Ice cracks: moving decision-making forward by planning-to-plan.

• Main Author: Jones, David Edward Morgan
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: Fort Leavenworth, KS : US Army Command and General Staff College 2006
• Subjects: Military decision making process (MDMP); Decision making; Problem solving; Planning-to-plan; Planning architecture; Military planning; Group environment; Planning theory; Planning doctrine; Decision making theory; United States Army; Falklands Islands War; South Pole; 1912; South pole
• Online Access: http://cgsc.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p4013coll3/id/736

There are a variety of military decision-making frameworks that provide useful sequences to problem-solving. However, planning groups rarely engineer creative answers by simply following the checklist steps of frameworks such as the Army’s Military Decision Making Process (MDMP). Instead, innovative solutions emerge as a result of the synthesis and collaborative learning that occur when individuals engage each other in open dialogue. Planning-to-plan addresses designing and building a planning architecture that facilitates open dialogue, learning, and synthesis within a planning group. Planning architecture augments the already existing doctrinal steps of traditional decision-making processes to provide planners with precedence for the employment of planning resources. By designing an underlying structure to a military planning effort, a planner can shape the nature in which a group reaches decisions. This monograph creates awareness to techniques that seasoned planners use to empower their planning groups. Moreover, it argues that a standard approach to the development of a planning architecture can aid the Army planning community. Research includes interviews, a questionnaire that solicited insights from thirty-six experienced military planners from various nations, and reviews of relevant academic, business, and military planning literature. Many contributions originate from planners who were deployed in operations in Iraq and Afghanistan at the time they provided feedback. Finally, the monograph draws upon two historical examples to illustrate some of the concepts of planning-to-plan: the Falklands Islands War and the 1912 race to the South Pole between Amundsen and Scott. The race to the South Pole inspired the title “Ice Cracks.” In the polar-regions, large chunks of floating ice drift along according to the direction and speed of oceanic currents. Along the journey, the ice cracks, splits-away, reconfigures, and regroups, but continues to move in the direction and at the rate of the current. A planning ...