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Flood and Romm present their version of ‘triple loop learning’ as one where synthesis of multiple frames are realized and appreciated by a triple-loop learning organization. They articulate this synthetic thinking as iterative, nonlinear, and able to paradoxically consider interior and external perspectives using a diversity of models, methods and theories that disrupt established institutional frames (what maintains single and double-loop thinking). This evokes a military paradox where the single and double-loop learning is appealing to organizations that want to be in control, whereas triple-loop learning acknowledges that in complex systems, control is usually an illusion. Ryan et al summarize this tension with: “If events are random, we are not in control, and if we are in control of events, they are not random.”[1] Mintzberg et al differentiate strategizing in complexity as a process characterized by “novelty, complexity and open-endedness… the organisation usually begins with little understanding of the decision situation it faces or the route to its solution.”[2]

However, Flood and Romm’s position is weakened by a lack of clarity of what constitutes triple-loop from a philosophical, theoretical and multidisciplinary frame of reference. To enhance their argument, the theories of Donald Schön, Karl Weick and other influential sociologists are merged here, along with complexity theorists that also engage on what a ‘reflective practitioner’ is for the socially complex reality that humans generate atop the existing natural order of complexity. Schön uses ‘reflective practice’ while Weick opts for ‘sensemaking’, yet these concepts overlap and interplay extensively in this presentation of ‘triple loop learning’ as presented in this article. Gharajedaghi, drawing from Ackoff and systems theory uses ‘holistic thinking’ as one of several similar terms to articulate this reflective practice. “Learning to learn is about the ability to learn, unlearn, and re-learn, both within and beyond conventional frameworks… unlearning is much more difficult than learning.”[3] The institutional rigidity of single and double-loop thinking intentionally generate this phenomena.

A primary oversight of single and double-loop thinking is the emphasis on processing all activities through a lens of rational action. Once the norms found to be most compatible with rationalized action are identified- efficiency, consistency, uniformity, repetition, coordination- the entire decision-making process (from strategic to tactical) is appraised entirely upon how tightly these norms are followed. Wildavsky elaborates with:

The assumption is that following these norms leads to better decisions. Defining planning as applied rationality focuses attention on adherence to universal norms rather than on the consequences of acting one way instead of another. Attention is directed to the internal qualities of the decisions and not to their external effects.[4]

Within non-reflective thinking, strategists and planners are trapped into this rationalized action frame, and due to this often unwitting rationalization that planners conduct while moving in a single or double-loop, the organization fails without realizing why it is failing. In rationalized planning, “planning is the attempt to control the consequences of our actions… planning is the ability to control the future by current acts,” yet a single loop cycle of “planning becomes a self-protecting hypothesis; so long as planners try to plan, it cannot be falsified”[5] in that when planning outcomes do not match the original intent, planners can offer that “the enemy has a vote” and that the planning process itself was a proper rationalization despite execution failures and surprises. The inability to break out of these self-referential patterns will protect the rationalization of what constitutes a valid planning process, while mitigating process errors by blaming either the operator and/or a complex external system. As long as planners plan by the preferred rationalized process, the institution preserves itself inside a non-reflective cycle of thought and action.

While this sort of rationalization may work in simple and some complicated systems,[6] they become paradoxical in complex (and chaotic) systems where warfare occurs. Single and double loop cycles steer operators toward assumptions that their institution has already worked out the rationale employed, so that by using the linear, mechanistic decision-making methodologies in military doctrine and adhering to the rules therein, the entire process subscribes to the rationalized action. Yet complexity violates this as “what is rational to the values of the actor may be different to the organisational values, which in turn may be different to the values highlighted by the subsequent analyst.”[7] Triple loop thinking demands reflective practice so that operators can think paradoxically, explore these tensions in how humans do interpret reality in strikingly different ways yet are systemically acting within the same dynamic, complex and emergent system that rejects much of the logical conclusions that single and double-loop thinking can provide. Strategies in complex contexts may form gradually as the operators interact and sensemake, even unintentionally or in highly unexpected, emergent ways.[8] This runs contrary to single and double-loop assumptions of control and prediction.

