Design for Napoleon's Corporal

Dayuhan:

Fair points. There are some intellectual wannabes out there. Just the other day a colleague asked a US ambassador about how military and civilians can work together given "divergent paradigms." I think "different cultures" would have sufficed...

Neither buzz words nor academic achievement are indicators of intellectual ability (though the latter is somewhat better than the former). Standardized testing, though flawed, is the best we have at the moment. I hate to say it, but IQ testing is a pretty decent measure of intellect. The best method would be a battery of testing, to include a standardized test, IQ, and perhaps MBTI.

Now, if you'll excuse me I'm going to retire to my bedroom with some lotion, a noose, and about 20 minutes of C-SPAN...

I wouldn't say that "intellectual" <i>must</i> be associated with "tidal waves of arcane pseudo-intellectual rhetoric," "intellectual autoeroticism," and "obscure jargon?". All too often, however, attempts at intellectual posturing end up as exactly that. The ratio of truly original thinking to pseudointellectual fluff is, in my observation at least, heavily biased toward the latter. Obviously there needs to be effort to distinguish which is which; the most reliable indicator I've found for fluff alerts is the dense and gratuitous use of jargon and buzzwords.

I'm sure that intellectual ability is a great predictor of success... but how do you predict intellectual ability? Not by the ability to stuff 37 fashionable buzzwords into a single paragraph, I'm sure. Academic achievement isn't necessarily a reliable indicator: we've all met extremely canny people who had limited schooling, and we've all met PhDs who were dysfunctional outside a purely academic environment. As with so many things, the key at the leadership level is to know intelligence when you see it, and to match the different types of intelligence and specialization with the tasks they are best suited to accomplish. Neurosurgery is more intellectually demanding than auto repair, but asking a neurosurgeon to fix your car is probably not a good idea.

I'm sure there is some anti-intellectualism out there, just as there are a fair number of intellectuals and intellectual wannabes who look down on many of the practical lessons coming from the field, especially when these lessons are not compatible with their pet theories. There's also a fair bit of impatience with some of the pompous posturing that tries to pass itself off as intellectualism, a quite different thing.

Have you never waded through a paper searching for a point, only to conclude ultimately that there isn't one, or that the point being made is far from original and has already been expressed many times in far simpler terms?

I've often wished someone would adapt one of those postmodern essay generators to become a military futurist essay generator. I suspect that it wouldn't be that difficult.

Two part, 2002 article from LLOYD J. MATTHEWS is seminal:

http://www3.ausa.org/webint/DeptArmyMagazine.nsf/byid/CCRN-6CCS4R

http://www3.ausa.org/webpub/DeptArmyMagazine.nsf/byid/CCRN-6CCS56

I agree that there may be a culture of anti-intellectualism. Hard to prove, but Matthews does a great job of arguing the case.

Dayuhan,

I'll admit again - my evidence regarding anti-intellectualism is purely anecdotal based on my own experiences, that of others, and the saga of one D.H. Petraeus and the one-star board. This is an OP-ED, nothing more.

There are a good number of people in the world who feel threatened by intelligent people. The Army is not immune. Those officers who fancy themselves a simple blood-and-guts SOB (we all know the type) don't like other officers who would rather think and act deliberately and rationally than reduce leadership to a "hooah show."

My sense is that there is a battle between the intellectuals and the blood and guts crowd. My sense is also that the intellectuals may be winning, primarily because of the poor performance of the blood and guts team in recent years. I won't name names, but the brainy team keeps getting promoted...

I couldn't agree more on this point; clarity is an academic virtue. Simplification is not. Simplification implies leaving out information, whereas clarity implies communicating the entire concept in a way that is generally understood. Simplification changes the meaning whereas clarity does not.

Some things are not, by their nature, simple and easily understandable. To explain them as such is to twist their meaning.

Now, I ask you, why must "intellectual" be associated with "tidal waves of arcane pseudo-intellectual rhetoric," "intellectual autoeroticism," and "obscure jargon?" Certainly there are intellectuals who never tire of demonstrating how smart they are through the copious use of multi-syllabic verbiage (humor there, ha ha), but they are essentially the same as the "hooah show" men - all show, no go.

All the same, this is no excuse for anti-intellectualism.

