What are you trying to say, in simple prose, and why?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
HumanCOGRachel
In this context, operational design is decribed by McMaster to be a "creative approach" to solving challenges in planning for operations. Rather than following a checklist of items to match with the conditions on the ground and targeting tactics to support those criteria, McMaster talks about focusing on a problem statement, one that is centered around a human/population problem, and planning your solution around resolving the human/population problem. It's a very simplistic explanation, but McMaster, if he attends, will probably discuss this in detail, and I'm sure he has written in Parameters or other journals on that topic....
Human COG refers to center of gravity, meaning that the environment and subsequent effects are dependant on the psychology or actions/behaviors of targeted humans (the capacity to execute is dependant on this core). See Nash, Nagl, Gurney, Vego, or Gavrilis for further authorship on this subject.
Cheers,
Rach
(HOOAH)
George Orwell once wrote that one of the things a writer must ask is "Have I written anything unnecessarily ugly?"
I am not sure if you have, because I understand neither your prose or context.
Could you humour me( and maybe some of the other members) and explain what your point is, and why you are making it.
Thanks
Mark
PS I would prefer in without any postmodern expression.
PPS 'Hooah' means what as an emphasis for whatever point you were trying to make?
Why attack the enemy's strength?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
William F. Owen
The COG is something you strike.
I think US military doctrine has botched the hell out of COG theory in an effort to over codify it. But I also find it counter intuitive that if the COG is the Enemy's "source of all stregth and power" why I would by necessity "strike" it, when in fact what I want to do is "Defeat", "Neutralize", "Co-opt" or in whatever way is appropriate (acceptable, suitable, feasible) render it ineffective.
Dr. Strange's work helped my think about this, but I could never fully get on board with his analysis either. It just didn't make sense to me to call something the COG's "Critical Capability" and then say it was something that the COG requirred. To me it was something the COG produced.
So to may way of thinking (makes sense to a mind educated in the Myrtle Creek public school system)
- A COG is like a factory that is the producer of the things the enemy must have to prevail
- Critical Capabilities are the things that factory produces. Targeting this output has little effect on the COG, but does reduce effectiveness. The importance of these things are what validates your assessment of what the COG is.
- Critical Requirements are those raw inputs to the COG that it must have to produce the Critical Capabilities. These are what must be disrupted to render the COG ineffective.
- Critical Vulnerabilities. THESE MUST BE A SUBSET OF YOUR CRITICAL CAPABILITIES. CVs are those CCs that are also vulnerable to attack. You can get at them with reasonable risk, and their disruption will produce your desired effect.
Anyway, I always think of attacking the COG like attacking an Enemy Strongpoint. Yes its important, but you don't want to attack it if you can defeat it in other ways. Find the CVs, and attack those.
Better ways of problem solving
Dr. Jack,
Sir, is your work to incorporate wicked/ill-defined/un-structured problems going to lead to a new version of MDMP, or are y'all simply providing guidelines for commanders on how to rethink or relook problems?
Mark O'neill / Wilf,
Some of this thread is confusing me, and I've spent two years studying this stuff. I'll try to explain it as best that I can. In the most simplest form, all these folks are trying to do is determine better ways of problem solving. That's it. In most circles, the main strategy to devise better answers is more defined and thorough problem definition.
Wicked, ill-defined, unstructured problems are big ones like global warming, terrorism, failed/failing states, etc....None of this is new, but some of the approaches are.
My favorite is what I call the "Huddle." The Academics will call it "collaberation." On the tactical level, a leader simply brings all his team together and allows everyone to give their assesments and recommendations before he makes a decision. The huddle allows the leader to avoid forgetting something. Many leaders do this intuitively. On the strategic level, a commander brings in regional and specialized experts to advice him on big decisions. GEN Patraeus's "Council of Colonels" is a great example of this.
