Download or read book How Critical Thinking Shapes the Military Decision Making Process written by and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A lack of Combatant Commander (COCOM) critical thinking in the Military Decision Making Process (MDMP) is a causal factor in military failure at the operational level. However, critical thinking can improve the MDMP of the COCOM. This paper analyzes the effects of critical thinking on the combatant commander's decision making process by: defining critical thinking; illustrating its impact on intuitive and analytical decisions; demonstrating barriers to critical thinking and proposing practical ways to use critical thinking in the MDMP. An historical vignette illustrates the effects of critical thinking on decision making in a major operation. The MDMP is a process and critical thinking is an enabler to that process. Frequently the MDMP solution is plagued by a lack of analytic depth, faulty assumptions, vague analysis and wishful thinking. Two common barriers to clear thinking are psychological and logical fallacies. This paper provides examples of both types of barriers. Critical thinking can improve the MDMP decisions resulting in a higher probability of operational success. Finally, the paper offers a starting point by proposing several critical thinking ideas to use in the MDMP.
Download or read book U S Army The Applied Critical Thinking Handbook written by and published by Jeffrey Frank Jones. This book was released on with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why Red Teaming? The premise of the program at the University of Foreign Military and Cultural Studies (UFMCS) is that people and organizations court failure in predictable ways, that they do so by degrees, almost imperceptibly, and that they do so according to their mindsets, biases, and experience, which are formed in large part by their own culture and context. The sources of these failures are simple, observable, and lamentably, often repeated. They are also preventable, and that is the point of ‘red teaming’. Our methods and education involve more than Socratic discussion and brainstorming. We believe that good decision processes are essential to good outcomes. To that end, our curriculum is rich in divergent processes, red teaming tools, and liberating structures, all aimed at decision support. We educate people to develop a disposition of curiosity, and help them become aware of biases and behavior that prevent them from real positive change in the ways they seek solutions and engage others. We borrow techniques, methods, frameworks, concepts, and best practices from several sources and disciplines to create an education, and practical applications, that we find to be the best safeguard against individual and organizational tendencies toward biases, errors in cognition, and groupthink. Red teaming is diagnostic, preventative, and corrective; yet it is neither predictive or a solution. Our goal is to be better prepared and less surprised in dealing with complexity. What is Red Teaming? Red teaming is a function that provides commanders an independent capability to fully explore alternatives in plans, operations, concepts, organizations and capabilities in the context of the operational environment (OE) and from the perspectives of partners, adversaries and others. A Red Team performs three general types of tasks: - Support to operations, planning, and decision support - Critical review and analysis of already-existing plans - Intelligence support (Threat Emulation) (UFMCS provides education for the first two tasks; TRADOC’s Intelligence School and Center provides education on the third.) In order for a Red Team to effectively contribute to decision making all of the following elements are required: • The ability to think critically about the problem. While this may seem obvious, the reality is that critical thinking is a skill set that requires training, education and tools. The Army assimilates people from different backgrounds across the nation. One of the drawbacks of that assimilation is our military tendency to reflect the same biases and perspectives. We pride ourselves in common values—which while ingrained in the Army culture are not universal outside of that culture. • Thinking critically and challenging the group is an unnatural act for military staffs. Doing so effectively requires tools and methods that enable leaders to see different perspectives. • Red Teams require top cover to be allowed to challenge the conventional wisdom and the organization’s leaders. No matter the quality of the Red Team or the methods they employ, dictatorial or toxic leaders are incompatible with successful red teaming. • Red teaming is not easy, and not everyone can do it. Red Teamers must be effective written and oral communicators. They must have credibility in the area in which they are providing red teaming insights. They must be able to constructively challenge the plan. This means focusing on what is truly important, able to explain why it is being challenged and offering some alternative ways to think about the problem.
Download or read book Logical Evolution of the Military Decision Making Process written by David W. Burwell and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph explains the ability of the military decision-making process to inform the decision-maker in the current operational environment. A comparison of the operational environment, as envisioned through the U.S. Army s doctrine, before and after the end of the Cold War establishes the framework by which commanders makes decisions. Moreover this comparison highlights the critical changes in that environment that the MDMP has yet to account for. Next, an analysis of naturalistic decision-making theory provides insight into how commanders inform the decisions they make. Subsequently, the military decision-making process (MDMP) is analyzed to determine the advantages and disadvantages of the process as compared to the current operational environment and the way experienced commanders naturally make decisions. This analysis establishes the logical evolutionary steps the MDMP must make in order to be a viable decision-making process in the current operational environment The fundamental dilemmas of decision-making within the U.S. Army are five fold. First, there currently is little experience within the U.S. Army at the operational level. Yet, since the end of the cold war the U.S. Army is increasingly becoming involved at the operational level of war, as the shift in focus of the Army s doctrine indicates. Second, Joint Doctrine does not prescribe a methodology for decision-making that is fundamentally different from the tactical MDMP contained in U.S. Army doctrine. Because of the deficiency in Joint Doctrine it is logical that a U.S. Army planner, for example, operating in a Joint Task Force (JTF) Headquarters will utilize the only decision-making process that the planner is familiar with the MDMP. Yet the MDMP is a tactical process. Third, the MDMP was a tactical decision-making process designed for the pre-cold war, tactical U.S. Army.