Difficult concepts can only be made so clear. Some people lack the intellectual capacity to understand. War is complex. It was never as simple as "killing people and breaking things." If one can't grasp the higher order concepts of warfare and complexity, one ought not be a military leader.

As for you question regarding post-positivist heuristics, I have no bloody idea.

I do know this; there is ample empirical evidence to suggest that the single best predictor of success in the workplace, across a wide variety of sectors (including the military), is intellectual ability.

Smarter people generally perform better. If we want better leaders, we should select smarter people.

Why should "simple and easily understandable" be equated with "anti-intellectual"? Clarity requires more intellectual rigor than is needed to bury an idea under a tidal wave of arcane pseudo-intellectual rhetoric, which often muddles more than it elucidates. I don't think we gain much from applying the tendency toward intellectual autoeroticism and obscure jargon that has long characterized the academic social sciences to military affairs, and we could lose a good deal.

Expressing an idea clearly and briefly in terms comprehensible to the educated lay person is not "dumbing it down". It's smartening it up. Clarity requires effort, but it's well worth it.

Is there any empirical evidence to suggest that officers who have studied post-positivist heuristics actually make better decisions in the field than those who have not? It would be interesting to know...

MAJ Lythgoe,

"We Army officers gravitate to what is simple and easily understandable." Indeed. There is something of an anti-intellectual undercurrent in the Army. As I understand it, the promotion of D.H. Petraeus was something of a coup, and at one point he was called back from Iraq to head a one-star board in order to ensure the Army did not promote another group of officers who yearned for the "simple and understandable" (in response to the previous groups that had managed to bungle Iraq).

Of course, this is all speculation, and my evidence for anti-intellectualism is purely anecdotal.

Even so, I'm sticking to my proverbial guns on the issue of expecting, no, DEMANDING an educated officer corps, however, I understand your call for pragmatism.

My dear Condrey.

Like a five-year old who has put his fingers in his ears and run away while yelling, "LALALALALAAAAA!", you have the last word.

While I don't care for your tone, I don't envy your task. Best of luck, truly.

MAJ Lythgoe,

The idea that we shouldn't expect officers to develop themselves seems somewhat flawed. Recent records of performance at the general officer level would suggest that well-read, educated officers, such as D.H. Petraeus, have done better that the traditional "blood and guts" (tactical) model (I'll not mention names).

I have no doubt that in the past, few officers really read or seek advanced education (though the latter seems to be changing). However, we shouldn't accept this status quo simply because it is the status quo.

Where much is given, much is required. If Design is to become a mainstay of doctrine (and it appears this is the case), we ought to expect officers to bloody well understand it.

The larger issue here is how small can you compress Design? It's like compressing a picture. Compression makes it easier to handle, but it also eliminates some of the information. At some point, the original image is distorted.

On the one extreme is this article, which would compress it into a short, easily understood, replicable process. On the other extreme is a deep understanding from not only doctrine, but the ideas and theories that Design is drawn from.

Certainly the answer is somewhere in between.

I actually have a copy of the original interim FM, Design, before it was reduced to a chapter. Having read it, and the chapter in FM 5-0, I think that an FM-size doctrinal reference is probably about the right size and offers the right amount of information to get the novice started with Design.

KOS Bismarck: Although I appreciate the fact that reading military history informs current doctrine, I would argue that it is not necessary to understand it. An officer can understand our doctrine without reading any history (though certainly this is not advisable).

Likewise, we need Design to be approachable without requiring officers to read a library of books (we're kind of busy nowadays...). Like tactics, etc..., we need a concise doctrinal reference that gets folks moving down the right path. They don't necessarily need to have a super deep understanding of the underlying ideas.

This is why we have doctrine - so we can rapidly convey the key ideas from history, theory, and experience.

That being said, Design is tough and requires some minimum level of intellectual capacity.

The title of this article referencing Napoleon's Corporal is interesting. The story goes that Napoleon would always have a mere corporal present while briefing his plan to commanders. At the end, he'd ask the corporal if he understood it, and if he did, Napoleon knew the plan was simple enough for the army to execute.

There is an argument to be made for simple, straightforward planning. However, Design doesn't lend itself to a lot of simplification. If Napoleon's corporal understands your version of Design, you are probably not doing it correctly.

