Design

This chapter establishes the fundamentals that guide the application of design. It
defines and explains the goals of design. It discusses design in context and describes
how leaders drive design. Next, it describes the design methodology that includes
framing the operational environment, framing the problem, and developing a design
concept. The chapter concludes with a discussion of reframing.

DESIGN DEFINED
3-1. Design is a methodology for applying critical and creative thinking to understand, visualize,
and describe complex, ill-structured problems and develop approaches to solve them. Critical thinking
captures the reflective and continuous learning essential to design. Creative thinking involves thinking in
new, innovative ways while capitalizing on imagination, insight, and novel ideas. Design is a way of
organizing the activities of battle command within an organization. Design occurs throughout the
operations process before and during detailed planning, through preparation, and during execution and
assessment.
3-2. Planning consists of two separate, but closely related components: a conceptual component and a
detailed component. The conceptual component is represented by the cognitive application of design. The
detailed component translates broad concepts into a complete and practical plan. During planning, these
components overlap with no clear delineation between them. As commanders conceptualize the operation,
their vision guides the staff through design and into detailed planning. Design is continuous throughout
planning and evolves with increased understanding throughout the operations process. Design underpins
the exercise of battle command, guiding the iterative and often cyclic application of understanding,
visualizing, and describing. As these iterations occur, the design conceptthe tangible link to detailed
planningis forged.
3-3. Design enables commanders to view a situation from multiple perspectives, draw on varied sources
of situational knowledge, and leverage subject matter experts while formulating their own understanding.
Design supports battle command, enabling commanders to develop a thorough understanding of the
operational environment and formulate effective solutions to complex, ill-structured problems. The
commanders visualization and description of the actions required to achieve the desired conditions must
flow logically from what commanders understand and how they have framed the problem. Design provides
an approach for how to generate change from an existing situation to a desired objective or condition.
3-4. Moreover, design requires effective and decisive leadership that engages subordinate commanders,
coordinating authorities, representatives of various staff disciplines, and the higher commander in
continuing collaboration and dialog that leads to enhanced decisionmaking. (Paragraphs 1-31 through 1-36
discuss collaboration and dialog.) This facilitates collaborative and parallel planning while supporting
shared understanding and visualization across the echelons and among diverse organizations. It is the key
to leveraging the cognitive potential of a learning organization, converting the raw intellectual power of the
commander and staff into effective combat power.
3-5. Innovation, adaptation, and continuous learning are central tenets of design. Innovation involves
taking a new approach to a familiar or known situation, whereas adaptation involves taking a known
solution and modifying it to a particular situation or responding effectively to changes in the operational
environment. Design helps the commander lead innovative, adaptive work and guides planning, preparing,
executing, and assessing operations. Design requires agile, versatile leaders who foster continuous
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organizational learning while actively engaging in iterative collaboration and dialog to enhance
decisionmaking across the echelons.
3-6. A continuous, iterative, and cognitive methodology, design is used to develop understanding of the
operational environment; make sense of complex, ill-structured problems; and develop approaches to
solving them. In contrast to detailed planning, design is not process oriented. The practice of design
challenges conventional wisdom and offers new insights for solving complex, ill-structured problems.
While plans and orders flow down the echelons of command, new understanding may flow up from
subordinate echelons where change often appears first. By enhancing and improving commanders
understanding, design improves a higher authoritys understanding of the operational environment and the
problems commanders are tasked to solve.

DESIGN GOALS
3-7. Successfully applying design seeks four concrete goals that, once achieved, provide the reasoning
and logic that guide detailed planning processes. Each goal is an essential component to reshaping the
conditions of the operational environment that constitute the desired end state. Collectively, they are
fundamental to overcoming the complexities that characterize persistent conflict. The goals of design are
Understanding ill-structured problems.
Anticipating change.
Creating opportunities.
Recognizing and managing transitions.