Triple-loop thinking is best paired with multi-minded systems from an organizational theory perspective. While single-loop thinking works with mechanistic, ‘mindless’ systems that lack purpose or choice outside of following the established rules and process, double-loop thinking seems to integrate with uni-minded systems that place ‘choice’ and purpose at the system end where the brain or leadership node is. Parts within a uni-minded system are compelled to remain static and obey the larger system rules- thus double-loop thinking cannot itself escape the system pull of remaining within institutional boundaries conceptually. Yet multi-minded systems are socially dynamic, and all members can exercise their own purpose and choice independent of what the overarching system might be doing.

Multi-minded systems are composed of members that voluntarily participate, and that system itself is nested in larger purposeful systems that continue upward and outward in emergent, nonlinear and complex ways.[9] Unlike assembling some machine with parts dependent on how the whole is constructed, socially dynamic organizations are constantly in flux and change at multiple levels,[10] requiring a completely different way of understanding multi-minded systems that mechanistic (single-loop) and biological (double-loop) frames simply cannot. In complexity, ends and means become interchangeable concepts, with many ‘ends’ becoming a new ‘mean’ for further emergent ends that only now come into realization through how a complex, dynamic system exercises multi-minded patterns. Ends and means, at sufficiently higher levels of complexity can converge and become the same,[11] making reflective practice and systemic design the only real options for how humans might make sense of such a reality that is incompatible with single and double-loop rationalization.

Schön and Rein see reflective practice as the intertwining of thought and action, but not in the linear-causal form that single and double-loop operators frame reality. In those situations, “practitioners tend to assume that the factors essential to the goals they pursue lie at least partly within their control. With their taken-for-granted assumptions, they tend to ignore the factors that lie beyond their control and the shifts of context that may distort the hoped-for outcomes of deliberate action.”[12]The belief that a system is stable and understandable enough to permit systematic logic with future goals reverse-engineered along linear-causal ‘lines of effort’ reinforces this assumption.[13] Yet complexity regularly violates these aspirations of reductionist, mechanistic control. Humans are not objective creatures, nor does the social construction of human experiences permit some universal order and stability so that one context can transfer to another and yield similar, repeatable results. Instead, it is the social framings held by actors that need to be added to systemic appreciation.

Danielsson, using the alternative spelling of ‘reflexivity’[14] frames the rise of reflective practice in military organizations with: “Reflexivity shifts the military attention to the knowing subject, to the social conditions and constitutions of knowledge, and to the interactions between the knowing subject, knowledge constructions, and other objects and subjects in the world.”[15] Danielsson, in studying the emergence of reflective practice across military organizations observes that this multi-disciplinary approach has entered into military education, “often in close association with the broader discourse on military design…and not without resistance.”[16] Whether triple loop learning and overlapping concepts of reflective practice and sensemaking are indeed gaining headway into traditional military decision-making methodologies, doctrine, education and training remains questionable, as numerous educators, theorists and facilitators write about the difficulty and resistance in getting these ideas and perspectives past the institutional gate keepers and defenders (witting and unwitting) of single and double-loop thinking orthodoxies.[17] Reflective thinking is unavoidably disruptive, thus any significant military resistance indicates that triple loop learning as a novel process is creating the desired effects upon an organization rooted in single and double-loop practices.

Schön and Rein elaborate on reflective practice with: “the frames held by the actors [are what] determine what they see as being in their interests and, therefore, what interests they perceive as conflicting. Their problem formulations and preferred solutions are grounded in different problem-setting stories rooted in different frames that may rest, in turn, on different generative metaphors”[18] While single and double-loop learners implicitly accept their assumptions without any critical inquiry into the larger system, reflective practitioners follow a third loop of learning where they accept that “there areno objective observers. There is no way of perceiving and making sense of social reality except through a frame, for the very task of making sense of complex, information-rich situations requires an operation of selectivity and organization, which is what “framing” means.”[19] Reflective practitioners move to higher levels of abstraction and inquiry to illuminate the institutionalized processes and the ontological (what we know is real) as well as epistemological (how we know to construct knowledge about the real) choices that stimulate such structures in a frame. WHY folds back upon WHY, with recursive iterations of deeper introspection beyond the limits of causal single and double-loop thinking. Tsoukas distinguishes reflective practice from non-reflective practice (those trapped in single or double loops) with:

We become reflective practitioners when we both unreflectively carry out our research tasks to generate new knowledge about organizational phenomena of interest and engage in discussions about the validity of our knowledge claims.[20]

Reflective practice demands the acknowledgement that paradox and complexity are not just foundational to reality- they should be readily embraced instead of marginalized or avoided. Tsoukas offers: “The human world cannot be mathematized because it is a world defined by beings with the capacity to reflect upon, and so contradict, any mathematical description made of them.”[21] Militaries confuse the second order of complexity (that which humans socially construct) with the patterns and conditions of the first natural order of complexity. This leads to a highly engineered, formulaic, and Newtonian Styled mode of systematically framing reality- one that becomes preferential to single-loop and double-loop cycles of theory and practice for an organization.[22]

Militaries tend to contradict Tsoukas and invest significant mental energies in planning and strategy-making by attempting to mathematize warfare entirely, to include the human actors on both sides of a conflict. They attempt to understand war as a biological or physical fact of reality, when instead it is a socially created one.[23] The Western world has incorporated complexity theory writ large, yet militaries appear devoted to their Newtonian Styled war frame which in turn cannibalizes complexity concepts so that the meaning is lost, and orthodox planning doctrine becomes littered with “faddish new fashions” devoid of content.[24]

In the illustration below, the triple loop exists only at the highest level of abstraction, beyond the self-imposed limits of any single paradigm (organizational frame). This level of inquiry and awareness does not look at theory from a theoretical level, but advances to a higher level of epistemological inquiry that Tsoukas terms the meta-theoretical level.[25] At this meta-level, the operator questions beyond a single frame and becomes appreciative about multiple social paradigms, and instead of attempting to generate a single theory about a particular topic, one attempts to “make the generation of theory itself an object of analysis.”[26] As opposed to generating superior results through increased analysis and descriptive knowledge that attempts to reduce complexity mechanistically into smaller isolated pieces, reflective practice thinks systemically where “actors become aware of the assumptions, the presuppositions, and the point of their actions only after they have obtained some distance from their actions, by looking back at them. Greater awareness comes about when we reflect on the way we reflect.”[27]

For military organizations conducting a ‘post-mortem’ of the spectacular and unexpected Afghan military collapse in 2021, those engaging in a second-loop non-reflective practice might seek to redefine existing methods for counterinsurgency operations or how to better accomplish foreign internal defense activities by introducing a new theory, new models and different terminology to buttress the existing decision-making methodology. However, triple-loop operators would deconstruct why modern militaries emphasize systematic logic for executing warfighter activities, or why they also project their own institutional values and organizational structure upon all foreign entities regardless of context.

Reflective practitioners might explore the dissimilar war paradigm of the adversary as well as why modern militaries dismiss such things as irrelevant to universal war principles they employ to understand and define the enemy, or why modern militaries converge decision-making through reverse-engineered, ends-ways-means derived formulas that violate most tenets of complex systems. In the triple loop, operators are thinking about their own thinking, and recursively using WHY oriented inquires to explore well outside the institutionalized processes of linear-casual, systematic sequences nested to preconceived goals.

Entering into triple loop learning and reflective practice swings critical self-inquiry not just toward one’s processes and institutional biases, but into abstraction on how and why humans socially construct a rich, dynamic tapestry of ideas, belief systems, values and language upon a naturally complex world. Performing reflective practice requires the operator to construct narratives iteratively as they attempt to appreciate what may better be understood through an interpretivist reality (using another paradigm outside of our traditional military one).[28] This third loop of systemic inquiry features recursiveness, in that as one engages with the system under study, “we must also confront our own complexity, in narrative terms… reflexivity is related to contextuality in the sense that inclusion of the narrator in the narrative involves another layer of context.”[29] This generates recursiveness where reflective inquiry reveals layer after layer of systemically arranged and intertwined constructs. In triple loop thinking about complex systems, ‘meaning’ outpaces ‘predetermined goals’ for how organizations ought to approach decision-making.[30] This is devastating for single and double-loop thinkers that insist upon goals/ENDS for any and all planning endeavors, as they are stuck in non-reflexivity.