My dear Condrey:

I'll admit my previous entry was a bit...er...pompous. And it was intended to be so based on the utter conceit in your first comment. My entry wasn't so much a jab at ISAF as it was a jab at you personally.

Of course, you continue your tone here by insinuating that I am a rear-echelon desk jockey who gets news of the war second hand, and with no experience putting theory into practice.

Therefore, I am (presumably) neither worthy nor competent to debate this issue with one such as yourself.

I'd be careful about that assumption. As a planner, you should know that a good assumption is likely to be true. This one is not.

Returning to the substantive debate, you mention the following:

<i>My point is that there are no short-cuts to learning and applying design. This article is yet another tool for highly educated officers who do not (nor will they) have formalized education in design and dont have the time necessary to wade through the vast pool of literature that forms its foundation.</i>

What are you saying here? Are there truly no shortcuts? If one does not have the time to understand something, then uses a tool to gain an understanding is a lesser time than would normally be required, is that not a shortcut?

The real question is, should be require officers do have a deep understanding of Design and related concepts?

Absolutely. To suggest that officers should not have to wade through the literature on Design is like saying that officers should not be obliged wade through the vast pool of military history that forms the foundations of our modern way of war. Every officer is obliged to develop him/herself through reading, study, and reflection. Design is no different.

Jason,

I hear what you are saying. I would also suggest that Dale Eikmeier's article is a bit pessimistic about the intellectual capacity of practitioners -- misrepresenting design as getting to a solution through a replicable process (that's what mission analysis advocates -- and that has not worked).

He premises his argument on the validity of FM 5-0: "Design is a methodology for applying critical and creative thinking to understand, visualize, and describe complex, ill-structured problems and develop approaches to solve them."

I could not disagree more with these premises. Design is a kind of anti-doctrine that does not assume military doctrine is right.

I think your argument is vested in Dale's ideas about executing prescribed doctrine correctly. You are arguing for process correctness rather than the quality of critical dialogue, framing or other aspects of design philosophy. I think FM 5-0 is misrepresenting design...it has distorted into a familiar paradigm -- planning & mission analysis.

So while I think I understand your argument, I respectfully disagree. The sensemaking process itself has to be designed...it cannot be presented in a doctrine. Or what is in doctrine represents something other than design (in Dale's case -- it is just another analytic tool in the planning toolkit).

Regards,
Chris

MAJ Condrey,

I am sure we are all pleased to hear that you found some "mild amusement" in this discussion. Obviously, we are honored to have you participating in a discussion that would ordinarily be beneath you and your SAMS chums.

However, might I suggest that the "people with which you are developing solutions" (HQ ISAF) aren't exactly poster children for success. Perhaps this is because of short attention spans and disinterest in theory.

Maybe delving into a bit of theory might help the situation. We might even win the bloody war.

Cheers!

P.S. Although having a short attention span and poor understanding of theory may give one bragging rights at ISAF, I'm not sure its the same everywhere. I might keep that information to myself...

Andrew, Well I agree to a point.

"Where Are We Now?, Where Do We Want to Be?, How to Get There?" presents a process and a reference to ends-based rationality.

As an historic heuristic, design is more like Columbus's mission -- he may have not answered any of these questions authoritatively yet one could argue he contributed to changing the world as was known. (Ironically, I believe he died not knowing the answers to them as well).

Design may well involve acting before knowing (and one may never know, but may have to settle for ephemeral knowledge). Anna Simons (an anthropologist on faculty at NPS) published a recent piece in the Strategic Studies Institute. She traces the historic stories of great strategic thinkers and finds that strategic thinking is associated with deep immersion into situations. I think she is onto something that is, in practice, a form of "anti-doctrine."

That is, don't expect to write doctrine when it is about uniqueness, novelty, situatedness, and so forth. The idea of doctrine itself is vulnerable. I tried to capture this argument in a short SWJ piece a couple of years ago: http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/journal/docs-temp/65-paparone.pdf

Bottom line: FM 5-0 is a fallacy.(?)

Dayuhan:

There is something to be said for a simple, concise explanation, which is what the author of this article was trying to get at. However, when you do that, especially with something like design, you run the risk of losing some of the important stuff.

Design was originally going to be an entire FM. Then it was reduced to a single chapter in FM 5-0. Now this author is reducing it to a single article. The question becomes how to simply and succinctly describe a way of thinking which is intended to deal with problems which are not simple?