UNDERSTANDING ILL-STRUCTURED PROBLEMS

3-8. Persistent conflict presents a broad array of complex, ill-structured problems best solved by applying
design. Design offers a model for innovative and adaptive problem framing that provides leaders with the
cognitive tools to understand a problem and appreciate its complexities before seeking to solve it. This
understanding is fundamental to design. Without thoroughly understanding the nature of the problem,
commanders cannot establish the situations context or devise approaches to effect change in the
operational environment. Analyzing the situation and the operational variables provide the critical
information necessary to understand and frame these problems. (Paragraph 1-21 discusses the operational
variables. See chapter 2 for a discussion on the structure of problems.)
3-9. A commanders experience, knowledge, judgment, and intuition assume a crucial role in
understanding complex, ill-structured problems. Together, they enhance the cognitive components of
design, enhancing commanders intuition while further enabling commanders to identify threats or
opportunities long before others might. This deepens and focuses commanders understanding. It allows
them to anticipate change, identify information gaps, and recognize capability shortfalls. This
understanding also forms the basis of the commanders visualization. Commanders project their
understanding beyond the realm of physical combat. They must anticipate the operational environments
evolving military and nonmilitary conditions. Therefore, design encompasses visualizing the synchronized
arrangement and use of military and nonmilitary forces and capabilities to achieve the desired end state.
This requires the ability to discern the conditions required for success before committing forces to action.
3-10. Ultimately, understanding complex, ill-structured problems is essential to reducing the effects of
complexity on full spectrum operations. This understanding allows commanders to better appreciate how
numerous factors influence and interact with planned and ongoing operations. Assessing the complex
interaction among these factors and their influences on operations is fundamental to understanding and
effectively allows the commander to make qualitatively better decisions under the most dynamic and
stressful circumstances.

ANTICIPATING CHANGE
3-11. Applying design involves anticipating changes in the operational environment, projecting
decisionmaking forward in time and space to influence events before they occur. Rather than responding to
events as they unfold, design helps the commander to anticipate these events and recognize and manage
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transitions. Through the iterative and continuous application of design, commanders contemplate and
evaluate potential decisions and actions in advance, visualizing consequences of possible operational
approaches to determine whether they will contribute to achieving the desired end state. A thorough design
effort reduces the effects of complexity during execution and is essential to anticipating the most likely
reactions to friendly action. During detailed planning, these actions and sequences are often linked along
lines of effort, which focus the outcomes toward objectives that help to shape conditions of the operational
environment.
3-12. Design alone does not guarantee success in anticipating changeit also does not ensure that friendly
actions will quantifiably improve the situation. However, applied effectively and focused toward a common
goal, design provides an invaluable cognitive tool to help commanders anticipate change and innovate and
adapt approaches appropriately. Performed haphazardly and without proper focus and effort, it may become
time-consuming, ineffective, process-focused, and irrelevant. Iterative, collaborative, and focused design
offers the means to anticipate change effectively in the current situation and operational environment, as
well as achieve lasting success and positive change.

CREATING OPPORTUNITIES

3-13. The ability to seize, retain, and exploit the initiative is rooted in effective design. Applying design
helps commanders anticipate events and set in motion the actions that allow forces to act purposefully and
effectively. Exercising initiative in this manner shapes the situation as events unfold. Design is inherently
proactive, intended to create opportunities for success while instilling the spirit of the offense in all
elements of full spectrum operations. Effective design facilitates mission command, ensuring that forces are
postured to retain the initiative and, through detailed planning, consistently able to seek opportunities to
exploit that initiative.
3-14. The goals of design account for the interdependent relationships among initiative, opportunity, and
risk. Effective design postures the commander to combine the three goals to reduce or counter the effects of
complexity using the initial commanders intent to foster individual initiative and freedom of action.
Design is essential to recognizing and managing the inherent delay between decision and action, especially
between the levels of war and echelons. The iterative nature of design helps the commander to overcome
this effect, fostering initiative within the initial commanders intent to act appropriately and decisively
when orders no longer sufficiently address the changing situation. This ensures commanders act promptly
as they encounter opportunities or accept prudent risk to create opportunities when they lack clear
direction. In such situations, prompt action requires detailed foresight and preparation.

RECOGNIZING AND MANAGING TRANSITIONS

3-15. A campaign quality Army requires versatile leaderscritical and creative thinkers who recognize
and manage not just friendly transitions but those of adversaries, as well as the operational environment.
Commanders must possess the versatility to operate along the spectrum of conflict and the vision to
anticipate and adapt to transitions that will occur over the course of a campaign. Design provides the
cognitive tools to recognize and manage transitions by educating and training the commander. Educated
and trained commanders can identify and employ adaptive, innovative solutions, create and exploit
opportunities, and leverage risk to their advantage during these transitions.

DESIGN IN CONTEXT
3-16. The introduction of design into Army doctrine seeks to secure the lessons of 8 years of war and
provide a cognitive tool to commanders who will encounter complex, ill-structured problems in future
operational environments like in March 2003. Division commanders of the 101st Airborne (Air Assault),
4th Infantry Division, and 1st Armored Division were ordered to maneuver their units from Kuwait and
into Iraq to defeat the Iraqi Army and to seize key cities and infrastructure. This was a task familiar to each
of thema structured problemand they communicated their intent and began to build orders through the
military decisionmaking process. Soon after accomplishing their mission, they were issued further
instructions to establish a safe and secure environment in Ninewa Province, Diyala Province, and
Baghdad. This was a task unfamiliar to theman ill-structured problemand each of them realized that
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they had to first understand the problem and frame the task before seeking to solve it. These commanders
used design intuitively and adapted their existing processes to gain this understanding.
3-17. As learned in recent conflicts, challenges facing the commander in operations often can be
understood only in the context of other factors influencing the population. These other factors often
include, but are not limited to, economic development, governance, information, tribal influence, religion,
history, and culture. Full spectrum operations conducted among the population are effective only when
commanders understand the issues in the context of the complex issues facing the population.
Understanding context and then deciding how, if, and when to act is both a product of design and integral
to the art of command.

PERSISTENT CONFLICT
3-18. In the 21st century, several global trends shape the emerging strategic environment and exacerbate
the ideological nature of current struggles. These trends present dilemmas as well as opportunities. Such
trends include
Globalization.
Technological diffusion.
Demographic shifts.
Resource scarcity.
Climate changes and natural disasters.
Proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Failed

or failing states.
3-19. The collective impact of these trends makes it likely that persistent conflict will characterize the next
century. Persistent conflict is the protracted confrontation among state, nonstate, and individual
actors that are increasingly willing to use violence to achieve their political and ideological ends.
Conflicts will erupt unpredictably, vary in intensity and scope, and endure for extended periods. In a
dynamic and multidimensional operational environment, design offers tools vital to solving the complex,
ill-structured problems presented by persistent conflict.

EVOLVING CHARACTER OF CONFLICT

3-20. Although the essential nature of conflict is timeless, its character reflects the unique conditions of
each era. Conflict is invariably complex because it is fundamentally human in character. As such, conflict
is characterized by uncertainty, chance, and friction. Design provides additional tools necessary to
understand this environment and to mitigate the adverse effects of complexity on full spectrum operations.
As modern conflict evolves, it is characterized by several key factors:
Conducted between and among diverse actors, both state and nonstate, with the former
frequently acting covertly and the latter sometimes acting through state sponsorship or as a
proxy for a state.
Unavoidably waged among the people.
Increasingly unpredictable and sudden, with the potential to expand rapidly into unanticipated
locations and continue for unexpected durations.
Increasing potential for spillover, creating regionally and globally destabilizing effects.
Waged in transparency.
Increasingly likely to include hybrid threats, dynamic combinations of conventional, irregular,
terrorist, and criminal capabilities adapting to counter traditional advantages.

FUNDAMENTALS OF DESIGN
3-21. Todays operational environment presents situations so complex that understanding themlet alone
attempting to change themis beyond the ability of a single individual. Moreover, significant risk occurs
when assuming that commanders in the same campaign understand an implicit design concept or that their
design concepts mutually support each other. The risks multiply, especially when a problem involves
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multiple units, Services, multinational forces, or other instruments of national power. Commanders mitigate
these risks with collaboration and by applying the design fundamentals:
Apply critical thinking.
Understand the operational environment.
Solve the right problem.
Adapt to dynamic conditions.
Achieve the designated goals.

Apply Critical Thinking

3-22. Commanders ensure that superiors and subordinates share a common understanding of the purpose
behind intended actions. Initial guidance provided by a higher political or military authority may prove
insufficient to create clearly stated, decisive, and attainable objectives in complex situations that involve
political, social, economic, and other factors. After commanders conduct a detailed study of the situation,
they may conclude that some desired goals are unrealistic or not feasible within the limitations. These
limitations stem from the inherent tension that often exists among different goals, historical tensions in the
local population, interactions of different actors seeking to improve their own survivability and position,
and limited resources and time available to achieve the mission. One can never fully understand the
dynamics of a conflict in advance. Well-intentioned guidance without detailed study may lead to an
untenable or counterproductive solution.
3-23. Design helps mitigate the risk associated with guidance that does not fully account for the
complexities of the operational environment by using a critical and creative approach for learning,
innovation, and adaptation. Design helps to clarify objectives in the context of the operational environment
and within the limits imposed by policy, strategy, orders