Renamed Thread: Operational Design Discussion

[Dr Jack]

Here's how we're defining "design" in the new FM 5-0 draft chapter 3:

"Planning consists of two separate, but closely related components: a conceptual component, represented by the cognitive application of design, and a detailed component, which introduces specificity through a formal planning process, such as the military decision making process. During planning, these components overlap—no clear delineation exists between them. As commanders conceptualize the operation, their vision guides the staff through design and into detailed planning. Like planning, design is continuous—it evolves with increased understanding and drives the operations process. It underpins the exercise of battle command, guiding the iterative and often cyclic application of understanding, visualizing, and describing."

"Design is a methodology for applying critical and creative thinking to understand, visualize, and describe complex problems and develop approaches to solve them. Critical thinking captures the reflective and continuous learning essential to design. Creative thinking involves thinking in new, innovative ways while capitalizing on imagination, insight, and novel ideas. Design is a way of organizing conceptual work within an organization to assist commanders in understanding, visualizing, and describing the operational environment and to develop approaches to solving complex, ill-structured problems. Design occurs throughout the operations process before and during detailed planning, through preparation, and during execution and assessment."

[jmm99]

is an interesting term. So, HumanCOGRachel are you using that in the context of the Political Struggle, or in the context of the Military Struggle ?

And, in any event, how are they "targeted" - in your construct ?

I should suppose that "kill, capture or convert" would be three possible end states for the "targeted human" - which in CORDS-Phoenix ran about 1/3, 1/3 and 1/3 (the general term used was "neutralize").

[IntelTrooper]

Creative thinking involves thinking in new, innovative ways while capitalizing on imagination, insight, and novel ideas.

Oh, so that's creative thinking.

I don't mean to be a jerk (though I often am anyway) but does this really need to be said? And if so, is this going to provide some epiphany to an otherwise un-creative thinker, or someone who is unable to recognize it? And even then, how is the institution going to be re-structured to encourage such "creative thinking" without just calling it "insubordinate"?

[HumanCOGRachel]

Check out what SAMS and TRADOC is doing to help push creative design. BGEN McMaster is a good POC on this - I'm sure he has some publications out. Check with NDU Press - I'm pretty sure he published an article recently on this subject.

Cheers,
Rach

(Hooah!)

[jmm99]

about what I thought re: this:

from HCR
[1] The targeted humans part simply meant as an identified group of persons, who range from non-involved to highly invested actors. [2] Counterinsurgency assumes that insurgency involves political AND military struggles (two-pronged) - [3] See Bard O'Neill for further leadership on this issue...

1. So, backfilling with your other posted statements: Do a General Area Study with a detailed Operational Area Intelligence Study; followed by a continuing Area Assessment after insertion ?

2. Gee, something like the attached - or, as well stated, in Dr. Zhivago:

Liberius: I could have you taken out and shot!

Razin, Liberius' Lieutenant: And could you have The Party taken out and shot? Understand this: as the military struggle draws to a close, the political struggle intensifies. In the hour of victory, the military will have served its purpose - and all men will be judged POLITICALLY - regardless of their military record! Meanwhile, there are still White units in this area - the Doctor stays.

3. Been there; done that.

[Haooh]

[slapout9]

JMM, sounds like they are trying to do a 5 rings analysis. The Human COG's are usually found in Ring 1-Leadership targets, unless they saw some of my LE adaptions.

[Dr Jack]

Oh, so that's creative thinking.

I don't mean to be a jerk (though I often am anyway) but does this really need to be said? And if so, is this going to provide some epiphany to an otherwise un-creative thinker, or someone who is unable to recognize it? And even then, how is the institution going to be re-structured to encourage such "creative thinking" without just calling it "insubordinate"?

Well – there is a difference between the concepts of “innovation” and “adaptation” that is reinforced in design. Innovation involves taking a new approach to a familiar or known situation, whereas adaptation involves taking a known solution and modifying it to a particular situation. Both concepts are central tenets of design – and the concept of innovation is closely tied (in the doctrinal definitions) to creative thinking.