Download or read book Training Critical Thinking Skills for Battle Command written by and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The ARI Workshop, Training Critical Thinking Skills for Battle Command, was held on 5-6 December 2001 at Ft. Leavenworth. The purpose of the Workshop was to: (1) provide an overview of current research in critical thinking and training critical thinking (CT), (2) provide a forum for identifying and discussing issues related to training CT in the Army; and (3) develop recommendations for training and for future directions for research and development in the area of CT training. Participants with a variety of expertise attended - Military officers, instructors in CT and academic researchers in CT. The following papers were presented: Critical Thinking in the 21st Century by MG (Ret.) Lon Maggart; Thinking Critically about Critical Thinking by Diane Halpern; A Framework for Critical Thinking Research and Training by Susan Fischer; A three part theory of Critical Thinking: Dialogue, Mental Models and Reliability by Marvin Cohen; Critical Thinking in Teams by Daniel Serfaty; and A simulation Tool for Critical Thinking Training by Marvin Cohen. The Proceedings includes these papers, with the exception of the Serfaty paper. Workshop participants discussed a variety of issues related to training CT and their recommendations for training and future research are included in the Proceedings."--DTIC.
Download or read book Conflict written by Neil D. Shortland and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-02 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conflict: How Soldiers Make Impossible Decisions is about making hard choices--where all outcomes are potentially negative. The authors draw on interviews conducted with soldiers about the situations they faced and the decisions they made at war. These are vivid and sometimes distressing stories. They form the data from which the authors explore the cognitive processes associated with choice, commitment to action and (sometimes) error, as well as goal directed thinking, innovation and courage. By referring to real cases, Conflict invites readers to consider their own responses under extreme circumstances and ask themselves how they would choose between difficult options. In doing so this book will go some way to helping readers understand what it feels like when choosing between least-worst decisions.
Download or read book Moral Issues in Military Decision Making written by Anthony E. Hartle and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Much has changed in warfare in recent years, with America now dominant on the international scene and terrorism the new enemy. In light of these changes, the need for moral grounding in military actions is a more pressing concern than ever. When it was originally published, Moral Issues in Military Decision Making reflected the concerns posed by nuclear stalemate and the lessons of Vietnam. In that highly-praised work. Anthony Hartle outlined the essential elements of the Professional Military Ethic created for American military forces. In this new edition, he reexamines the moral foundations for America's military leadership in the post-9/11 era. Considering world affairs since the first edition - the Gulf War, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq, 9/11, and the emergence of the United States as an unrivaled military power - Hartle explains how these events have raised ethical issues that differ dramatically from those of the Cold War. by the war on terrorism, homeland defense, asymmetric warfare, the proliferation of American military interventions, and the UN's role in peacekeeping operations. Using meticulously analyzed case studies - twice as many as in the first edition - he considers such moral dilemmas as torture, challenging superior officers, use of overwhelming force, and responding to fire in the presence of civilian shields. In this revision, Hartle examines further the status of professional military ethics in light of current affairs, changes in the articulation of military values, and recent research. In a new chapter on human rights, he relates moral principles directly to values embedded in the Constitution and argues that overwhelming American military power cannot succeed unless it is accompanied by the moral force of the values it seeks to protect. difficulties of applying conventional laws of war and human rights doctrine in military operations. Hartle convincingly shows that national security is as much about the preservation of moral principles as it is about the protection of America's citizens and borders. His book demonstrates that the American military must continue to observe those principles in order to be effective in its primary mission.
