar conclusions to Ricks; however, he arrives at his conclusions from a different perspective. See Bob Woodward, The War Within: A Secret White House History, 2006-2008, Simon and Schuster, New York, 2008.
23 Trent Scott and John Agoglia, ‘Getting the Basics Right: Tactical Actions for Strategic Impact in Afghanistan,’ Small Wars Journal, 11 November 2008, <http://smallwarsjournal.com/mag/docs-temp/134-scott-agoglia.pdf> accessed 20 December 2008.
24 Richard N H Dickson, Operational Art in a Middle-Power Context: A Canadian Perspective, Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, 2004, p. 2.
25 Consolidated Comments on Austhink Recommendations (Revision of the Military Appreciation Process), 7 December 2006, copy in author’s possession.
26 Evans, ‘The Closing of the Australian Military Mind, pp. 107-12.
27 Interview with a Reconstruction Task Force Commander, 5 August 2009.
28 Joshua Cooper Ramo, The Age of the Unthinkable: Why the New World Disorder Constantly Surprises Us and What We Can Do About It, Little, Brown and Company, New York, 2009, p. 17.
29 Dr Alex Ryan makes this point in a soon to be published chapter for a book on complexity. Alex J Ryan, ‘Military Applications of Complex Systems’ in Philosophy of Complex Systems, Dov M Gabbay, Cliff Hooker, Paul Thagard, John Collier and John Woods (eds), Elsever, Amsterdam, 2010.
30 Alan Beyerchen, ‘Clausewitz, Nonlinearity, and the Unpredictability of War’, International Security, Vol. 17, No. 3, Winter 1992-93, p. 61. The version of On War used throughout this essay is Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Michael Howard and Peter Paret (trans and ed), Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1976.
31 This is a popular theme. A good start point is: James K Greer, ‘Operational Art for the Objective Force’ Military Review, Vol. 82, No. 5, September-October 2002, p. 22.
32 M Mitchell Waldrop, Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Chaos, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1992, p. 11.
33 Beyerchen, ‘Clausewitz, Nonlinearity, and the Unpredictability of War’ p. 62.
34 Clausewitz, On War, p. 595.
35 Huba Wass de Czege, ‘Systemic Operational Design: Learning and Adapting in Complex Missions’ Military Review, Vol. 88, No. 1, January-February 2009, p. 2.
36 Dr Alex Ryan suggests that emergence will be increasingly important to the design of both military systems and operations. An understanding of emergence in complex systems may open up new methodologies for designing beyond the thresholds of predictability and control. Ryan, ‘Military Applications of Complex Systems’, p. 35. For a layman’s explanation of emergence see Steven Johnson, Emergence, Scribner, New York, 2001.
37 Antoine Bousquet, The Scientific Way of Warfare: Order and Chaos on the Battlefields of Modernity, Columbia University Press, New York, 2009, p. 174.
38 Waldrop, Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Chaos, pp. 288-92.
39 Ibid., p. 296.
40 Murray Gell-Man, ‘The Simple and the Complex’, <http://www.ndu.edu/inss/Books/Books_1998/Complexity,%20Global%20Politic…’l%20Sec%20-%20Sept%2098/ch01.html> accessed 18 June 2009.
41 Adaptive Campaigning: The Land Force Response to Complex Warfighting, Version 4.18, Department of Defence, 24 November 2006.
42 Horst W J Rittel and Melvin M Webber, ‘Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning’ Policy Sciences, Vol. 4, 1973, p. 156.
43 The other nine distinguishing features are: Wicked problems have no stopping rule; solutions to wicked problems are not true-or-false, but good-or-bad; there is no immediate and no ultimate test of a solution to a wicked solution; every solution to a wicked problem is a ‘one-shot operation’ because there is no opportunity to learn by trial-and-error, every attempt counts significantly; wicked problems do not have an enumerable (or exhaustively describable) set of potential solutions, nor is there a well-described set of permissible operations that may be incorporated into the plan; every wicked problem is essentially unique; every wicked problem can be considered to be a symptom of another problem; the existence of a discrepancy representing a wicked problem can be explained in numerous ways and the choice of explanation determines the nature of the problem; and, the planner has no right to be wrong. Ibid., pp.161-67.
