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Teaching Design Thinking

 

Col. William Donnelly, US Marine Corps
Cmdr. Michael Posey, US Navy

 

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The character of war today demands adaptive leaders who can navigate technological disruptions, contested logistics, disaggregated formations, deterrence theory, and unified action across the globe.¹ At the US Army War College, we educate national security professionals to prepare them for the challenges of warfighting and strategic-level leadership. Like other executive-level professionals, graduates of our institution must be able to understand and approach complex problems in practical contexts. Complex problems—often referred to as ill-structured or “wicked” problems—do not lend themselves to a straightforward approach nor allow a structured planning process to achieve a solution. Often, with ill-structured problems, no solution exists; the best practitioner outcomes stem from managing trade-offs.²

At the strategic level, military officers command large numbers of people executing high-stakes missions. In their future roles, Army War College graduates must be able to mitigate the risks posed by persistent transregional and all-domain threats, which are clearly in the category of complex problems. Organizational leaders—both military and civilian—can leverage a wide range of problem-solving tools to understand and approach these types of problems, plan for contingencies, and enhance both processes and performance. We teach our future graduates operational design (also called design methodology), with emphasis on the design-thinking aspect of this methodology. While design methodology is the doctrinal, system-level process the joint force uses to understand complex operational environments and develop an operational approach, design thinking is a flexible, human-centered approach focused on reframing ambiguous problems and generating creative, iterative solutions.

Operational design is a powerful tool to approach ill-structured problems more effectively.³ The US Department of War (DoW) employs operational design as a “model to aid in understanding and communicating cause-and-effect relationships in complex environments.”⁴ The US military adopted design methodology to address the need for leaders and planners to frame problems and visualize approaches to solving them.⁵ Joint military doctrine, as well as US Army and US Marine Corps publications, incorporate this methodology, which is generally practiced at the strategic and operational levels of military command by trained teams of planners. Our senior military and civilian students must be familiar with and proficient in this joint doctrine, as many can expect to apply it in their future assignments. However, we believe that other organizations can also successfully apply design thinking beyond its military use in operational campaigns. Design thinking can be beneficial across various contexts for almost any organization facing complex challenges, not just military planning teams. Practitioners and educators can combine design thinking with disciplined framing, systems thinking, and a collaborative workshop model for military and civilian organizations of varying size and structure to tackle ill-structured problems. After briefly explaining operational design, we will share how we taught it, how we applied it in multiple settings, and then offer our best advice for leaders, practitioners, and educators to apply it in their organizations.

Design Thinking 101

In an excellent 2021 Joint Force Quarterly article, Daniel Rauch and Matthew Tackett describe the tenets and the process of using design methodology to approach complex, unstructured problems.⁶ This article remains relevant today and is assigned reading for our students, along with the doctrinal description of operational design in Joint Publication 5-0, Joint Planning.⁷ While the recently updated joint publication is the official “instruction manual” for operational design for the joint force, Rauch and Tackett offer a simple yet effective framework for applying the key principles of design methodology. Figure 1 depicts their operational design framework. The four steps of the framework provide a clear and concise approach to addressing the issue. To begin with, the organization must understand its guidance. For military organizations, this guidance originates from national leaders in documents such as the National Security Strategy, the National Defense Strategy, and the National Military Strategy. The following iterative step is to understand the operational environment. Most effectively, teams should understand the environment in context as a complex adaptive system.⁸ Then, perhaps employing a theory-of-change model, the practitioners must define the problem and the delta between current and desired conditions.⁹ We teach this simple part as the most crucial step, paraphrasing an unsubstantiated quote from Albert Einstein that if he only had an hour to save the world, he would spend fifty-five minutes defining the problem.¹⁰ Finally, students can then construct an operational approach. Most operational approaches use lines of effort to logically discuss how current conditions need to change to lead to desired conditions in the future.

Rauch and Tackett explain how senior military commanders and planners at the strategic level can and should use design methodology when planning major operations or campaigns. The authors explicitly assert that the use of design methodology can be oversold or improperly applied to less complex problems or for influencing the environment over relatively short time horizons. The authors caution against confusing design thinking with design methodology (see the table). Rauch and Tackett also note that fully applying design methodology requires significant means and may not be available to organizations unable to resource a full design team. While the defense-oriented design methodology may be out of reach for many smaller or lesser-resourced organizations, we maintain that applying design thinking remains feasible for these teams.

