As a business school professor at a leading institution, I’ve spent decades working with senior leaders in sectors where complexity outpaces clarity—especially in tech and biotech. These industries thrive (or falter) not on perfect planning, but on their capacity to adapt in real time. When I was invited to work with innovation leaders in the U.S. military and NATO, I saw similar conditions: velocity, ambiguity, and systems that defy tidy models. As an educator and architect of innovation programs, I’ve found that many of the principles that drive adaptation in the private sector now apply—urgently and directly—in military contexts.

The Warfighter’s Dilemma: From Critical Thinking to Adaptive Thinking

Military leaders today operate in theaters marked by shifting alliances, asymmetrical threats, and accelerated feedback loops. Improvisation has often beaten doctrine in Ukraine. Gray zone operations in the Indo-Pacific undermine conventional deterrence. Cyber operations unfold in nonlinear, barely visible ways. These are not hypothetical scenarios—they’re everyday realities.

For generations, the aim of professional military education has been to develop critical thinkers—leaders capable of analyzing complex problems and applying sound judgment. That foundation remains essential. But in today’s security environment, it’s no longer sufficient.

As military leaders work to modernize education and training—often under the banner of “operationalizing PME”—a shift is needed: from instilling critical thinking to cultivating adaptive thinking. This means preparing leaders not just to assess a situation, but to respond creatively when the rules no longer apply.

The pace of change is accelerating. The victor in future conflicts won’t necessarily be the fastest—it will be the most adaptable.

Ukraine’s resistance against a larger adversary has underscored this truth: improvisation, agility, and decentralized decision-making can outmaneuver traditional mass. Cognitive overmatch will not be achieved through linear planning alone. It will come from leaders who can think flexibly, experiment boldly, and operate effectively in uncertainty.

Start with Paradox

Years ago, I began shifting how I teach in executive classrooms: leading not with answers, but with paradox. In a NATO workshop, I opened with the question: “How do we maintain operational security while enabling real-time data sharing across coalition partners?” No slides. No guidance. Just an unresolved dilemma.

What emerged wasn’t confusion—it was collaboration. Officers across nations engaged deeply, questioned assumptions, and surfaced creative approaches. Doctrine arrived later, as a tool to frame and refine their insights.

Paradox is not a detour from learning—it’s a gateway to it. It democratizes knowledge, sparks inquiry, and builds psychological readiness for ambiguity. It’s one of the most effective ways I’ve found to simulate the mindset needed for adaptive leadership.

Project Mercury: Discovery at the Edge of Doctrine

Project Mercury is an innovation leadership program I helped design for the U.S. Air Force, and it has rapidly spread to joint and allied partners. Participants include officers, enlisted personnel, and military civilians—not just from different roles and branches, but organized into teams based on diverse thinking styles using the Innovation Code framework. This intentional mix creates constructive conflict: cognitive tension that sparks hybrid ideas and adaptive strategies.

Each team begins with a clear mission. But as they analyze the situation, familiar terrain quickly becomes unfamiliar. Hidden constraints surface. The problem reveals layers. What initially appears straightforward becomes increasingly ambiguous—demanding new ways of thinking.

In one challenge, teams were tasked with developing a distributed logistics solution in a communications-denied environment. They approached it like a traditional project management exercise: assume the variables are known, then move quickly to execution. That approach collapsed almost immediately. The tools they defaulted to—linear timelines, predictable workflows—proved ineffective in a context that refused to behave.

As conditions shifted, teams realized that course correction wasn’t optional—it was essential. Doctrine didn’t offer clear answers. Instead, teams accelerated a series of small, fast experiments to test assumptions, surface options, and learn what worked. They moved from managing the problem to exploring it. And from that exploration came an unexpected solution—one so effective that it was later adopted in subsequent wargames.

The takeaway? Breakthroughs rarely come from obvious paths. Teams learned that the route to innovation often begins where certainty ends. Facts don’t change minds, experiences do.

In Project Mercury, we don’t begin with doctrine—we “engage-then-frame.” After acting under pressure, teams return to doctrine not for validation, but for contrast and insight. This reverses the traditional military education sequence. Doctrine becomes a tool to reflect and adapt—not a script to follow blindly.

