Decisionmaking in the Pentagon is intrinsically difficult, but the growing consensus 

is that reform is both necessary and possible. 

The chorus of voices calling for reform reached 

a crescendo with the 2006 Quadrennial 

Defense Review Report, which gives unprecedented priority to this objective.

Yet the Pentagon’s large and powerful 

bureaucracy and complex operating environment pose daunting obstacles for even the most 

knowledgeable, experienced, and determined 

leaders. Decision support processes designed to 

be rational are anything but that, and attempts by 

Pentagon leaders to compensate for this situation often make the problem worse. Furthermore, 

intuitive decisionmaking support that could 

improve strategic decisionmaking is ignored on 

the erroneous presumption that it is illegitimate.

Reforming Pentagon decisionmaking 

requires focusing the process on the 

Secretary’s strategic agenda; improving rational 

decision support provided by the contingency 

planning and resource allocation systems; and 

refining senior leader intuitive decisionmaking 

capability with exercises and simulations.

These reforms cannot be implemented by 

fiat. The Pentagon needs a new organizational construct that would be an “honest broker” 

for improving decisionmaking support. It would 

be empowered to provide standards and products for both rational and nonrational decision 

support and would use collaborative teams that 

draw upon expertise from across the Pentagon’s 

functional and regional organizations.

Implementing such reform would be 

difficult, but no more so than the training 

revolutions that the Services instituted in the 

1970s to improve decisionmaking in conflict. 

The same leap forward at the strategic level 

is possible, and those who go in harm’s way 

deserve nothing less.

The recent 2006 Department of 

Defense Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) 

Report to Congress gives a surprising prominence to decisionmaking reform. Prior to the 

2006 QDR Report, Pentagon leaders thought 

reforms they made between 2001 and 2005 

were sufficient to produce major shifts in 

military capabilities that would move the 

Department of Defense (DOD) into the 21st

century.1 Yet by the time Pentagon leaders 

finished the report, they believed strategic 

decisionmaking reforms were one of only two 

fundamental imperatives for DOD to emerge 

from the QDR (the other being the need to 

continue efforts to reorient military capabilities toward new threats).2

The importance of good strategic decisionmaking in matters of peace and war is 

easy to understand but difficult to achieve. At 

a minimum, it requires reforms that modify 

both senior leader decisionmaking styles and 

organizational support. We begin this paper by 

identifying prerequisites for good decisionmaking. We then describe problems and conditions 

that currently diminish the quality of Pentagon 

decisionmaking and close by making a case for 

a new decision support capability that would 

improve Pentagon decisionmaking.

Blink and Think

It is commonly assumed that people can 

and should make decisions as rationally as 

possible. Rooted in economic theory, rational 

actor models postulate that people make decisions by identifying and comparing options to 

determine which one produces the optimal 

outcome for a given set of circumstances. 

While the rational actor model has generally 

done a good job of explaining human 

decisionmaking in the aggregate, close 

observation of human behavior clearly 

demonstrates that people rarely act in a 

purely rational manner. Often, people use a 

variety of mental shortcuts to simplify and 

speed up their decisionmaking.3 Thus, people 

exhibit “bounded rationality,” which not 

only helps them make decisions but also 

introduces a range of nonrational psychological factors into their thinking.

An otherwise rational decisionmaking 

process may be limited by many factors 

specific to individual decisionmakers, the 

organizations they inhabit, or their broader 

decisionmaking environment. Here we 

concentrate on the forces that most influence senior leaders in the Pentagon, including 

organizational affiliation. One model based 

on affiliation notes that organizations create 

environments that “adapt” members so that 

they further the organization’s goals. They 

do this by:4

n dividing work among members and/or 

subunits

n controlling access to information

n providing standard operating procedures

n creating an organizational culture that 

promotes a specific set of values and norms

n establishing a formal chain of command for 

promulgation of authority and communications

n establishing programs for training and 

indoctrinating new members.

As a result of these behaviors, organizations increase the likelihood that individuals 

will make decisions consistent with the organization’s interests and predispose individuals 

to decisionmaking shortcuts that limit their 

ability to make rational decisions.

Strategic Forum

No. 221

July 2006

Institute for National Strategic Studies

National Defense University

http://www.ndu.edu/inss

Key Points

No. 221, July 2006 Strategic Forum 

Reforming Pentagon Strategic 

Decisionmaking

By Christopher J. Lamb and Irving Lachow
No. 221, July 2006 Strategic Forum 

For a long time, experts viewed deviations 

from the rational ideal as something to be 

minimized, corrected, and eliminated if possible. The presumption was that any reduction 

in rationality degraded the quality of decisions. 

Recently, however, psychologists and scientists researching human decisionmaking have 

concluded that people using mental shortcuts 

can produce good decisions in difficult circumstances. One of the most popular nonrational theories of decisionmaking, which can 

be dubbed the “intuitive model,” proposes that 

people make decisions by recognizing situations, matching them to previously experienced 

situations, trying out various solutions in their 

heads by running “What if?” mental simulations, and then picking the first solution that is 

good enough to satisfy the problem at hand.5

This is the model that was popularized in 

Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink. In this model, biases 

and rules of thumb are not deviations from an 

ideal approach, but rather mental adaptations 

that should be celebrated for enabling people to 

make quick, accurate decisions.

