Planning Beyond Tactics: Towards a Military Application of the Philosophy of Design in the Formulation of Strategy. A Monograph by MAJ

PLANNING BEYOND TACTICS: TOWARDS A MILITARY APPLICATION OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF DESIGN IN THE FORMULATION OF STRATEGY by MAJ Edward P. W. Hayward, RHG/D, British Army, 79 pages. The recognition of the failure at the strategic and operational levels of war during the Global War on Terror, specifically in Iraq, has resulted in a quest for intellectual solutions to complex operational and strategic problems. To date this has resulted in a tacit acknowledgement that the Military Decision Making Process (MDMP) is not equipped to tackle ill defined problems and that a complementary approach is required. The emphasis on problem framing as defining a problem has been the hallmark of this new approach that is facilitated through institutional learning and a process of reframing rather than the advocating of predictive solutions. This monograph does not attempt to evaluate these new processes or seek to incorporate them within existing doctrine. Instead, it sets out the philosophy behind a design approach to planning. The broad design theory is an amalgam of the Israeli concept of Systemic Operational Design (SOD), Effects-Based Approach (EBA) and Systems of Systems Analysis (SoSA) as a systemic design process that is complementary to existing decision making tools. The monograph elucidates the philosophical functions that are contingent to this process. Importantly, this is not a ‘how to’ manual providing a prescriptive approach, but an illumination, a theory of becoming that focuses on the why of the process, in order to offer a level of understanding. The distinction between Form, Function and Logic has been embraced as the method used for explaining the philosophy of design. This builds on the writing of Deleuze and his ‘philosophy of difference’ and also in compartmentalizing between explaining the form of the design approach, from its functions and logic. The design approach produces more robust planning guidance, a frame of reference that enables reframing when the situation changes, an easily communicable strategy, across the whole of government and the explicit step of acknowledging our own biases and perspectives in shaping how we view the world. The conclusion of this monograph is not to replace MDMP and existing practices for planning or as a tool for decisions of implementation, but that a design approach is more appropriate for the creation of strategy, at every level, and concerns primarily decisions of consequence.