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Home > Journals > 2004 > Vol. 30 No. 4 > Features > Decision-Making in a Brigade Command Team: Integrating Theory and Practice
Decision-Making in a Brigade Command Team: Integrating Theory and Practice
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by COL Ong Yu Lin and LTC Lim Beng Chong

Humans make decisions, but, exactly, how do we make decisions? One school of thought is that humans adopt an analytical, rational decision-making process. That is, we first diagnose the problem, seek relevant information, identify a number of options or alternatives, and finally, make a rational choice among the many options.

In the military context, where decisions made by military commanders, often have dire consequences if failed, it is not surprising that military organizations have invested time and resources to develop doctrine and procedures to guide military decision-making, and train military commanders to be cognizant with these requirements. These procedures are logical and prescriptive in nature. Indeed, the SAF has adopted this analytical perspective for its battle procedure.

Increasingly, there is awareness that the current set of doctrine and procedures may not be appropriate under certain conditions. This growing uneasiness among many military commanders can be attributed to two reasons. Firstly, military commanders realize that this is not how they make decisions in operations. Often they have to adapt the prescribed procedures to suit the way they operate. Secondly, and also more importantly, military commanders find it hard to follow the prescribed procedures even if they want to because of both time pressure caused by high operational tempo and high level of uncertainty.

So how do humans make decisions under time pressure and uncertainty? In 1985, Gary Klein examined how firefighters made life and death decisions under extreme time pressure. Simply put, they found that experts use their experience to make rapid and effective decisions under time pressure and uncertainty. The field has come to be known as Naturalistic Decision-Making (NDM).

We believe insights from NDM can complement the analytical approach to decision-making, and advance our understanding of decision-making in the SAF. Hence, in developing a preliminary model of decision-making, we have incorporated many of the insights gleaned from NDM research. In addition, as teams are the basic building blocks of any military, we see the need to advance our understanding of decision-making in a team context. Specifically, for this article, we discuss decision-making in the context of a brigade command team. Integrating insights from both the NDM and team effectiveness literature to build a framework for decision-making in the military, we believe, is critical. Currently, there is little integration of the two literature. Apart from theoretical perspectives, we see the need to incorporate experiences of military commanders into the model building process as well. This approach is consistent with the insights from NDM, i.e., experts use their experience to make decisions. Hence, in building a model of decision-making, we should also incorporate the experiences of experts; and the experts are none other than military commanders!

The objectives of this article are threefold. First, we articulate a preliminary model of decision-making in a team context for the SAF. This preliminary model can form the basis for discussions among interested parties to further improve the utility of the framework. Second, after explicating a theoretical framework of decision-making in a team context, we use 3rd Singapore Infantry Brigade (3 SIB) command team as a case study to illustrate how the framework can be applied to a brigade command team. Finally, the implications of the framework for the SAF in terms of command team training, leader development, battle procedure and human resource (HR) policies/team selection will be discussed.

A Preliminary Model of Decision-Making in a Team Context

Insights from NDM

Klein, in his book Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions , argued that in natural settings, the conventional sources of power (e.g., deductive logical thinking, analysis of probabilities, and statistical methods) are not as useful as “the power of intuition, mental stimulation, metaphor, and story telling.” He asserts that intuition allows individuals to size up a situation rapidly, while mental stimulations enables decision makers to imagine how a course of action might be carried out. Furthermore, metaphor enables people to draw on their experiences to compare the current situation to a situation that they have come across. Finally, story telling allows individuals to consolidate their experiences for future use. These experiences are captured as mental models. The development of mental models of a specific domain differentiates an expert from a novice.

Often, experienced decision makers are able to carry out their tasks even when faced with uncertainty due to inadequate information (i.e., missing, ambiguous or unreliable - either due to errors in transmission or deception by the adversary). Essentially, their acquired mental models can fill the information gaps and enable them to extract a storyline or pattern from the inadequate information. In addition, their mental models also allow them to focus their attention on the right set of cues and provide the right weightage to the selected cues. Essentially, this is what differentiates an expert from a novice for a specific domain.

Experienced decision makers generate an initial feasible course of action, mentally simulate the process and consequences of that action, and if the simulation suggests that the course of action will work as desired, they act. Interestingly, there does not appear to be a process of comparing different courses of action, as would be expected from the traditional decision-making view. They are able to do this because of their extensive mental models built over time. Their experience lets them see a situation, even a novel one, as an example of a prototype, so they know the appropriate course of action immediately. And this first option is often good enough so they are not bothered with exploring other options.