Tsoukas and Hatch elaborate on ‘recursiveness’ with: “The recursiveness of context extends to the recursiveness of narrative thinking, so that thinker and thought become so intertwined as to render the possibility of disentanglement unimaginable, and ourselves more complex.”[31] The preferred single or double-loop approach of modern military decision-making methodologies such as the Joint Planning Process simply are ill-equipped to do anything other than mechanistically isolate, categorize, and in reverse-engineered, systematic fashion apply universal formulas toward a complexity that must reject such attempts outright. Schön’s position on reflective practice holds that “the problems of the real world practice require a process that engaged the practitioner’s theoretical, procedural, and reflective knowledge.”[32] In this triple loop as illustrated in the above graphic, decision makers must “move beyond a purely rational model of understanding to one that is transactional, open-ended, and inherently social.[33]

The ‘So What’ on How Single and Double-Loop Cycles are Dangerous:

Modern militaries rely on single and double-loop thinking processes in order to maintain a fragile decision-making framework that is hierarchical and scales upward or downward with the same constructs intact. Everything to be planned for future action revolves around an institutional fetish for clear, objective and stable goals/ends… despite the paradoxical admission that all war is wickedly complex and resistant to such efforts. “The military mind exhibits an almost pathological desire to achieve certainty.”[34] Meiser concludes that: “the American way of strategy is the practice of means-based planning: avoid critical and creative thinking and instead focus on aligning resources with goals… [the] problem with our current understanding of strategy [is] exacerbated by the whole-of-government approach encouraging us to define national power as a discrete set of instruments that form a convenient acronym.”[35] Meiser refers to ‘DIME’, the short-hand categorization model standing for ‘diplomatic, informational, military and economic.’ This is an expression of single and double-loop learning, where militaries become trapped in cycling through a process that prohibits any systematic appreciation beyond the institutionally imposed rationalization that process improvement is only possible through tighter adherence and compliance. Organizations are educated, trained and evaluated in training centers to follow the process, refer to doctrine, and self-assess entirely on how well they achieved process compliance as a linear-causal assumption that proper process leads to goal accomplishment.

The ‘ENDS-WAYS-MEANS’ structure operates at a high strategic level and also scales down in subordinate fashion to the smallest tactical or technical activity if properly rationalized and sequenced within the bigger frame. Much as Russian nesting dolls fit within each other, militaries assume that the formulaic, universal and repeatable qualities of isolated tactical events in warfare must correspond directly with broad, strategic and operational processes so that planners at all levels can synchronize and accomplish desired goals. This reflects a Newtonian styled perspective upon warfare, and violates most core tenets of complexity theory and how humans collectively socially construct a second order of reality upon an already complex natural order. Taking the military decision-making methodology (whether JPP, NATO-OPP, or a service variation) that is a tactical problem-solving analytical construct and applying it to operational and strategic challenges is problematic, and forms the raison d’être for the rise of the military design movement starting in the late 1990s.[36]

Ramaprasad and Mitroff, in their paper ‘On Formulating Strategic Problems’ observe that “a strategic problem does not have a unique, universal formulation- it cannot be projected upon larger systems from original sub-system analysis. Second, formulating a strategic problem in different ways can result in different solutions to the same problem. Third, an error in formulating a strategic problem can result in solving the wrong problem.”[37] Lastly, non-reflective practitioners cannot break out of this loop, dooming the organization to cycling back through where one might be effectively ‘solving’ certain problems at a tactical level, that success is localized exclusively to one potentially irrelevant part of a larger system where the strategy is entirely decoupled from the tactical activities. This is ultimately why strategists and planners in military organizations must gain reflective practice and assume a triple-loop learning approach. This also leads to what is later suggested in this book: tactical, operational and strategic frames for appreciating complex warfare require an alternative structuring beyond this steep hierarchical one.

