They're not going to be an Oriel College. Constitutions before constitutional is a discussion of the Congress.
I think that was it. No. That's up to me.
Then we can move on to today's proceedings. We are very honoured to have Professor Anthony Page from War College give today's
lecture entitled The Decision Point Military Command in the 21st Century.
Professor King has written two pertinent books on related subjects from the Combat Soldier, Infantry Tactics,
Confusion in the 2020 and 21st century, and the other on front line combat in the 21st century.
Both of Oxford and I understand this stuff is part of an ongoing very soon to be finished book project.
Yeah, well, the talk is called Command the 21st Century General.
Okay. Right. And then without further ado, let me get this to work.
Oh, yes. So before we have this going on.
Okay. And as I said, the debriefing of.
Okay. Thanks, Kit. Well, thanks for the for the nice introduction and thanks.
Thanks for being here on a beautiful winter's afternoon.
You know, in life we have preferential things to do at Oxford itself on an afternoon such as this.
But anyway, I appreciate you. I appreciate being here.
I got to say, I didn't talk here my first two. I had to see, first of all, also few years back.
And the first thing to have to talk to here in this very room,
I was actually assaulted by a fellow a fellow fellow from all the cells who attacked the military fashion.
So I see what PTSD from my experience, but hopefully we'll have a lot of I'm getting hammered afterwards,
but hopefully we'll have a slightly more gentle, gentle experience.
Well, as he says, what I'm trying to do today,
what I'm going to do today is just give you a little insight in some work I've been doing on on command in the 21st century,
particularly what I'm working on the last few years is the issue of divisional
command and the book that I've just hopefully we're going to like a final part.
Please come back to and I have to keep revising it. But the book that I've just written is about divisional command in the 20th and 21st century.
Obviously reviews trying to isolate and analyse the distinctive character of command
at that level and then footnote about every level in the in the 21st century.
And essentially, this this talk is really a chapter out of that book.
And hopefully what I want to try trying to do is to choose to give you a sort of accelerated version of the
thesis about command transformation with that on which I've been working over the last over the last four years.
So what I'm going to do is hope to talk in quite detailed way about command and methods of of command.
But I just need to, to, to make a few points in terms of setting, setting the talk up.
And in particular, obviously, I need to start by defining what I mean by command.
We command is one of those words which, you know, it's almost a word you put any meaning or you would like to put and it's adequate.
So it's worth it's worth just confirming what I mean by command before we go into the kind of anthropological, anthropological, sociological analysis.
And but what I mean, nothing special.
I didn't have any technical thing to offer you in terms of a definition command of me.
Come on. The first means decision making. I'm not trying to be clever in any way about it.
And the concept I use in the book is not is not trying to be clever, but there is there's some,
I think, interesting points about that once we define command decision making,
you know, because there are also interesting organisational questions of why you have
commanders and why you have such an institutional practice as command itself.
At this point I think things start to get a little bit more interesting and why do military organisations have commanders?
Why does command always exist in miniaturisation? And they all seem to be this in order to coordinate large forces, large organisations,
it is essential for human organisations to invest decision making authority in a particular role and actually in practical terms,
in a particular person. In other words, decision making.
Command is decision making, but it has this important organisational element.
The purpose of that decision making is not deciding random events.
It's specifically a function designed to enjoin totally cohesion, to generate large scale coordination and coherence in an organisation,
especially in an organisation where the people in it, the troops, the forces, the soldiers in it don't actually know each other.
And what does size command is essentially a solution to an organisational problem.
You invest decision making authority in the role in the person in order to generate large, large scale levels of cohesion and coordination.
Now, when we get into this, this kind of debate, I think think sentence, interesting literature is interesting questions start to start to be raised.
And there are many here. But the one I think all the work I think is particularly interesting is March analysis, famous work on garbage can thinking.
I mean, what Martin Olson famously showed in that work was that, you know, organisations are great, you know that you put an organisation together.
The idea of minimisation and the structure of the executive is designed to create
rational decisions to promote and create efficiency in that organisation.
While marching on some pretty official shows is that organisations are almost pathologically.
Incapable of creating a decent decision and making a rational decision.
They call this garbage can decision making and the outcome is this the chance to make a good decision?
You need to isolate for months.
You have your problems, your solutions, the participants who have expertise to make the judgements about the solutions.
And then you have choice opportunities moments in time where the solution is the right one for the problem.
That's the ideal. That's rational decision making. And one would have thought the organisations which have existed as long as humans exist,
it would be good at this system, of this system of sequential decision making wrong what marginals and shows.
Basically every single organisation is constantly, almost ubiquitously and universally handicapped by garbage decision making.
Essentially, whenever it comes to decision, the sequence of problems,
solution participants, choice opportunities gets mixed up and thrown into a garbage can.
And you get a random decision in which there is not a sequence of problems, people, solutions,
etc., etc., but simply random decisions, essentially for random, for random reasons.
And you know, we're in a university now. Anyone who sat on a university appointment panel will know exactly what Marsh and Olson make.
It's you start off with this rational process by the end, by the fourth hour of deciding who's going to get the appointment.
We're in a totally different world of insanity and irrationality.
And this is the world that Marsh Nelson talks about. Now, if this is a problem of civilian relations, it's even more so for military organisations.
Yes, we invest power authority, decision making authority in the general to make decisions in order to hopefully create cohesion.
But actually the decision making function is fundamentally compromised by garbage carrying decision making at every single moment.
So the military, the armed forces generals have a potentially very significant problem.
If we if we believe March Nelson we might say this in the 21st century, at the divisional level,
at the level of the sort of basic unit of land warfare 20,000 soldiers are, the problem has become more profound.
The problem of command has become accentuated and even more difficult, 20th century.
Now, let me just give you a brief a brief overview here.
If we look at divisional operations in the 20th century, they're eventually essentially very simple.
They were conducted over extremely small fronts and with relatively small debt.
So if you look at the First World War, so you've got centenary, but you look at the First World War,
the average divisional front on the Western Front was a maximum of about 300 yards straightaway,
3000 yards, a normal, lot short if we said an average of 2000 to 2500 yards, I'll be pretty accurate.
And so the actual problem the divisional command was dealing with was a deeply critical problem.
I mean,
the division back divisional commander and unlucky division commander could lose entire command in an afternoon without any problems whatsoever.
But the actual organisational problem was one bounded in time and space and function.
