 Good afternoon. Oh my gosh, it must be late in the afternoon because that was like a good afternoon. So let me again welcome you to the United States Naval War College. And welcome also to those of you who are viewing remotely. I imagine that might be a little bit of a challenge. But hopefully we can keep you all engaged. I am also keenly aware that we are operating late in the afternoon after a long day of sitting and that a little sleepitis might start to set in. So I will do my best to keep our energy up as much as possible. So clearly, we are building on a theme here with the foot stomper being that what got you here in terms of your current capabilities, your levels of achievement, your successes may not necessarily get you there, with there being higher level leadership and the responsibilities and the requirement for more advanced skills, abilities, and self-awareness. So again, hopefully it is our expectation that you will view today's symposium as providing some foundation for how you might approach this year of study going forward in preparation for that higher level leadership and certainly for your personal and professional development. So recently, I found myself on a Netflix binge. I'm confessing. And let me just say, when you find yourself bingeing Netflix for consecutive days, morning, noon, and night, that's not really the healthiest thing to do. But during my Netflix binge, I came across this movie called The Walk. Has anyone seen it by any chance? I got one or two. The Walk is this biographical drama about a Frenchman, Philippe Petit. And my apologies to the French officers, because I probably just totally slaughtered that pronunciation. So we're going to go with Philippe. So Philippe was a high wire artist who became famous for walking across a narrow cable stretched between the twin towers of the World Trade Center. This happened back in 1974. 140 feet, about 42 meters across, 110 stories up in the sky. Now, not only did Philippe succeed in walking across this narrow cable, he actually did it multiple times, walking back and forth. At one point, he even nails down and then lays backwards on the cable, much to the fear and the delight of the people below him, because he did it all without a net. It is absolutely amazing. But what is also amazing is the way that the filmmakers filmed this scene. It is as though you are up there on that high wire with him. It is heart racing. In fact, I learned that when they showed the movie in the theaters, some people actually became physically ill from the dizziness of feeling as though they are walking on this high wire 110 stories in the air. Which, for me, makes the title of this movie all the more striking, The Walk. The Walk suggests something simple and natural, something that occurs with ease. In fact, I would imagine that most of us who are able learned to walk by the time we were what, 12 or 15 months old or eight or nine months old for the overachievers in the room? We first learned to pull ourselves up, and then we learned to stand on our own and hold our balance without holding on to something. And then eventually, we learned to put one foot in front of the other and walk. And then we got good at walking. We gained confidence. And those first wobbly steps turned into solid footing. And that solid footing turned into running. And so walking just became this thing that we do. Automatic, subconscious, something that doesn't require much thought. But when Philippe walked that high wire, he elevated walking to a whole other level. Now this thing that is automatic, subconscious, and is just assumed to be a given skill, required deliberate preparation, conscious consideration, and a high level of mental focus. Moreover, in attempting this feat, Philippe was subject to external forces both within and outside of his control, the tautness of the cable, the length and the weight of the balancing pole, the humidity that could make that cable slick, and the wind shifts that could change direction without warning all interrelating and dynamic forces that impacted whether or not he would succeed. So Philippe had to develop the physical and mental dexterity to adjust his balance as the situation dictated. This was walking at the highest level. This was walking under conditions of uncertainty and complexity. This is next level walking. In the same way, you as leaders to this point in your careers have developed certain capabilities. And you're good at it. You can devise plans and solve problems and make decisions. All abilities that for many of you I would imagine right now are just automatic, but conditions have changed. And these natural and well-learned abilities must now be elevated to a higher order way of thinking and deciding in order for you to meet the needs or the cognitive demands of higher level leadership. And what we're referring to in terms of higher order thinking is the ability to effectively address adaptive problems or adaptive challenges, to think critically in ambiguous situations, and importantly, to make decisions in the absence of predictability. This, of course, aligns with Dr. Cavallero's presentation on vertical development, mental complexity, and adaptive challenges. But these abilities don't just happen. They require deliberate preparation and focused attention on your part so that you can prepare for the cognitive demands of higher level leadership. Makes sense? So let's take a closer look at what we mean by higher order thinking abilities by taking a deeper dive on this statement by Secretary of Defense Mattis that Professor Anderson referred to earlier. Let me give you a little background. This was actually a memo that Secretary of Defense sent to all of his senior leaders to November 2017. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, all of the service chiefs, the commanders of the combatant commands, the undersecretaries of defense, and several directors of defense agencies. So bear with me as I read this out loud. Recent discussions at the strategic level have focused too much on operational and tactical details, on the execution of a contingency, rather than on strategic options the joint force can execute and decisions the President and I must make to achieve US objective short of armed conflict. Our discussions must also focus on what we can do today to proactively achieve our objectives not just on what we may have to do if we fail. Wow, wow. At its most basic, Secretary Mattis is directing his senior leaders to advance their thinking beyond the way in which they have become accustomed. He is directing them to engage in higher level thinking. So let's pick this memo apart a little bit and see what language, for example, might speak to what I would describe as mid-level thinking. And you can just shout it out. I come from a Southern Baptist Church background, so a little call and response works for me. So mid-level thinking, holler, tactical, operational, details, execution, exactly. Contingency, I would add on there the focus on failure. Because a focus on failure means that you are looking at things in a very narrow window, right? So let me go back. And what about higher level thinking? Give me the language. Strategic, options, proactively, absolutely. Whoops. Work for me. All right. Yeah, let me try to keep order. I think we locked. Sorry. So I'll stay a little close to here for now until we make sure this is working. Strategic, strategic options proactively. And then I would add here the focus on broader objectives. So the question becomes, how do we get from here to there? Well, this actually takes us full circle back to Professor Anderson's presentation on self-awareness. In this instance, we are looking at our thinking preferences. So let's do a little exercise and see if we can gather what that is. Do you know what this is an image of by any chance? Anybody know? When you go to the eye doctor or the optometrist, and you have to look through the apparatus, and the doctor uses that to ascertain your visual strength or your visual preferences. And the doctor usually does something like this. There's an eye chart at the end. And the doctor says, which one is clearer? Is it this one? Or is it this one? Right? Yes? No? Yes? OK, all right, just want to make sure we're right there. So let's take the same approach in trying to ascertain our thinking preferences and proclivities. What I'm going to do is I am going to show you a series of diagrams. And I'd like you to consider which is most comfortable, particularly in terms of how you might think and process information or how you might approach a problem or a challenge. I want you to keep track of your responses. You ready? What is your, as I like to describe, cognitive comfort zone? Is it A or B? Or B? Is it C or C or D? Is it E or? Now, show of hands. And for those of you who are viewing remotely, you do this as well, because I'd like you to get a sense of your room. How many people, your cognitive comfort zone, aligned with A, C, and E? Raise your hands. Look around. How many of you were most comfortable with B, D, and F? You are my people. OK? So what do you notice? A, C, and F? A, C, and F? B, D, and E. A, C, and E, sorry, B, D, and F. What do you notice? What do you notice? Right? Linear versus curvature, as someone said. That certainly there is a preponderance of a certain way of thinking among your peers and colleagues. But that doesn't necessarily mean that one is more right than the other. So here's what I'd like to describe this as. Linear thinking and fluid thinking. Some of us are naturally wired to think in linear ways, structured, ordered, methodic, discreet. For a linear thinker, there's generally a set starting point. There is an established end point. And maybe some steps or processes in between to get you from one point to the other. For fluid thinkers, this is our realm. Amorphous, adaptive, flexible, interrelating. For fluid thinkers, the starting point may be unconventional. Discontinuity is acceptable. So going from 6 to R is not necessarily discombobulating. And for fluid thinkers, there's a tendency to hone in on interrelationships. So fluid thinking and linear thinking. But here are a couple of key points. Our thinking preferences are automatic and subconscious. They just happen, just like walking. It's the thing that we learn to do. It is a thing that for many of us is just our inherently the way that we are wired. It is also the case, though, that we are not necessarily locked into only being able to think given our preference. This is expanding that cup. This is that you have the opportunity and the ability to grow and evolve your way of thinking. And again, one is not more right than the other. However, the context matters. The context in which a particular way of thinking, now let me say it the other way, the way in which a particular way of thinking is applied is influenced by the context and whether