Senior Leader Decision Making: Lessons Gleaned From Field Marshal Viscount Sir William Slim And Bill Gates

Lt-Col Keith Vore

• Publisher: Verdun Press
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781782894285
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire de l'Europe

Just as many football players have failed to become great coaches, so too have many governmental leaders, leaders of industry and military officers failed to succeed when placed at higher levels of responsibility. Understanding how to solve problems at increasingly higher levels of dynamic complexity is certainly important to the success of the military at large. Being able to discern a complex situation, sizing up what is happening and what is critical to the situation, knowing at a glance what is occurring and why, confidently understanding what is important (and what is not), and then making a successful decision to respond are critical aspects of senior leader decision-making. Resources at this level are rarely sufficient to overwhelm the opposition everywhere continuously. Divining a "path of success" that maximizes leverage over the competition at least cost is imperative for long-term operations. One way to explore this vital issue is to examine the thoughts and decisions of those who have been thrust into complex decision making situations and were eminently successful, time and again. Sir William Slim faced almost insurmountable complexity in dealing with the Japanese in the China-Burma-India theater during World War II. Yet he managed to figure out a way to succeed in spite of the complexity he faced, soundly defeating the Japanese and driving them completely from the country. Bill Gates has faced complexity of an entirely different sort in his unparalleled rise to success in the computer software industry. He has managed, in spite of the complexity, to uncannily make decisions that have propelled him to the top of his profession. This monograph examines the research question, "Do the decision making methods used by Sir William Slim and Bill Gates correspond to the theories espoused by Gary Klein with respect to patterns and anomalies, singular evaluation, and leverage points?"

 

CHAPTER I — INTRODUCTION

A six-foot, five-inch, 275 pound defensive end can be an intimidating opponent on a high school football field. With an appropriate level of speed, agility, and instinct, a player such as this can certainly compete at the collegiate level, if not the professional level. Football coaches teach players like this specific offensive and defensive plays from team playbooks which are designed to succeed against predicted opposing team formations. During a game, however, when the specific play selected does not exactly match the opposing team’s formation as predicted, the defensive player then resorts to a rational choice strategy to decide how to adapt successfully. Coaches teach players to rationalize what they should do in these types of situations: “If the opponent does this, then you do that; but if he does something else, then you do this.” A rational choice strategy is a broad, logical search for all available options, which limits the chance that any one particular option may be overlooked. It is a compelling strategy for one who lacks the depth of insight and experience, to whom a satisfactory option is not immediately (or intuitively) forthcoming. In the case of the player, since there are few options from which to choose, his analysis takes seconds to accomplish. In the art and science of football, the player is a scientist. His training teaches him what to think.

Following his successful high school, collegiate or professional career, this superb player may decide to transition into coaching himself. Although successful as a player against opposing players, he may find himself bewildered by the challenges of coaching and winning football games against opposing teams. Although he survived by rational choice strategies as a player, he quickly discovers that rational choice strategies become increasingly difficult to use as the level of complexity increases. For although the physical world of both the player and coach are confined to the same playing field space (measuring 100 by 53 yards), the player himself has a very narrow scope of responsibility. Resorting to rational choice strategies for him is a fairly simple thing. For the coach, on the other hand, the scope of responsibility runs the gamut of the entire field of play. On the defensive, he must guard against attacks by the opponent’s offense, both on the ground and in the air. He must decide when to blitz and when to fall back into deep pass coverage. When on the offensive, he must decide when to throw and when to run the ball, where to do so, and when. And he must do it, successfully, under a time constraint. A coach who, overwhelmed by the complexity of the game and unsure of where to begin to decide what to do, might likely open his team’s playbook and select the very first play, with no rhyme or reason as to why, and with little hope of success. The world of the coach involves much more complexity in terms of numbers and types of decisions than that of the player, and in the creativity demanded of him in concocting his “game plan” of successful play combinations to use against the opposing team, a game plan which is devised to take advantage of his team’s strengths and the opposing team’s weaknesses. In the art and science of football, the coach is more an artist than a scientist.

