Toward Effective Strategic Analysis

New Applications Of Information Technology

Albert Clarkson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000009996
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia militar y marítima

Exploring the future of strategic analysis, this book identifies problems at the heart of the historical U.S. failure to perform effective strategic analysis, then explains and dramatizes how new applications of information technology can make significant progress possible. Certain specific limitations of human memory, says the author, are major ca

1
Introduction

The present book is about the future of strategic analysis. Strategic analysis has many forms: it seeks to anticipate foreign situations that will critically influence a nation; to envision conditions which will decisively affect an economy or an industry; to grasp the likely consequences of current policies of a government; and to accomplish many other objectives which serve the growing imperative in our time to see ahead, to reconnoiter the future. We are learning all too painfully that unless we become more successful at strategic analysis, our plans, policies and decisions will become more absurd and pathetic; surprises more dangerous; the sense of futility more intense; and the issue of accountability more difficult.

Yet obviously strategic analysis continues to be practiced often with little, if any, success In government departments and agencies; private institutions; corporations and businesses; and the academic, artistic and journalistic communities. Certainly at this moment, at the beginning of the Eighties, none of us can do it well. Luckily perhaps, but not well, and therefore not convincingly. We are all amateurs.

Yet within the past few years the future of strategic analysis has seemed to me to become very bright. For with the advent of cognitive technology, man has at last begun to develop a weapon with which he may begin a long, arduous but promising struggle to mitigate the modern crisis of interpretation. This promise of greater success in strategic analysis does not lie precisely in better data processing, smaller and cheaper computers, computer-based expert systems or artificial intelligence, although these developments are exceedingly important and rightfully lauded today. But it does lie in our discovery and invention of increasingly refined information machines, and especially in our growing sense of their tremendous potential.

In certain crucial senses, we humans have not yet taken to information machines. For reasons that will be discussed in later chapters, I seriously question that we have yet begun really to work with them. I sense, however, that we are ready. And I am convinced that when we do we will transcend certain dramatic cognitive limitations which now, as they have for thousands of years, virtually preclude effective strategic analysis. Just as automobiles and airplanes suddenly appeared and mitigated spatial and temporal limits, so information machines must mitigate human cognitive limits; not merely limits on calculation and storage, but limits on imagining, on the development of realistic models — schemata or knowledge structures — and on successful inferencing. And indeed, the "man-machine relationship" here will be a close, highly personal one.

Moreover, it will be a relationship between the machine and the artist. Man proceeds through the world not primarily as a scientist but primarily as an artist. In strategic analysis there is no magic algorithm. Because we are interpreting a reality which by definition will bring novel situations, there are few safe assumptions of replication in any sense. Hence though it must be as rigorous as possible, and understood, measured and developed as scientifically as possible; and though it must include techniques based in quantification and in probability, strategic analysis is finally an art. Arguably it is becoming our most important one.

The strategic analyst will realize a more exalted art, pursuing literal realism about the future more successfully if still, of course, imperfectly, only if we make the machine truly extend his cognitive powers. The machine must become "extrasomatic": it must become almost a part of him. But if the machine becomes crucial, it will also remain subordinate: it will facilitate, rather than replace, the human analytic functions, for these are irreplaceable.

Most importantly, the machine must extend the analyst's memory. The strategic analyst must have an extrasomatic memory.

Several factors, elaborated in subsequent chapters, have led me to this perspective.

To begin with, in the view of many there is now a growing epistemological crisis. Perhaps unprecedented in its demoralizing effect, this crisis has thrown into doubt our interpretive ability, our success in making sense of events, our ability to project outcomes. There is a deep pessimism in many well-informed, well-intentioned people about prospects for improving human capabilities to look ahead, anticipate crises, and develop enlightened policies. Theories, both formal and informal, assert that among the root causes of our difficulties are certain very old psychophysiological constraints on the human mind. Moreover, such root causes are perceived as being continually and increasingly exacerbated by the modern information deluge (perceived now as an "overload"), a sort of huge and peculiar collage added to daily by the contemporary communications media but perversely discontinuous. While it promises much, the multitudinous data actually frustrates our interpretive impulse and conditions us to limited perspectives. In fact, it tends to cut off our inquiry into these problems because it tends to anesthetize us.

In this context, several constraints on human cognition have now become crucial to the problem of strategic analysis. The most fundamental is man's difficulty in reconstructing his past analytic perspectives. In greatly simplified terms, it is a "failure" of memory, a quiet but all-important discontinuity, which we experience as we perform cognition through time; we forget as we learn. Richards J. Heuer, Jr., has written with considerable insight about this problem as it affects intelligence analysis.

In turn, several related problems arise from the constraints on human memory. The first consists of limitations on both the scope and intensity of modeling. In strategic analysis it is vital to create complex frames of reference. These arise from man's essential strategy of building models of past, present and future reality. This framework of models, an analytic context essential to the discovery of meaning and to learning, will always be fundamental to strategic analysis. In our era of intense communications media and a deluge of information, the problems, imperatives and promises of creating interpretive contexts seem larger than ever. Yet we remain profoundly deficient in creating operational contexts. Given that analytic energies are not only precious but difficult to sustain, both the building of, and the analysis against, complex contexts is severely constrained in the unaided mind.

An ensuing constraint is the difficulty of the mind in rapidly perceiving ramifications in meaning through complex frameworks of coherent perspectives — through, in short, many assumptions and elements of logic — that occur when individual judgments are made about small portions of the overall framework. This problem of our limited ability to grasp implications assumes, of course, that we have been able to construct sophisticated models to begin with! Obviously we need effective contexts both for developing meaning in strategic analysis and to mitigate the information overload.

