"Change Agents for the SOF Enterprise”,
Ben Zweibelson, PhD, Chief Commander's Strategic Initiatives Group (SIG), US Space Command. 14 NOV 2017.
[Vandergriff note: Ben is an outstanding retired infantry officer and now an academic, who specializes in Military Design. He just published a brilliant book, which I have read and I am reviewing, called Reconceptualizing War (Helion & Co (UK)). He is also a big believer in Mission Command and Maneuver Warfare].
From Ben Zweibelson, PhD, "Change Agents for the SOF Enterprise”, an article I wrote for the Special Operations Journal in 2017 when I was working in SOCOM. The article is oriented toward SOF leaders, but generally all the concepts apply to any military leader. The Space-SOF-Cyber construct is valuable here in that SOF, Cyber, and Space leaders are not going to fight the next war in domain, service, or geographic isolation. We will be Joint, coupled with Allies and Partners, and in many applications, the unique interplay of Space-SOF-Cyber will be a dominant theme. This article offers several ways for senior leaders to consider military innovation, forging a creative and free-thinking warfighter organization, and uses the semiotic square as a metaphoric device to quickly propel staffs or divisions into thinking divergently instead of becoming trapped in convergent loops of ‘do what worked yesterday harder if it is not working today as well.” The Special Operations Journal was the flagship academic journal for JSOU up until 2021 when they ended that journal and shifted to a publicly accessible (no paywall) version that now is reborn as ‘Inter Populum’ and available here: IP Inter Populum - The Journal of Irregular Warfare and Special Operations."
Abstract: “The military design movement in the past generation has generated much discussion on why, how, and when to apply design thinking in military organizations. Further, there is significant debate on how design and traditional linear planning ought to integrate and compliment within a military enterprise confronting a complex, adaptive environment. Although there are multiple design schools, programs, as well as methodologies available across the U.S. Department of Defense and internationally in other militaries, the lack of research and materials for military senior leaders is of paramount concern. For Special Operations leadership in particular, design requires different consideration when set in the context of SOF unique missions as well as the composition of SOF forces in larger Coalition and Joint activities. This article provides some of the leading design theory tailored specifically for senior military leaders to provide deeper appreciation of how to foster design activities, innovation, and operational planning integration within complex Special Operations contexts.”