Out of all the literature, I best enjoyed Dr. James Adams' Conceptual Blockbusting: A Guide to Better Ideas. As Dean of Stanford Engineering back in the early 1970's, he became frustrated b/c his students were book smart but could not think creatively. So he wrote a book on how to think creatively. It's short, and provides cool tricks to entertain with at a pub.
v/r
Mike
A semi-tangent on collaboration
Mike, thanks for mentioning the huddle aka collaboration. As an academic, I've seen two ideal types (in the Weberian sense) of this. The first involves collecting people who are "like minded" and will reinforce the "correctness" of what you write, while the second is closer to Red Teaming (I suspect that in academia it derives from the old Advocatus Diaboli position).
Of the two, the first reinforces any perceptual pathologies that are present. In effect, this type of collaboration is worse than useless, it is destructive of creative thinking. The second type, when done properly, identifies holes in one's thinking and may or may not produce creative solutions. Some of the research on organization culture seems to indicate that there is a strong correlation between HR practices (especially rewards and punishments) and styles of collaboration. As a rough rule of thumb, the more clearly laid out HR policies are in terms of ordering (e.g. promotion and pay structures in a linear form), the greater likelihood that "collaboration" will tend towards the first type.
Part of this seems to centre around the organizational culture's formalization of "problems"; i.e. how they are defined, who "owns" them, how the must be approached, what may or may not be considered as a legitimate problem, etc.
Let me take an example of this. Let's suppose that a critical "problem" in gaining support for an HN government centres around a local perception held by the populace that the governor of the area is "corrupt" (in quotes to indicate a level of corruption beyond the culturally accepted limit). Let us further suppose, for the sake of this example, that that condition is true. Gaining the support of the local populace for the HN "government" will be increasingly difficult as the depredations of the local governor go on unchecked. The local governor is, in effect, one of the greatest recruiting tools for the insurgents in the area. How are you going to define the problem in a manner that would allow a local (foreign) commander to "solve" it?
Will this planning process - design - encourage such problem identification and increase the likelihood that such "problems" will be acted on?
Design complementing MDMP
Quote:
Originally Posted by
MikeF
Dr. Jack,
... is your work to incorporate wicked/ill-defined/un-structured problems going to lead to a new version of MDMP, or are y'all simply providing guidelines for commanders on how to rethink or relook problems?
Mike - design will complement formal / detailed planning processes, such as MDMP and JOPP - it certainly won't replace these systems. It also won't just look at "re-thinking" or reframing problems, but be the conceptual component that a commander does for detailed planning - that can take place before initiating MDMP/JOPP, during MDMP/JOPP, or doing execution of a mission.
It was renamed because the lead post in this thread
Quote:
Originally Posted by
GMLRS
Curious as to why the thread was renamed.
diverted into a discussion of Design and a moderator pulled it an started a new thread to prevent disruption of the TSLC Thread.
That thread still exists, it's here: LINK
Based on my military experience
Quote:
Originally Posted by
jmm99
Attached is the 1944 version of the "Huddle" - 1/117-30ID. Mid-Nov 1944 planning session for Bn's attack on the "Paper Village" near Warden, Germany - after the Siegfried Breakthrough was successful. Guy with pointer is LTC Bob Frankland (retired as a MG), with his 5 company commanders.
Looking at the apparent age of the captains, I'd have to agree with Ron that the people are some of the new things under the sun - and that a lot of lessons learned have to be relearned by future generations.
PS: I'd also add army hair styling to the list of differences - then and now. :D
The caption of this photo probably would more accurately read:
"Alright, which one of you A**clowns took a crap on my map board??"
(But your right, with time on our hands we can complicate the heck out of what is often very intuitive to the good commander, and then in turn penalize intuitive commanders for "Not using the process to standard" and promote far less capable men over them who dogmatically churn through the process like the unimaginative clerks that they are.)
In Patton's book he talked how he would go forward to his commander's location for a huddle over the Jeep hood; one page document, basic task/purpose/intent on one side, sketch on the other. I highly doubt he relied on 40 guys grinding through a 4-5 hour process to produce it either.