Think Digital Doctrine

Midjourney prompt: Soldier thinking digital

Great military doctrine explains how to think rather than what to think. Yet there is a glaring omission in current theory and thinking within Western militaries - their thinking starts with how to think analogue rather than digital.

Quite bluntly, analogue thinking is crippling our decision-makers and, if not stopped, will kill our soldiers in a future conflict. That is why we need to think digitally in Defence.

One analogue example would be military decision-makers who still examine one or two options and then decide their best course, whether delivering military effect or acquiring capabilities. Digital thinkers would investigate multiple nuanced cases and derive an optimised solution from the wealth of available data. Digital thinkers explore and test viable options rapidly to assess their relative viability.

Consider two organisations, both adopting the same digital capability. One organisation has maintained the same ways of working for 50 years with their same organisation structures, their decision-making processes, their selection and training of people, their acquisition processes and their adoption of new technologies. The other organisation has rebuilt their structures, decision-making, training, acquisition and adoption processes from a digital perspective, driven by data, and implements new thinking rapidly across its entire business. 

It is clear to see which one of these organisations will see the most significant improvements from the same digital capability or new platform.

Common Think Digital Indicators

Digital thinkers typically employ a few similar approaches and techniques:

  1. A desire to learn. Their growth mindset, the desire to be a "learn-it-all" rather than a "know-it-all", is a typical indicator of thinking digital. They encourage open learning and a thirst for improvement. They accept that anyone can get better at something as technology enhances rather than replaces human ingenuity. Crucially, they know that failure is essential on the path to mastery.

  2. A consistent application of lean and agile approaches. They empower decision making and delegate authority, place a high value on the economy of effort, and create trust in leadership and display faith in people delivering the process.

  3. Tolerance of failure. They test and pivot with the recognition that a wrong decision quickly corrected is better than a wrong decision pursued regardless. They encourage learning from failure with rapid testing of ideas and reviews of progress and then share successful experiences and knowledge to help others learn without repeating the same errors.

  4. Desire to move faster. They increase the tempo of delivery by amplifying people and processes. They optimise people and processes through thinking digitally and then apply technology to accelerate results. 

We can apply the above list to military operations or successful digital businesses. It is less comfortable to use this list on the broader defence environment, whether military, public service or defence industry. In these areas, too often, technology compensates and hides poor processes or analogue thinking. 

Measures to implement Think Digital

There are a few quick measures that Defence can implement to deliver the necessary change and catch up with peers or adversaries. Some of these ideas include:

  1. Leadership – Leaders must drive the think digital agenda, embed it into every activity, and get thinking digital just done. Leaders will need to engage their middle leadership, their Sergeants and Captains, with the message that everyone is digital.

  2. Commitment – Change mindset and culture by committing at least 20% of the time for both leaders and training to fix their shortcomings. That includes evolving personal reviews, promotion selection and digital skills training. Every soldier or officer should be assessed for their digital skills and set goals to improve their skills, based on their actual abilities, not some mythical idea based on an average person in that role. If an opponent were physically fitter than the UK Military, then every British soldier would be doing extra physical training. Bluntly, our opponents are digitally fitter than us.

  3. Make it Real – digital thinking needs to be written down, clearly expressed, made public, and made unavoidable. 

  • Start rewriting every doctrine publication from a digital perspective, and not just the communications topics. This action prevents individuals from rejecting change or pointing to out-dated approaches.

  • Every performance report should consider digital abilities, and not only in technical branches. Measuring what matters is a critical approach to adopt digital thinking.

  • Every training course should incorporate digital assessments, training and views. This change enforces implementation of think digital approaches.

We need to choose a think digital doctrine.

Microsoft believes that every organisation is a digital organisation, impacted already by digital adoption and capabilities. The military does not ignore this fact but thinks that technology will replace their lack of thinking and ability in this area. It will not. Instead, defence organisations need to amplify thinking digital with digital processes adopted by digitally smart people, then accelerate this adoption with more intelligent digital capabilities. Across Defence, we need to choose a think digital doctrine.

Opinions linked to presentations at DSEI19, September 2019.

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