For most of 21st century.
The division has morphed into a quite different organisational type and what we see is a multiplication and stretching of its range and functions.
And these are a couple of quotes from, from, from the work that I've been doing.
But if we look, if we look at division operations day, what we see is an extensive I show on three or four axes.
First of all, a range of divisional operations has increased dramatically from fronts of a few thousand yards.
Divisional operations now are conducted over over tens and indeed potentially hundreds of miles.
We can see that in the Iraq invasion, the divisional divisional for I'm going to say divisional fronts.
The divisional fights were conducted over depths of 80, 90 miles during that, during that, during that.
So at the same time, the old line division of three brigades and small territories making up 20 thousands of homogeneous soldiers,
all essentially all army personnel, all orientated to essentially saying functions, has been replaced by heterogeneous formation,
which is not just consist of this element of land, war, land warfare which still exists,
but actually it's been overlaid with a series of other assets and functions and obviously airpower, aviation, UAV, drones, forced air above that.
So the division has grown from a small information functional a little front to this large extended.
Which actually reaches up to about 2025, 25,000 foot.
And at the same time, there's new domains of of air of of operation which have become critical to division operations, namely informational debate,
cyber electronic domains,
and also critically political and civil engagement has been become utterly critical to the division as a as a system of of of operating.
So what we see with the division is the actual the the division is organisation, the character of division operations.
And therefore the problem of divisional command has has actually changed.
If I wish to summarise this in a sense, I say this this 20th century divisional command was a problem of scale.
It was a problem of organising homogenous force over a small area for mass industrial warfare.
21st Century. The problem of division of command is one of scope.
It is the coordination of a heterogeneity of assets over large spans of time and space.
In other words, the problem which command has been created is the solution or is trying to be creative.
Solution has become much more complex. So what is what M Division has done?
What a Western division has tried to do over the last 20, 25 years, especially since the millennium, especially since 2001, 2003.
What are they sought to do? Well, the thesis of the Book of Just Hope, which is finished,
is that in response to this increasing complexity of operations and essentially an individualised system,
an individualised regime of command which characterised mass industrial warfare,
the divisional level has been superseded, increasingly superseded by professionalised collective model of command,
in which the individual division alone is still is absolutely critical.
But the individual divisional command is now part of a command team, executive team, where the decision making authority,
not responsibility, but authority is actually distributed across a team of subordinate deputy commanders.
And in fact, staff in the headquarters as well.
Essentially, virtual security individuals have been replaced by highly professional teams of decision makers.
And that's what I essentially want to talk about. And that what I want to give you a insight.
Insight into this is world of the collective command is by just looking at one example, namely the example of of the decision point,
which is a small, apparently mundane and insignificant artefact which has been adopted in the divisional headquarters.
And I would suggest you become a really important element of contemporary 21st century command decision making,
particularly a means of actually coordinating and executing decisions within these emergent command collectives.
Now, for the that what I'm going to do now is just go into all the sort of empirical material which I've been working on,
hopefully, hopefully working totally, you know, stuff like is pretty boring actually, but hopefully it won't be totally tedious.
But let me just make one qualification that every, every time I'm going to solve this, the same question comes up.
And it's a very good question. And the decision point is for a particular kind of decision making, what I call normal or routine decision making.
So what I'm going to talk about the rest of the talk is not crisis decision making, critical decision making under pressure,
but regionalised decision making essentially when the plans are going according to plan.
And I'm happy to talk about what happens in a crisis.
But the decision point is really for regionalised normal decision making in normalised situations.
Okay. And what is the decision point? Well, at this point, again, it's it's not to be different on some decision point is exactly what it says.
It is a moment in the future I projected or anticipated moment in the future when a commander is going to have to make a decision,
is likely to have to make a decision. And the decision point refers to a to the anticipation of that future decision.
And as I to show, it's become an important element. The staff work at the divisional level.
Now this is the research project as a whole and I'm not I'm happy to talk about any of this in question.
But what I'm actually going to talk about today is hit down here,
sets up my work with three UK division and then second a little bit of first Marines and at a little bit 101st Airborne.
So it's this is what this is what I'm going to talk to you today.
Now, I think looking around this this audience,
I know this some colleagues from justice movement within the Navy with the S and a couple other friends who are very familiar with this world.
But what what I want to try and talk to here the world.
I'm trying to enter the life of which I'm trying to describe here is is this is the lifeboat.
It's the lifeworld of the divisional headquarters.
And this is, you know, 82nd Airborne divisional tactical command post set up in Fort Bragg a few years ago.
But essentially all divisional headquarters have different from but they typically assume a form like this,
a load of tents very highly connect with digital communication.
And this space in them that I'm particularly interested in is these spaces called the current operations centre or war room situation.
Call it what you will, but this is the kind of hub of the divisional headquarters where current operations,
the battle is actually fought in real time with reference to real time computer screens,
digital eyes, situation maps and real time electronic communications from various echelons of command,
giving information to the divisional headquarters about current operations.
And it is in this environment the current operations centre where command decisions are made,
and it's here by this staff and the commanders with them,
that the decision point as a bureaucratic artefact is utilised and comes to inform decision making.
So everything I try to say in the next half an hour or so is related to this world of
the of the divisional headquarters and particularly to its current operations centre.
Okay. So what I'm wondering for a little bit, and this is, you know,
it's very descriptive what I'm about to do in order in order to understand the decision point and its significance for contemporary decision making,
I just have to take a little sort of tribute tree, a descriptive tribute of tell you how staff actually creates a plan.
And so if you just forgive me for 10 minutes, I'm just gonna go read through how staff makes a plan.
Because it's only then that you understand where the decision point comes from.
And then we can actually start to analytically, you know, I can show you what the decision point is doing now.
What is the plan start? Well, I'll cut I'll make a little bit of information here,
but a plan starts with commands and tell a commander these days write an intent statement, you know,
we should be sending you guys your mission statement, which is a which is a statement, a descriptive statement,
a narrative of what the command wants to happen when and where in a particular operation.
And this is this is the doctrinal thing. Let me just give you a quick example of this.
So this is as far as I know, you will know, this is Asbjorn,
one of a diagram showing up because currently the UK in the US use Azerbaijan as their basic sort of scenario for contemporary exercise.
We don't know. All the data in from our squadron is actually accurate data.
