The 2017 National Security Strategy and the subordinate National Defense Strategy and National Military Strategy represent a genuine inflection point in U.S. strategic culture. While the origin of the great power competition that drove this shift can be traced back at least to the end of the last century, the intent to more proactively challenge rising revisionist powers clearly lies within these documents. The military-strategic architects of this more dynamic approach to protecting the dominant geopolitical position of the U.S. were Secretary of Defense James Mattis and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford. This deliberate shift and their strategic stewardship were also accompanied by the rising favor of a new lexicon of buzz terms, including idioms such as “competition continuum” and “competition below the level of armed conflict.” One of the new terms that both Secretary Mattis and General Dunford drew upon repeatedly during this time was the “speed of relevance.” Both men separately have been credited with the genesis of the expression; they also both identified the speed of relevance as being an adaptation and an aspiration that is fundamental to gaining competitive advantage. They have, however, used the term in subtly different senses, and this divergence is worthy of further analysis. Ultimately, if the intention and sentiment of their respective speeds of relevance is to bring competitive advantage to the joint force, it must be based on shared interpretation and a coherent and achievable goal.
On the Origins of Speed of Relevance
Then-Secretary Mattis focused on operating at the speed of relevance as an aspiration for the Department’s organizational culture. The National Defense Strategy, signed by Mattis in January 2018, refers to the delivery of performance at the speed of relevance. He challenged the Department of Defense to throw off the shackles of inertia created by unwieldy approval chains, wasteful use of resources, and an aversion to risk to deliver faster adaptations to new ways of war. Separately, in a written statement to the House Armed Services Committee on 6 February 2018, Secretary Mattis explained how he wanted the Department of Defense to shift to a “culture of performance and affordability that operates at the speed of relevance.” He consistently identified this new way of war as the driver for his stated desire for a defence operating model that could be responsive to these changes.
General Dunford, by contrast, has focused on operating at the speed of relevance as a means to provide senior leaders with the decision space that they need to make high-quality decisions in an increasingly complex strategic landscape. In the “From the Chairman” section of Joint Forces Quarterly, he introduced the speed of relevance while highlighting how “the Joint Force is improving how it frames decisions for the Secretary of Defense,” allowing the Secretary to study options and make decisions of prioritization and resource allocation. The Chairman’s focus as global integrator appears to support this improved decision cycle with a common intelligence picture and appropriately postured Joint Force—“the boxer’s stance”—as well as providing improved context through reinvigorating strategic assessments. The former Chairman also talked about the speed of relevance in a less strategic sense, explaining that “[i]nformation operations, space and cyber capabilities and ballistic missile technology have accelerated the speed of war, making conflict today faster and more complex than at any point in history.” General Dunford’s assertion that these factors have changed the character of war has ramifications for decision-making at every level of war, not just the strategic. The reduction in decision time is as applicable, and dangerous, to battlefield commanders as it is to strategic leaders.
Dunford’s desire for decision superiority builds upon the philosophy that well-executed decision-making can be genuinely decisive. As British theorist, B. H. Liddell-Hart put it, “It is in the minds of commanders that the issue of battle is really decided.”[1] This sentiment and the need for dependable decision superiority becomes even more important as the chasing pack of near-peer competitors seeks to erode the United States’ position of dominance. For either of the two visions of the speed of relevance to be credible, there must exist a shared interpretation and focus across the joint force. It cannot be just another buzz term to be sprinkled liberally into the military jargon soup du jour. The open-source picture of current usage across the Joint Force is somewhat muddled and, as with all aspects of joint operations, words matter.[2]
Words Matter
In the short time since the first use of the expression, speed of relevance has percolated across the defense community in a range of contexts. It is a catchy phrase occasionally used as a soundbite by joint professional military education students in seminars and written submissions.[3]
The usage across the joint force is the clearest indicator of the lack of shared interpretation. The U.S. Air Force has taken a technology-centric view of the speed of relevance, leading to numerous supporting innovations including declaring their ambition to build the next fighter in under five years. For airpower advocates, the use of the term centers upon technology and acquisition. The U.S. Army focuses on the human aspects of the speed of relevance: “It's all about better rigor, better relationships, better ideas, and getting them faster.” The Department of Defense press coverage of the proposed shift to cloud-based computing offers the view that speed of relevance is about technology driving information dominance. For example, it explains how “operating at this new, higher speed, will depend, in part, on how well and quickly (the Department) [sic] can exploit rapid advances in information technology.” For its part, the U.S. Navy has tended to use former Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral John Richardson’s preferred nomenclature of “high-velocity outcomes” to cover similar aspirations regarding the speed of relevance. The speed of relevance has even permeated the broader environs of defense, including its industrial base, with Raytheon echoing the phrase right back to the Department of Defense in its “Innovation at the Speed of Relevance” series of YouTube clips.