Triple-loop learning incorporates reflective practice so that strategists and planners can break out of institutional barriers and single-frame limitations. Reflective practice involves what Wieck also terms ‘sensemaking’ where there is “the process of social construction that occurs when discrepant cues interrupt individuals’ ongoing activity, and involves the retrospective development of plausible meanings that rationalize what people are doing.”[38] Triple-loop learning is already found in many of the military design methodologies, particularly those drawing from the theoretical work of Shimon Naveh, Ofra Graicer and the Israeli Defense Forces. [39] Reflective practice can be located in recent design case studies such as in the 75th Ranger Regiment, Canadian military efforts, Australian endeavors, in NATO, and across American services. [40] However, not all militaries exercise design this way. Many (including the American Army and Marine Corps) assimilate design terminology into what reverts back to a single or double-looped optional step in the rigid planning process.

Unlike in single and double-loop thinking where operators are trapped in reinforcing and at times modifying a process to validate (or re-validate after failure) the deeper assumptions and institutional beliefs justifying it, reflective practitioners take a triple loop outside of these limits. In complex security contexts, the system is never stable nor malleable to uniform or universal techniques. There is instead a process of dynamic reflexivity where the system is self-organizing and responding to the military force as it selects activities to perform. This is surprising, as pre-determined goals are often abandoned… or more tragically they are doubled-down upon which often compounds the failure systemically. In the triple loop, “when an individual faces something unexpected, his or her sense of surprise and the resulting reflection-in-action elaborated by Schön, can lead to a new way of framing or testing the situation.”[41]

This creates the first necessary step at a philosophical level for military introspection on why and how they make decisions. This is indeed thinking about our thinking, and reflective practice can only be realized through deliberate philosophical consideration. This illuminates a deliberate need that may be lacking in contemporary military educational programs where students often lack the concepts to approach their entire warfighter frame at a philosophical level of inquiry first. This clarifies how and why decision-making methodologies are as they function. This enables deeper reflection upon theories and models that underpin those methods, as well as the corresponding doctrine, terminology, and techniques can be disrupted out of the current single and double-loop frameworks and toward a mode that places triple-loop learning as the new foundation.

Yet most military educational programs fixate on a single-loop of process instruction and adherence in junior military development (learn the method), and arguably at training centers and advanced education, those intermediate career and senior leaders may only reach a double-loop of critical reflection within institutionally sanctioned limits. One may question how the joint planning doctrine is applied to various security challenges, but not whether the models, theories and core logic underpinning it is appropriate or not. Alvesson and Spicer offer a blunt critique of organizations that insist upon non-reflective decision-making by terming it ‘functional stupidity.’ This does appear harsh, yet they summarize the core points of this first section with the following and provide a useful point of transition to the next area of focus:

Functional stupidity is organizationally-supported lack of reflexivity, substantive reasoning, and justification. It entails a refusal to use intellectual resources outside a narrow and ‘safe’ terrain. It can provide a sense of certainty that allows organizations to function smoothly. This can save the organization and its members from the frictions provoked by doubt and reflection. Functional stupidity contributes to maintaining and strengthening organizational order. It can also motivate people, help them cultivate their careers, and subordinate them to socially acceptable forms of management and leadership. Such positive outcomes can further reinforce functional stupidity. However, functional stupidity can also have negative consequences such as trapping individuals and organizations into problematic patterns of thinking, which engender the conditions for individual and organizational dissonance.[42]

Continued rejection of approaching how militaries form and employ their warfighter frame is not just an anti-intellectual reaction toward philosophy (or more bluntly, functional stupidity of the organization), but a doubling down upon retaining single and double-loop decision making cycles for institutional self-interests that are bankrupting the military’s ability to think innovatively, critically and reflectively.[43] Without triple-loop thinking, how might they can transform the organization toward necessary reforms and prepare to fight tomorrow’s war differently than just recycling how they lost the last one?