Now three UK division on which some have been following this request was based,
has been spending quite a lot of time this mission over the last three years during recurrent exercise and the exercise is essentially started.
They started here three division in the first exercise in 2015, 2014 attacked up here and a nasty enemy that had come from,
well, a country that was all media but had been recorded, an area or something.
And in the next operation, in the next exercise, what happened is that the three UK division,
having successfully defeated the enemy here, ended up investing this city of major here.
And the exercise that the key no divisional exercise in 2015 exercise RS of 50 involved and so on message.
I mean not real or fictional. It didn't actually happen, but a fictional, so on.
You take an industrial hydroelectric powered city and centre in this area of of of of Azerbaijan and
the the whole exercise involved the invest investment of this city and then an attack into the city.
Now, why do I give you this?
DEJA Because what was interesting in terms of extracting out of this decision point has you can see the very clear development,
the extraction of decision point. Now, this was the divisional commander's intent for exit the launch on Resolve 15,
referring to the operation of the exercise of fighting in this city and defeating the enemy.
In that now what you'll see here, you don't need to read the whole thing by any stage.
All I've done what the statement talks about essentially is about the defeat, the isolation defeat of the enemy brigade in the city.
The important point for us is this the as you'll see here, the command's intent consists of a series of effects.
Woods was in effect. It's back here at a. That will affect refers to the outcome that a commander wants.
What is an intent and intent really is a list of facts that a commander wants.
In other words, in the intent, the commander lists the outcomes and brackets the effect that that commander wants in the operation in order to,
quote, communicate that to his staff and his subordinates.
You'll see here those two main effects are outcomes they want to offset to the enemy and involved various other other things that have to happen.
All the effects, all the outcomes, all the tasks that have to be achieved to do that.
Now what then happens? Well, the mission statement is very important.
The commander's extended mission statements are very important moment in the in the planning process.
But the staff then take the mission statement and start to actually deconstruct.
And this is when things start to become interesting and when the decision point starts to be extracted.
Basically, the staff take the mission statement and they isolate all those effects words.
You've seen all those outcomes the general wants, and they simply put the effects down on a map of the operating area.
And so you can say, we want to do it any way.
I'm going off time, but you'll see.
So if we look at Vanity Fair, you will see that all of the effects that the commander want are in a box and ops box around an operations box,
around military coerce, compel, isolate, and then obviously defeat in the some other ones here.
So the staff take the mission to take the commands inside and they disaggregated into a load of effects
which they actually put down on the map and work out where certain outcomes are going to have to happen now.
It then becomes even more interesting for you because you then move to a stage where from this map the decision support matrix is called.
They then develop a the set of decision points which triangulate structure the subsequent operational plan.
What then happens? Well, they check the map on the staff.
If one of the cells begins to produce a sync matrix, a synchronisation matrix of the entire operation, synchronisation, which is nothing clever.
It is typically I would excel sheet to spreadsheet or would excel which the staffs do two things on the x axis of the chart.
They put the days and the times running along and then on the y axis they list every single formation, every single unit,
every single element of which the divisional operation consists the organic divisional assets and assigned attached divisional assets.
And they put it out down the left hand axes.
And then they have the fascinating job of putting in all the tasks that every single unit is going to have to do over the whole operation.
So what you end up with is a sink matrix with hundreds and actually sometimes potentially thousands
of tasks of actions which are designated to particular units and assigned to particular times.
And if you go into divisional headquarters, the segments is pretty produced,
it's on a computer but is then always printed up wherever you have divisional course sources always been printed out,
and what you end up with is a sink matrix that's about a metre and a half wide and runs from about that great pillar here to about this signpost here.
And it's a pen, you know, it's actually appended to the wall of the current operations centre and actually to other cells as well.
It is a bewildering and intimidating document which, you know, you need a microscope to read at most times, but it disaggregated the entire operation.
Now, once the staff has the Sync Matrix, they then produce decision points and they locate decision points on to the Sync Matrix.
And you can see this is actually this is a sort of simplified signal from exercise arm resolve 15
with just the actual decision points marks on it that were on the same matrix in that exercise.
Now, how did it how does this got started? Just simple stuff go through the same matrix and there's a thousand tasks, hundreds of tasks.
But if you think about operation, the certain tasks that are really critical, you know, so one is attacking, you know, what is attacking an enemy.
And then on the other side, the bridge, when you go to take the bridge first in terms of the operational minutiae,
there were some really decisive elements that had to happen,
very decisive tasks that had to be achieved if the operation investment, the city, you know, the attack in the city was going to be able to.
You know, various logistics things had to be sorted out. Humanitarian camps had to be sold, etc., etc.
But it came to a point where obviously there's one critical task where there's going to come a point at some point in
the future where the division is going to have to actually make the decision to launch the assault into the city,
defeat the enemy brigade in that city.
And no, I'm reasonably the staff decided they'd like they identified a series of other actually five preceding decision points.
Then they got to this moment of launching the attack and they recognise that in my view,
absolutely rightly this was a decision for the general was going to have to make a decision of
whether to actually launch the decisive phase of the operation in which large numbers of civilians,
large number enemy and large of his own troops could be killed.
So absolutely the decision to launch the attack was a decision point.
It required a decision point. It required decision a permission from the general to actually launch this attack and they located it.
Decision point on this on this on this on the safe matrix where, you know,
on the things about halfway along down the call on that day there's actually a point now I want
ethnographic be incorrect that this yellow there was three three different ways used see other ones.
I mean I don't know if that's doctrine but it was know the correct decision point what then happens.
Even more interesting my view the decision point. No it's when the decision is going to have to be made or likely made.
The staff then go one step further and they go right.
What are the decision? What are the criteria? What are the factors which inform a sensible piece of decision making at that point?
And they produce a decision criteria table which actually lists what they regard as
the decisive factors which would justify a decision to launch an attack into Japan.
And this was the decision criteria table that three div used on this exercise.
And you'll know we'd have to go with this through this in any detail.
But what they effectively did is they had essentially they essentially identified three basic conditions that pertain to the decision.
What was the state of the enemy force? Basically, was the enemy force weak enough?
Had it been treated far off that an attack was sensible?
Was there was the you know, there was was there a humanitarian crisis?
In other words, what three you didn't want to be doing is rolling tanks down a road and there's
a thousand refugees coming towards and they crushed on their train tracks.
That would be a very bad situation. So the humanitarian situation was another factor.