The point about unnecessary jargon is well-taken, however, I'd point to my original comment as evidence of how this can go astray. The author reduces the definition of complexity to something that is short and easy to understand, but wrong. The original Design FM said:

"Understanding the operational environment as a complex system helps us see beyond intuition based and reductive decision making processes which expect predictable, linear relationships between cause and effect. Complex systems are nonlinear because of interactions between their parts. They contain a mixture of positive and negative feedback loops, and complex systems can change as a result of previous interventions."

Not exactly succinct, but then again, complexity (as it relates to complexity theory, systems thinking, etc..) is difficult to understand. Maybe we need an entire FM after all so folks can understand the underpinning of this concept.

I don't mean to defend "over-blown verbiage", but this stuff can only be reduced so much before something is lost in translation.

I certainly agree that we've been treating symptoms rather than problems... I'd take it a bit farther ans say that our approach to symptoms has often created more problems. I suspect, though, that this particular tendency is centered more on the policy level than at the military decision making level.

Yes, we've been doing this - if "this" means addressing difficult problems - for some time. So have many other people: difficult problems aren't exactly new and today's difficult problems are neither unique nor uniquely difficult. Some people - including us at times - have addressed difficult problems well, some have done it badly.

I'm simply questioning whether the goal of improving our response to difficult problems is advanced by stifling the process under ever-thickening layers of overblown verbiage. I suspect that it is not. For better or worse language reflects thought, and it seems to me all too likely that a lack of direct, concise, incisive, jargon-free writing on these subjects might well reflect a lack of thinking that possesses the same qualities.

Dayuhan,

In a sense, this is not new. Have we been doing it for a long time? Yes. Have we been doing it well? Not really.

One issue is that we spend a lot of time addressing symptoms rather than problems because we don't know what the problems are. As Russ Ackoff might have said, we've been doing the wrong things righter and getting wronger in the process. Design is meant to address this issue (among others).

We've been fighting wars for a long time, too. That doesn't mean that we can't do it better.

Dayuhan,

Hmmm..the premise of your conclusion is the article. The step-by-step you reference is just a form of rational-analytic decision making (an objectivist paradigm).

Design would question the way we are framing (for example, "environment" is a term we borrow from the science of ecology, not a hard fact we can use in war -- it is a metaphor).

When we start realizing that we are framing situations around borrowed meaning from other knowledge niches, we can begin to appreciate how we "socially construct" the situation we face through dominant metaphors/narratives.

If we accept that the reality we are perceiving is made up (inter-subjectively), we can be critical about the way we are framing.

Reframing is an essential "language art" that design demands. Yet the steps in the analytic models would not permit such reflexivity (challenge) because the paradigm demands objective views of the world (some might call classical empiricism).

Classical empiricism does not work in the "design thinking" mode. Hence this is the paradigm shift I was referring.

Possibly I'm dense, nbut I don't see how this represents a paradigm shift or what's so philosophical about it. From the article:
<i>
The four basic questions are:

What is going on in the environment? (Description of the current state)

What do we want the environment to look like? (Description of the desired end state)

What are the tensions in the environment that are preventing achievement of the desired end-state? (What is the problem(s) or obstacle(s) blocking the transition from the current state to the desired state?)

How do we get from the current state to our desired state? (What actions will address the problem(s)?)</i>

In other words: where are we, where do we want to be, what's in the way, and how are we going to get there.

Is this really a paradigm shift? Is this thought process really something new and revolutionary? Or are we just using a whole bunch of new words to describe something that military commanders - and others who face problems - have been doing for a long, long, time?

Dale,

Well, while I think I understand your intent, I also detect that you may be suggesting, albeit metaphorically, that practitioners are like Napoleon's corporals. I tend to think officers (and many smart enlisted folks), in most cases, are quite capable of grasping the philosophical underpinnings. These are essential to perceiving the scope of the paradigm shift at hand.

My counterargument: Nothing is easy about design and by making the case that it can be made easy is understating its challenge. After all, design is oriented toward "wicked problems" which defy simplification. The philosophical aspects of design are inseparable from its conception in practice.

In any case, I appreciate your effort here and I believe it to be noble.