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[1] Ryan et al., “Full Spectrum Fallacies and Hybrid Hallucinations: How Basic Errors in Thinking Muddle Military Concepts,” 248.

[2] Mintzberg, Raisinghani, and Theoret, “The Structure of ‘Unstructured’ Decision Processes,” 136.

[3] Gharajedaghi, Systems Thinking: Managing Chaos and Complexity, A Platform for Designing Business Architecture, 103.

[4] Wildavsky, “If Planning Is Everything, Maybe It Is Nothing,” 130.

[5] Wildavsky, 128–31.

[6] Snowden, “A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making”; Snowden, Dr. David Snowden IMDC Lecture: “The Application of the Cynefin Framework in Military Design.”

[7] Rutgers, “Be Rational! But What Does It Mean? A History of the Idea of Rationality and Its Relation to Management Thought,” 30.

[8] Mintzberg, “Patterns in Strategy Formation,” 935.

[9] Gharajedaghi, Systems Thinking: Managing Chaos and Complexity, A Platform for Designing Business Architecture, 12.

[10] Tsoukas, Complex Knowledge, 111.

[11] Gharajedaghi, Systems Thinking: Managing Chaos and Complexity, A Platform for Designing Business Architecture, 107.

[12] Schön and Rein, Frame Reflection, xiv.

[13] Tsoukas, Complex Knowledge, 22–23.

[14] Within sociology and complexity disciplines, researchers do not appear to agree on whether ‘reflective’ or ‘reflexive’ is the correct terminology and have various nuanced distinctions. Those are not relevant for the overarching purpose of this monograph.

[15] Danielsson, “Knowledge in and of Military Operations: Enriching the Reflexive Gaze in Critical Research on the Military,” 5.

[16] Danielsson, 6.

[17] Mitchell, “Stumbling into Design: Teaching Operational Warfare for Small Militaries in Senior Professional Military Education”; Beaulieu-Brossard and Dufort, “Introduction to the Conference: The Rise of Reflective Military Practitioners”; Paparone, “Designing Meaning in the Reflective Practice of National Security: Frame Awareness and Frame Innovation”; Martin, “A Tale of Two Design Efforts [And Why They Both Failed In Afghanistan]”; Graicer, “Beware of the Power of the Dark Side: The Inevitable Coupling of Doctrine and Design.”

[18] Schön and Rein, Frame Reflection, 29.

[19] Schön and Rein, 30.

[20] Tsoukas, Complex Knowledge, 333.

[21] Tsoukas, 224.

[22] Meiser, “Ends + Ways + Means = (Bad) Strategy”; Monk, “End State: The Fallacy of Modern Military Planning”; Paparone, The Sociology of Military Science: Prospects for Postinstitutional Military Design.

[23] Malešević, The Sociology of War and Violence, 57.

[24] Ryan et al., “Full Spectrum Fallacies and Hybrid Hallucinations: How Basic Errors in Thinking Muddle Military Concepts,” 239.

[25] Tsoukas, Complex Knowledge, 322–23.

[26] Tsoukas, 322.

[27] Tsoukas, 326.

[28] Interpretivism is one of four primary social paradigms that became prominent in social paradigm theory in the 1970s. Social paradigms will be expanded upon later in this monograph. The interpretivist paradigm differs from the functionalist paradigm, of which modern militaries rely exclusively upon to extend natural science constructs into warfare explanations. See: Burrell and Morgan, Sociological Paradigms and Organisational Analysis: Elements of the Sociology of Corporate Life; Burrell and Morgan; Morgan, Images as Organizations; Paparone, The Sociology of Military Science: Prospects for Postinstitutional Military Design.

[29] Tsoukas, Complex Knowledge, 249–50; Tsoukas and Hatch, “Complex Thinking, Complex Practice: The Case for a Narrative Approach to Organizational Complexity.”

[30] Rutgers, “Be Rational! But What Does It Mean? A History of the Idea of Rationality and Its Relation to Management Thought,” 31.

[31] Tsoukas and Hatch, “Complex Thinking, Complex Practice: The Case for a Narrative Approach to Organizational Complexity,” 1000–1003.