And the five or so factors related to friendly force reinforce that to be in position,
sufficient combat effectiveness to make a sensible decision for general to launch so well.
The start is they broke down the decision of launching into a series of criteria
and then they had an assessment of whether those criteria were actually met.
Now the diagram they used this part was really complicated because what it should all be is you go green,
green, green, green, and then you go to this general conditions of green.
We recommend you launch the attack. But actually the way they set up the conditions was very complicated.
So then they had some roads that it was. We will continue to questions, but they realise that it was too complicated.
So the following year when they went on a major exercise.
Actually two years later when the MEMORISING exercises in the US last year,
they changed the way they did the decision criteria tactical instead of a complicated conditional table.
They just simply had a series of questions, simple, affirmative questions.
Yeah. All the enemy are treated to the level we require.
Yes. No. And essentially what the idea was, it had these ten questions.
Every single one would be answered. Yes, you would get the general in your column on the right hand side.
Right. We reached page six B decision criteria have been met.
We have, yes. On every single decision criteria. General, we are asking you for a decision.
Our recommendation is you launched the attack. So what we see is the decision criteria actually simplified the decision not just to link back to God.
Which kind of thinking? Of course, the idea here is that you basically front end be front load you analytical work.
So when you're actually in the whole operation and things are going wrong,
you don't have to start doing the deep work cogitation working out criteria on the basis of which your decision should be made.
It's already been done and the decision is absolutely a binary decision of go, no go, because it's already it's already been done.
Now, just to say, look, you may say, oh, this is all nonsense and a fragment of, you know, figment of exercise, imagination, but actually reality.
When, when, when, when you on operations this kind of complexity never works in decision points
the come around actually if we look at the evidence from Iraq particularly
because of manoeuvre warfare certainly from the counter-insurgency campaigns
actually divisions use these techniques of decision making on actual operations.
And I just point you to David Petraeus experience, the 101st Airborne.
Now, that's pretty tall. Let me let me try and give you a quick analysis of what I think is going on here,
why I think this is an example of collective command, of a distribution of command authority.
So let's let's see what the you know, let me let me TRUMP before knowing what I think decision decision points do are the seems to be
four basic functions that are decision point and specially decision criteria for orientation,
delegation acceleration and accuracy can get the right one for the last one.
But but before focus of anticipation, how do they help anticipation with the staff.
Well, what is.
Yes is this the current operation centre is a very busy working environment on the staff, you know, working 24 hours a day in this centre,
running the current battle which involves, as I suggested to you, an extraordinary multiplicity of actions extended over time in space.
It's very complicated to maintain cohesion and coordination within the headquarters,
and it's very difficult for the staff, you know, as they work in their specialist area,
but also try and coordinate with each other to ensure that the current operation is actually according with the plan and what the scope.
Therefore, the staff in the current operations have developed a technique basically to try and
ensure that they are linked to the plan in terms of in terms of its coordination.
Essentially, as the battle is running on in the current operations from this staff and
especially the chief of the operations room is essentially constantly referring
to the sink matrix on the wall and in particular referring to the decision points and indeed specifically normally to the next decision points.
So the staff actually, you know, in their discussions verbally, are constantly referencing decision points.
And of course, the next decision point,
all of us that consciously sort of collectively orientated to where the operation has to go in the immediate future from where it is now.
So as the there's some chaos going on here, the staff collectively are still thinking forward to the next decision points, in other words.
And in fact, I saw a very comical version of this. So they went on, say this three day,
if we're doing a really tough exercise and America last year war fighter and they were
approaching river line one of the deepings was to be cross the river to attack the enemy.
The major object was on the other side of the river and Odyssey hours.
The exercise opened up in the morning, 7:00 in the morning after seven three did no longer be completely destroyed.
About 4 hours later, about 11:00, the staff was still going on about DP 12,
which was the DP for the command to make a decision about crossing the river.
There was no forces to cross the river. They were open, destroyed hours before.
So the DP is a way of. The staff to coordinate forward.
And what it allows him to do is to essentially slightly be creative and to necessary
balance the operation and make innovations and adaptations as events occur,
but still maintain maintain the line on it now. That's an important function, but we then get into the real element of command and decision making,
and that anticipatory staff is the way the staff ensure that they're still aligned so that they can help help the commander.
But then we move into other areas. And one of the key things here is the decision point allows a divisional headquarters to delegate authority.
So initially, you know, a division operation starts. There's huge complexities.
There's always unforeseen events. There's always some kind of disaster or crisis going on.
The problem is, once you've invested command in in the person of a particular individual like the divisional general,
it is important that the authority of the general is aligned to the correct place.
The general has very limited amount of time to make decisions.
The the pressure on a contemporary divisional commander is, is, is, is prodigious.
And they have very limited amounts of time, energy, space,
emotional bandwidth to actually make decisions into and to have to have to bear the responsibility of actually making things so.
The key point, one of the key points in terms of of of running a divisional operation and maintaining
cohesion is ensuring that decisions are aligned to the right fit of command.
And this is just one example from the exercise if something of something small happens.
You do not want your division of command being sucked into an irrelevant tactical decision when actually in 6 hours time,
they're going to have to coordinate and make a very serious decision about the operation.
So what the decision points do and their criteria is to assign rigorously assign
and discipline command decisions to particular and appropriate command echelons.
And I don't trust very useful about this. You know, it actually was something quite interesting.
Namely, once the decision criteria have been signed off by the commander and the commanders.
Great. You know, once they've got a GPS on that box is essentially, why do you need me?
I made this decision six weeks ago. I'm not actually now required.
And what actually allows is a genuine devolution of decision making authority to actually potentially quite junior levels.
Yeah, sure. Deputy commanders often make decisions for a commanding general.
Actually, under the system of decision criteria,
there are frequent cases where a current operations centre on the chief of the current operations centre, who will be a lieutenant colonel,
colonel actually makes divisional command decisions because the criteria have been fulfilled
and the he that he or she has been temporarily empowered to make that decision at that point.
Now, a couple last points about decision make. What what what else does the decision point to?
Well, once you've got the criteria in place and you establish when the decision points off conditions on which they're going to be executed,
basically in some sense when the actual action happens, no serious decision has to be made.
The decision to be put to a decision has essentially been automated,
that once the criteria have been mapped, the decision is automatic and can be instantly executed.
