Tag: Military Decision-Making Process

  • Bringing Decision-Making Home: COA Analysis (Wargaming), COA Comparison, and COA Approval

    “You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality.” Vice Admiral James Stockdale (Medal of Honor)

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    In my last blog, we ended with the staff presenting leadership their best two to four Courses of Action (COAs), along with a recommendation for the one they believed would best accomplish the mission. That briefing included an analysis of each COA based on the evaluation criteria and the mission statement previously approved by leadership. Leadership then gets as much time as they need to consider the options, ask clarifying questions (which the staff must record!), and decide what comes next.

    When leadership receives a COA briefing, their response usually falls into one of four categories:

    1. Accept the staff’s recommended COA and direct them to wargame it.
    2. Identify two or more COAs as viable and ask the team to wargame each one and then compare the results.
    3. Send the team back to do more brainstorming.
    4. Suggest a COA the leader believes in that was not part of the original briefing.

    If option 3 is selected, it’s back to COA Development. In all other cases, the team moves into COA Analysis—what we called wargaming in the military and what I still call it today.

    Wargaming: Creating a Realistic Simulation

    Wargaming is simply a structured simulation of the selected COA(s). The goal is to identify risks to completion, consider ways to mitigate those risks, and refine the COA based on what the simulation reveals.

    I’m a firm believer that COA Analysis should be as visual and tactile as possible. Sticky notes on a wall, whiteboards, printed floorplans—anything that allows you to move pieces around. Seeing the plan in motion will reveal gaps, risks, and opportunities you would never catch on paper alone.

    A Community College Example: Three Campuses, 120 Students, Half a Day

    Recently, one of our high school recruitment coordinators, Demond, was asked to schedule a campus tour. Nothing unusual there—normally no need for deep decision-making. But this time they had a new ask: they wanted all 120 students to tour three of our five campuses, which are miles apart, all in half a day.

    Demond and I loved the idea and knew it was possible, but we also knew we needed a simulation to see what we might be missing.

    So we drew the campus buildings on a whiteboard.
    We used sticky notes to represent buses.
    We identified available staff.
    And with a notepad in hand to record every step, we played the morning out.

    Some insights emerged quickly:

    • If the school provided three buses, each going to a different starting campus, we could rotate the groups in a round-robin structure.
    • Two campuses were less than a mile apart, but the third was nearly eight miles away, affecting timing.
    • The school wanted students to eat lunch, but only two of the campuses had spaces where 120 students could eat.

    By walking through bus movements, lunch timing, and tours at all three campuses, we saw exactly where bottlenecks would happen. Our solution? We added a short presentation at our largest campus where students could hear from Demond. The students would share their interests and dreams, and Demond would share how education after high school could help them reach those goals. That extra activity created the time buffer needed to keep the entire event on schedule.

    Running the simulation took time, but it paid off. They day was a rousing success and we’ve already been asked to repeat it.

    The Final Step: COA Comparison and COA Approval

    When wargaming is complete, the staff prepares one last briefing. This briefing compares the results of all simulations (if more than one COA was analyzed), offers a final recommendation, and seeks leadership’s approval to execute the plan.

    One important note: approval must come from the administrative level with authority over every department or resource involved in the solution. In the military this sometimes meant taking the final plan to a higher headquarters to request additional resources. If those resources weren’t approved, we returned to an earlier step—but with a far deeper understanding of the problem.

    And that’s the point. By this stage:

    • You’ve done a thorough analysis.
    • You’ve followed leadership guidance at every turn.
    • You’ve developed multiple COAs.
    • You’ve simulated at least one.

    So if you’re required to revisit an earlier step, you do so from a place of clarity, confidence, and shared understanding.

    Up Next: Execution and Communication

    Execution is its own discipline, and it’s an area where the military excels. It starts with clear, consistent communication to every person responsible for carrying out the plan.

