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In 2004, retired Brigadier General Shimon Naveh of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) offered an extended idea on intuitive decision making to the US Army and US Marine Corps. His approach, which he called systemic operational design, appeared uniquely useful to planning campaigns and major operations.[xix] Based on an understanding of the chaotic nature of war, systemic operational design focuses on discerning the logic that makes a situation a problem. Through discourse a group that has expertise on some aspect of the situation structures or frames the problem, which frequently causes a counter-logic or solution to emerge naturally. In intuitive decision making a person aware of a familiar pattern enables construction of a story that makes sense; in systemic operational design a pattern materializes during discourse and facilitates a sense-making story. Failing to find the logic that makes a situation unacceptable and in need of change means planners are not able to discern a counter-logic, the conceptual element essential to begin planning.
Naveh’s explanation of systemic operational design was for many officers difficult to grasp despite the simplicity of his idea. Much of this difficulty was due to language issues and US officers’ poor understanding of the nonlinear nature of war.[xx] Fortunately, researchers learned of an important paper during the Army-Marine Corps experiments evaluating systemic operational design, which US officers found easier to comprehend.[xxi]
Close study of the systemic approach to operational design, coupled with a series of carefully constructed and capably executed wargames conducted over five years, validated systemic operational design. The final product, though, was a modified version of Naveh’s original structure and form. The US Army, which led the evaluation, provided the results to service and joint doctrine writers with the expectation they would revise planning manuals and incorporate this new approach to operational design. Universally, this failed to happen. In every case, doctrine writers merely affixed the new approach to the front end of the standard analytical military decision making process, which stresses creating and testing multiple courses of action. To illustrate the illogic of this, recall that systemic operational design is to uncover the logic or “pattern” of the situation and offer a story—the counter-logic—that will resolve the problem. In other words, the planners employ the approach to create a story that makes sense. What the standard analytical process demands is the creation of additional stories in the form of other courses of action. Why would any commander or staff want to waste time developing alternative stories when they have one they believe will work?
[xix] After the 2006 Israeli war with Hezbollah, several critics blamed use of systemic design for the failings the IDF experienced. I have reviewed these reports and found that the critics misconstrued systemic operational design and effects based operations, seeing them as the same thing. They are polar-opposite ways of making decisions.
[xx] The term nonlinear here does not refer to the geometric connotation inherent in the “nonlinear battlefield,” but to the disproportion between cause and effect often found in open systems.
[xxi] Horst W. J. Rittel, and Melvin M. Webber, “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning,” Policy Science, 1973, 155-169.
(Excerpt from article “From Grand Strategy to Operational Design: Getting it Right”)
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Paul K. Van Riper