And what you know, this is an example from First Marine Division,
but it's a it's a piece of evidence replicated many times in the research that essentially
decision points or short short circuits the requirement for decision making in the action.
If we go back to the military example, when they actually got to a point where the advice to the city and the conditions were met,
essentially the decision the decision was was was kind of made by three division, a division of command.
But actually it was it was almost automatic the conditions to be met.
And it simply completely accelerated that process of consultation and discussion and communication.
Officer Downes decision was taken almost automatically.
Finally, the final element of this, which I think potentially is it this is the most, you know,
most interesting topic is the accuracy of decision point here is that what are
decision criteria are charging decision criteria by isolating the key factors,
the conditions under which any sensible condition would be made and isolate those factors
before the pressure of decision making comes up is is brought to bear on command of the star.
Of the insurers. It's meant to, you know, certainly mitigates the risk of a catalyst kind of thing,
but it's actually meant to ensure that the decision making is accurate and appropriate.
In other words, it tries to refine the decision making.
Let me just give you a quick example. This an example of Petraeus time to try us again to try electronics blindness.
This example, let me just talk this through this what he's referring to here, he's totally talking through the 101st Airborne Airborne divisions.
So in Iraq in 2003 and basically which involved a series of very large air operations,
it was a very serious large series, split series, whether, you know, two things sort of.
Yes, I think sort of the problems are huge.
And the air invasion lifts, you know, over 400 helicopters move the entire division 200 miles off land in a desert, and then they do it again.
And that's effectively 101st Airborne dead during the six weeks of the of the operation.
Now very complicated activity but what what was in discussions with General Petraeus was interesting
is how how this very complicated process gets broken down into quite simple procedures.
Now what he was saying, fault is not so set up. It's no good.
What's a fault? Fault, this forward air refuelling point, essentially erroneous operations look absolutely great.
Yeah, but actually they just relied and they need a lot of fuel.
You just need a load of petrol. Otherwise they otherwise the helicopters just turn to pumps, battle on the desert or on the desert floor.
So essentially the whole of the 101st Airborne, this extraordinary kind of swarm of bees that would lift off and then move forward to under bombs,
which rely on really boring stuff, namely huge bladders of aviation fuel that would be driven forward into the desert to form these false fuel,
fuel forward air refuelling points.
And they'd have ball by round protection for settlements columns to get to get everything, some communications systems get everything ready.
And the point here is what progress process. Look here you all the division of cars, this unbelievable machine, you know,
100,000 of them, an incredible machine, a three dimensional entity, war making machine up.
And the divisional decision comes back to simple this or if the fuel wasn't there if there's a fault not set,
there's no fuel station stuck in the desert. There's not widdop.
I have no idea. Brilliant, General. Obviously I have no decision to make now.
So if the thoughts not say it's no good, I just. I just let's just contemplate, in other words, know what's happening here.
But the of this is a very simple example where you have one condition.
Is the fault set? Yes. Go. No, don't go.
But you can actually just disagree. It's the staff has to consider a few other things.
Is the fuel in the plant is enough? Is a column communications there?
Is there a protection force there? So there's three couple of subordinate things the staff to it.
Once the staff actually worked out, the fault is set, not what's happening.
Here you go. General patrols, you know. Yeah, certainly the most famous one of the finest generals of the of this generation.
And he's reduced basically to being a disciple, his staff, who tell him whether the criteria set for his fuel,
you know, his petrol stations, his free will, air refuelling points in the desert,
that effectively his decision making is he's leached out appropriate and colonised by
the staff through the method of the decision point in especially centuries criteria.
In other words, the staff begin to against all doctrine through the system of the decision point,
through the decision system of the decision criteria,
the staff actually begin de facto to take, you know, an element of jurisdiction over decision making.
They actually start to structure and limit the decisions that a commander can take.
What's the point? The point here is that, look, in a highly complicated organisation like 21st Century Division,
the management of operations has become so complicated that it's no longer adequate
to invest monopolising authority and a single commander who can heroically go,
right, we're going to go left line. KING All right, fine.
KING You actually have a whole three dimensional system that needs to be orientated and worked and to be managed and coordinated.
And so the decision making cannot be one of individual instinct has to be predigested prior to an anticipated systems of decision making.
So what are essentially arguing with a disparate decision point is this is that what we see is a really Monday this is.
It's really, you know, trivial artefacts of the divisional divisional headquarters of division operations in the 21st century.
But implications for command, I would suggest you're really profound that what it denotes is a systematised and professional means of sharing and
distributing the authority for decision making with a view to actually improving decision making on operations.
Now, let me just finish one last point. Is this joining the military?
Do this in the 21st century?
Is this a unique military practice of distributing decision making among a collective into a highly collectivised and highly professional body?
I'll say, no, it's not at all. We can support it across all the professions very clearly.
And a point to you, to Gawande's book, The Checklist Manifesto, which I mean, it's got I mean, of course, The Checklist Manifesto.
I mean, I think it's interesting. It's got two interesting pages. And then the rest of it is whatever, you know.
But the two interesting papers are good. They are really good pages because I mean, you know, no, no, no, no disrespect.
But they all put pages. What does he say? Look, this is really interesting talking about himself as consultant.
He's talking about surgery. And you get the optimistic bit here.
Yeah. But generals do operations in theatres, surgeons do operations in theatres.
But, you know, so there's an opportunistic bit here. But but no.
What do you say? Basically, it's look look up surgical practice in the post-war era, up to about the 1970s, 1980s.
Basically, the procedures are pretty simple and normal.
If it's anything complicated, the patient dies, unfortunately.
So what happens in from the 1980s? Well, procedures become really complicated.
And you can't have a single heroic surgeon digging around in your brain.
You need team of specialists who coalesce and you see a specialist on a series
of different functions to ensure that your brain actually is working after all.
Right. What has become critical to coordinating operate this surgical team is the checklist,
a series of procedures which the team actually just simply checks off.
So what I suggest is we see in the in the in surgical procedure,
something which is akin to transformations in the military to conclude and to confirm everything I said essentially.
And they of increasingly complex and heterogeneous operations.
The military especially, but not only at the divisional level, have sought to address the multiplication of decisions, the extension of decisions,
the elongation of decision cycles by replacing an individually empowered commander, a heroic commander with a highly professional, his team.
And the decision point is one.
And but one method by which this collective process of decision making has been institutionalised within the armed forces.
