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Welcome to the Managing Complex Problems (MCP) Resource. Here you will find practical guidance, tools, and skill-building exercises to become more effective, agile, and adaptive at managing complex problems in the operational environment.
COMPLEX PROBLEMS
PRACTICAL GUIDANCE
BUILDING THINKING SKILLS
U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral & Social Sciences
MANAGING COMPLEX PROBLEMS
The 21st century Army faces operational environments that present enormous challenges. Conditions are highly dynamic. Situations consist of multiple players and factors that interact in complicated and unexpected ways. It is difficult to know the accuracy or completeness of available information, and its meaning is often unclear.Effectively managing these exceedingly complex environments—where volatility, uncertainty and ambiguity are the norm—requires advanced thinking skills. Leaders need to be able to think holistically, recognize connections and linkages, anticipate the ripple effects of decisions, and visualize how situations might evolve into the future.
“I believe we are on the cusp of a fundamental change in the character of war. Technology, geopolitics, and demographics are rapidly changing societies, economies, and the tools of warfare. They are also producing changes in why, how and where wars are fought—and who will fight them.
The significantly increased speed and global reach of information (and misinformation) likewise will have unprecedented effects on forces and how they fight…
Conflict will place a premium on speed of recognition, decision, assembly and action. Ambiguous actors, intense information wars and cutting-edge technologies will further confuse situational understanding and blur the distinctions between war and peace, combatant and noncombatant, friend and foe—perhaps even humans and machines.
These challenges demand an Army that can respond with greater intelligence, power, lethality and speed, as well as greater soldier, leader and organizational adaptability, to seize and retain the initiative from our enemy.
The time to prepare is now.”
-GEN Mark A. Milley, Chief of Staff of the Army
