Balancing Military Thinking
A meditation on the different types of thinking styles required for success on the battlefield, and why an officer corps matters. By guest contributor Graeme Doull.
Peacetime armies face tightening budgets alongside rising expectations around compliance, safety, and social license. They are expected to function as exemplary public institutions: legally immaculate, risk-managed, and politically uncontroversial.
In this environment, success is measured by the absence of failure, rather than combat readiness. Leaders see that caution is rewarded, while risk taking carries consequences. The result is a conservative bureaucracy: risk-averse, procedural, and inward-looking.
Yet 21st-century warfare is anything but conventional. Technology has transformed tactics. Success increasingly depends on rapid innovation and close integration between operational units and private-sector technology partners. Innovation and risk taking is not optional; it is essential to survival. If you don’t make mistakes you don’t learn.
As budgets become stretched and capabilities erode, the greatest damage to peacetime armies may actually not be from force reduction, but cognitive attrition within the officer corps - the erosion of agility, curiosity, and innovative thinking.
Armies and large organisations are naturally process-oriented. To understand how balance should be achieved, it is useful to explore why modern armies have an officer corps - and how different thinking styles shape military effectiveness.
Why Officers Matter
It’s an old question: if senior non-commissioned officers (SNCOs) hold decades of experience, why are commissioned officers needed? Popular culture tends to celebrate the seasoned sergeant and diminish the young lieutenant - this likely resonates with many who remember their own green years of command. It’s true that a twenty-something officer leading a SNCO with over a dozen years of service can be an awkward arrangement.
Some argue that the officer corps is a relic of the class system - upper-class officers commanding working-class soldiers. While undoubtedly its origin, it would be a poor organisation that preserved such a structure for tradition’s sake alone. Others claim that officers exist to bring intellectual horsepower to the Army - an arrogant and misguided view, in my opinion - anyone who believes this has clearly never worked with SNCOs; they are highly knowledgeable, intellectually formidable, and deeply attuned to the nuances of warfighting.
Rather, the difference between officers and NCOs lies primarily in how they think. Understanding this distinction explains why both are indispensable and why armies suffer when the balance tilts too far toward either side.
Thinking Styles: Two Complementary Modes
Decades of research into cognitive and leadership styles - from Sternberg’s Thinking Styles, Herrmann’s Whole Brain Model, and Kirton’s Adaptation–Innovation Theory, among others - show that people approach problems through a wide range of mental frameworks. These models describe many possible dimensions of thought, from analytical to interpersonal, adaptive to innovative.
For the purposes of this discussion, however, it is useful to focus on two modes that are particularly salient in military culture - that I have defined as “process-oriented” and “strategic-oriented” thinking styles. Each represents a distinct way of making sense of the world and solving problems. Each brings its own strengths; together, they create the productive tension every healthy organisation needs.
As with any conceptual framework, this model simplifies reality and does not account for every outlier. It is intended to describe the usual patterns, benefits, and trade-offs of these thinking styles, not every individual case.
Process-Oriented Thinkers
Process-oriented thinkers - what Sternberg calls local thinkers and Herrmann calls practical thinkers - are the superstars of most large organisations. They excel at detail, planning, coordination, and execution. You can spot them instantly - even in civilian workplaces, they are impeccably presented, with fresh haircuts and polished shoes. They value certainty, structure, and rules, and are essential to the smooth running of any large organisation.
To influence a process-oriented thinker: provide an agenda in advance; allow time to consider options; and treat them with respect. Status matters to them - and they respect the status of others. They prefer to minimise disruption, favouring time-tested models and lessons learned from experience.
Process-oriented leaders focus on continuous improvement, taking action while adhering to established processes. They are compliant, disciplined, efficient, and excel at execution - they are the people who make things happen.
Strategic-Oriented Thinkers
Strategic-oriented thinkers are conceptual and often a little messy - sometimes literally. Herrmann calls them experimental, and Kirton calls them innovators. They synthesise multiple elements simultaneously and have a strong grasp of the big picture. They love ideas and can occasionally get lost daydreaming when they should be executing.
To engage a strategic-oriented thinker, challenge them intellectually and present new ideas. The mundane is punishing for them. They are creative, unorthodox, and comfortable with uncertainty. They take risks and don’t necessarily always follow the rules.
Strategic-oriented leaders do things differently, constantly seeking new solutions. They set the course but may not know how to make the engine run. They challenge their superiors and are confident to lead - guided by their own sense of direction. Without them, any business - or the Army - would risk going in circles.
The Power - and Danger - of Efficiency
Efficiency is seductive. In both business and the military, it is seen as a virtue: doing more with less, tightening the system, driving out waste. Process-oriented thinkers excel at this. But efficiency without innovation can become a trap.