Thanks so much. Some questions that he just indicates a million people at once about.
John, thank you very much with your array of interviews.
Did anybody reflect on where this spacecraft from on this planet is going over this?
Oh, yeah. I mean, the it was the interview was a very basic really.
It was it was it was really great. The interviews are really interesting and solitary.
So absolutely most of generals or many of the generals I spoke to were very forceful that I was completely wrong.
And so so when I started the project was was conducted on the ninth called Post the post-Iraq General.
That's what the grant was. And when I talked to sort of David Petraeus and actually James Mattis was the funniest.
I mean, James Mattis was a formidable character.
And in the most, you know, in the in the you know, he in the most polite is but also deeply threatening sort of way.
He basically said, I was talking absolute nonsense.
And the command and the command post Nazi command flat were utterly as relevant as the contemporary, as the as as they were.
And so so I had to think about what I was trying to say and what it says.
This command has three function.
The three elements command, mission definition, mission management, leadership.
And what I continued not to talk to people like Petraeus, Mattis, etc., etc. was that we were talking about different.
When we talking about personality and the extraordinary ethical responsibility of the commander, we were confusing two different functions.
They talked about mission definition and they are absolutely wrong in terms of mission definition.
The responsibility for setting the mission and embodying the mission.
The commander is as important as that.
I would have to say more than this is 24th, because the division operations have morphed up to a kind of operational, even strategic level.
The divisional come on now has way more latitude in terms of setting the mission and actually bears much more responsibility,
which spans across both political and military. You know, it's a political and military responsibility.
So in that to make the commander is much more much more responsive on this point.
Issues of personal flair, you know, personal vision or I think extremely important.
And indeed, the thing about Mattis, which is really interesting, is that Mattis set his own.
He has set his own division's mission for Iraq. He now he didn't get a mission from CENTCOM.
He's quite interesting about the CENTCOM commander of Tommy Franks.
You know, not entirely complimentary, but so absolutely.
There's you know, there's still a great importance for the capabilities, the intuition, the personality of the commander of that kind of level.
But what I would say is that what you see is this the expand the distribution, the Collectivisation command is at the management level.
Once the command is set, the what the mission is,
then there has to be a distribution of authority downwards because the mission has expanded so widely.
And so to emphasise.
Yeah, what I would say is yeah there is absolutely a place for command is flat, but it's, it's, it's located at different functions.
I mean mass is great him because if you look at Mattis was interesting so he both he and all his staff officers that I interviewed said oh,
you're totally crazy. You've never met Mattis. He's a completely dominating, domineering character.
And then the next sentence, they say, Yeah, but Mass is also really brilliant at distributing commands and and being a practitioner of mission,
command and distribution of, of command authority. So you went, why was this so tight?
Paris I could see that was going is like, you know, some kind of Napoleonic figure, you know, Alexandrian figure.
And then this guy is brilliant description I want to say is the it's it's the different functions.
So yeah, there is there is absolute yes. And so that intuition when I'm talking about crisis,
but obviously that intuition and that personal connection with staff officers and commanders
becomes very important when you hit a crisis which transcends the moment of the decision.
So, yeah, I it's what you're saying is I completely agree with you and there's lots of evidence for it.
Yeah. I might just be trying to draw out the crisis examples in which maybe I shouldn't.
But it seems like your discussion of the disaggregation of decision making fit right in with mission command.
That seems like people were pretty well, but then the checklist model seems 100% counter to that.
And so, you know, I'm trying to think about things where let's say the same matrix in advance says and decision point you know options every.
Yeah but then facts on the ground are such that the best thing to do is see. Yeah.
Is that part of the crisis category or is there a place for that?
Well, it's very interesting. You said I mean, in terms of the work that I've done, I would put that down to crises on the.
Yeah. There's a slight. Yeah, there's a slight grave.
What were you saying that you say up to that point everything's going well and that actually there might be a better way of doing it?
Yeah, but I would probably still put that under a series of crisis thinking,
i.e. the the series of tasks that need to be executed, not in anticipating the plan.
And so huge burden is put on the current operations to make a quick response.
Coordinating a quick sort of operation mission, essentially on an ad hoc on the hoof basis,
I probably would say even if it was going well, that that corresponds to to to a crisis situation.
And what I'd say there is that the critical thinking, um, uh, you know, responding to a crisis situation is the,
is the skill of the operation from, in, in, in being able to coordinate horizontally with themselves.
They pulled out the assets and still fulfil the operational requirements overall.
So what's interesting about in the crisis that although physically in a crisis,
the sync matrix becomes less relevant like that staff stuff so busy they're not looking at the steel.
Actually, especially the chief of conversations is still thinking.
We actually still need to get to that point so low does this all suspension of disbelief for babes there is actually still no rotation.
Now your other point about checklist. Yeah, you know what?
We you know, a checklist is a is a simple I agree so checklist that the Q&A is talking about is is a simpler is a simpler process.
Um, but I mean, it just seemed, you know, I mean, it was maybe is opportunistic, but it just seemed a useful thing to,
to, to, to try and put it, I mean, like, say one point about, you know, the sort of the option thing.
I mean, I, you know, you'll see sounds like America and the Americans trying to make decision point system
more flexible to talking about technical decision point tactics and decision more taxes.
Though for every decision point you create, you then put the staff to work and staff basically creates a series of options for the come on.
So you actually get an encyclopaedia sort of repertoire of potential options.
And for every decision point, there should be at least three, you know, branch plans, namely everything's going to plan.
So we'll stick to the plan. Everything's going quite better than the.
So we we need to we need a catastrophic success plan, but we also have a catastrophic failure plan.
So what you end up with instead of one lineal plan with with white markers of decision points you get by CISO power,
it's like a delta, you know, you get the power of the operation goes down here.
There's a Delta decision point here and then you go like that. And then and that's what they're experimenting with.
So so it's I would suggest it's moving quite a long way.
Even within the decision point system, the Western forces led by the US are beginning to move some way from a sort of go Indian.
Right. Make sure we haven't left any swamps inside this guy's head sort of scenario, you know.
So yeah. But it's a very good it's a very good point. Thanks. Yeah.
General in the course a defeat as there was a bit of inevitability about the collective
commands coming from the effects base doctrine that the hopes of Western militaries document.
Because if you as the commander just want you to this, which was the US, we would have joined in a set of orders anyway.