What began as a pilot is now a growing network of adaptive thinkers—alumni embedded across units, commands, and agencies. They are quietly reshaping how innovation is done at every level. The highest demand for the program now comes from our NATO partners—particularly in forward environments like the Baltics. At our most recent workshop in Tallinn, Estonia, we saw firsthand how leaders facing urgent, real-world threats are not just seeking best practices—they’re embracing paradox. They are making deliberate decisions that accept risk as a condition of learning. This is not just a mindset shift. It’s a skill that must be practiced.

Toward a New Learning Operating System

In the tech and biotech worlds, where I’ve spent most of my career, learning is treated as a dynamic process—more like R&D than curriculum delivery. The goal isn’t just to know more; it’s to adapt faster. Here’s how five principles used by leading companies can be translated for military education, training, and planning:

1. Lead with Paradox, Not PowerPoint

In tech and biotech:

Innovation teams often begin with unresolved tensions like, “How do we protect patient data while sharing enough for collaborative research?” or “How can we ship faster without sacrificing stability?” These questions are real, urgent, and unsolved. They activate attention and surface diverse perspectives before any solutions are offered.

For the military:

Use operational paradoxes to start learning moments. Instead of beginning a seminar with doctrinal slides, open with:

“How do we maintain strategic ambiguity in the Pacific while strengthening allied coordination?”

Let the room wrestle. The discomfort builds engagement. The diversity of responses becomes the foundation for insight. Doctrine can follow as a tool for synthesis, not as a script

2. Facilitate Discovery Before Delivery

In tech and biotech:

At a global biotech firm, new project leads are given ambiguous product challenges before formal training. Their early decisions reveal blind spots that later make instruction more relevant. In agile software teams, we often run “pre-mortem sprints” where teams act first, then learn what frameworks or constraints they missed.

For the military:

Create simulations where learners act before they’re taught. For instance, ask planners to develop a humanitarian logistics plan in a denied communications environment. Only after execution do you introduce doctrinal frameworks. This sequencing builds muscle memory for real-world ambiguity and encourages internalization over memorization.

3. Reward Cognitive Risk-Taking

In tech and biotech:

Progress depends on experimentation. At one AI firm, product teams are evaluated not just on success, but on how boldly they explored uncertain paths. Leaders routinely ask, “What did you try that didn’t work—but taught you something important?”

For the military:

In AARs, shift the focus from error correction to sense-making. Ask:

“What insight were you chasing?”

“How did you adapt under stress?”

Reward those who stretched their thinking—even if imperfectly. This builds a culture where innovation isn’t something special; it’s the cost of staying relevant.

4. Embed Structured Reflection

In tech and biotech:

Top firms schedule structured debriefs into innovation sprints. These are not just for operational review, but for cognitive insight:

“What did we assume?”

“Where did we change direction—and why?”

We’ve seen how consistent reflection improves creative resilience over time.

For the military:

Build short, focused reflection cycles into exercises. After a key inflection point, ask:

“Where were we surprised?”

“What failed to go as expected—and what did we learn from that?”

This turns feedback into cognitive conditioning, helping warfighters recognize and respond to dynamic environments.

5. Teach Doctrine as a Lens, Not a Law

In tech and biotech:

Frameworks are often introduced after teams have struggled through real problems. For example, in a drug development sprint, a design team might sketch out a clinical trial strategy without being told the regulatory pathway. Later, regulatory experts map the team’s instincts to the actual framework—producing far deeper retention than a lecture ever could. The model becomes meaningful because it was discovered, not just taught.

For the military:

Instead of beginning with doctrine, start with real-world dilemmas. Let teams operate without predefined models. Then use doctrine afterward—as a comparative lens to evaluate, refine, and reframe their decisions.

One team, while developing a way to detect autonomous drones, found themselves navigating a complex problem with no doctrinal playbook. They began experimenting—blending military systems, commercial sensors, AI tools, and data-sharing protocols in unconventional ways. Their solution spanned domains and broke categories. It wasn’t doctrinal—it was effective. And it was ultimately advanced by the command.