Blink’s popularity stimulated a defense 

of rationality and a resultant “blink vs. think” 

controversy that captured popular imagination.6 While the clear consensus among experts 

is that people use both intuitive and rational 

techniques to make good decisions, it is true 

that some problems drive people toward one 

approach or the other. In general, the more 

fact-based a given decision, the more likely 

one is to use a rational model. For example, estimating the number of enemy missiles 

can largely be a fact-based exercise that draws 

upon evidentiary methodologies, even if it 

must account for significant uncertainties.

In contrast, the more a decision involves 

tradeoffs among incomparable factors, especially values or beliefs, the more likely one is 

to rely on intuition. For example, a politician 

may be faced with the choice of voting on a 

bill that is supported by congressional leadership and will benefit the country as a whole 

but that will anger constituents and possibly 

hurt chances for reelection. The politician will 

likely reach some kind of intuitive decision 

based on years of experience dealing with voters, colleagues, and the media.

Other key criteria influencing how someone makes a given decision are circumstantial.7

People generally rely on their intuition when:

n they are facing a time-urgent situation. In 

extreme situations, such as firefights and 

battlefield triage, even short delays caused by reasoning through a formal decisionmaking process 

can result in disastrous outcomes.

n conditions are dynamic or goals are ambiguous. If a situation is changing rapidly, then it 

makes sense to focus on a satisficing (that is, good 

enough) solution that can be found quickly. One 

can reevaluate the situation when it changes and 

identify a new solution if needed.

n they have a great deal of relevant experience. Because intuitive decisionmaking relies on a 

person’s ability to match a given situation to previous situations one has seen, the more relevant 

experience one has, the more likely one is to use 

intuition and use it effectively.

n the problem can be modeled in mental 

simulations. Intuitive decisionmaking requires 

people to run mental simulations on what might 

happen if a given option were chosen. People 

can do this for a wide range of problems, some of 

which are fairly complex. For example, one study 

found that Navy commanders serving on Aegis 

cruisers use intuitive decisionmaking for 95 percent of their decisions.8

In contrast, people generally use a rational process when:

n they are not under heavy time pressure. 

Stepping through a rational decisionmaking process takes more time than simply following a flash 

of insight. With more time, people are more likely 

to follow the rational approach, if only to verify an 

initial gut feeling.

n conditions are relatively stable and goals are 

clear. If a situation is not changing rapidly 

relative to the time needed to make a decision, 

then a rational approach to find an optimal solution to the problem can be used.

n they do not have a great deal of relevant experience. If decisionmakers’ experiences 

are not applicable to a given situation or insufficient to provide a basis for pattern matching, they 

should (and usually do) resort to a more rational 

model to guide them through problem formulation, option identification, analysis, and selection 

of a solution.

n the problem is computationally complex. 

Although human beings have a remarkable ability 

to use intuition in complex circumstances, at some 

point complexity overwhelms the ability to grasp a 

given situation. At that point, the quality of decisions erodes along with the ability to recognize situations or run mental simulations.

Despite different models and categories 

of decisionmaking, the reality is that decisionmaking style falls along a continuum. Pure 

reason and intuition are only antithetical at 

the far ends of the spectrum. In most cases, 

people make decisions with a combination of 

reason and nonrational mental shortcuts. For 

example, people often use intuition to bound 

the range of possible solutions for a problem 

that will be analyzed with a rational approach. 

Similarly, they frequently use formal steps from 

the rational model to augment or verify their 

initial intuitive judgments.9

How does the way people make decisions relate to decisionmaking in the Pentagon? First, any attempt to reform strategic 

decisionmaking in the Pentagon must fully 

account for the way senior leaders make strategic-level decisions. Furthermore, prescriptions 

for improving senior leader decisionmaking 

must accommodate rational, nonrational, and 

intuitive decisionmaking, depending on when 

these types of decisions are likely to generate better outcomes.10 When rational decisionmaking is appropriate, efforts to limit the factors that bound rationality make sense. When 

rationality is either impossible or irrelevant, it 

is appropriate to support intuitive approaches 

to decisionmaking.

Challenges

Pentagon decisionmaking reforms since 

World War II are largely a history of efforts to 

curtail the power of the Services to veto joint 

solutions that serve the entire military better. 

Christopher J. Lamb is a Senior Research Fellow in the Institute for National Strategic Studies at 

the National Defense University. Irving Lachow is a Senior Research Professor in the Information 

Resources Management College at the National Defense University. Comments may be directed to 

lambc@ndu.edu and lachow@ndu.edu.

using mental shortcuts 

can actually produce a 

good decision in difficult 

circumstances
No. 221, July 2006 Strategic Forum 

The Services inculcate members with habits and 

perspectives—cultures that are beneficial for 

warfighting but that can be counterproductive

at higher levels of decisionmaking where 

integration of effort is required. Secretary of 

Defense Robert McNamara’s Planning, 

Programming, and Budgeting System (PPBS) 

was installed in 1961 as an effort to rationalize Pentagon decisionmaking by introducing 

broader, more transparent, and more objective 

decision criteria. 

Although modified frequently, PPBS survives to this day because it is essentially rational, 

benefiting Pentagon decisionmakers for several 

reasons. First, the infrequency of war militates 

against intuitive decisionmaking on war preparation (as opposed to making decisions in the 

heat of battle). There is not a large experiential 

basis for making intuitive decisions about what 

investments will produce the best mix of 

capabilities for warfighting. Second, the high 

stakes involved in deterrence and war argue for 

the adoption of rational processes that identify 

and weigh all possible risks. Third, many 

Pentagon planning problems are so complex 

that they defy intuitive judgment alone. 