If this coach were a genius, or could somehow harness the computing power of a Cray II supercomputer, he might be able to make all of these myriad decisions by resorting to rational choice strategies. For every single action requiring a decision, he would have to compute all of the possible options available and determine the best choice. However, for the majority of humans this is not a feasible method of coaching—or of deciding. The number of decisions are simply too overwhelming. Some other method, then, of deciding just what to do must be used—something short of trying to sort through every single option available in order to rationalize the best option. What other methods exist? What methods do successful coaches use? A coach is an artist. His education needs to teach him how to think. But how does one teach “art?” Do the best coaches just “happen?” Is success in coaching merely a Darwinian selection process? Or are there “principles” involved?

Perhaps this explains why many successful players never become outstanding coaches. They lack a sense of how to proceed. The football player/football coach dilemma is not unlike the problems of senior governmental leaders, leaders of industry, or senior military officers, all of whom face increasing and dynamic complexity as they ascend in rank and responsibility. Just as many football players have failed to become great coaches, so too have many governmental leaders, leaders of industry and military officers failed to succeed when placed at higher levels of responsibility. Understanding how to solve problems at increasingly higher levels of dynamic complexity is certainly important to the success of the military at large. Being able to discern a complex situation, sizing up what is happening and what is critical to the situation, knowing at a glance what is occurring and why, confidently understanding what is important (and what is not important), and then making a successful decision to respond are critical aspects of senior leader decision making. Resources at these levels are rarely sufficient to overwhelm the opposition everywhere continuously. Divining a “path of success” that maximizes leverage over the competition at least cost is imperative for long-term operations. The principles of planning operations at the operational level of war, as distinct from the tactical level of war, begin to broach this subject by focusing on centers of gravity and decisive points. Making decisions at these higher levels involves increasingly more art relative to the science used at lower echelons. Successful scientists do not become ipso facto successful artists as they climb the ladder of rank and responsibility. Again, the dilemma in educating senior leaders: How does one teach art? In high school, art students are taught to imitate other artists. Yet imitators of military art have been thrashed soundly in past conflicts, derided as “methodists” by Clausewitz, since they do not truly understand the art and its particular application on the battlefield in a specific situation.

Is the art of war completely separate from the science of war? Is there a stone wall dividing the two? Or are the science and art of war at opposite ends of a continuum? Does the science of war at some point transition into the art of war, such that there are some basic principles that can be used to bridge the gap and facilitate the education of the art? Are there any existing decision making methods that could reinforce operational level planning principles to make them better?

In his book, Sources of Power, author Gary Klein discusses the difficulty of using rational choice strategies in “naturalistic” decision making settings—settings which include time pressures, high stakes, shifting conditions and complexity. Klein discusses many of his observations of individuals under these conditions and offers ideas on how to comprehend and solve complex problems, such as understanding completely the nature of the problem (situational awareness), looking for patterns as well as understanding what is missing from those patterns (anomalies), understanding the benefit of intuition, searching for leverage points on which to act, and using mental simulations. Other decision making theorists have proffered solutions about how to proceed as well. Do they agree in principle with Klein’s conclusions? Or do they strike out in a different direction?

One way to explore this vital issue is to examine the thoughts and decisions of those who have been thrust into complex, “naturalistic” decision making situations and were eminently successful, time and again. Their record of repeatedly making the right choices in a bewildering environment humbles the average man—unless the average man could study their methods in order to discern how they thought through their problems and made their “correct” decisions. Sir William Slim faced almost insurmountable complexity in dealing with the Japanese in the China-Burma-India theater during World War II. Yet he managed to figure out a way to succeed in spite of the complexity he faced, soundly defeating the Japanese and driving them completely from the country. Bill Gates has faced complexity of an entirely different sort in his unparalleled rise to success in the computer software industry. He has managed, in spite of the complexity, to uncannily make decisions that have propelled him to the top of his profession.

Are the approaches to making decisions that these two successful leaders have used similar to the methods that Gary Klein suggests? Or are they more in keeping with the “traditional” decision making theorists? This monograph examines that issue, and answers the research question “Do the decision making methods used by Sir William Slim and Bill Gates correspond to the theories espoused by Gary Klein with respect to patterns and anomalies, singular evaluation, and use of leverage points?” The monograph answers the research question in the following manner. First, it establishes Gary Klein’s theoretical basis, and then contrasts that to the views of several other decision making theorists, to establish whether Klein’s ideas are unique unto himself. The discussion then transitions to the study of Slim’s campaigns in Burma, first by developing the events as they transpired, followed by an examination of his evident recognition of patterns and anomalies, whether he relied on singular evaluation, and whether he worked toward reliance on leverage points in framing his decisions. Following the discussion of Slim, the monograph then transitions to a similar discussion of Bill Gates. The monograph then finishes with a short section devoted to both conclusions and recommendations for the U.S. Army to consider.