Even in cases where the decision maker actually looks at several options, he never compares any two of them. He evaluates each in turn, rejects it, and moves to the next option. He stops once he finds one that works. This is called satisficing - selecting the first option that works. Satisficing is different from optimising, which is trying to come up with the best strategy.

Insights from Team Effectiveness Literature

When a task is beyond the capability of an individual, organizations often rely on teams of individuals who can work together to accomplish the goals. Military command teams are one good example. The combined cognitive and behavioural capability of a team allows a team to achieve goals that are potentially unachievable by an individual. However, simply putting a group of people together does not ensure they will operate as a team. Teams must be systematically developed over time.

There are a number of critical team processes that have been posited by researchers to affect team effectiveness. These team processes can be categorized into affective, behavioural, cognitive and leader components.

Affective components Individuals working together often develop a sense of togetherness and bonding. This sense of togetherness is important for the development of some critical team affective processes such as team orientation and team trust. Members of a team that is high on team orientation tend to have a strong team identity, believe in a team approach to achieving goals, believe in the team’s ability in the face of difficulty, and is highly committed to their team goals. The trust developed among team members further bonds them together.

Behavioural components With the appropriate team affective processes as foundation, other more behavioural, but not less critical team processes can be developed. Two such team processes are team communication patterns and team self correction behaviours. Optimal team communication patterns facilitate an open flow of constructive information within the team. In other words, there is no bottleneck in the information flow. Dysfunctional team dynamics, such as those teams without high levels of team orientation or team trust, often inhibit the development of an open, constructive and responsive communication patterns. Team self correction behaviours include members engaging in mutual and team performance monitoring, demonstrating back up behaviours (i.e., offer to help others), willingness and inclination to both offer and accept help from others, readiness to provide feedback and are receptive to feedback, and engage in effective corrective actions if necessary.

Cognitive components Researchers have found that a team mind evolves over time when a group of individuals work together. Not only that members agree on the team task and work procedures, they are also cognizant about each other’s personal characteristics (e.g., strengths and weaknesses, habits) and the interaction processes in the team. Defined as “team members’ shared, organized understanding and mental representation of knowledge about key elements of the team’s relevant environment”, team mental models have been proposed to enhance team performance especially when time is of essence and opportunities for overt communication and debate are limited.4 Team mental models allow team members to anticipate one another’s actions and to coordinate their behaviours. Another important team cognitive process is team situation awareness - a process by which team members develop compatible models of teams’ internal and task environment at a given point in time.

Leader components Finally, as command teams in the military are hierarchical, there is no doubt that team leaders exert a powerful influence on the cognitive, affective (motivational), and behavioural aspects of team processes. In order to facilitate the development of all these critical team processes, the appropriate leadership being exhibited in the team is paramount. Without belabouring the point, we believe that team leaders exhibiting more transformational leadership behaviours will be critical for the development of such team processes. Transformational leadership is often contrasted to transactional leadership. Transactional leadership is often depicted as contingent reinforcement; leader-subordinate relationships based on a series of exchanges or bargains between them. Transformational leaders, on the other hand, rise above the exchange relationships typical of transactional leadership by developing intellectually stimulating, and inspiring subordinates to transcend their own self-interests for a higher collective purpose, mission, or vision.6 Notice that one consequence of this perspective is a focus on unit-level interests, beyond those of the individual person.

Traditionally, especially in the military, leadership is often conceived as residing in one individual. Someone is “in charge” while the rest are simply followers. However, recent views of leadership have broadened to include the idea that team leaders and team members can share leadership. That is, leadership is rotated to the person with the key knowledge, skills, and abilities for the particular issue facing the team at any given moment. Indeed, team research has shown that less effective teams tend to be dominated by the team leader, while effective teams display more dispersed leadership patterns i.e. team leadership. Moreover, research indicates that teams that have tasks that are highly interdependent, require a great deal of creativity and are highly complex will do well with team leadership.

Another way a leader can influence the team effectiveness is through his mental models. What he knows or does not know, his biases and inclinations will impact the decision-making process of a team. Hence, it is paramount that a leader’s mental model is well developed.