History is full of organisations that optimised themselves into irrelevance. Armies that become too efficient - too focused on procedure, risk management, and compliance - lose the creative flexibility required to fight and win in a changing world. For businesses, the cost is bankruptcy. For armies, the cost is measured in lives.
That’s why every successful military maintains a dual-thinking system: commissioned officers as the advocates for innovation, and non-commissioned officers as the custodians of discipline and process. The goal is not hierarchy for its own sake but cognitive diversity - ensuring the organisation can both execute and adapt.
The officer’s job, in essence, is to challenge convention. Not recklessly, but purposefully - to inject strategic thought and creative friction into an institution that naturally tends toward order. When this balance works, the result is a military that is simultaneously disciplined and dynamic, efficient yet inventive.
When this balance breaks down, the result is stagnation - and, worse, an erosion of values. In heavily process-driven cultures, good politics displace good governance. Mistakes are hidden, embarrassment avoided, and challenge suppressed.
This leads to a dark side of a process-oriented culture where misconduct can be normalised or hidden under the guise of protecting reputations and ensuring cohesion. Loyalty and conformity enables cover ups and the concealment of poor performance.
Organisations Out of Balance
Many peacetime armies may find themselves caught in a lopsided mindset. Years of budget strain, manpower shortages, and constant operational demands can shift officer corps into a process-oriented mode. Risk aversion, compliance, groupthink, and managerial focus dominate where there should be experimentation, curiosity, candor, and vision.
This isn’t about individual officers, but about a collective drift in how the organisation thinks. When resources are tight, it’s natural to hunker down and prioritise efficiency. But this results in an army that becomes cautious, reactive, and inward-looking.
Officers, who should be the strategic counter-weight to this process-orientated tendency, instead are drawn into its gravitational pull.
A process-oriented Army focuses on what it can control: shutting down activities to save costs, deferring maintenance, and delaying innovation. The danger is that even when funding returns, such an organisation invests in what it already knows - safe familiar projects and known capabilities rather than the transformation that is needed.
Finding a balance
There’s a reason officer training maintains a strong regimental focus - officers must understand and integrate within the broader process-oriented culture of the Army. Too much innovation would be reckless, and being too far out of step with the wider organisation would be counterproductive.
Research shows that you can’t sustain both a strong process-oriented and a strong strategic-oriented mindset simultaneously; they sit at opposite ends of the same scale. While thinking styles are influenced by personality, they are not fixed. With the right incentives it should be possible to reset officers to a strategic-oriented thinking style.
Senior leaders should not be consumed by debates over maintenance schedules or compliance minutiae. Process-heavy burdens should be deliberately stripped away or centralised to free cognitive space for innovation.
Creating Conditions for Innovation
Funding helps, but money alone will not restore creative capacity. Cultural and structural change is required. Some fixes are addressing basic factors: functional accommodation, modern workspaces, reliable equipment, and predictable maintenance cycles. Leaders cannot think strategically while compensating for decaying foundations.
But revitalising an army’s thinking goes beyond ensuring the basics are maintained. Officers at all levels need both mental and organisational space to think, test, and take calculated risks. That means embracing controlled failure in peacetime, establishing safe-to-fail experimentation zones, and building partnerships that expand the Army’s imagination.
Those partnerships should include external innovators. Militaries should engage innovative companies and independent thinkers to challenge doctrine and accelerate capability development. Such initiatives may feel radical, but they are exactly what’s needed to reignite an army’s strategic spark.
Armies need to be intentional about officer training, selection and promotion. To have effective leadership, armies should be deeply suspicious of officers who dress too well, show too much respect, and have a history of compliance. Preference should go to those with strong views, curious minds, and the confidence to rub people the wrong way. Generals need flair and ideas - not meekness and conformity.
Final Thoughts
I recently sat quietly in my kids’ school chapel service. Our chaplain had served as a chaplain on Operation INTERFLEX in the UK. He spoke about supporting Ukrainian soldiers who were heading straight from that training to the front line. It was deeply poignant as many of those soldiers were the same age as his own children. Today, some of those soldiers will be dead, injured, or captured by the Russians.
While his message focused on spiritual preparation, it made me reflect on what military capabilities I would want for my own children if they were ever deployed to a future conflict. With a family history of service, and increasing international tension, this is a plausible scenario. It certainly sharpens the mind on how we should be preparing our military.
When I look at what capabilities we have versus what I believe we need, the gap is wide. Some of it can be addressed through funding, but the mindset must change too. We urgently need innovation - otherwise someone’s children will pay the price of inaction.
This article is adapted from a piece first published in the Summer 2025 issue of Line of Defence.
Graeme is a retired armoured corps officer and veteran. After leaving the military he has had a very successful career in civilian logistics.
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