The purpose of this monograph is to delve deeply, at an appropriate level in one’s career, in how to wrestle with complexity, understand it for what it is, and decide correctly on a course of action which has every hope of succeeding. It is an examination of how both Slim and Gates thought and decided, and a comparison of those thought and decision processes to Klein’s taxonomy. But this monograph is more than this simple comparison. It is also an examination into some of the little understood aspects of intuitive decision making and executive-level decision making, as well as the aspects of both critical and creative thought. It serves as a melting pot, connecting a number of appropriate thoughts and ideas gleaned while studying the operational level of war for two years. The monograph is not, however, intended to serve as a “vetting” for Gary Klein’s theories, nor is it to prove that either Slim’s or Gates’ decision making prowess prove or disprove Klein’s theoretical points. It is not intended to be a history lesson of all of the events surrounding Slim or Gates.

The discussion begins, then, with an intriguing look at a different way to deal with complexity in fast-paced situations, and how to decide what to do—Gary Klein and Sources of Power.

CHAPTER II — THINKING AND DECIDING

The purpose of this chapter is to examine the decision making ideas of Gary Klein. It begins with a short discussion of conventional decision making and rational choice strategies, followed by Gary Klein’ s thoughts. The discussion then contrasts Klein’s thoughts with those of several other decision making theorists in order to discern which of these other decision making theorists, if any, propose ideas similar to Klein’s.

GARY KLEIN AND DECISION MAKING

Conventional decision making follows a four-step process: 1) Problem definition, 2) Course of action generation, 3) Course of action analysis and evaluation, and 4) Course of action selection and execution.{1} Rational choice strategies are used to develop a number of different courses of action, or options, in order to “reduce the chance that an important option will be overlooked...It comes closer to error-free decision making than other sources of power.” {2} Rational choice strategy does have several advantages. First, decisions reached using the strategy should be reliable ones, because it is a rigorous and quantitative process. It is also a general strategy, applicable to a wide number of situations.{3}

The problem with rational choice strategies, however, is that it is time-consuming to determine and evaluate all of the options to any given problem. A rigorous, analytical approach cannot be used easily in a dynamic, rapidly-developing situation, for example.{4} There is an additional problem of being able to break down properly each of the tasks incident to the problem into constituent elements for analysis. Once those tasks are broken down, they tend to be treated as individual, independent problems vice components of a larger system at work. This means that the decisions rendered as a result are apt to be short of a full solution. Further, decision makers suffer from having to set up elaborate mathematical calculations which result combinatorial explosions as they work through course of action comparison. Considering this large set of factors and trying to develop all of the implications there from are simply too onerous for any human or group of humans to attempt to accomplish.{5} Finally, the traditional decision making process coupled with rational choice strategies implies a linear process. In order to progress from one step to the next, all actions must be accomplished. Klein finds, however, that in light of the fact that rarely does anyone have sufficient information to do so, that anyone wanting to use rational choice strategies would literally be stuck in the information gathering mode, never to emerge from it.{6}

Klein studied several groups of people at work making decisions. Firefighters, for example, do not rely on rational choice strategies to decide how to put out fires. If they did, potentially the buildings they were attempting to save would burn down as they pondered all of the options to extinguish the flames.{7} Klein also finds that students who have been taught rational choice strategies tend not to use them when undergoing decision making exercises.{8} The reasons for this are that rational choice strategies are laborious and time-consuming. In fact, Klein goes so far as to state that teaching rational choice strategies to students does them a disservice because it pushes them through a painful, not-to-be-used-again process that stifles their creativity and initiative, ...

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• Abstract
• CHAPTER I - INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER II - THINKING AND DECIDING
• CHAPTER III - THE MARSHAL MAGICIAN
• CHAPTER IV - THE MAGICIAN OF MICROSOFT
• CHAPTER V - CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
• REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER
• BIBLIOGRAPHY