Proposed Framework

Decision-making is defined here as the manner in which an individual or a team acts on the information and elements as perceived in their situation awareness, and how this information interacts with their more stable mental models of reality, to make and arrive at decisions. At the individual level, the individual biases and experiences employed become important and crucial in the quality and speed of decision-making. At the team level, human interaction patterns and group dynamics will also play an important role. As such, decision-making processes can be seen as transcending four domains - Cognitive, Social, Information and Physical (see Table 1).

When time permits elaborate deliberations, the analytical approach to decision-making is still useful; however, under difficult circumstances (e.g., time pressure, high stakes, inadequate information, ill defined goals, dynamic and uncertain conditions), naturalistic decision-making process will become more relevant.
Figure 1 (please refer overleaf) depicts a preliminary model of decision making in a team context. As mentioned earlier, many of the insights were gleaned from NDM and team effectiveness literature. In this article, we value add by integrating both literature with military commanders’ experiences. There are perhaps 10 key components critical to decision-making in a team context: two affective components (i.e., positive team orientation, high level of mutual trust), two behavioural components (i.e., open and constructive communication patterns, high level of team self correction), four cognitive components (i.e., high level of team situation awareness, accurate/shared mental models, collective sense making, collective understanding of command intent), and leader components (i.e., team leadership, leader’s expert mental model or experience).

This framework depicts how a team goes about making decisions under time pressure and high level of uncertainty. The start state of this framework assumes that the team leader and team members are experts in their specific domains, and these experiences are captured in their individual mental models. Their mental models guide their information search by focusing their attention on relevant cues via situation awareness. At the same time, their mental models also facilitate the recognition of patterns in the arrays of cues and information. Both of these processes help the expert to size up the situation quickly. The interplay among the three processes - sense making, command intent and mental stimulation - enables the expert to first determine a course of action, evaluate it against the command intent by mentally simulating the consequences when that course of action is executed. If the consequences cannot fulfil the command intent, the expert will then seek another course of action. The judgement process repeats itself until the expert determines the first course of action that works (satisficing). Individually, the team leader and team members are capable of conducting this cognitive process at any point in time during the operation (i.e., individual cognition). As these experts do not operate in isolation, they need to function as a team. There is another level of cognition that will be operating as well - team cognition. At the team level, the extent to which the team leader and team members have similar mental models (i.e., team mental models), have a similar perception of the situation (i.e., team situation awareness), have a shared understanding of the situation (i.e., collective sense making), and have a common understanding of command intent, the team will be able to make swift and quality decisions.

Like individuals who have to accumulate experience to become experts, team cognition takes time and effort to develop. Moreover, team cognition can only be developed when the team develops the five critical team processes in the social domain of decision-making – team leadership, team communication, team self correction, mutual trust, and team orientation. The existence of these key team processes will facilitate the development and maintenance of the team cognition over time. In other words, we first develop individual experts, then develop the necessary team processes to transform “teams of experts into expert teams”.

Once the planning process is completed, directives are disseminated followed by synchronization activities that are then translated into actions. These actions inevitably will effect environmental changes. Changes in the situations are represented as data and information for the consumption of the command team. However, the extent to which a piece of data or information affects team situation awareness or individual situation awareness depends very much on the representations and flow of the information. The whole cycle then repeats itself. Note that, individuals’ mental models may be updated or may undergo refinements after getting feedback from the environmental changes (i.e., reality check). Hence, the whole process is very dynamic.

In the next section, theory is put into practice. Using 3 SIB as an example, the first author (then Commander 3 SIB) shares his first hand experience in building up his command team, in accordance with the depicted framework.

Developing Decision-Making Process in a Brigade Command Team

Phase 1 Vision, Role, Rule, and Relationship Developing a command team is a deliberate process. This section briefly documents the efforts in building up a brigade command team. The build-up comprised two phases. In Phase 1, efforts were targeted at developing a shared vision and building team structures and relationships. The Vision, Role, Rule and Relationship (V3R) team building program advocated by Field Psychologists was adopted. Within the brigade, a shared vision was developed. The roles to be played by each member of the team were agreed on. Finally, a set of rules was set to guide the work and interactions of the team. For example, some of the rules were “Question and understand the reasons why”, “Make it happen”, “Don’t complain about the problems - solve them!”, “If there are no rules, invent them”, “Who else needs to know and why”. These efforts were consistent with building up the social domain in the framework.

Phase 2 Understand and develop the thinking process, mental models, analytical skills of team members, and the information management process In this phase, the effort was to focus on building the cognitive domain of team functioning. The focus was on understanding one another’s thinking process, mental models and analytical skills. The process started off by analysing the strengths and weaknesses of each team member in terms of his thinking and analytical skills. This shared understanding of collective strengths and weaknesses allowed team members to complement one another. For this process to work, mutual trust was critical. From the onset, members were assured that these discussions would not be used for annual ranking purposes. Understanding the background of each team member, their past postings, experiences enabled other team members to have a better understanding of how their mental models were shaped and developed. All these efforts built shared understanding in the team (i.e., team mental models). In addition, team members also agreed on a common theory of success.
Shared Theory of Success

To improve the team communication process and team situation awareness, especially under time constraint, technology was leveraged on to enhance information dissemination and management. The Brigade Command post used webpages to present/organize most frequently used information. This information was just one click away.

These were some of the considerations when designing the brigade information management process:

• Post before Processing

Populate the network with information in a timely way to facilitate parallel processing to achieve speed. Experience showed that 80% of information in a product remains relevant/unchanged/unaffected. Where possible, new information were posted and merged with existing knowledge to produce richer products. Users were informed/updated of changes by highlighting what has changed and if possible why.

• Pull and Push

Pull/Push the right information in the right format to the right persons at the right time and right place by asking who else needs to know. Team members were constantly reminded that information has no hierarchy even though the military organisation has.
• Define what information is and what it is supposed to facilitate
Table 2 was instrumental in helping the Brigade make sense of the data, information and knowledge as part of the information management process.

The brigade’s human intelligence sensors were trained to report data accurately and to highlight if they were reporting data or their interpretations/assessments, in order not to confuse receivers due to different experience levels and mental models. Likewise, as a standard operating procedure, planners in the HQ would highlight if they were stating data or information. To facilitate processing time, data and analysis were presented on webpages early so that team members had access to them ahead of time. When team members subsequently came together, discussions were focused on what the event meant, and what the implications were.

Every effort was also made to create an open HQ structure to increase situation awareness and facilitate information flow. For example, webpages were used to facilitate information flow in the command post. The Fire Support Cell was also moved from the fringe to the centre of the command post to enhance awareness and coordination.

To further develop the team mental models and collective sense making ability, there was a common understanding of what constituted team situation awareness and sense making.

Situation Awareness was defined as the following:

• Not what is on display but what is in the head

• Not static but a rich, dynamic comprehension of a situation and what drives it

• Looking beyond data to notice trends, build expectancies, spot anomalies and see windows of opportunities for exploitation

• Good situation awareness also envisions more than one potential future and recognises uncertainty as a key element of the situation

Sensemaking was defined as:

• More than just sharing information and identifying patterns

• Going beyond what is happening and what may happen to what can be done about it

• Involve generating options, predicting adversary’s actions and reactions and understanding the effects of particular courses of actions

This shared understanding of what constituted team situation awareness and sensemaking engendered the development of many team-orientated behaviours. For example, there were more backup behaviours; members were more proactive in pushing information to the relevant people; members began to ask new questions; members began to see how the various moving parts fit together rather than piecemeal understanding.

The planning process was seen as a learning process. The purpose was to create shared mental models or framework to facilitate discussions and deliberations. Senge noted that “shared mental models are important mechanisms for development of effective communication strategies and also increase team performance”.

Before the start of any exercise, there would be a deliberate planning process, adapted from Klein’s work, as depicted in Figure 2 below.
As mentioned earlier, the leader component is critical to the team effectiveness. Hence, the Commander was made an integrated planner to share his experiences and knowledge instead of functioning as an approver of plans. Detailed commander planning guidance (CPG) was meant to provide possible frameworks for own course of actions (COAs) and enemy COAs so that staff can quickly fill in the gaps and details.

As the intent of the deliberate planning phase was to generate options, the end state was not to develop multiple COAs for comparison, but to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each option using a strength weakness- opportunity-threat (SWOT) analysis, and to understand the relationships between the options. These relationships were then mapped as Lines of Options with critical battlefield events as nodes in the lines of options. This line of options provided shared mental models of the various possibilities of how the battle can unfold. This process greatly enhanced not only the team mental models, but also the collective sense making capability of the team.

Mapping of the relationships also facilitated the support planners in working out their support plans with sufficient flexibility and robustness to support the alternatives. The variety of alternative paths to mission accomplishment was also an indicator of degree of flexibility. The line of options framework - a creative process stimulated by collaboration among multiple participants with different perspectives - allowed the team to develop its cognitive domain of team functioning, as depicted in the framework.

The experience in the brigade also showed that the team did not have to go through a deliberate selection of COA process to determine which COA to be selected as the plan, but intuitively each knew which option was the best to be adopted as the plan. To ensure that all members were informed, the commander would confirm that a certain COA was selected, often with unanimous agreement.

An example for offensive operations is shown in Figure 3 overleaf.
The line of options framework was subsequently used in the conduct of operations phase. As it captured the shared understanding of team members, it provided possible frames to interpret battlefield events as they unfold in a seemingly random fashion. Team members then made use of these frames to interpret the event in context as well as use the event to explain possible emerging frames or to discard frames (i.e., collective sensemaking). In the operations phase, team members used the line of options to elaborate, question, preserve, seek a frame, reframe or compare frames*, with each line of options as a possible frame. In essence, this is an operationalisation of Klein’s Data-Frame theory. The process is shown in Figure 4 below. This process also enhanced shared situation awareness and shared understanding of the situation.

The line of options facilitated control of operations in several exercises participated by 3 SIB as it provides:

• A frame for more rapid recognition of changes in the battlespace

• Seamless transition to foreclose or marginalise some options and maintenance of momentum without need to develop detailed contingency plans

• Foreseeable multiple futures - building blocks for actions

• Less likelihood of surprise and dislocation

To further facilitate the diagnosis of the evolving battle situation, all team members were asked to constantly review these four questions:

• Is the situation clear or uncertain? What are the key indicators/ patterns emerging? What are the implications?

• Is the operations proceeding according to plan? If not, what are the anomalies? What are the implications?

• Is the Commander Intent for this phase and entire operations achievable? If not, what are the alternatives or adjustments needed? What are the implications?

• Is the plan still relevant? If not, what are the alternatives or adjustments needed? What are the implications?

The team’s discussions focused on interpreting the situation, and the implications for both enemy and own forces, and inevitably, a discussion of the options available using the line of options. If an event occurred and has not been considered as a possible line of options, the team would deliberate on the possibility of a new frame and the components of this new line of options. Experience from past exercises showed that the team was able to develop a good shared understanding of the situation and of the possible future states.

Active Information Search

The process was supported by an active search of information during the planning phase and conduct of operations phase. It is important to note that as the team saw the planning process as a learning process and accepted that it was an iterative process, it was inevitable that the team periodically referenced a previous product to make improvements as well as removed parts of the plan, as they crystallized the problem.

The team also acknowledged that information was unbounded and needed to be bounded by our own operational concepts as well as the most probable enemy COA. The information needed was then derived and crafted as Essential Elements of Intelligence (EEI) for the enemy as well as Blue Critical Information Required (BCIR) for subordinates to report the attainment of critical battlefield events. These information requirements were crafted to:

• Facilitate recognition of changes and emerging patterns which in turn facilitate the determination of the current perceived state

• Facilitate interpretation of possible enemy intent with a supporting list of descriptions of indicators and cues (which become Specific Information Requirement - SIRs) to allow us to foreclose or marginalise options and thus reducing enemy flexibility and prevent surprises

• The descriptions of indicators/cues allowed us to determine possible options (using the line of options) to counter emerging threats or exploit opportunities by disrupting enemy intent and decision cycles

In cases where the intelligence agencies were not able to provide a positive response on the EEI (i.e., no sightings), it was not to be taken as a non-event but rather it triggered further thinking and questions such as “so what can he be possibly doing?”. Other intelligence agencies were then redirected to confirm the most likely alternatives.

Implications for SAF

There are a number of implications for SAF.

• Team Training/Field Psychologist Services

To enhance decision-making in command teams, it is important that team training for command teams should be systematically developed and conducted. Based on the proposed framework, efforts should focus on developing the cognitive and social domains of a team. Specifically, we should develop measurement tools to assess and outline interventions for developing team mental models, team situation awareness, team orientation, mutual trust, team self correction, and team communication. Team building programs advocated by both field psychologists from Applied Behavioural Science Department (ABSD), G6 and TRADOC have focused primarily on enhancing the social domain of team effectiveness (e.g., V3R framework of team building). To this end, field psychologists from ABSD can work with TRADOC to improve the current version of the team building program by augmenting it with measurement tools and interventions for enhancing the cognitive domain of team effectiveness.

Looking ahead, a revised command team development program may include three phases: phase 1 – build the basics through team building, phase 2 - enable component development through PC based simulation, phase 3 - make further refinements of the command team operations through field exercises.

In Phase 1, build team orientation through building team mental models (i.e., shared understanding of one another), and establishing mutual trust. This effort is similar to the current team building intervention (i.e., V3R model) advocated by ABSD field psychologists. One addition may be to provide feedback on team leader’s team leadership style so that the leader can begin to enhance his leadership effectiveness in a team context.

In Phase 2, team development should continue to build up the team mental models, communication patterns, and team self correction strategies systematically through scenario based training. While this team development can be done using traditional field exercises, the use of PC based simulations for team development is also advanced in this phase. This is because PC based simulations (e.g., command and conquer) can be easily customized to simulate various military scenarios so as to develop certain aspects of their mental models (i.e., experience with different military scenarios), and critical team processes (e.g., team mental models, communication patterns, team leadership, mechanisms to promote team situation awareness, collective sensemaking and collective understanding of command intent, and team self correction strategies). All these learning can be acquired within a shorter time period and possibly with lesser resources. Moreover, PC based simulations once developed, can be used for other command teams. Not all training needs to be done in the field. Team development training can be more effectively carried out at a simulation centre, as long as the learning takes place in the cognitive and social domains of decision-making. Once the critical mental models and team processes have been developed, then the command team is ready for phase 3.

In Phase 3, the command team will be ready for field exercises. Further refinements would be made to ensure the decision-making process in the command team is optimised.

Expertise takes time and effort to develop. However, in order to maintain our professional edge, knowledge management is critical. It is essential to capture expertise from the senior commanders and package them in a useful and meaningful manner for learning by the junior commanders. One way is to first identify critical military scenarios faced by military commanders in operations. Knowledge databases can then be built by eliciting expertise from experts (i.e., senior commanders) on how they go about making decisions in these scenarios using Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA) methodology. This newly acquired knowledge can then be used to design military scenarios for command team training.

• Leader Development

Similarly, incorporating scenario based training into leader development is critical to build expertise (i.e., expert mental models). Leaders have a disproportionate influence on decision-making in the team. As mentioned, leaders can affect the team process not only with his leadership style but also with his mental models (i.e., what he knows and does not know, and his biases and inclinations). Klein contends that “if we can present many situations an hour, several hours a day, for days or weeks, we should be able to improve the trainee’s ability to detect familiar patterns.” If the hypothesis is correct, leveraging on technology (e.g., PC based simulation) to deliver scenario based training may be effective.

• Battle Procedure

There is a need to align the current 15-step battle procedure to the decision- making framework. The objective of procedures should be to facilitate human decision-making rather than to inhibit it. Given that there is now greater insight into how humans go about making decisions, battle procedures should be aligned to facilitate the naturalistic decision-making cycle of human decision makers. Here, the experience of the brigade command team is again used as a case study to illustrate the usefulness of the proposed framework.

• Human Resource Policies/Team Selection

Human Resource policy makers must break away from the traditional mindset of viewing job postings as independent decisions for individuals. They must begin to be more team focused and take into consideration how personnel movement can affect command team effectiveness. The objective of personnel movement should be to retain or build the ideal command team configuration. Considerations should be given to the make up of a command team. Personnel movement should not be piecemeal. Collective attributes of a command team must be considered. This would however require some radical change in the mindset of the Human Resource Departments/Personnel Management Centres.

• Disrupt the Adversary’s Decision Cycles

In order to enhance one’s probability of success, one can enhance one’s decision-making process. On the other hand, one can also attempt to disrupt the adversary’s decision cycles. The framework mentioned here is equally applicable to the adversary. Given what we know about the human decision-making process, military commanders can attempt to disrupt the adversary’s decision cycle by overwhelming him in the physical domain like what the Americans did in Operation Iraqi Freedom with superior firepower. Unlike the Americans, this option may not be applicable to the SAF given that we may not have significant technological advantage over our adversary. Disrupting the adversary in the information, social and cognitive domains of decision-making may be the strategy to explore. These are some suggestions.