But now it just increase the facts and you say I want to defeat or destroy him.
That's very helpful. I suspect he was going to say that because things that be destroyed, but without saying how,
then that's actually by investigating control and necessarily devote resources goes yeah you that work
up a couple of code and say one or two guys I know we used to be limited to the call to say okay 1.6.
There have been a couple of a bit of code to give me with me in half an hour.
Yeah. And then it also work out there's compliance with 71 levels as well.
So it's a very it naturally fluid.
It's it's a very it's a very interesting point.
I mean, it's a complicated point.
So, you know, let me give you sort of a half answer, which is this.
What I would say is that, yeah, I think that the way so say let's think where space operations came from.
You know, it's from the from base the air forces as munitions become more precise and they get a sweep of different things such as bombing,
you know, doing the aerial bombing, accurate area bombing, which is. Right.
All right. I would love that. That's pretty accurate of the end of the position where they've got a suite of munitions.
So this is 1992, sweep munitions, accurate musicians and measure ignitions that do different things.
And so the original solo effects based Doctor Who effects base operations,
most action was was against any kind of devolution of control because the control,
the centralised and centralised headquarters, you could actually define precisely the mission that should be used now.
You know, use the word naturally has expand I think of as wide a military as the Army and Marine Corps is have taken on the word facts.
I think you were absolutely wrong.
I think that within it has been used to institutionalised the devolution of what I would call managerial responsibility,
i.e. the call to set the parameters of the operation.
The mission has been defined within that mission. That's de facto, I want you to create.
That's the outcome I want you to create. Don't go away.
I do it in any way you want. So I think you're actually right. But note also, this may be more of a British thing.
So if you talk to Americans, Americans go say Americans will go, bloody [INAUDIBLE], you know, the British these effects every way it works.
If you look at 82nd Airborne, when they talk about the fact they're basically in the task an action,
it's much more rigorous and they actually quite interested by the British sort of this much more loose sort of conceptual definition, of course.
And for that it's a different it's different coordinate, which is yeah,
actually the Americans got the weaponry to actually create the effect in real time in space where the British do this sort of legend to man,
we've got we've done this fact.
But that that's a cynical point but yeah so you know but the American the contrast in the American concept, in fact with the British,
what I think does kind of provide evidence for your argument that in Britain
it has been a way of institutionalising a devolution of managerial authority,
but in different organisations. I'll just give an example. The Air Force 80 seconds, 80 seconds definitely is used to devolve, but, you know,
command subordinate commands are you will take that airfield, you will take that building.
The fact I want is that building destroyed, not my wanting to secure the airfield,
you know, as I, you know, in a sort of broad, gentlemanly way the British generals do.
Yeah, but it's a very, very interesting, complicated point by the fact here.
Course, I'm not going to completely agree with say you are doing better than last time.
I mean, by this time last year, it was very difficult.
Now, look, I of course, I agree that you need something to wrestle down complexity, get order out of chaos,
something to anticipate, uh, pre analysis, very worthy devolution management saying all of those things you can't argue against.
But I think that what this has appeared from is our recent experience where we've been fighting counter-insurgency,
counterterrorism, where we've had overwhelming superiority, we've not been fighting general war.
And very often divisions have been fighting independently and not within a core army group structure.
Whether that would ever come back again. And I think the end result is madness because I think Maitlis of course has a position in that,
but it's beginning to mechanised command and if you mechanised command, it means inadequate generals could actually do reasonably well.
And that's the last thing you want. You want the general to be running the show, not the stop you running the general.
And I think it's over optimising an imperfect world.
I mean, would you think matrixes have helped the Americans when they were retreating down the Korean Peninsula
with the southern attack of the of the Chinese completely obliterating everything that was before?
I mean, that required generalship to sort of produce something out of that.
And but most importantly, I think this whole process begins to isolate the general from his command job.
His job is to do all this and to say and to read the map, to read the situation,
try anticipate and then give the ground of all the work out to his own people to get on, do the detail,
not for them to do all the the pre thinking of this because that's taking away his job
and put it up on some matrix which then get some authority which he doesn't deserve.
So I, I think I agree with what Mattis did when he went to Joint Forces Command, where it was, and said IDO and the rest of it, we don't agree with.
I come back with one point there is that. One final point is, is what you're saying new?
And to a certain extent it isn't because I mean, Eisenhower must have had this command board when he was doing D-Day.
He couldn't have done it himself. So he he established areas where he gave things to other people to do.
I know that was the army that but I mean, good generals have always done that.
And Rupert Smith, in particular in the first Gulf War identifies five one star.
Points of command. I dedicated the whole show to the artillery.
Logistically, I and he trusted those people and he ran a command ball system, if you like.
But he retained complete authority himself, so it may be in its best form.
It's always been like that. On the other side, of course, the the poor old Egyptian general who sat in his bunker when in the old poor war,
having a perfect plan with a gigantic sink matrix, no doubt was overwhelmed by the lightning strikes by the Israelis.
He just couldn't keep up with it. And so that illustrated more than anything where you get a sort of mechanisation of war coming in.
But I had a great privilege yesterday to sit next to an American at lunch who'd been a tank company commander in Fallujah.
And he said, I mean, this is his words from yesterday. It was very relevant today.
He said, we were given brilliant orders. We tell you exactly what to do.
We went into the town and it all went wrong. It didn't follow what we would have to do at all.
And so the pre cooking of the situation, which perhaps we'd become used to because we have overwhelming superiority,
is not what's going to happen in the future. Thanks. I mean, thanks.
Very, very kind and perceptive intervention and a lot of a lot of points there,
most of which obviously in this context, I'm I'd love to have more of a chat chat with you on this.
There's definitely this the street two or three reasons. One is the historical thing is this is this new?
And then you're saying, okay, this shouldn't this shouldn't be happening and wouldn't be happening if it wasn't for the coin.
And this is a quote from US Marines officer. It wasn't for coin poisoning.
Yeah. So she should focus on those of this sort of supporting the rebels.
So historically, yeah,
this is something that you got me right there because that is something that been keep me awake at night for a quite a few years and months.
I know I am. I just was describing a current system situation which has a completely commensurate equivalent in the 20th century.
Now, you know, the project deliberately is looking at the 20th century to 21st century,
trying to claw what I think is a transformation, not a revolution, but a transformation.