Increasingly, this is the case as integrated 

joint warfare becomes the norm in mission 

areas such as command and control, logistics, and missile defense. Fourth, there is usually sufficient time to allow a rational process 

to unfold. Even though the security environment is increasingly dynamic, assumptions can 

be made that will hold long enough to justify 

planning; the assumptions just have to be revisited more frequently. No instantaneous decisions 

based on intuition alone are normally required, 

occasional pop-up crises notwithstanding. 

For these reasons, the resource planning 

and allocation systems designed to support 

senior leader decisions are ostensibly methodical and engineered to minimize risk: objectives are defined; conditions that inform the 

objectives are identified; alternative ways and 

means to achieve the objectives are explored; 

multiple expected and possible unintended 

consequences are considered; and decisions 

are made, generally to eliminate as much risk 

in as many categories as possible. The same 

holds true for the Pentagon contingency planning system and its modifications over the 

years, all of which were designed to centralize 

and rationalize contingency planning guidance and the war plans review process. The 

rational design, however, has not been rationally implemented.

Limits to Decision Support. To execute 

its ostensibly rational planning processes, 

the Pentagon is divided into hierarchical 

organizational structures that represent 

relatively narrow bodies of expertise (policy, 

intelligence, program analysis, acquisition, 

and budgeting). Within these bodies are subdivisions that further specialize in more narrowly defined subjects. Recently, Pentagon wits 

have taken to calling their stovepiped organizations “cylinders of excellence,” which is in 

fact what they are. Their purpose is to build 

and nurture deep expertise in a narrow body 

of knowledge. These experts identify issues, 

devise options and recommendations, and forward them up the chain to senior officials. In 

this regard, planning and decisionmaking are 

essentially bottom-up and stovepiped.

For example, a war plan is initially generated by lower ranking officers in a combatant command who coordinate the product up 

through the four-star leader of that command. 

The plan then passes to the Joint Staff and 

then to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, 

where this bottom-up process is repeated 

within those staffs until the plan is placed 

before the Secretary. On occasion, this Sisyphean process is executed in parallel, or one or 

more organizations are cut out of the process, but it is essentially bottom-up. The same 

thing holds true for military requirements and 

resource allocation issues, which are generated 

primarily by lower ranking staffs and move 

upward until approved by senior leaders.

The value of these rational decision 

processes is limited by multiple bureaucratic 

and human factors. The Secretary and other 

senior leaders need integrated problem 

assessments and solution options, but their 

subordinates have few incentives to collaborate in order to provide such products. 

Instead, subordinates are rewarded for developing and protecting their organizational 

equities. Since there is no incentive to sacrifice 

organizational equities for the common 

good, the natural outcome of a formal 

coordination process in the Pentagon is a least 

common denominator or consensus product 

for senior leaders that avoids and obscures the 

need for tough tradeoffs.

The bureaucracy’s penchant for producing 

watered-down consensus products encourages 

talented and highly motivated officials to get 

their positions directly to senior decisionmakers by circumventing the formal coordination 

process or by leaking dissenting views to the 

media. Proposals presented this way often are 

clearer and more creative but invariably reflect 

a limited perspective that does not benefit from 

access to all relevant information. Lack of coordination also means that senior decisionmakers 

ultimately are presented with multiple recommendations that contradict one another. The 

competing recommendations may sound plausible, even compelling, but they do not provide 

sufficient methodological information to help 

senior leaders make well-reasoned tradeoffs 

among competing alternatives.

What Senior Leaders Need. For these 

reasons, Secretaries and Deputy Secretaries of 

Defense are the first real point of integration in 

DOD, and they do not like it. They need integrated decision support from the 30 or more 

subordinate bureaucracies that report directly 

to them; they do not have the time to produce it 

themselves, and they do not receive it. Not surprisingly, former Secretaries and Deputy 

Secretaries of Defense from both political parties are virtually unanimous in the belief that 

the Pentagon bureaucracy could be substantially cut, from 25 to 75 percent, without any 

degradation in the quality of decision support.11

Often the Office of the Secretary of Defense is 

singled out for particularly harsh criticism, 

but the Joint Staff also hoards information 

and defaults toward least common denominator products. Colin Powell once remarked that 

while he was the Chairman, the “sole purpose” 

of his 1,500-person staff “was to keep as much 

information away from me as possible, [thinking] let’s just give him what we want him to 

have, not what he needs.”12 Least common 

denominator or poorly integrated decision support products are still the norm throughout the 

Pentagon bureaucracy.

Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made it clear 

from the beginning of his tenure that he would 

challenge these bureaucratic tendencies. In a 

speech on September 10, 2001, he called the 

Pentagon bureaucracy the enemy, arguing it 

“disrupts the defense of the United States and 

places the lives of men and women in uniform 

Secretaries need integrated decision support, 

but they do not have 

the time to produce it 

themselves, and they 

do not receive it
at risk.”13 The next day, however, the Secretary 

had to go to war with the bureaucracy he had, 

not the one he wanted. Therefore, he uses workarounds to tame the bureaucracy, some similar 

and some dissimilar to those of his predecessors. Some of these workarounds may contribute to criticism of the Secretary’s leadership style. Critics note that although Secretary 

Rumsfeld emphasizes the need for flat organization, maximum delegation, collaboration, 

new ideas and innovation, some of the methods 

he employs to control the bureaucracy undermine these objectives.

