Coup D'Oeil: Strategic Intuition in Army Planning

Abstract

This monongraph reviews the U.S. Army's standard methods for problem solving and decisionmaking to see how they might take more account of a commander's intuition at every step. The ideas offered here go beyond the Army's current view of intuition in its latest version of Field Manual (FM) 5-0, Army Planning and Orders Production, issued January 2005. That version presents "analytical" and "intuitive" as two different types of decisionmaking, for two different situations: The analytical approach to decisionmaking serves well when time is available to analyze all facets affecting the problem and its solution. However, analytical decisionmaking consumes time and does not work well in all situations - especially during execution, when circumstances often require immediate decisions. * Intuitive decisionmaking is especially appropriate in time-constrained conditions. It significantly speeds up decisionmaking. Intuitive decisionmaking, however, does not work well when the situation includes inexperienced leaders, complex or unfamiliar situations, or competing courses of action (COAs).

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Nov 01, 2005
Accession Number
ADA442185

Entities

People

  • William Duggan

Organizations

  • United States Army War College

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • C4I
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Human Systems
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Contingency Operations (Military)
  • Instructions
  • Mental Processes
  • Military History
  • Military Operations
  • Military Science
  • Numerical Analysis
  • Pattern Recognition
  • Personality
  • Personnel Management
  • Psychology
  • Recognition
  • Standards
  • Students
  • United States
  • War Colleges
  • War Games

Readers

  • Joint Military Operations and Doctrine.
  • Team-Based Human-Centered Cognitive Task Decision Making and Information Performance.