ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how human understanding and interaction shape collective sense-making in military contexts, drawing on three conference papers. Anchored in John Boyd’s notion that effective command relies on units operating independently within a shared intent, we explore how teams maintain unity by continuously re-orienting. This requires shared mental representations rooted not only in doctrine but also in knowledge traditionally more associated with the humanities and social sciences.
The first paper, “Team Up for Success: Harnessing Participatory Sense-Making with the Harmonization Emergence Model”, examines “languaging” as a modality of participatory sense-making. It argues that team composition, context, and organizational interfaces shape the emergence of shared meaning and determine whether collective insights can be effectively channelled. The second, “A Set-Based Approach: Searching for the Problem–Solution Eclipse”, proposes five principles to strengthen contextual understanding. It highlights the importance of fostering knowledge communities capable of developing situational awareness through continuous learning and agency, extending beyond the assumptions of traditional operational frameworks. In the last, “Understanding Linguistic Diversity, a C2 Enabler”, the foreign-language effect among Swedish officers using English as an L2 in operational planning is explored. It demonstrates how L2 use influences individual agency and team dynamics, often in unrecognized ways.