Cognitive domain We can profile adversary commanders by understanding the adversary’s mental models, values, beliefs, doctrine, and cultural values and beliefs. Armed with this information, our military commanders can better read the actions of these adversaries, and subsequently exploit their cognitive vulnerabilities (e.g., biases and heuristics) of these adversary commanders.

Social domain The effectiveness of exploiting the vulnerabilities of the adversary commanders’ cognition can be further enhanced by disrupting the social domain of the adversary’s decision-making cycle. To do this effectively, profiling the other team members in the adversary command team is critical. Based on this profiling, a team can be postulated in terms of their communication patterns, level of trust among members, level of team orientation, team mental models, team situation awareness, existence of team self correction strategy or adaptability. Once the adversary team profile can be identified, vulnerabilities and weaknesses in their social domain of decision-making cycle can be targeted and exploited. The objective is to disrupt their team dynamics.

Information domain If the strengths and limitations of the adversary’s Command and Control Information Systems (CCIS) and decision support tools are well understood, it will enable us to attack the information domain of their decision-making cycle. The adversary’s information domain can be targeted to disrupt their cognitive and social domain. Essentially, the aim is to shape the adversary’s decision-making by letting him see what we want him to see.

• Leverage on Technology

People first. Technology must be built to facilitate human functioning and not the reverse. Hopefully, this framework can provide some insights for decision support tools development and CCIS.

Conclusion

Research in decision-making has spanned three decades. Much more work is needed to further our understanding of decision-making, especially in a team context. In this article, a preliminary framework of decision-making in a team context has been put forth, using 3 SIB as a case study to illustrate its utility. We have also drawn up the implications for team training, leader development, human resource policy, and use of technology to facilitate human decision-making.

It is our hope that this article can engender some lively discussions and dialogue on this important topic.

Endnotes

1 Gary Klein, Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1998), p3.

2 McIntyre, R.M., and Salas, E., “Measuring and Managing for Team Performance: Emerging Principles from Complex Environments”, in R.A. Guzzo, and E.Salas (eds.), Team Effectiveness and Decision Making in Organizations (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1995).

3 Mohammed, S. and Dumville, B.C., “Team Mental Models in a Team Knowledge Framework: Expanding Theory and Measurement across Disciplinary Boundaries”, Journal Of Organizational Behavior, Vol.22 (2001), p90.

4 Mathieu, J.E., Heffner, T.S., Goodwin, G.F., Salas, E., & Cannon-Bowers, J.A., “The Influence of Shared Mental Models on Teams Process and Performance”, Journal Of Applied Psychology, Vol. 85, pp273-283.

5 Stephen Zaccaro, Andrea Rittman, and Michelle Marks, “Team leadership”, The Leadership Quarterly, Vol.12 (2001), pp451-483.

6 Bernard Bass, Transformational Leadership: Industrial, Military and Educational Impact (New Jersey, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1998).

7 Pearce C.L., “The Future of Leadership: Combining Vertical and Shared Leadership to Transform Knowledge Work”, The Academy Of Management Executive Vol.18 No.1 (2004), pp47-60.

8 Carol R. Paris, Eduardo Salas, and Janis A. Cannon-Bowers, “Teamwork in Multi- Person Systems: A Review and Analysis”, Ergonomics Vol.43 No.8, p1052.

9 Gary Klein, op cit, p30.
COL Ong Yu Lin is currently the Commander of Officer Cadet School in SAFTI Military Institute. He is a Guards Officer by training, and has attended the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst , UK , the US Army Infantry School at Fort Benning , and the Australian Command & Staff College . He has previously held command appointments at the battalion and brigade levels. He holds a BSc in Physics from the National University of Singapore, a Master of Management in Defence Studies from the University of Canberra, Australia, and an MBA from the Nanyang Fellows Programme at Nanyang Business School .
LTC Lim Beng Chong, PhD, a Guards Officer, is currently Head Training Psychology Branch, Applied Behavioural Sciences Department. He holds a BSc (Honours) in Psychology from University of Nottingham , MSc in training and development from Leicester University , MA and PhD in Industrial and Occupational Psychology from University of Maryland .
Last updated on 17 May 2006
 
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