That’s the power of engage first, frame later. Doctrine still matters—but as a reference point, not a rulebook. It helps learners reflect on what worked, why, and how it fits into the broader strategic picture.

In fast-evolving fields, we don’t teach our way to adaptation—we discover our way into it. Translating these discovery-driven practices from tech and biotech into military education doesn’t diminish doctrine. It enhances its utility—by showing where it flexes, where it holds, and where it must evolve.

Implications for Leaders and Planners

As someone who helps leaders in tech and biotech navigate uncertainty and change, I’ve learned that how people think—not just what they know—makes the greatest difference when the ground keeps shifting. The same applies to military leaders. The following four shifts can help foster more adaptive thinking across teams, planning sessions, and field exercises:

1. Use paradox prompts to surface hidden tensions early

Why it matters: Starting with a live dilemma forces people to think beyond a single solution. It brings competing priorities into the open and makes space for creative responses.

How to apply it:

• Begin meetings or briefings with open-ended questions like:
• “How can we act quickly without undermining long-term trust with partners?”
• “How do we ensure freedom of action without losing coordination?”
• Assign team members to explore opposing sides of a tension—then share and reconcile the differences.
• Capture these tensions on a whiteboard or digital board to show where real decisions will involve trade-offs.

2. Run exercises where the situation shifts in real time

Why it matters: Real-world missions rarely unfold as planned. Changing the conditions midstream teaches teams to adapt, not just execute.

How to apply it:

• Interrupt a training scenario with unexpected developments—like new intelligence, equipment loss, or altered objectives.
• Assign someone the role of “disruptor” to throw in new constraints or demands at key moments.
• Use multiple time checkpoints—“What will you do now? What if this changes in 2 hours?”—to simulate evolving conditions.
• Afterwards, reflect not just on what decisions were made, but how the team adapted when the unexpected hit.

3. Challenge assumptions before committing to a plan

Why it matters: In high-stakes industries, the best teams ask, “What could go wrong?” before they move forward. Identifying failure points early builds resilience.

How to apply it:

• Before finalizing a course of action, ask each team:
• “If this plan failed completely, what would likely be the reason?”
• Map out vulnerable spots—like overreliance on a single supplier or assumption about a partner’s behavior.
• Assign someone to be the “constructive skeptic”—their role is to question what others may be taking for granted.
• Turn this into a habit, not a one-time exercise. Routinely test your plans for hidden weaknesses.

4. Build a culture where curiosity and critique are encourage

Why it matters: Great ideas often come from unexpected places. But they only surface in environments where people feel safe asking tough questions or offering alternate views.

How to apply it:

• In team discussions, rotate a role like “red hat” or “devil’s advocate”—someone whose job is to challenge the group’s thinking constructively.
• Start conversations with the question:
• “What are we missing?”
• Create regular space—perhaps weekly or monthly—to reflect on assumptions and invite critique.
• Publicly recognize those who speak up with unconventional insights, even if their idea isn’t adopted. That sends a strong signal that thinking differently is valued, not punished.

None of these practices require a policy change or new technology. They simply require intention. And they signal—clearly—that adaptability and discovery are not luxuries for peacetime. They are essential to staying ahead in the unknown.

Why This Matters Now

As the Department of Defense pivots toward Defense-Oriented Global Ecosystems (DOGE), AI integration, and digital warfighting, our ways of learning must keep pace. We cannot afford to train 21st-century leaders with a 20th-century mindset.

Adaptive capacity—what I call cognitive readiness—isn’t taught by transmission. It’s forged through experience, tension, and reflection. And it’s vital for any domain where the only constant is surprise.

The Next Fight Won’t Wait

In the fog of future conflict, certainty may become a liability. What will matter most is not what leaders know, but how they think. Not how closely they follow the script, but how boldly they shape it.

We don’t need to abandon doctrine. We need to reawaken its purpose—as a springboard for discovery, not a ceiling for thought.

Because in tomorrow’s battlespace, the questions we ask may matter more than the answers we already have.

Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Air Force or the U.S. Government.

Jeff DeGraff is clinical professor of management and organizations at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan. He has trained innovation leaders in the tech, biotech, and defense sectors, and developed programs used by the US military and NATO in over forty-five countries.