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In a previous essay, I discussed the second wave of critical thinking—sizing up situations for ourselves rather than uncritically accepting what we are told.
Can this type of critical thinking be taught? I think so because I have seen it happen in the U.S. Marine Corps. I have seen the Marines make a mindset shift from a procedural mindset to an investigative mindset fueled by curiosity. This mindset shift has encouraged Marines to question the goals they are given rather than mindlessly pursuing them. In complex situations such as combat or even peacekeeping missions, the stated goals may be overtaken by events or, more often, the goals may be so ill-defined that they’ll have to be clarified while they are being pursued.
How did this transformation happen?
In the 1980s, the U.S. Marine Corps underwent a dramatic institutional and operational reformation in response to the dysfunction of the Vietnam War. It was known as the Maneuver Warfare movement. As part of that movement, then-Captain John Schmitt and a few colleagues introduced Tactical Decision Games (TDGs) as a way to build decision-making skills.
Starting in 1990, the Marine Corps Gazette, the Corps’ professional journal, published a new TDG every month and encouraged readers to submit solutions, some of which would be published two months later. One of the TDG themes, never explicitly stated to Schmitt's readers, was about questioning goals. These TDG exercises would begin with an order to be carried out, and then the TDG scenario would take an unexpected turn that rendered that order obsolete. What would the Marines do?
Historically, questioning orders was not a part of Marine Corps operations or culture. Marines had a reputation for accomplishing the mission at all costs. But Schmitt and his colleagues felt that this mindless obedience wasn’t in the best interest of the Marine Corps. Without announcing his agenda, Schmitt simply published these and other types of TDGs.
Schmitt wondered if the TDGs had any impact. So after four years of writing TDGs, he decided to run a little study. He dug up his very first TDG, from April 1990, “Enemy Over the Bridge.” It featured an order that no longer made sense. The protagonist is a battalion commander ordered to move his battalion into an assembly area to prepare for an attack the next day across a bridge held by friendly forces. However, upon approaching the assembly area, the battalion commander discovers that it is already occupied—by enemy forces! He also learns that that bridge is undefended and that enemy forces are pouring across it.
Schmitt evaluated the solutions sent in by Gazette readers. The submitted solutions fell into four main groups: (1) attack the assembly area (the most common solution), (2) hunker down and defend in place, (3) report the situation and wait for orders, and (4) attack to recapture the bridge, which Schmitt argues is the best decision because the assembly area has no essential value whereas the bridge is the critical terrain.
Then in 1993, Schmitt wrote a new TDG, “Action at Oxford,” that was intended to pose essentially the same dilemma as “Enemy Over the Bridge.” This time, however, the written solutions all converged: Ignore the instructions given by higher headquarters and address the unexpected problem (analogous to the bridge in “Enemy Over the Bridge”). Most solutions made a point of informing higher headquarters, but no one suggested waiting to ask for guidance. And no one advocating holding on to the original goal, which had been the most common response four years earlier.
So it would seem that TDGs had, at least in part, changed the mindset of Marines and changed the culture of the USMC. Senior leaders in the Marine Corps had been promoting a shift to Maneuver Warfare, and the TDGs helped to change the mindset of Marines from bullishly following orders to being critical thinkers ready to shift goals as the situation played out.
