Arguing the OE, Episode 13: Training Systems Thinking

As military professionals strive to understand and creatively intervene in the operational environment, joint and Army doctrine recommend that we graphically depict the stakeholders and the relationships between them as they exist in our AOs and JOAs. For now, I will call this mapping the practice of systems thinking. Put otherwise, we are trying to understand how various sub-systems--comprising political, economic, social,ethical, and identity-based factors--combine to form tough challenges for military professionals and our unified-action partners. Such mapping requires that we appreciate this aggregate (and ever-changing) system "holistically" as well as in terms of the individual forces that compose it. This mapping allows us to appreciate the connections between individual forces at the lowest levels and emergent effects at the aggregate level. Moreover, by depicting relationships graphically, a group of officers will more readily be able to imaginatively and creatively see places (both geographically and conceptually) as windows of opportunity where the application of a commander's soldiers, resources, speech, and unified-action relationships might be helpful. Most especially, we'll need to imagine what the effects of our specific missions will be once they are introduced into the environment, always appreciating that (i) our actions may not work as planned, (ii) our actions may very well generate hoped-for consequences, and (iii) our actions will also likely engender unintended and unforseen consequences.

Systems thinking requires practice, or "turns," if it is to yield benefits. One way to practice is to have a staff section listen to, say, an National Public Radio news clip about a real-world conflict. Play the news clip in a conference room or planning office, and have the staff officers depict the relationships on whiteboards or butcher paper as they listen to the clip. Once the clip is complete, give the officers a few minutes to clean up their work and begin some initial analysis of the connections. With a few repetitions, you'll find that they will not only learn more details about the given topic; they will also learn how to more richly understand, visualize, and describe the operational environment and their unit's proposed interventions with much greater granularity and imagination. Since a news clip is a narrative akin to what we find in patrol debriefs, intelligence estimates, etc., the skill of systems thinking will be readily transferrable to the kind of work we routinely do.