For instance, the Secretary relies heavily on a few trusted aides who are able to offer 

alternatives to the bland or contradictory decision support provided by the bureaucracy. 

Unfortunately, doing so helps convince lowerlevel officials that having access to senior leaders and controlling information flow are keys to 

success, which further discourages informationsharing and collaboration. The fact that senior 

leaders often do not provide feedback to subordinates compounds the problem. If the recommendations of subordinates are not accepted 

and they do not understand why, many will 

conclude that senior leaders made the wrong 

choice for the wrong reasons, further deepening their cynicism. In this way, the bureaucracy and senior leader decision styles reinforce 

one another and undermine the quality of the 

Pentagon’s rational decision support processes. 

Thus, strategic decisionmaking remains more 

personalized, centralized, and idiosyncratic 

than it should be, devoid of the ability to test 

hypotheses and see all reasonable alternatives.

Another example of the Secretary’s informal war on the bureaucracy is his use of short 

inquiries to stimulate creative, holistic thinking at all levels of the Pentagon. The Secretary 

bombards Pentagon staff with short missives 

(called “snowflakes” by those they descend 

upon). One characteristic of the Secretary’s 

thousands of snowflakes is that they ask questions that can reasonably be answered only 

with information from multiple organizations. Snowflakes irritate the staff because they 

are difficult to answer, but from the Secretary’s 

point of view they serve as a frequent reminder 

of his broad field of vision and the scope of 

his requirements for effective decision support. While they generally have that effect, they 

do little to change the bureaucratic incentives 

that drive behavior in the Pentagon.

The Secretary also has tried to invert 

Pentagon processes so that top-down, integrated 

strategic decisionmaking is more the norm. 

Toward this end, he often summons top leadership (an assembly of four-star equivalents)

in a body known as the Senior Leader Review 

Group to make collective decisions about the 

strategic agenda. This group helps set priorities 

and provide direction, but it still serves more 

as an information-sharing and consensusbuilding forum than a decision body. This is 

the case partly because there is no crosscutting, 

high-quality decision support to the Senior 

Leader Review Group. Without sharp, transparent, and collaborative decisionmaking support, individual senior leaders tend to fall back 

on what they know best—their own organizational equities—and not to support strategic trades that would serve the larger military 

enterprise well.

In short, the Pentagon’s ostensibly rational decisionmaking system remains much 

more bureaucratic than rational, which 

reduces its value to senior leaders. These 

bureaucratic forces undermine strategic management by overwhelming the Secretary with 

issues of marginal importance while obscuring 

the information needed to make fundamental 

strategic choices about opportunities and risks. 

This is why, regardless of the major changes in 

the strategic environment over the past decade, 

the formal Pentagon decision processes do not 

shift more than a few percent of the Pentagon’s 

budget from one capability area to another 

in any given year, a fact that held true in the 

2006 QDR.

Balancing Rationality and Intuition. 

Even if the rational planning and resource 

allocation processes of the Pentagon worked 

better, they would be insufficient for good 

strategic decisions. Senior leaders must make 

decisions that account for a broader range of 

factors than those found in the analyses conducted by lower-level officials. Sometimes the 

range and significance of these factors are 

so great that they dwarf the marginal utility 

of supporting rational analyses. Even if the 

results of the rational analyses offer valuable 

insights, senior leaders ultimately must still 

compare and contrast choices across diverse 

value sets (operational, political, and economic). It is difficult to compare rationally 

the value of better relations with a key ally, 

less friction with a powerful Senator, more 

economical shipbuilding, and a better fighter 

plane radar. To do so successfully requires 

heavy reliance on intuition, judgment, and 

other nonrational factors.

This is not to say that there is no role for 

rational decision support. Senior leaders must 

rely in part on their intuitive understanding of 

the net effect of their decisions across multiple 

objectives, but they ought to do so while taking 

advantage of decision support that can better 

inform their intuition. In practice, this means 

there are two critical elements required for 

effective strategic decisionmaking in the 

Pentagon: clear, transparent, and well-coordinated rational analyses of alternatives from 

the decision support system; and well-honed 

personal intuition and judgment. These two 

elements can best be harmonized through the 

creation of a Decision Support Cell.

Decision Support Cell

A Decision Support Cell would be a dedicated staff located within the Secretary’s office 

whose mission would be to enforce a degree 

of discipline and collaboration in strategic 

decision support for the Secretary and his 

closest advisors. It needs to do three things. 

First, it should help the Secretary focus the 

decision support process on his strategic 

agenda and make sure he receives integrated 

supporting products and provides necessary 

feedback and direction. Second, it should 

improve the quality of the decision support 

routinely provided by the contingency planning and resource allocation systems, making 

sure underlying assumptions are clear and that 

all viable alternatives are rigorously examined. 

Third, it should help senior leaders refine their 

intuitive decisionmaking with exercises that 

No. 221, July 2006 Strategic Forum 

strategic decisionmaking 

remains more personalized, centralized, and 

idiosyncratic than it 

should be, devoid of the 

ability to test hypotheses 

and see all reasonable 

alternatives
enlarge their experience base and allow them 

to question their predilections in a controlled 

environment.

The cell could undertake these functions with 35 to 50 interdisciplinary staff 

members who rotate into the cell for limited 

appointments from inside and outside the 

Pentagon. The cell’s staff should conduct the 

majority of its business by leading teams of 

experts drawn from diverse Pentagon organizations. The staff would seek to generate collaboration among experts to produce 

integrated decision support for senior leaders. To obtain such collaboration, the cell’s 

leadership would have to be seen as loyal to 

the Secretary’s strategic agenda but scrupulously even-handed in the way it supports 

that agenda. Thus, the cell’s leader should be 

a political appointee chosen by the Secretary 

with a transparent public mandate and set of 

authorities to execute the cell’s three functions as follows.

Focusing Strategic Decisionmaking. 

The 2006 QDR Report underscored the 

importance of senior leaders focusing on a set 

of core functions that only they can perform 

effectively,14 including:

n providing strategic direction by setting 

priorities

n assigning responsibilities and authorities 

to key subordinates

n making major resource investments 

n explaining key objectives and methods to 

internal and external audiences

n monitoring performance and make necessary adjustments.

The Secretary and his core leaders 

should focus on these functions. Instead, 

they are often sidetracked by day-to-day 

crises. Some crises demand senior leader 

attention, but often senior leaders fail to 

focus on strategic planning and choices for 

lack of integrated, quality decision support. 

The Decision Support Cell should be charged 

with ensuring the collaboration among 

Pentagon bureaucracies necessary to put 

issues in a strategic choice framework. In 

doing so, the cell would not usurp the functions of other staff elements but rather 

undertake integrating activities in support 

of these core functions that are currently 

left to the Secretary to do himself or are not 

done at all.

For example, the Decision Support 

Cell could work with diverse elements of the 

bureaucracy to identify critical elements for 

success in each core function and alternative 

approaches for integrating those elements into 

a successful strategy. After presenting the findings to the Secretary and his senior advisors 

and receiving their guidance and approval, the 

Decision Support Cell would synchronize the 

execution of the strategy by aligning internal 

decision support with external forcing functions, such as budget submissions and highlevel meetings with foreign leaders. Since the 

senior leader core functions cut across many 

Pentagon bureaucracies, the cell would need 

to ensure that lead organizations or individuals assigned responsibility for critical elements 

of strategy execution receive the collaboration 

and information-sharing support that they 

need to do their job. Periodically, the Decision 

Support Cell would organize briefings to provide senior leadership with an update on progress and outstanding issues so that they could 

provide corrective guidance.

With a Decision Support Cell to coordinate decisionmaking in senior leader core 

functions, the Secretary’s personal staff would 

No. 221, July 2006 Strategic Forum 

Decision Support Cell Structure

Standing Teams Led by 

Decision Support Cell Staff

Strategic Direction Roles and 

Responsibilities

Internal and External 

Relations Macro Investments

Contingency Oversight Performance Review

Standing Teams Led by 

Decision Support Cell Staff

Joint 

Contingency 

Scenarios

Joint Operating 

Concepts Joint Data

Joint Methods 

of Analysis

Joint 

Operational 

Metrics

Institutional 

Knowledge

Ad-Hoc Teams Led by 

Decision Support Cell Staff

Exercises 1 Exercises 2 Exercises 3

Exercises 4 Exercises 5 Exercises N

MultiService Force 

Deployments 

Conferences

Joint Data 

Support

Global Force 

Management 

Board

Defense 

Modeling and 

Simulation

Defense 

Technical 

Information 

Centers

Lessons 

Learned 

Organizations

Examples of Institutions Receiving Guidance From Decision Support Cell–Led Teams

Decision Support Cell

(Director, Deputy Director, and Administrative Assistant)

Secretary of

Defense Strategic Agenda Group

(Leader Core Functions)

(7–10 personnel)

Analytic Decision Support Group 

(18–25 personnel)

Exercises and Simulations Group

(7–10 personnel)
finding a baseline of authoritative knowledge 

on a subject. Invariably the answer comes back 

that the results from many years of expensive 

studies are not transparent, comparable, or 

consistent and cannot be explained.

Putting an end to this waste of human 

skills with a Decision Support Cell is also a 

necessary step in the Pentagon’s transition to a 

capabilities-based planning approach. Capabilities-based planning is a top-down exercise in 

comparing the value of alternative capability 

investments. A top-down, strategy-driven process is only as good as the weakest link, and all 

the necessary links for comparing alternative 

capabilities—scenarios, operating concepts, 

data, methods, and metrics—are currently 

weak. A Decision Support Cell can change that 

by providing an authoritative analytic backbone that would make rigorous comparison of 

alternative capabilities possible.

Improving Intuitive Decisionmaking 

Support. The Decision Support Cell also needs 

to be able to support senior leader intuitive 

decisionmaking by providing leaders with the 

breadth and depth of experience they need in 

their jobs:

The key to using intuition effectively is experience—more specifically, meaningful experience—that allows us to recognize patterns 

and build mental models. Thus, the way to 

improve . . . intuitive skills is to strengthen 

[the] experience base.17

The list of areas where meaningful 

experience would be desirable is both long 

and diverse: military operations, executive 

management, bureaucratic processes, 

political savvy, government budgeting, media 

relations, intelligence products and operations, emerging technologies, and so forth. 

While it would be ideal for all senior leaders to 

possess a depth of real-life experience in each 

these areas before taking office, it is not 

realistic to expect leaders with such uniformly 

rich experience.

Senior leaders can gain needed experience 

on the job. However, relying solely on real-world 

experience has two downsides. First, gaining 

experience this way is a time-consuming and 

inefficient process. Senior leaders with relatively 

short tenures in government need to develop 

intuitive decisionmaking capabilities quickly 

and in areas that meet immediate needs. Second, one of the ways that people learn via onthe-job training is by making mistakes (which 

is one of the best ways to learn). However, 

be free to support his daily schedule and 

personal needs. Similarly, the Secretary’s subordinates could concentrate on their areas of 

expertise, knowing that the Decision Support 

Cell would ensure collaboration when the 

Secretary needed it. Since the cell would have a 

holistic view of the multiple senior leader core 

functions, it would be in a position to advise the 

Secretary on the importance of keeping abreast 

of these issue areas. It would also be in a good 

position to remind the Secretary when priorities 

have to be established in light of limited time, 

resources, and political support.

Improving Rational Decisionmaking 

Support. The QDR emphasized the importance 

of building capacity to inform senior 

leaders about strategic choices by improving 

common databases and analytic methods.15

Much more is needed, however, to improve 

the quality of the Pentagon’s rational decision 

support processes. Comparing and evaluating 

alternatives is not possible without a transparent set of baseline assumptions, operating concepts, methods, and data. The Decision Support 

Cell would need to ensure that all Pentagon 

elements had timely access to common:

n joint contingency scenarios (that bound 

assumptions about the problem set military forces 

must be prepared to handle)

n joint operating concepts (alternative ways 

to solve problems that military forces must 

prepare for)

n joint data (common assumptions about 

enemy, friendly and U.S. forces, their performance, 

terrain, and other relevant operational data)

njoint methods of analysis (transparent 

qualitative and quantitative techniques for 

assessing the risk inherent in alternative means of 

solving problems and accomplishing missions)

n joint operational metrics (standards for 

measuring value and risk so that options for 

reducing or accepting more risk can be identified)

n institutional knowledge (means to retrieve 

and build upon knowledge so that each question 

posed is not considered sui generis).

Without these common, essential precursors to good analysis provided in a timely 

fashion so that results are comparable and 

replicable, senior leaders cannot usefully 

evaluate alternatives and their consequences. 

Currently, no single organization has the 

interest, authority, and resources to produce 

such timely, quality products for the benefit 

of all. The organizations that do possess a 

No. 221, July 2006 Strategic Forum 

plausible mandate to produce these common 

goods—for example, the Defense Modeling 

and Simulation Office and the Defense Technical Information Center—report to parent organizations that look first to their own 

organizational interests rather than DOD 

needs as a whole. As a result, the foundational 

products for good decision support are provided too slowly and with insufficient quality 

and quantity to support a common analytical 

framework across DOD.16

The Secretary would need to empower 

the Decision Support Cell to set standards and 

timelines for products and to enforce a degree 

of transparency, collaboration, and information-sharing among all Pentagon headquarters elements that conduct analysis in support 

of senior decisionmakers. Exercising this kind 

of authority underscores why the cell must be 

independent of any Pentagon component and

report directly to the Secretary. If the Decision 

Support Cell reported to someone lower than 

the Secretary, it might not be able to enforce 

the necessary collaboration to carry out its 

duties. If the cell belonged to an organization 

charged with conducting analysis, or conducted analysis itself, it would be predisposed 

to defend those analyses, which would immediately ruin its reputation as an honest broker. The Decision Support Cell must be in a 

position to illuminate the underlying assumptions and factors behind analysis generated by 

other organizations for the Secretary. It must 

understand the analyses without conducting 

them itself.

Another benefit of a Decision Support

 Cell with this type of mandate, authority, 

and resources is that it would reduce a major 

source of waste. Each year, the Pentagon 

spends billions of dollars on analytic support 

that cannot be harnessed in support of senior 

leader strategic decisionmaking. The situation 

is so bad that the Pentagon occasionally pays 

contractors to study past studies in hopes of 

putting an end to this 

waste of human skills is 

a necessary step in the 

Pentagon’s transition to a 

capabilites-based planning 

approach
holds true even in areas such as adaptive planning and capabilities-based planning where 

the Secretary places a high value on reform. 

In short, the many blue-ribbon panels over 

the past decade and the 2006 QDR are correct 

when they conclude that more strategic decision reform is necessary.

While supporting reform, some might 

argue that the cell itself is unnecessary. If the 

core problem is lack of integrated assessments 

and options, why not just have the Secretary 

of Defense change incentives so that subordinate organizations collaborate more? Certainly the Secretary must provide incentives 

for collaboration, but he needs the help of the 

Decision Support Cell. The cell makes collaboration possible by setting standards and timelines for collaborative efforts, and it reports 

back to the Secretary when collaboration 

does not materialize so that the Secretary 

knows who should be held accountable. In 

addition, better collaboration does not necessarily improve senior leader intuition.

Another objection is that the Decision 

Support Cell would be so powerful that its 

guidelines would unduly restrict analysis conducted by experts in the various bureaucratic 

offices. In fact, the opposite is true. The point 

is to ensure that analysis begins with reasonable assumptions and addresses relevant 

issues, but establishing approved baselines for 

analysis simply defines the starting point for 

inquiry. A common and comparable analytic 

backbone would actually make it easier to 

explore and evaluate variations on approved 

baselines. Organizations inside and outside 

the Pentagon could conduct excursions off the 

common baseline to explore options in areas 

of particular interest to them. Since modifications would be transparent and results comparable to the baseline, analyses would be 

of interest if they revealed hidden problems, 

new insights, statistically significant exceptions, and wildcard cases that merit the attention of senior leaders. DOD policy has always 

been to encourage analytic excursions, but 

such excursions are rarely done because the 

means to do them quickly and efficiently are 

not in place.

Still another argument often heard is that 

the Director of Program Analysis and Evaluation (PA&E) can perform the Decision Support Cell functions. This argument is implausible for two reasons. First, the PA&E mission is 

to conduct joint analyses to evaluate programs. 

given the stakes associated with strategic decisionmaking in the Pentagon, such mistakes are 

often too costly to accept.

A better approach to develop one’s experience base in a given area is to use a tailored 

“intuition skills training program.”18 Such a 

program must help decisionmakers do three 

things:

n identify and understand the decision 

requirements of the job

n practice difficult decisions in context

n review decisionmaking experiences to learn 

what works and what does not.

The most promising option for practicing 

difficult decisions in life-like situations is decisionmaking exercises, which are thought experiments, usually built upon well-defined scenarios that attempt to capture the essence of specific 

decisions. Although often conducted as games, 

they can also utilize virtual environments that 

allow players to participate while dispersed 

at great distances. Decisionmaking exercises 

should not be confused with large-scale headquarters or field simulations involving dozens 

or hundreds of players and complex computer 

models. Each one is a simple, focused event targeted at the characteristics of specific decision:

Well-designed [exercises] can be surprisingly effective at capturing the essence of a 

tough decision without many of the costs or 

other overhead of more complicated simulations or exercises. And, they can be usually 

be done in a much shorter period of time, 

so you can get more repetitions.19

Participation alone will provide Pentagon 

leaders with new experiences to improve their 

intuition, but they will learn more quickly if 

they analyze their decisionmaking after the 

fact to identify lessons for future reference.20

It is more helpful for people to reflect on how 

they made a particular decision than on the 

outcomes of a specific decision, which is often 

done in games and exercises. The Decision 

Support Cell can facilitate discussions with 

senior leaders to achieve this result. In addition to sharpening intuitive decisionmaking 

skills in areas of particular concern to them, 

such exercises would familiarize senior leaders 

with one another and their predilections.

Finally, the Decision Support Cell should 

help record the results of real-world intuitive 

decisionmaking. Even though intuitive decisionmaking is idiosyncratic to some extent, and 

often politically sensitive, the cell must capture 

senior leader concerns and desires well enough 

to help middle management understand the 

factors that informed the decisions made by 

senior leaders. Doing so should increase trust in 

the system and improve the quality of decision 

support. Middle managers would see that senior 

leaders gave their proposals due consideration 

and made their decisions based on a wider set 

of criteria than they were able to consider.

Objections

What are the potential objections to a 

Decision Support Cell? First, some might argue 

that the depiction of Pentagon decisionmaking provided here is too harsh and that major 

reform is not necessary. They would note that 

hundreds of information-sharing bodies exist 

in the Pentagon that, in principle, could 

provide integrated support to the Secretary. 

The truth, however, is that such committees 

can neither reward nor compel a truly free 

flow of information, nor are they empowered 

to make team decisions as opposed to producing consensus products. Rare exceptions 

such as the Joint Improvised Explosive Device 

Task Force, which improves the collective 

response to roadside bombs in Iraq but still 

cannot field end-to-end solutions with all the 

required support, only serve to highlight the 

fundamental truth about the prevailing weakness of cross-cutting groups in the Pentagon.

Critics could also argue that senior leaders who really want to dig into an issue can get 

the information they need. While this is true, it 

is so energy- and time-consuming that senior 

leaders often choose to postpone a decision or 

stick with the status quo. Critics might also 

argue that recent changes, such as the reform 

of readiness data in support of Global Force 

Management, are improving decision support now. However, these reforms are moving 

too slowly and, in some cases, not at all. This 

the Decision Support Cell 

must integrate a wider 

set of expert knowledge 

for the Secretary than 

currently resides in 

any single Pentagon 

organization

No. 221, July 2006 Strategic Forum 
7 Klein, 95–96.

8 Ibid., 97.

9 For a detailed discussion of the interaction between 

rational and intuitive decisionmaking in a military context, 

see David C. Gompert, Irving Lachow, and Justin Perkins, Battle-Wise: Seeking Time-Information Superiority in Networked Warfare (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 2006).

10 The military Services clearly understand this point. 

For example, rational and intuitive decisionmaking processes, 

and the situations where each should be used, are discussed 

explicitly in Navy and Marine Corps doctrine. See Naval Doctrine Publication 6: Command and Control and Marine 

Corps Doctrinal Publication: Command and Control.

11 Exit interviews with departing Secretaries of Defense 

by the Pentagon Office of the Historian and informal comments from participants in defense reform studies who interviewed former senior leaders.

12 “Follow the Leader,” Context Magazine, interview 

with Colin S. Powell, available at <www.contextmag.com/setFrameRedirect.asp?src=/archives/200002/Feature0FollowtheLeader.asp>.