An accusation of the selective harvesting of these perspectives to prove a point would be valid. However, even a cursory internet search reveals the defense community’s diversity in using the phrase. For some, it represents a Silicon Valley style time-hack for innovation; for others, it is about technologically enabled decision-making or a change of organisational mindset for defense. It could be considered that speed of relevance is being used to mean all of these things, thus integrating these broader concepts. In this light, one might propose the former Chairman’s Military Strategy perspective is firmly nested within the former Secretary’s Defense Strategy viewpoint. Nevertheless, even if these elements are simply different sides of the same coin, any disunity of interpretation could threaten the original strategic vision. The worst case will be if different usages signify a broader cultural divide on decision-making, whether in Dunford’s view of the commander’s decision making or Mattis’ perspective on financial and acquisition decisions. Any divergence in procurement, process or thinking that offers one iota of decision advantage to potential adversaries could be exceptionally costly.
The Key Decisions
The critical factor in decision-making that has changed is time. Technological changes in warfare, compounded by heightened competition, are increasing the time pressure on decision-makers across the gamut of defense. In guidance on modern decision making, General Dunford described the need to “buy more time for senior leaders to study options and make decisions,” highlighting processes, leadership, and technology as the vehicles. Management of the trade-off between speed and quality is a quandary for all decision-makers and this balance is central to Dunford’s speed of relevance ambitions. Although the challenges he highlights are intensifying, the complications of a reduction in decision space are not new. Dunford’s predecessor had previously proposed a bottom-up solution to the erosion of decision space. General Martin Dempsey stressed “superior speed in competitive cycles of decision making” through mission command. Achieving the goal of competitive advantage through a faster, decentralized decision cycle requires mission-type orders, understanding of the commander’s intent and trust. More recently, mission command has become increasingly linked to the need to exercise command and control effectively within a disrupted or denied environment. Still, by its decentralized nature, it remains fundamentally an enabler to more competitive decision cycles.
If notions like the speed of relevance and mission command are individual components of an overall response to the collapse of decision space, then they must be linked elements of a holistic process. The Joint Force requires a mutually reinforcing and highly efficient approach to decision-making that goes well beyond the current Military Decision-Making Process thinking. The National Defense Strategy makes clear that “[s]uccess no longer goes to the country that develops a new technology first, but rather to the one that better integrates it and adapts its way of fighting.” This integration of the equipment, tools, and processes to push decision speed forward to achieve the speed of relevance must span all elements of the force and all levels of command.
Decision-centric thinking across people, processes, equipment and doctrine must be a central pillar of the Force’s theory of victory.
General Dunford’s top-down vision must complement his predecessor’s bottom-up thinking, as well as Mattis’ more overarching view, if the force is to achieve the common goal they seek: decision superiority. If decentralized operational and tactical decision making is the aspiration, the linkage to strategic decision making—the very crucible of intent—must be entirely coherent. Strategic decisions made at the speed of relevance must be able to flow seamlessly down through the echelons. The assurance of a fully coherent approach to decision making across the levels of war requires a significant cognitive recalibration, and terminology is a vital element. Decision-centric thinking across people, processes, equipment and doctrine must be a central pillar of the Force’s theory of victory.
Nothing New Under The Sun
Alexander Mosaic, House of the Faun, Pompeii (Wikimedia)
The counter to this view is that, while the expression may be original, the underlying theory is nothing new. Even looking as far into antiquity as Alexander the Great, one observes decision superiority’s importance. As explained by one historian, Alexander the Great demonstrated his “tactical genius” in the “lightning-like speed with which he adapted his actions to novel circumstances.”[4] Even long before the vaunted depletion of decision space, the need to make high-quality decisions faster than an adversary was a fundamental tenet of success in warfare. While this remains true, the decision space continues to diminish. To achieve and protect a competitive edge in the current strategic, informational, and technological setting is the real significance of the proposed speed of relevance.