To teach operational design at the Army War College, we start with multiple lessons on critical thinking, systems thinking (with an emphasis on complex adaptive systems), strategic guidance and direction, and operational design itself. After these lessons, our students are immersed in two multiday design exercises. We divide the students into small teams and give them the task of using operational design to develop approaches to complex problems across various combatant command areas of responsibility around the globe. While limited in scope, time, and available information, these design exercises nonetheless provide practical opportunities for our graduates to apply the design-thinking framework and approach wicked problems. The groups generally perform very well and come away from the experience with a better understanding of both operational design and the global operational environment that they will return to after graduation. These exercises are useful, and we have found that they can be modified and applied successfully in other organizations.

Design Thinking Works for Many Types of Organizations

Our experience suggests that smaller organizations with diverse missions have opportunities to apply design thinking and achieve sound results. Over the past few years, small teams (that either one or both authors have led or been a part of) from the US Army War College facilitated operational design sessions with organizations ranging from military healthcare facilities, foreign war colleges, and civilian engineers. These teams facilitated each organization’s use of design thinking and methodology to help them better understand their environment, challenges, and, in some cases, their mission. The approach addressed complex problems that were obstacles to transforming the organization’s current environment into its desired future environment.

We will illustrate how we teach and apply design methodology by discussing several workshops in which the authors led or participated. In two recent workshops, we conducted operational design sessions with two different military healthcare facilities, Dunham US Army Health Clinic in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and the Andrew Rader Fort Myer Army Health Clinic in Arlington, Virginia. Each of these organizations sought to better understand the evolving healthcare environment and develop a refined approach and vision for their mission. To begin, we offered the clinics the same teaching material and methodology used at the Army War College to instruct senior military leaders on the doctrine and application of operational design. After meeting with each health clinic’s leadership cadre, we modified the reading material we typically assign to our students to align with the specific intent of the clinic’s commander and achieve their desired outcomes. In both sessions, the organization’s members quickly grasped the central tenets of design thinking, applied it to their unit’s challenges and mission, and delivered helpful feedback and positive results for their commanders.

We began with a brief lesson on the four main frames: understanding guidance, understanding the environment, understanding (or framing) the problem, and developing an approach. Once we explained the concept and frames, we divided the participants into four predesignated groups representing the focus areas chosen by the commander and completed a short sample exercise to get a feel for the process. During the exercise, participants were asked to write down their ideas individually on sticky notes to encourage creative thinking, prevent any one person from dominating the discussion, and promote equal contributions from all participants, regardless of their level of experience or rank.¹¹ The groups then arranged and rearranged the sticky notes (“ideas”) on a whiteboard, simultaneously moving between the four frames of operational design. Design-thinking experts advocate using this technique, and we do the same at the Army War College. Applying the “sticky-note technique” aids students in thinking systematically, enabling clearer analysis of causal relationships in the system.¹²

After the initial plenary exercise, the groups split, getting down to business and tackling the issues specific to their organization. The facilitators ensured that the groups iteratively worked among the four frames of operational design within time limits (one business day). A trusted member of the clinic’s leadership team guided each group, but all voices had the opportunity to be heard. By design, each group was composed of members from across the organization, allowing for a diversity of thought informed by experience and career specialty. We found it interesting and encouraging to listen in as the professionals from the pharmacy, radiological, public affairs, and medical operations in each group focused on a specific priority line of effort assigned to them by the organization’s leaders, linked to the clinic’s overall vision and mission. They worked through understanding how the strategic direction and the current operational environment affected their assigned line of effort and then developed a problem statement and an approach to that problem. At the end of the day, each group had the opportunity to brief the others on what it had learned and provided recommendations for the commander and the other groups to consider.

In both clinic cases, the leadership teams expressed satisfaction with the results, but more importantly, they were excited about the collaboration and thinking that took place. The robust dialogue uncovered issues and ideas that do not come out in the normal course of their organization’s operational rhythm. In both instances, the work resulted in an enhanced cross-organizational understanding of the challenges, direction, guidance, and future vision of the clinic. These outcomes demonstrate how design thinking can help structured organizations generate shared understanding across functional roles. Beyond healthcare settings, design thinking has also proven valuable for organizations considering how to best modernize to support the Army.

While US military health clinics benefited strategically from applying design thinking, teams from the US Army War College were also privileged to help three other organizations find value in working through this iterative process. In 2022, a small team of instructors flew to Aberdeen Proving Ground to assist the workforce in understanding the new Army concept of multidomain operations, thereby improving their test and evaluation alignment. Using the final day as a design thinking workshop, this largely civilian audience of around ninety participants was able to frame their problem and think through ways to transform it to better incorporate the Army’s modernization priorities. This workshop highlighted how design thinking can help mostly civilian, highly technical organizations navigate modernization demands and align their processes with the Army’s strategic priorities.