[32] Schön, The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action.

[33] Schön and Rein, Frame Reflection; Lichtenstein, “Generative Knowledge and Self-Organized Learning: Reflecting on Don Schön’s Research,” 48.

[34] Ryan et al., “Full Spectrum Fallacies and Hybrid Hallucinations: How Basic Errors in Thinking Muddle Military Concepts,” 247.

[35] Meiser, “Ends + Ways + Means = (Bad) Strategy,” 90.

[36] Sorrells et al., “Systemic Operational Design: An Introduction,” 15.

[37] Ramaprasad and Mitroff, “On Formulating Strategic Problems,” 597.

[38] Maitlis and Sonenshein, “Sensemaking in Crisis and Change: Inspiration and Insights from Weick (1988),” 551.

[39] Naveh, “The Australian SOD Expedition: A Report on Operational Learning,” 9; Graicer, Two Steps Ahead: From Deep Operations to Special Operations- Wingate the General, 33. Ofra Graicer, “Between Teaching and Learning: What Lessons Could the Israeli Doctrine Learn from the 2006 Lebanon War?,” Experticia Militar, October 2017, 22–29; Ofra Graicer, “Self Disruption: Seizing the High Ground of Systemic Operational Design (SOD),” Journal of Military and Strategic Studies 17, no. 4 (June 2017): 21–37. Naveh, Systemic Operational Design: Designing Campaigns and Operations to Disrupt Rival Systems (Draft Unpublished), 4–7. Hirsch, Defensive Shield: An Israeli Special Forces Commander on the Front Line of Counterterrorism, the Inspirational Story of Brigadier General Gal Hirsch, 318.

[40] Stanczak, Talbott, and Zweibelson, “Designing at the Cutting Edge of Battle: The 75th Ranger Regiment’s Project Galahad.”; Philippe Beaulieu-Brossard and Philippe Dufort, “Introduction to the Conference: The Rise of Reflective Military Practitioners” (Hybrid Warfare: New Ontologies and Epistemologies in Armed Forces, Canadian Forces College, Toronto, Canada: University of Ottawa and the Canadian Forces College, 2016); Philippe Beaulieu-Brossard and Philippe Dufort, “The Archipelago of Design: Researching Reflexive Military Practices,” The Archipelago of Design: Researching Reflexive Military Practices, 2017, https://aodnetwork.ca; Aaron Jackson, “Design Thinking in Commerce and War: Contrasting Civilian and Military Innovation Methodologies (Final Draft)” (under consideration for the U.S. Army University Press (draft version in author’s possession January 2020), January 2020); Ben Zweibelson and Imre Porkolab, “Designing a NATO That Thinks Differently for 21st Century Complex Challenges,” Defence Review; The Central Journal of the Hungarian Defence Forces 146, no. 1 (2018): 196–212; Jeffrey van der Veer, “The Rise of Design: Why an Innovative Concept Is Emulated in Armies around the Globe” (Master thesis of Military Strategic Studies, The Netherlands, Royal Netherlands Defence Academy, 2015), https://aodnetwork.ca/the-rise-of-design/; Jackson, “Introduction: What Is Design Thinking and How Is It of Use to the Australian Defence Force?”; Jackson; Jackson, “Towards a Multi-Paradigmatic Methodology for Military Planning: An Initial Toolkit.” Wrigley, Mosely, and Mosely, “Defining Military Design Thinking: An Extensive, Critical Literature Review”; Zweibelson, Whale, and Mitchell, “Rounding the Edges of the Maple Leaf: Emergent Design and Systems Thinking in the Canadian Armed Forces,” 11–12.

[41] Lichtenstein, “Generative Knowledge and Self-Organized Learning: Reflecting on Don Schön’s Research,” 49.

[42] Alvesson and Spicer, “A Stupidity-Based Theory of Organizations,” 1196.

[43] The author again clarifies that ‘stupidity’ is not a pejorative attack on military individuals. Rather, the non-reflective practice of cycling through single and double-loop thinking defines an organization as functionally stupid by Alvesson and Spicer’s framework.