Chris,
The title of my article and the introduction made it clear that I was writing for a specific audience that needs to understand the nuts and bolts of Design but has no need or interest in scientificism, objectivism, post-positivism, Habermasian or any other ism. A debate on the merits of objectivism and subjectivism may be interesting to some but is it to the average staff officer in the field? A very real complaint and impediment to the acceptance of Design has been its over-intellectualism and a underlying attitude that if you have not read Schon or understand all the isms you can't really do Design.

Dale,

I think critical thinking is much more than the "scientificism" proposed by Paul and Elder. As you present "A critical thinker raises vital questions and states them clearly and precisely; gathers and assesses relevant information; then comes to well-reasoned conclusions; tests those conclusions; and is open minded to alternatives." This is clearly a restatement of the "scientific method."

Paul and Elder reflect a logical positivist view of reality (objectivism) and knowledge (a result of empirical hypothesis testing).

Design is based in a different ontology (in short what is real?) and accompanying epistemology (i.e. how do we know it is real?).

Those who have promoted design over the past few decades have indicated a basis in post-positivism (e.g., Donald Schön). These ontologically represent subjectivism and, epistemologically, the social construction of knowledge. Hence this is where the idea of "framing" and "reframing" come from.

Methods of design are based in dialogical reasoning, Habermasian "communicative rationality," and hermeneutics (among other expressions of social constructionism). Herbert A. Simon, the proverbial father of design, wrote his book titled "The Sciences of the Artificial," expressing man-made concepts and sensemaking are at work.

The problem with the Paul and Elder approach to critical reasoning and creative thinking is that they cannot account for aesthetics, feelings, and so forth that are important to imagination in design (in architecture, it is not just the engineering sciences, but the artfulness and situatedness that are perhaps more important).

The use of metaphoric reasoning is key to understanding how Schön describes the process of framing (he wrote a book published in 1963 describing how we extend and displace meanings from other meanings--i.e. metaphor). Short article: http://www.dau.mil/pubscats/ATL%20Docs/Jul-Aug10/Paparone_jul-aug10.pdf

Longer explanation: http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/milreview/paparone_metaphors.pdf

Best wishes, Chris

Sir,

While Webster may say that the two words are synonyms, within the field of Complexity Theory (from which Design draws much of its theoretical underpinning), these two terms are most certainly not synonyms.

I would direct you to the Jan-Feb 2009 issue of Military Review in which BG (Ret) Huba Wass de Czege says the following:

"Complicated versus complex systems.

Merely complicated systems are composed of numerous parts and structures, all logically separable from their environment. An example would be the system for deploying units on a time table for an operation like D-day. Such a schedule could be accurately analyzed in the abstract.

Complex systems are made up of dynamic, interactive, and adaptive elements that cannot be separated from interaction with their environments. The significant elements of complex systems are human beings and their relationships. An example would be the action-reaction interplay of the various actors in cooperation and contention on D-day. Analysis could never predict the relationships that were the most important part of the flow of events.

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 informal logic of making new wholes of parts).

Because the elements of complex systems we care most about are human ones, making sense of relationships requires hypothetical synthesis in the form of maps or narratives. Such maps and narratives evolve as informal products that reflect a dimly perceived truth at a moment of understanding in time. To make the best sense of human relationships, interactions, trends, and propensities, military commands have to adopt a habitually skeptical approach to such non-deductive conclusions. Such habituation implies a new intellectual culture that balances design and planning while evincing an appreciation for the dynamic flow of human factors and a bias toward perpetual learning and adapting."

I draw attention to the distinction, not to be the semantics police, but to illustrate the point that the difference there is a very real and important difference between complex and complicated problems.

MAJ Lythgoe,

Regarding my use of the word complex. My intent was to describe problem complexity and structure in precise and distinct ways. The goal being that one could seperate a problem's level of complexity from its structure. Your definition of complicated (the helicopter) is the same as my use of the term complex. In fact complex and complicated are synonyms.
What I think your gripe is actually about is problem structure, not its complexity. A helicopter is a complex, or complicated system, but nevertheless it is structured. Adaptive systems, be they complex or simple are ill-structured and can behave in numerous ways some of which are difficult to predict or understand. Hence the need for Design.
What it sounds like you are saying is, complicated + ill-structure = complex
What I am saying is that complexity and structure are two distinct components of a problem and Design is useful when high complexity combines with ill-structure.