Operationalizing The Jones Model through COG

[MikeF]

Here's some quick editing recommendations for your argument.

With so many talented providers swarming into places like Afghanistan, and with so much funding currently available to resource such engagement one would expect that if "effectiveness" (security, development, government) is indeed the road to victory, that victory will soon be ours.

Another analogy is Ayn Rand's character Dagny Taggart in Atlas Shrugged. She saw her world and society collapsing around her, and she felt that she could change it through her own sheer will and determination. She was over-confident in her own abilities and over-optimistic in the potential of others and the state of human nature.

But what if "effectiveness" is far more the output of a stable, insurgency-free state, rather than being the input that will ultimately produce such a state??

Change output to outcome. You're speaking in technical systems terms. Outputs in a governance system would be in terms of the stable, insurgency-free metrics (low levels of violence, free/fair elections, mutual respect towards differing cultures/religions, women's rights, etc...). The outcome is good governance.

For the slide, the picture is confusing. It looks like a systems slide, but the items on the left are critical requirements not inputs.

Mike