Quote Originally Posted by MikeF View Post
On the tactical level, when forces are attempting to secure terrain, decision making is pretty straightfoward and a commander just has to remind himself to seek advise, feedback, and recommendations from his subordinates (i.e. "huddle" method).

Once the area is secure, one starts working on the really complex problems (legitimacy of gov't, good governance, property rights, reconciliation, etc...) At this point, I believe the introduction of academics, NGOs, and other smart people into the planning process can assist the commander in finding better or least bad solutions outside of his/her expertise.
In some ways this strikes to heart of my issues with the idea of Operational Design. As far as I can tell, (from the badly written FM) OD essentially attempts to predict outcome in a deterministic and even casual way.
"We do this, so the situation created is this...." - It then basically seeks a set of opinions to predict the second and even third order effects of actions. - cannot be done.

So question. Would the US have invaded IRAQ if opinions suggested that it would lead to a six year insurgency and X-thousand dead? - If no one ventured that opinion, then the process is useless. Now the OD guys say "if we had used OD, it wouldn't have been like that." - but OD does not avoid the entirely human desire to pick the information that fits the desired version of events.

Exactly like EBO and MW, the "enduring wisdom" of OD takes credit for success, and denies involvement in failure.