To Design or Not to Design (Part Three): Metacognition: How Problematizing Transforms a Complex System towards a Desired State

Abstract

FM5-0 Chapter 3 Design describes design's purpose as a methodology used to "make sense of complex, ill-structured problems." 2 The term "make sense" deals with explanation of the open system. The previous article of "To Design or Not to Design" demonstrated how military institutions have a strong propensity for describing an open system instead of explaining it. To make sense of a complex system, humans instinctively attempt to categorize information through descriptive monikers and reductive classifications. Knowledge is usually "pursued in depth in isolation...Rather than getting a continuous and coherent picture, we are getting fragments-remarkably detailed but isolated patterns. 3 FM5-0 Chapter 3 Design follows military institutional preference for reconstructive and mechanical methodology prevalent at the tactical level of war by misapplying it to the operational level with design. Army design doctrine does not articulate why and how to transform a complex system into a desired one.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 18, 2011
Accession Number
ADA546334

Entities

People

  • Ben Zweibelson

Organizations

  • United States Army Command and General Staff College

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  • Energy and Power Technologies

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  • Air Force
  • Army Training
  • Cold War
  • Complex Systems
  • Doctrine
  • Economic Models
  • Human Population
  • Land Warfare
  • Law
  • Military History
  • Military Organizations
  • New York
  • Personnel Management
  • Societies
  • Systems Analysis
  • United States
  • Warfare

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