Second, we saw the international applicability of this skill set as Nigerian senior soldiers benefited from design thinking. The Army War College Nigeria hosted a small delegation of US Army War College faculty in the African nation’s capital, Abuja. Using design thinking, the American guest faculty walked their seventy students through an academic exercise regarding the conflict between herders and farmers, a complex problem that touches on geography, resources, religion, and culture in Nigeria.¹³ The team’s experience in Nigeria reminds us that the utility of design thinking extends beyond national borders. Design thinking can be a powerful tool when complex social and security dynamics intersect, as in the case of herders and farmers in West Africa.

Finally, we were fortunate enough to lead education administrators through a design workshop jointly hosted by Shippensburg University and Pennsylvania’s Intermediate Unit (IU12). Like other workshops, we familiarized participants with the design and then, in small groups, guided them through the process applicable to their district’s or school’s operational approach. Notably, the groundhog Punxsutawney Phil, a Pennsylvania celebrity in February, forecasted six more weeks of winter in 2025, and it snowed heavily on the day of the IU12 design exercise. However, thanks to the savvy technical skills of our educator hosts, we successfully conducted the workshop online with virtual sticky notes on PowerPoint slides. This virtual collaboration example illustrates the adaptability and versatility of design thinking, as the audience of education administrators was entirely civilian. Across these diverse workshops, several recurring lessons emerged that inform our recommendations for leaders, practitioners, and educators.

Best Advice to Conduct a Successful Design Session

Through teaching design to various organizations and senior leaders at the Army War College, we have observed what makes design methodology effective and what leads to less optimal sessions. Our experience shows that leaders, practitioners, and educators can use this powerful tool to address their toughest complex problems. Conducting a successful design workshop requires a fair amount of effort and buy-in from the organization. Whether you are the leader of an organization or the facilitator of a design session, much advance coordination is required. This coordination between the facilitator and the organization’s leaders is critical to both set the conditions and manage the expectations of the session. We offer six key takeaways (see figure 2):

Ensure design thinking is appropriate. Make sure you are using design thinking for an ill-structured problem. Ill-structured problems are so complex that experts often disagree on what the problem is. Furthermore, even the keenest minds cannot solve these ill-structured problems; most often, these problems can only be managed through trade-offs. Organizations can solve less-complex problems with straightforward decision-making tools. When leaders agree on a problem—and agree that it can be solved—the military decision-making process, a cost-benefit analysis, or Harvard Business School’s eight-step decision-making process may be a better tool for the job.¹⁴

Set conditions for collaboration. When we conduct these workshops with military organizations, we encourage participants to wear civilian clothes and address each other by their first names. By reducing institutional barriers to communication, organizations can gain insights from bright, junior coworkers who may otherwise feel intimidated or out of place when speaking up.

Map the system. To best understand the environment, design practitioners must use critical thinking, creative thinking, and systems thinking. Usually, our students and workshop participants are primed to think critically and creatively when the environment is collegial. However, thinking in terms of complex adaptive systems is challenging and time-consuming. Nevertheless, design practitioners cannot truly distill an ill-structured problem without embracing the complexity of systems thinking. There are several models and tools available to assist teams in mapping out their system and environment. A SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis is one example of productive way to systematically examine the environment without overwhelming participants.¹⁵ By mapping out the environment into a system, a design team can more accurately employ its collective abductive reasoning, leading to a better operational approach to managing the problem.

Start with sticky notes, not speeches. This technique encourages creative thinking and prevents any one person from dominating the discussion. Introverts can think privately when writing down their ideas, and extroverts can encourage the group to find common ground. Often, when people work in groups, not everyone contributes. However, sticky notes offer an elegant alternative.

Iterate until the problem becomes clear. Embrace the iterative nature of the process and the insights from the team. With our workshop participants in particular, we deal with experts who see the ill-structured problem from the perspective of their role. They see an obstacle and a straightforward solution. This is not an insult. This is the result of having hard-working, caring professionals who have not yet dedicated time to understanding the problem. When these experts hear from other participants, they can truly broaden their understanding of the problem. Understanding takes time, and for design to work, it takes several iterations. Although it is tempting to move through design thinking’s four steps and call it “complete,” the most effective students and participants revisit the process several times to further their understanding.

Write it and draw it. When participants draw their operational approach, they tend to link nodes together in a causal fashion, demonstrating systems thinking.¹⁶ Additionally, people like to draw, and a graphic can communicate a complex system or approach more clearly. By synthesizing their approach into a narrative, participants think more holistically than when simply presenting it in bullet points.