And what I'd say is, look, let me ask you about the divisional level first,
and then I'll make that point that you said about Eisenhower divisional level.
Look what I got to say to you. So I did work on both counterinsurgency division, soldier operations and warfare operations.
And what I'd say is, look, all the evidence I looked and I looked at the first Marine Division in Chosin,
all the evidence there is the division operation is very simple. I divisional commander,
basically monopolised mission definition and actually mission management as well because the divisions were so this experience was so contiguous,
the division can't actually be on site in the divisional defence.
I don't actually see what his subordinate commanders and troops were doing.
So what do we get from the period 1914 to 1992?
You get to a commander monopolising mission definition was very simple and
actually monopolising most of the decision for decisions in management with very,
very small staffs. Smith Staff in, in, in, in the Gulf was 150, but it stretches off 1944 Western Division.
So it was 40 people. It was tiny times too often commanders used to even use a smaller group.
So the very, very small set of decisions.
So now let's saying if we were going to say a merged collective command, I think you had Montgomery's you really saw an interesting example,
I think, in when he was division commander of third division in the Battle of France.
Actually, something that to me was as close to a collective command system that you get in the 21st century,
in the 20th century, namely, he he he taught his brigade commanders to execute series of trials when you ordered them to do it.
So it was as close as that you could get. But there's this of command commands.
You didn't do that who just took over themselves or in fact, the division disaggregated into these individual finds.
But what it's just is that, you know, what we're talking about here is a transformation, not a revolution.
So there's continuities in procedures, continuities in certain practices.
But the the transformation seems to me the evidence is, you know, pointing that, you know, something has changed in the practice squad, but it is not.
Same, even though in some examples you can see something that presages something that will be thoroughly institutionalised in the 21st century.
But but not this as well. If Montgomery created a small come on collective said it was year five people.
What we're talking about here is five people with a a division that was operating
on very small fronts through a series of manoeuvres forward and then back.
Well, you're talking about the 21st century as these these heterogeneous forces operation across domains and second point manoeuvres coin.
Yeah, I take your point. I'm definitely collective command as most show in terms of counter-insurgency
operations where there's a there's a ridiculous multiplication of functions.
You end up fixing the electrics and the water as division commander and Petraeus did in Mosul.
And then you have to disaggregate out.
But if you look at the key example we've got in the case, of course, the direction of Iraq and the subsequent exercises,
which are all warfighting exercises, you know, they're all deliberately designed for fighting.
I mean, look, I'm open to more evidence, but the evidence that I collected suggests strongly to me that there had been a evolution
transformation in the way that decision making was operationalised at the divisional level.
And let me say this in terms of what does it mean by other stuff?
Well, I think that, you know, even if you go up to the highest levels of command, 20th century, you still get a simplified military.
You know, you don't start to get political elements and you get to the very, very top level.
So where it's just it's just as your scepticism is completely well-founded.
I totally agree with your scepticism, but I'm I'm happy to hear some evidence that disproves what I'm trying to say.
But I've got to say, I mean, I didn't have a universal sample, but I thought a pretty reasonable sample.
And I, I think something has happened. I think something has happened.
All right. We have 2 minutes and three questions left, so please come back to the U.S. six and the gentleman in the front row and then the red.
I spoke to some of my grandparents. And you go through a whole program.
Know I'm finding it a little difficult to reconcile your excessive focus on structures,
processes, team of team concepts and that kind of environment and the the gut general,
the general with flair, the general which relies on experience and knowledge of decades of knowledge based leadership,
where does that all sort of fuse into your hypothesis?
So we're talking together. Yeah, that's right. Two words missing pertinent from some of the question is what is trust?
And the other one we find with trust. In the case of if if you are a good command and you trust your support, you allow them to get along.
I think trust has been eroded by the rate at which some things happen in the senior command.
The second one is family. I'm sure I'm happy with the best way to keep a marriage on that.
I think matrix in whatever form to meet through the whole pie is way, way, way, way, way, way, way too big for divisional headquarters.
It should be when you put on screen. My point being, the cause that Andrew fought is pretty much fingers.
It's too many pies. And that's actually they're not trusting of of us to get it quote within the boundaries of what you give voice.
And let me just say this. Um, no experience is absolutely critical.
I mean, the answer to this question, you know, in one word is matters that matters.
It was evident, you know, the evidence is he was the best division commander.
He is the best commander who has existed in the West in this current generation.
How did you come on? Well, he drew on his extraordinary expertise and knowledge and extensive reading.
He used his incredible, charismatic personality to engender trust in his subordinates and his staff.
But when it actually came to the mechanics of driving first Marine Division 300 miles to Baghdad,
he actually needed a really good current operations centre and a really good set of subordinates who
had prepared and practised the operation time and time again and rehearsed with concept drills,
which whose purpose was explicitly to pre-empt,
presage and anticipate the decisions that Mattis himself and his subordinates commanders would have to take.
So if we check my sources, the classic example, what this doesn't say, oh, the general was just a cipher, right?
This political one is it isn't. The authority and skill goes from the command to the staff.
It is it is collective command, the expertise of the entire collective commander,
deputy commanding generals, subordinate brigade commanders and the staff all become critical to operations.
And what I tried to give these days. One strand of that new system, one element, one artefact,
which is used along with loads of other techniques to tie this extraordinary new organisation together.
To emphasise the human dimension is critical,
is augmented by bureaucratic administrative techniques of the type that we've seen today in order to generate high levels of trust,
not to eliminate trust and turn everything into an algorithm which which then runs in a
in a sort of normal fashion when we know that war is a domain of uncertainty and fear.
So so no space. No space for instinctive decision making.
Yeah. Everything I said about processes yet of course there is space for discipline.
But in order to make an instinctive decision on a contemporary operation, you have to work really hard to be able to do this.
Division Commander Brief Response. Oh, well, yeah.
You know, I mean, the trust. Yes. Is critical. I mean, I'm sort of kind of putting both together and I mean,
what I say is evidentially you may not like the by the provisional staff of lots of people down are working the left by are they using matrix
but the fact is the evidence shows they work with them and they use them and they're professional enough to actually make them work themselves.
So, you know, that's that's what I mean.
So since, you know, as a scientist, that's what's actually happening.
You know, we might not want it to happen, but that's actually what's happening right now.
Thank you so much for coming. Please join me. Production, which was originally supposed to take place.