Excelling in speed and quality of decision and outdoing the opponent’s decision cycles is the very essence of the speed of relevance and the challenge that has been set.
The how of future decision-making is a genuinely complex business that will rely on both science and art. The tenet of the how of the speed of relevance worth highlighting is General Dunford’s Joint Forces Quarterly description of the need to conduct the “sets and reps” to inculcate the proposals. The resulting muscle memory relies on the full alignment of the supporting processes across hardware, software, and cognition, through all forces and at all levels of warfare. Further, if the joint force is educating, training, and rehearsing to obtain decision advantage at the speed of relevance, it must build confidence that it is being achieved. The success metrics of the speed of relevance will be hard to assess. Confirmation that the top to bottom spin of one’s own decision cycle is faster than the opponent’s or that these speeds facilitate the necessary decision quality from the strategic to the tactical will be a challenge to measure but must be assessed. Excelling in speed and quality of decision and outdoing the opponent’s decision cycles is the very essence of the speed of relevance and the challenge that has been set. One of the key risks is that the true stress test of the holistic decision process only comes in a genuinely competitive scenario with success or failure as the metrics. The mitigation is fine-tuning through a department-wide culture that understands and values the reality and necessity of the speed of relevance which former leaders have called.
The Relevance of the Speed of Relevance?
Simply agreeing with military intellectual heavyweights such as Mattis and Dunford could be regarded as an overly safe position, egregious even. The crux of the problem is that all using the term speed of relevance believe themselves to be in agreement with the original intent, but in reality they are not. For speed of relevance, as an idea, to add real benefit, not just intellectual fodder, genuine unity of effort and a complementary decision-making environment across the levels of warfare are required. Renowned management consultant Peter Drucker has been loosely credited with the maxim that “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” The real takeaway, though, is that if strategy and culture can be brought into alignment, then the possibility of achieving remarkable things opens up. If Mattis’ cultural view of the speed of relevance could be delivered alongside Dunford’s decision-focused interpretation, the collapse in decision space, which affects all potential belligerents, could be used to be a true source of U.S. decision advantage.
Even if the phrase itself is considered disposable, the essence is absolutely not. Decisions at the speed of relevance must be the aspiration at every level of warfare. As Field Marshal Montgomery put it, “When all is said and done the greatest quality required in a commander is ‘Decision.’”[5] The challenge for the joint force is to enable this decision through the relentless and totally aligned pursuit of knowledge, systems, and procedures. This pursuit must be laser-focused on ensuring commanders have the time, the information, and the context to make linked battle-winning decisions, faster than their adversaries at every level of warfare. In a future conflict, between near-peer states, decisions made at anything less than the speed of relevance will be severely punished by the incisive actions of unforgiving foes.
Joe Dransfield is a Royal Navy exchange officer serving on the Joint Military Operations faculty at the U.S. Naval War College. The views expressed are the author's own and do not represent those of the Royal Navy, the U.S. Naval War College, the U.S. Department of Defense, nor the U.K. or U.S. Governments.
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Header Image: Secretary Mattis and General Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in April 2018. (SSG Amber Smith/DoD Photo)
Notes:
[1] Sir Basil Henry Liddell-Hart, Thoughts on War (London: Faber and Faber, 1944), 55.
[2] Milan Vego, Joint Operational Warfare: Theory and Practice (Newport, RI: USNWC, 2007), XI-81. “Words matter” is most recently attributed to President Obama but my source for this fastidiousness is my colleague Professor Milan Vego who has written at length about the need for precision of language across the joint force.
[3] This is a personal observation from moderating both level 1 and level 2 joint professional military education at the U.S. Naval War College during the timeframe 2017-2019. The varied interpretations at this level were the genesis of this article.
[4] John Frederick Charles Fuller, The Generalship of Alexander the Great (New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press, 1960), 298.
[5] Viscount Bernard Law Montgomery of Alamein, The Memoirs of Field-Marshal the Viscount Montgomery of Alamein (London: Collins, 1958), 313.