This will require close dialog and collaboration – encouraging creative thought for innovative approaches to problems… which will require reinforcing the best practices of great staffs that encourage innovation and adaptation.

[jmm99]

delusions of grandeur ....

JMM, sounds like they are trying to do a 5 rings analysis. The Human COG's are usually found in Ring 1-Leadership targets, unless they saw some of my LE adaptions.

Seriously, could be a 5-ring analysis; or simply a classification of the population from pro-HN to anti-HN, and everything in between (with whatever variations and branches you have time to make).

In any event, to do any of that you need to do something akin to the studies mentioned in my point #1 (General Area Study, etc.). Which, BTW, are 50 years old - from FM 31-21 (Apps III & IV; 1958, rev 1961), Guerrilla Warfare.

Might want to read the two Apps - not much new under the sun, except new buzzwords.

[slapout9]

delusions of grandeur ....

Yea them little blue pills are sumtin man

[William F. Owen]

When working on counterinsurgency definition with the Pentagon, we were looking at various thought leaders in preparing 3.24.2 (December 2006 revision).

How and why did the definition change?

The idea with Human COG is to redefine the term to understanding the motivators and drivers of humans in the OE, and then understanding that those motivators (and human actors obviously) are what drive battlefield changes, whether of kinetic or non-kinetic effect.

The COG is something you strike. The JP3 definition is wrong, and less it explicitly makes that point or unless it wants to invent a new term.
What I think you are saying is the HumanCOG is the motivation that cause people to act. Correct?

The targeted humans part simply meant as an identified group of persons, who range from non-involved to highly invested actors.

Does this mean, trying to understand what everyone wants?

Counterinsurgency assumes that insurgency involves political AND military struggles (two-pronged) -

So an insurgency is exactly the same as any other type of warfare.

[Bob's World]

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.

[William F. Owen]

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.

Strike merely means the action that does harm.

[MikeF]

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

[marct]

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?

[Ron Humphrey]

Don't take the beating from the "old" guys to hard. They just get kinda tired of things which they have known forever and have assumed should have been common sense having to be approached in doctrine to fix what should have been happening from (training birth). So yes their right there is nothing new under the sun ;except for us(people). Each of us has developed our understanding of the world through the lens of our own experiences and training. For some reason throughout the years it seems that the realization that the primary analyst at any echelon is the CO (or at least should be IMHO) has gone awry. Thus those simple common sense up front requirements in order to facilitate a good analysis of the mission before even trying to apply MDMP has gone by the wayside.

In so far as the COG at least from where I have come to see it is that treating the populous as a Center of Gravity for operations leads one to ask the questions about that particular group which should point out the less apparent what not to do's. Having done that it becomes much easier to define both what the mission is and to gain at least acceptable expectations for how it should be approached by those assigned to it.

An example is that if you have looked at a group through the "targeting" lense of COG then not only have you given yourself more clarity about those with whom you will interact but you have also in the same stroke managed to "red team" the heck out of the enemies probable approaches in that arena that they must survive in.

As Mike noted it really is about how to plan but honestly it is even more about getting the whole orchestra on the same sheet of music and then keeping time. And the pub thing is pretty cool too

[William F. Owen]

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.

OK, I understand the idea of wicked problems, but how does that translate into the conduct of Operations?

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.

So essentially, this is seeking the advice of others?
On the strategic level I can think of many, many times this fails. People seeking advice are often merely seeking approval for their plan, so I'm not sure this is a step forward, or that this is part of the Planning or Estimate process.

[Dr Jack]

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.

[slapout9]

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.

That is exactly why EBO was invented....you want to affect(cause) a target to change to something (effect). And how you do that may be kinetic or non-kinetic,lethal or non-lethal.

[jmm99]

from MikeF
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.

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.

[Bob's World]

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.

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.