Download or read book Logical Evolution of the Military Decision Making Process written by David W. Burwell and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 53 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Military Decision Making Process written by Us Army and published by . This book was released on 2019-11-19 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Heuristics and Biases in Military Decision Making written by and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 14 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: CARL VON CLAUSEWITZ'S metaphoric description of the condition of war is as accurate today as it was when he wrote it in the early 19th century. The Army faces an operating environment characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity.2 Military professionals struggle to make sense of this paradoxical and chaotic setting. Succeeding in this environment requires an emergent style of decision making, where practitioners are willing to embrace improvisation and reflection.3 The theory of reflection-in-action requires practitioners to question the structure of assumptions within their professional military knowledge.4 For commanders and staff officers to willingly try new approaches and experiment on the spot in response to surprises, they must critically examine the heuristics (or "rules of thumb") by which they make decisions and understand how they may lead to potential bias. The institutional nature of the military decision making process (MDMP), our organizational culture, and our individual mental processes in how we make decisions shape these heuristics and their accompanying biases. The theory of reflection-in-action and its implications for decision making may sit uneasily with many military professionals. Our established doctrine for decision making is the MDMP. The process assumes objective rationality and is based on a linear, step-based model that generates a specific course of action and is useful for the examination of problems that exhibit stability and are underpinned by assumptions of "technical-rationality." 5 The Army values MDMP as the sanctioned approach for solving problems and making decisions. This stolid template is comforting; we are familiar with it. However, what do we do when our enemy does not conform to our assumptions embedded in the process? We discovered early in Iraq that our opponents fought differently than we expected.
Download or read book Clarifying the Relationship of Design Thinking to the Military Decision making Process written by Thomas Scott Fisher and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The complexity of today's operational environment where military organizations are conducting campaigns to address some of the nation's most urgent problems has grown exponentially. To address this expanding complexity, the Defense Department introduced 'design' into its problem-solving doctrine as a method to understand the new and dynamic challenges associated with this increasingly complex environment and provide a tool to augment its current doctrinal military decision-making process. However, it appears military 'design' as prescribed by the Department may be only marginally effective at producing viable solutions for solving the complex, ill-structured problems that current military campaigns were developed to resolve. This study seeks to understand the issues facing the Department's design methodology by examining two areas: 1) the common challenges facing senior planners responsible for solving complex problems, and 2) the model or process that best enables design approaches to support military decision-making.This study is comprised of exploratory, qualitative research that examines these areas by using a combination of interviews, case research and design science research regarding the relationship of design thinking to the military problem-solving process. The research began with interviews of Plans Chiefs from the Department's most experienced warfighting headquarters from the last two decades to identify insights and data regarding the efficacy of military design thinking in the Department's problem-solving process and develop an improved design model. Additionally, case research involving observations of planning teams conducting problem-solving processes in situ to develop solutions to crises provided corroborating data for the interviews. The case research identified current practitioner design challenges and products needed to validated Subject Matter Expert observations and recommendations for improving military design. The research provided a number of results useful for modifying current military design methodologies to improve its campaigning process. It concluded with the development of a novel Military Design Model (MDM) for integrating design thinking with current military decision-making processes and the joint operational planning processes. This model modifies current doctrine with the introduction of a Solution Space and Model Space in addition to the current Problem Space while placing the development of an operational approach for the campaign within a larger framework of the Operation Space. Overall, the research suggests that abduction is a better reasoning system for designing campaigns as it relies upon inferences to define success as well as modifying current academic theory regarding the scientific method cycle of research to more accurately describe the relationship between identification of inferences and the generation of hypotheses. It also identifies and explains the interdependencies between the proposed military design spaces. Finally, the case research discovered products and processes from practice useful in both deliberate and crisis planning processes based on the proposed model for integrating design with the military decision-making process.
Download or read book Military Leadership and Decision Making written by Agha Humayun Amin and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2012-10-28 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Military Leadership and decision making If there were no gap between "Theory" and "Practice" or between "Perception" and reality life would have been a bed of roses! Soldiers would not have read Clausewitz, Economists would not have read Keynes, Revolutionaries would not have read Marx Plekhanov or Mao! There would have been no great men since no one would have required any direction! Organisations would have been run on one-man one vote since no one would have been required to make decisions or assessments! Alas this was not so! This is what made a great philosopher say, "All thinking is indeed Art. Where the logician draws, where the premises stop which are the result of cognition -where judgement begins, there Art begins"! Politics and warfare are two spheres where intangibles override the tangible! In short Politics and Warfare require superior intellects in order to operate successfully since both cannot be mastered by mathematical formulae or theorems! Decision making in war, politics or business is no mean task as it is mistakenly assumed to be. Clausewitz was not wrong when he said "Bonaparte was right when he said that many of the questions which come before a General for a decision would make problems for a mathematical calculation not unworthy of the powers of Newton or Euler. In this brief article we will discuss the "Perception and Reality Gap" and those who bridged it! As a matter of fact the real test of greatness of a man lies in bridging the perception and reality gap! Every individual does so in life, however the great men who have made history bridge larger gaps while the vast multitude live their life by bridging relative much smaller gaps! "Some Examples of "Misperception" and of "How perceptions changed" It is hard to believe that of all people a man called Gandhi urged resident Indians to "think imperially and was instrumental in organizing a field ambulance training corps in London"!1 It is another thing that Gandhi soon had second thoughts and resigned from the ambulance training corps. Von Bernhardi a great German thinker, at least so it was thought before the First World War as early as 1911 wrote "Germany and the Pan Islamists and the revolutionaries of Bengal would shake the entire British position"!2 The Pan Islamists and the Bengalis gave the British a lot of problem in WW One but the British position was saved by a feigned composure of nonchalance and by divide and rule despite the fact that one point in time there were only 15,000 British troops in India! Mr Jinnah dismissed the "Pakistan Scheme" as a mad student's scheme but later he fought for the Pakistan idea and became the first Governor General of Pakistan. In 1937 Mr Jinnah stated that the Punjab was a hopeless place and that he would never visit it again!3 Mr Jinnah visited Punjab many times after this statement and the famous Pakistan Resolution was moved in Punjab in 1940. A general dismissed the draft plan of another officer stating "The originator belonged to an insane asylum"!4 The originator in this case was one who was later known as one of the greatest military commanders of history i.e. Napoleon Bonaparte!