Conclusion

Military planners leverage design thinking to develop effective operational approaches and campaigns, but a wide range of organizations can also benefit from employing this powerful and straightforward tool. Design thinking is a proven and effective tool for strategic leaders confronting ill-structured problems in a dynamic operational environment. Our experiences across military, civilian, and international settings illustrate that, if we offer people dedicated time, some structure, and a collaborative environment, people can generate insights that routine organizational processes cannot. While design thinking does not promise easy solutions to wicked problems, it can equip an organization with a method for managing complexity through curiosity, coherence, and shared understanding. In a modern operational environment defined by rapid change and uncertainty, that capability becomes essential for any organization.

The workshops we facilitated with healthcare clinics, test-and-evaluation centers, Nigerian senior leaders, and Pennsylvania educators revealed recurring themes. Often, people see only part of the problem and cannot appreciate the magnitude of an issue until they participate in an exercise that requires this sort of thinking. Professionally diverse groups can collaborate more effectively outside their silos when they think in systems, which exposes hidden relationships. Meanwhile, iterative action across the design steps yields a clearer, more actionable understanding of complex challenges. These lessons reinforce why leaders must cultivate design thinking not as a one-time exercise but as a learned best practice.

As two senior military officers and educators at the US Army War College, we have taught design to many diverse organizations and found success. By coordinating ahead of time with the organization, establishing a collegial climate, using the “sticky note technique,” and requiring a graphic and narrative for output, you can also successfully educate others on how to approach complex problems and guide them through the process. Leaders at any level can begin by piloting a short workshop, integrating a framing session into their planning cycle, or training a small cadre of design facilitators. Doing so can help teams navigate the complexity that increasingly defines modern military and organizational environments.

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Notes

1. Mark A. Milley, “Strategic Inflection Point,” Joint Force Quarterly, no. 110 (3rd Quarter, 2023): 6–15.
2. Horst W. J. Rittel and Melvin M. Webber, “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning,” Policy Sciences 4, no. 2 (1973): 155–69, https://urbanpolicy.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Rittel+Webber_1973_PolicySciences4-2.pdf.
3. Rodani Tan, “Framing Solutions in Army Design Methodology,” Small Wars Journal, 25 January 2023, https://smallwarsjournal.com/2023/01/25/framing-solutions-army-design-methodology/.
4. Daniel E. Rauch and Matthew Tackett, “Design Thinking,” Joint Force Quarterly, no. 101 (2nd Quarter, 2021): 12.
5. Army Techniques Publication 5-0.1, Army Design Methodology (US Government Publishing Office [GPO], July 2015).
6. Rauch and Tackett, “Design Thinking,” 11–17.
7. Joint Publication 5-0, Joint Planning (US GPO, October 2025), https://www.jcs.mil/Doctrine/Joint-Doctrine-Pubs/5-0-Planning-Series/.
8. Eric Berlow, “Simplifying Complexity,” TED, July 2010, 3 min., 25 sec., https://www.ted.com/talks/eric_berlow_simplifying_complexity.
9. Ovidijus Jurevicius, “Theory of Change (ToC) Explained,” Strategic Management Insight, updated 20 March 2024, https://strategicmanagementinsight.com/tools/theory-of-change/.
10. Nell Debevoise, “The Third Critical Step in Problem Solving That Einstein Missed,” Forbes, 26 January 2021, https://www.forbes.com/sites/nelldebevoise/2021/01/26/the-third-critical-step-in-problem-solving-that-einstein-missed/.
11. Tom Wujec, “Draw Toast Systems Thinking Guide,” Draw Toast, accessed 6 March 2026, http://www.drawtoast.com/downloads/DrawToast%20Systems%20Thinking%20Guide.pdf.
12. Berlow, “Simplifying Complexity.”
13. Chiroma T. Wamdeo et al., “Herder–Farmers Conflict and National Development in Nigeria: A Study of Akwa Ibom State,” CEDS Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Research 3, no. 2 (December 2024): 143–56, https://cedsjournal.com/home/articles/volume6/CEDS_JEIR67738E4227A05_HERDER_-_FARMERS_CON.pdf.
14. Matt Gavin, “8 Steps in the Decision-Making Process,” Business Insights Blog, Harvard Business School Online, updated 15 July 2022, https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/decision-making-process.
15. University of Kansas, “Section 14. SWOT Analysis: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats,” Community Tool Box, accessed 6 March 2026, https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/assessment/assessing-community-needs-and-resources/swot-analysis/main.
16. D. L. Nelson et al., “Pictorial Superiority Effect,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory 2, no. 5 (1976): 523–28, https://www.doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.2.5.523.

 

 

 

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May-June 2026