13 “DOD Acquisition and Logistics Excellence Week 

Kickoff—Bureaucracy to Battlefield,” remarks as delivered by 

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, the Pentagon, Monday, September 10, 2001, available at <www.dod.mil/faq/comment.html>.

14 QDR Report, 65–66.

15 Ibid., 66.

16 Christopher J. Lamb, Transforming Defense (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, September 

2005), 4–17.

17 Gary Klein, The Power of Intuition: How to Use 

Your Gut Feelings to Make Better Decisions at Work

(New York: Currency Book, 2004), 36. Emphasis in original.

18 The description of this training program is based on 

material in Klein, The Power of Intuition, 36–63.

19 Ibid., 45.

20 This is why the military conducts after-action 

reviews following tactical training exercises.

Because it conducts joint analyses itself, PA&E 

cannot objectively serve the role of honest broker that is critical to the successful execution of 

the Decision Support Cell’s functions. It would 

naturally favor its own findings or certainly be 

perceived as doing so. Second, PA&E lacks the 

full range of interdisciplinary skills necessary to 

conduct cell activities. PA&E personnel specialize in program analysis, not in threat depiction, 

policy and strategy, warfighting concept development, or other areas of expertise that must 

be brought together by the Decision Support 

Cell to support strategic decisionmaking. 

This is not a criticism, but an inescapable 

consequence of specialization. The whole 

point of the Decision Support Cell is that it 

must integrate a wider set of expert knowledge for the Secretary than currently resides 

in any single Pentagon organization. In addition, PA&E is neither structured nor staffed to 

improve intuitive decisionmaking.

Recommendations

The Decision Support Cell is a necessary innovation for DOD and consistent with 

the 2006 QDR clarion call for institutional 

reform. Configured with due sensitivity to 

senior leader priorities, bottom-up analytic 

support, and intuitive decisionmaking needs, 

the Decision Support Cell would improve 

strategic decisionmaking. There are no obvious legal or statutory impediments to its 

implementation. The main requirement is 

strong, visionary leadership to overcome 

vested interests and a conservative bureaucracy’s tendency to safeguard the status quo. 

If the Decision Support Cell seems like 

a tall order, we should remember that the 

tactical military already has achieved the 

sort of transformation in decisionmaking 

culture envisioned here. The Services have 

long understood the value of organizational 

cultures that support warfighting missions 

and good intuitive decisionmaking in battle. 

In the 1970s, however, they introduced 

objective, empirical feedback into training 

exercises with the aid of new simulation 

technologies and after-action reports to 

improve learning and future battlespace 

decisionmaking. The training revolution of 

the 1970s was not an easy transformation, but 

it was highly effective because it combined 

the value of objective analysis of courses of 

action with the ultimate need for commanders 

to make intuitive assessments and decisions. 

There is no reason why the Pentagon cannot 

do the same thing and implement a Decision 

Support Cell that balances objective analysis 

and intuitive wisdom. The Soldiers, Sailors, 

Airmen, and Marines who fight the Nation’s 

battles deserve nothing less.

Notes

1 Ryan Henry, “Defense Transformation and the 2005 

Quadrennial Defense Review,” Parameters (Winter 2005–

2006), 5–15.

2 Department of Defense, Quadrennial Defense 

Review Report (Washington, DC: The Department of Defense, 

February 6, 2006), 65–66.

3 Lee Roy Beach and Terry Connolly, The Psychology 

of Decision-making (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 

2005), 80–83.

4 Herbert Simon, Administrative Behavior (New York: 

The Free Press, 1945), 87–117. See also Graham T. Allison and 

Philip Zelikow, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban 

Missile Crisis, 2d ed. (New York: Longman, 1999), 143–163.

5 We use the term intuitive model to refer to a class 

of models that generally are considered to be “naturalistic,” 

such as Gary Klein’s Recognition-Primed Model. Gary Klein, 

Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions (Cambridge: 

MIT Press, 1998).

6 Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking 

without Thinking (New York: Little, Brown, 2005); and Michel 

Legault, Think! Why Crucial Decisions Can’t Be Made in the 

Blink of an Eye (New York: Threshold Editions, 2006).

The Strategic Forum series presents original research by members 

of NDU as well as other scholars and specialists in national security 

affairs from this country and abroad. The opinions, conclusions, 

and recommendations expressed or implied within are those of 

the contributors and do not necessarily reflect the views of 

the Department of Defense or any other agency of the Federal 

Government. For information on NDU Press visit the Web site at 

http://www.ndu.edu/inss/nduhp. INSS also produces Joint Force 

Quarterly for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the journal 

can be accessed at www.ndupress.edu.

The Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS) is a policy 

research and strategic gaming organization within the National 

Defense University (NDU) serving the Department of Defense, 

its components, and interagency partners. The institute provides 

senior decisionmakers with timely, objective analysis and gaming 

events and supports NDU educational programs in the areas of 

international security affairs and defense studies. Through an 

active outreach program, including conferences and publications, 

INSS seeks to promote understanding of emerging strategic 

challenges and policy options.

I nstitute f o r N ati o na L S trategic S tudies

Stephen J. Flanagan

James A. Schear Director	 Col Merrick E. Krause, USAF

Director of Research Director, NDU Press

 Strategic Forum	 No. 221, July 2006