A Recognitional Planning Model

Planning under conditions of uncertainty, time pressure, and other stressors is a complex cognitive activity for military command post staff members. The Army and the Marine Corps have developed formal planning models intended as step-by-step guides. However, these models are inconsistent with the actual strategies of skilled planners, and they slow down the decision cycle. As a result, the formal models are usually ignored in practice, in order to generate faster tempo. Yet some procedure is needed, to direct inexperienced staff and to coordinate the actions of a planning team. We present a Recognitional Planning Model (RPM) based on a series of observations of Army, Marine, and Naval command post exercises. The RPM applies the concept of recognitional decision making. The RPM is intended as a prescriptive model to increase the speed of planning, but it is also a descriptive model capturing the strategies of experienced planning teams.