A further constraint, also arising from the problems of human memory, is our difficulty in measuring the effectiveness of strategic analysis, in essence, human problems in reconstructing past analytic perspectives impair post mortems, thereby curtailing diagnosis, prescription and, finally, learning. I shall discuss in detail the difficulties and paradoxes in attempting to measure the effectiveness of strategic analysis, but I must note now that our prospects for developing a tradition of increasingly successful strategic analysts are strongly tied to the need for standards, for measures: these are basic to the development of both motivation and mastery.

These and other fundamental obstacles have led me to solutions that involve computer technology. If we remember that the human analyst is limited; that the machine, if differently, is much more limited; and that the strategic analyst finds himself without choice engaged in an heuristic process, then it seems evident that the most important immediate question becomes: how should we aid the now largely unaided human mind in performing strategic analysis? Stated very simply, I argue that we must begin to use our ingenuity to create computer-based extrasomatic memories of analytic operations, memories which in their various forms also hold the analytic context developed heuristically by the analysts, themselves. The machines will allow us to record and thereby reconstruct past analytic perspectives, safely removed from the losses of human memory. At the same time, the machines will allow us — indeed, must prompt us — to build and preserve as well as review, criticize, dismantle and recreate, the vital context for making strategic analytic judgments. And indeed, for many reasons the analytic context I speak of as being stored extrasomatically must complement the schemata (or knowledge structures) of the mind, those mental constructs which allow us to recognize portions of reality, interpolate and extrapolate, infer and perform other mental operations. And in the final analysis, the key factor becomes the strategic imagination.

That is indeed what much of this book ultimately is about: the strategic imagination, its development and future. We shall explore these problems at length.

I should point out that there are specific research and development implications in many of the discussions in later chapters. To remove the need to refer to them frequently, I will indicate them here. Although this book is written primarily from the viewpoint of a technologist, the insights and research of cognitive psychologists and other scientists such as Amos Tversky, Richard Nisbett and Lee Ross seem to me fundamental to the issue at hand. In designing cognitive technology, we must utilize the findings of cognitive psychologists: their recent experiments and research into judgmental heuristics, knowledge structures and other aspects of human cognition have already provided valuable insights. Indeed, as I indicate in later discussions, it is a hope of mine that this research and experimentation can be brought closer to the world of the strategic analyst, and that the new memories I discuss will be one of the catalysts for this development. I must apologize now for any failures to represent adequately the findings and insights of cognitive scientists — my colleague, Richards Heuer, is currently exploring these findings and defining applications of them to analytic art with precision — and hope I will be forgiven any errors in seeking to summarize the results of experimentation.

I also believe that some of the methods and procedures of forecasting — for example, certain analytic approaches developed by Willis Karman — are of considerable potential value to strategic analysis. If there has been a tendency by some to dismiss such methodologies, I would suggest that the pursuit of the methodologies with the aid of cognitive technology may greatly enhance the value of the methods.

Finally, the quest for, and attainment of, order and system that mark the work of the successful systems scientist are important to the development of a tradition of effective strategic analysis. I have been fortunate to be able to discuss some of the complexities of strategic analysis with James Grier Miller and to count among my co-workers on strategic analysis projects John W. Sutherland; these two men are clearly among the finest of systems scientists, and their skills and insights have brought home to me many times the key future role of their field in the development of strategic analysis.

In the chapters which follow, I shall discuss these and other aspects in detail. In Chapter 2, the process of strategic analysis is considered. I have developed a functional model of analysis, dividing the process into interrelated stages and identifying procedures and steps associated with each. In Chapter 3, I pursue the issue of effectiveness in strategic analysis, developing a system of interconnected measures of analytic effectiveness which I believe to be a new and powerful approach to a difficult problem which has confronted us for some time. In Chapter 4, I explore the art of strategic analysis and offer designs of cognitive technology to support it. An entire system of computer-based strategic art is described. Finally, in Chapter 5, I offer some speculations about strategic analysts of the future, discussing innovation, aesthetics and other aspects.

I should note that this is a book in which the explorations and definitions of ideas such as "strategic analysis," "strategic analyst," "cognitive technology" and "analytic effectiveness" are gradual and cumulative. There are, for example, several portraits of the strategic analyst, beginning in Chapter 2 and culminating in Chapter 5. Similarly, the idea of strategic analysis is elaborated slowly through the text because I have found no adequate way to convey quickly the complexities of the concept.

Finally, the reader will see that my experience lies chiefly in work on problems of defense and national security. But I am primarily interested in the "generic" strategic analyst of the future. Such analysts will work in government, the corporate sector and a variety of other settings. While I do not foresee a revolutionary impact for the new strategic art and its supporting technology in the next several years, I do see now the beginnings of a significant movement in that direction. With this book I hope to give some impetus to that movement.

Note: Source notes and references are to be found at the rear of the book and are keyed to page numbers and phrases/sentence fragments.

2
Strategic Analysis Model

The first task is to develop a useful model of strategic analysis. Given the encouraging contemporary progress in the understanding and modeling of human cognition, we nevertheless remain far too ignorant to make any pretense of modeling all activities in a mental process as elusive and complex as strategic analysis. We must be content with a functional model which identifies major stages, procedures and decision points. From there we must identify crucial variables in the cognitive process which can be monitored, change measurably, and are diagnostic. Such a model is essential in developing analysis performance measures.

Better, more sophisticated models of the analysis process constitute a goal. The present model is only a start.

Figure 1 shows an overall c...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables
• Author's Preface
• 1 INTRODUCTION
• 2 STRATEGIC ANALYSIS MODEL
• 3 STRATEGIC ANALYSIS MEASURES
• 4 THE ART OF STRATEGIC ANALYSIS
• 5 THE STRATEGIC ANALYST IN THE FUTURE: SPECULATIONS
• SOURCE NOTES
• SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX