Fast thinking, slow thinking, and integrating whole-of-government planning: Applying retrospective operational design to deliver non-military effects within complex national campaigns

Other Government Agencies (OGA) and civil organisations increasingly work closely with and deploy alongside the ADF. One of the reasons is the complex nature of contemporary conflict and the need to exert non-military effects. Dealing with complexity and applying non-military effects requires changes in thinking, planning and decision making processes: Army is driving this change under its Adaptive Campaigning concept. Recent government direction for the OGA and ADF to integrate their operations provides an opportunity to address planning and decision-making weaknesses at the national-strategic level.Enhancements should leverage the strengths and mitigate the weaknesses of the different OGA and ADF decision-making approaches, and be compatible with the adaptive stance, an emergent DSTO-led initiative to improve complex decision-making. The differences between and weaknesses of organisational decision-making styles can be understood in a framework based on Kahnemans psychology of fast and slow thinking styles.The current strategic planning processes are proven but are not well suited to deliver integrated Whole-of-Government responses in complex conflict. A need for enhancements is recognised, and discussions about required change are ongoing, but interdepartmental agreement will take time. This paper suggests higher level changes, but focuses on tangible and practical measures within Army’s remit. Retrospective Operational Design is a campaign management approach that visualises the Lines Of Operation (LOO) construct proposed under Adaptive Campaigning, develops it to synthesise OGA and ADF activities into integrated WOG lines of effort and then enables their adaptive management, even prior to the tasking of OGA planners.