Download or read book Military Review written by and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 648 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Military Decision Making Processes written by Kevin Dougherty and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2013-11-08 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: President Bill Clinton, speaking as might any commander-in-chief, on the eve of his decision to deploy ground troops to Bosnia in 1995, declared he had "no responsibility more grave than putting soldiers in harm's way." Such a statement suggests that a study of the decision-making process associated with the weighty matters of using force would be enlightening. Indeed, it is. The decision-making process is far from standardized nor is it simple. While all individuals associated with important decisions about national security and the lives of America's service members take their responsibilities seriously, the processes by which they reach their conclusions are varied and complicated. The book traces eight traditional and emerging theories or models of decision-making by first explaining the components of each model and then by analyzing its practical application through three case studies. Each chapter concludes with a discussion of the utility and explanatory power of the particular model. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.
Download or read book What is the Military Decision Making Process written by Georg Podlipny and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 9 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The aim of this article is to find out what the characteristic of the Military Decision Making Process (MDMP) at the tactical level is in order to understand better which elements have to change and how they have to change in order to fit this process to the actual challenges.
Download or read book Beyond the Commander s Estimate of the Situation written by and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 29 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Current U.S. military planning procedures were developed during the Cold War. As such, they generally fail to incorporate critical contemporary battlefield variables into the planning processes. Notably absent from deliberate planning is an analysis of the impact of culture and society on the way potential adversaries fight. Today's enemies are becoming increasingly asymmetric, and the problems faced by the United States have shifted from the well-structured problems of the Cold War to the increasingly ill-structured problems of the Long War. The military's standard planning methodologies were not developed around illstructured problems. Consequently, a single analytic template can no longer be applied with equal success to all problems. An analysis of the dominant Arab culture and of Arab society demonstrates the need to better incorporate intangible elements into our planning procedures. To remain relevant and effective, our planning process must keep pace with change. Military planners must find new planning procedures to augment existing doctrine, incorporate a better understanding of culture and society into current doctrine, expand and change the use of Foreign Area Officers and cultural advisors, and provide more opportunities for advanced civil education for our leaders.
Download or read book Incorporating Feedback Into the Military Decisionmaking Process to Improve Decisionmaking Performance written by Kenneth R. Smith and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 47 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Training Critical Thinking Skills for Battle Command ARI Workshop Proceedings written by and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ARI Workshop, Training Critical Thinking Skills for Battle Command, was held on 5-6 December 2001 at Ft. Leavenworth. The purpose of the Workshop was to: (1) provide an overview of current research in critical thinking and training critical thinking (CT), (2) provide a forum for identifying and discussing issues related to training CT in the Army; and (3) develop recommendations for training and for future directions for research and development in the area of CT training. Participants with a variety of expertise attended - Military officers, instructors in CT and academic researchers in CT. The following papers were presented: Critical Thinking in the 21st Century by MG (Ret.) Lon Maggart; Thinking Critically about Critical Thinking by Diane Halpern; A Framework for Critical Thinking Research and Training by Susan Fischer; A three part theory of Critical Thinking: Dialogue, Mental Models and Reliability by Marvin Cohen; Critical Thinking in Teams by Daniel Serfaty; and A simulation Tool for Critical Thinking Training by Marvin Cohen. The Proceedings includes these papers, with the exception of the Serfaty paper. Workshop participants discussed a variety of issues related to training CT and their recommendations for training and future research are included in the Proceedings.