44 Richard M Swain, ‘Commander’s Business: Learning to Practice Operational Design’, Joint Forces Quarterly, Issue 53, 2009, p. 62.
45 According to Martin Rein and Donald Schön: A frame is a perspective from which an amorphous, ill-defined problematic situation can be made sense of and acted upon. Framing is a way of selecting, organising, interpolating, and making sense of a complex reality so as to provide guideposts for knowing, analysing, persuading, and acting. Martin Rein and Donald A. Schön, ‘Frame-reflective policy discourse’ in Peter Wagner, Carol H Weiss, Bjorn Wittrock and Hellmut Wollman (eds), Social Sciences, Modern States, National Experiences and Theoretical Crossroads, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1991, p. 263.
46 Gary Klein, Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1998, p. 30.
47 Senge, The Fifth Discipline, p. 3.
48 Keith Grint, Leadership, Management and Command: Rethinking D-Day, Palgrave Macmillan, Hampshire, 2008, p. 36.
49 Swain, ‘Commander’s Business: Learning to Practice Operational Design, p. 62.
50 Ibid., p. 21.
51 Yaneer Bar-Yam, Making Complex Things Work: Solving Complex Problems in a Complex World, NECSI Knowledge Press, Cambridge, 2004, p. 14.
52 Senge, The Fifth Discipline, p. 36.
53 David A Fastabend and Robert H Simpson, Adapt or Die: The Imperative for a Culture of Innovation in the United States Army, Army, Vol. 54, February 2004, p. 16.
54 Ibid., p. 9.
55 See Christopher P Gehler, Agile Leaders, Agile Institutions: Educating Adaptive and Innovative Leaders for Today and Tomorrow, Strategic Studies Institute, Carlisle, 2005, p. 4 for amplification of this theme.
56 Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife, p. 195.
57 John Heskitt, Design: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2002, p. 1.
58 Ibid., p. 2.
59 Bryan Lawson, How Designers Think: The Design Process Demystified, 4th Edition, Architectural Press, Oxford, 2006, p. 112.
60 Issue Paper: Army Design Doctrine, Design (Final Draft - Pre-Decisional), Headquarters, Department of the Army, Washington DC, 29 March 2009, p.1-3.
61 Wass de Czege, ‘Systemic Operational Design: Learning and Adapting in Complex Missions’, p. 7.
62 ADDP 5-0 Joint Planning, pp. 3-5, 3.14.
63 Australian Army Land Warfare Doctrine 3.0 - Operations (Developing Doctrine), Land Warfare Development Centre, Puckapunyal, 19 September 2008, p. 2-4.
64 Issue Paper: Army Design Doctrine, p. 1-1.
65 Banach and Ryan, ‘The Art of Design: A Design Methodology’, p. 109.
66 ADDP 5-0 Joint Planning, p. 3-1.
67 Wass de Czege, ‘Systemic Operational Design: Learning and Adapting in Complex Missions’, p. 7.
68 Senge, The Fifth Discipline, p. 12.
69 Banach and Ryan, ‘The Art of Design: A Design Methodology’, p. 107.
70 Ibid., p. 108.
71 Matt M Matthews, We Were Caught Unprepared: The 2006 Hezbollah-Israeli War, The Long War Series Occasional Paper 26, US Army Combined Arms Center, Combat Studies Institute Press, Fort Leavenworth, 2008, p. 63.
72 Ibid., p. 28.
73 Basil Liddell Hart, Thoughts on War, Faber and Faber, London, 1944.
74 Scott Hopkins (ed), Chief of Army’s Exercise Proceedings - 2006, Land Warfare Studies Centre, Duntroon, January 2007, pp. 119-28.
