Military Review English Edition January-February 2015 | Page 46

Time Period

Military DecisionMaking Process
(MDMP)

Army Design
Methodology (ADM)

Before Observer’s
Command

4

1

obUnstructured Approach
served
from
each
group.

During Observer’s
Command

55

2

7

After Observer’s
Command

3
59

Total

3

10

Note: Of the seven unstructured teams and 55 MDMP teams during the observer’s command period, 29 received a brief introduction to design.

Table 1. Number of Teams Observed by Group
and incorporating the new special operations
forces operational design concepts into training and
education.7

The Experiment
When describing an experiment in social science
terms, it does not always follow that a deliberate
approach was utilized under clinical conditions. What
follows is a collection of observations during the Robin
Sage portion of the Special Forces Qualification Course.
I define an MDMP team as one that either had no exposure to design or who received no guidance to plan in
any way differently than they had already been taught.
I define Army design methodology (ADM) teams as
those that, during the course of conversations with
those teams I received briefings from, the topic of the
ADM was inevitably broached. I define the unstructured teams as those teams that I, while roleplaying as
their commander, offered guidance to approach their
planning in a less structured manner. During my last
three classes, I gave a block of instruction on planning,
largely due to some insightful conversations I had had
with previous teams during commanders’ briefbacks.
Inevitably the subject of design was broached during
this instruction. This last group of teams, therefore,
received some formal exposure to design and unstructured approaches. Table 1 shows the number of teams I
44

The real value of my observations lies in the feedback I received from students and instructors during
planning, after planning, and after their training
exercise was completed. These observations, casually
recorded much later in more of a reflective journal-like
manner, were the basis for conclusions I shared during
an interview with the Army Research Institute in
February 2014. After sharing the conclusions with
several others afterwards, I was encouraged to describe
and publish my observations and efforts in the words
of social science. Thus, it is less important to focus on
the methodology of the experiment, as it was decidedly
exploratory (and admittedly did not follow the conventional orthodoxy of social science experimentation),
and focus rather on preliminary observations that
strongly suggest a basis for more controlled and structured future study.

The Control Group: Military
Decision-Making Process
To underline the point made in the previous paragraph, there was no control group per se other than the
teams I observed that either had no conversation with
me about design, or were not encouraged to approach
their planning in any other way but through MDMP.
As noted in table 1, these were the vast majority of the
teams I observed.
January-February 2015  MILITARY REVIEW