    I’ll talk about communication—and how it applies to higher-ed operations—in the next few posts.

  • Step 3 – COA Development: Where Creativity Meets Discipline

    “The dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.”
    — T.E. Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia”)

    I have vivid memories of our TOC (Tactical Operations Center) covered in whiteboards and butcher paper. We were constantly developing alternatives to our current course of action—planning logistical convoy security, updating troop strength, tracking vehicle maintenance, and revising Electronic Warfare jamming programs as the radio-controlled IED threat evolved. While these aren’t memories of a full-on, end-to-end MDMP cycle, they remind me how involved our COA work really was—and how much it mattered that we were trained in a process that rewards thoroughness and attention to detail.

    Step 3 of the Military Decision-Making Process is Course of Action (COA) development. In the method we’re experimenting with at my community college, we keep the same name. Where Mission Analysis (what we call problem analysis) is an extremely rigorous, research-driven exercise designed to produce a well-informed staff able to discuss the problem with leadership, COA development is more creative. I’ve described it as a brainstorming exercise, but—as I learned in the Army—that creativity is tempered by the rigor produced in problem analysis. It’s also bounded by the approved mission statement and by the leader’s requirements, constraints, intent, and evaluation criteria. In short: creative brainstorming from a position of strength.

    At the end of step 2, Mission Analysis, the commander is briefed on what the staff has learned. The staff then recommends a mission statement and proposes evaluation criteria for assessing potential COAs. If the leader approves the mission and criteria, the staff reconvenes—again without the commander—to brainstorm ideas that accomplish the mission (in our context, to solve the problem). There usually aren’t many rules for this session, but because it follows thorough analysis and a leadership brief, the creativity stays grounded in reality. There’s no set number of ideas that must come out of brainstorming. When the session wraps, I recommend a short break before reconvening to apply the mission statement and evaluation criteria to the results.

    When the staff meets to refine ideas, start by reviewing the approved mission statement and the evaluation criteria. Post a simple decision matrix to narrow the list to a few COAs to bring to leadership. A decision matrix for a community college might include criteria such as impact on student outcomes, cost, time to implement, staffing requirements, risk, and alignment with strategic priorities.

    Begin by removing ideas that clearly fail one or more criteria, are unacceptable to leadership, or are impractical given constraints. Then discuss what remains. I recommend bringing no more than three to four recommendations to leadership; two to three is often better. You can evaluate as many options as time allows, but keep the final brief focused. For each COA you present to leadership, complete the decision matrix (some options will stand out on scores alone), write a short narrative identifying its decisive or unique element, and explain why it’s distinct. Finally, list the risks for each COA (costs, time investment, added resources, change-management complexity, etc.). Your available time will determine how many brainstormed ideas get the full treatment.

    Ideally, you want to give leadership a real choice. By bringing two to four strong options—each with unique points, risks, and rationales—you enable a detailed discussion of what best meets the leader’s intent. Once your staff work is complete, bring the commander/leader back in for their input. This is the leader’s COA presentation. At our community college, we’re using this format:

    • Brief recap of the Problem Analysis deck (emphasize changes since the last meeting)
    • Leadership’s approved mission statement and the approved evaluation criteria for choosing a COA
    • Slide on major obstacles/constraints to successful execution
    • Completed decision matrix highlighting quantitative scores for the 2–4 COAs being briefed
    • One slide per COA including:
    – Its score against the evaluation criteria (with notes)
    – Decisive/unique component of the COA
    – Rationale for the COA
    – Risks associated with the COA
    • Final slide with the staff’s recommendation

    After the presentation, the leader provides feedback. He or she isn’t deciding yet—they’re offering reactions to each COA, eliminating options they find unsuitable, and then handing it back to the staff for the final exercise. In the military, there are three more steps: COA Analysis (wargaming), COA Comparison, and COA Approval. For our community college, we’re finding that combining those into a single step makes sense. I’ll cover that in the next post.