or not that way of thinking is effective. Here's an example. So let's take a look at these contexts and provide some visuals of something that Dr. Cavallero referred to, complicated versus complex environments. So a complicated environment visually might look something like this. We have an awful lot of factors, but their factors are similar in some way. In this instance, they're all dots. But those factors can be grouped or categorized. So we've got all the greens and blues grouped together, have all the oranges, reds, and yellows grouped together, which means that you can categorize them in some way and reduce them down to their least common denominator in terms of solving problems. This also means that in a complicated environment, there is a known target or an in-state which tends to be relatively predictable. It's static. It doesn't move a lot. So you can pretty much predict where you're headed. In this instance, we're all headed towards the same slope with a complicated environment. A complex environment might look something like this. You have an awful lot of factors, but those factors are very diverse. We've got circles and squares and triangles and crosses, and they're all different colors. And those diverse factors are all interrelated. So moving the green circle will have an impact on the red triangle and the blue square. With a complex environment, because it is very much unpredictable, the in-state oftentimes is unknown. Follow? So let's apply and overlay our thinking preferences with the complex and complicated environment. Which could we make an argument for which best aligns with which? Negative what? Watch. Watch me. I hear you. Watch me. We could make an argument that linear thinking best applies to a complicated environment. And we could also make the argument that by its very nature, a complex environment requires more flexible and fluid thinking. Because here's the question that you actually raised this. So thank you. What happens if we attempt to apply linear thinking to a complex environment? You miss stuff, right? There's a tendency for us, particularly if we live in the linear thinking lane, to try and reduce complexity. And the challenge with that is we tend to suboptimize, which means that there are elements in the environment that we are likely to miss, and which means that our decision making is likely to be in either ineffective or, at a minimum, less effective. So the question becomes, how does all of this relate to critical thinking? So let's take a look. So this is what I would describe as the Johnson model of critical thinking. And let me give you a little background on this. So I settled on this model after teaching critical thinking here for about seven years now. I co-teach it with Captain John Meyer, who spoke earlier this morning. And I also developed and taught a similar course at the Army War College. And over the years, one of the things that I noticed is that students would begin the course with the self-perception that they were already very good critical thinkers based on their understanding of what is critical thinking. However, it turned out that their conception of critical thinking tended to run counter to the way in which we approach the course, which is heavily focused on cognitive development and evolving your mental complexity. I also realized that if you Google critical thinking, is anyone ever Google critical thinking, you get tons of responses. There are a whole bunch of different frameworks out there. There are a whole bunch of different definitions. So this led me to reimagine critical thinking as existing on a continuum rather than as a discrete, singularly defined variable. So on one end of that continuum is problem solving. And the other end of that continuum is mental agility with varying degrees of both in between. Critical thinking aligned with problem solving focuses on logic, with an emphasis on critical analysis. And that's using planning models and decision frameworks to focus on problem solving. Udallup would apply here. With critical thinking related to problem solving, also includes the application of tacit knowledge, T-A-C-I-T, tacit knowledge, which is insight gained from our experiences. Critical thinking aligned with mental agility emphasizes cognition. In other words, individual thinking abilities that are fluid in their application. So this is where you see the cognitive capacity to hold and reconcile multiple perspectives, to seek paradox, and thinking that is unconstrained by boundaries or convention. It is also at this end of the continuum where we see adaptive expertise. And what that means is having the ability to discern when routinized problem solving won't work, and instead engage more fluid and flexible thought to address more complex problems. So as we think back to Secretary Mattis' directive, here is where he is playing. The argument is, in this complex environment, we need a greater ability for higher order thinking, particularly as it relates to mental agility. So here is part of your challenge for this year. And that is to work to evolve in advance your cognitive capacity for mental agility. Now, if you already live in the fluid thinking lane, then think of this year as an opportunity to refine and strengthen your adaptive thinking abilities. If you live in the linear thinking lane, this is an opportunity to really stretch and evolve your mental complexity. Here are some tips for you if, there we go. So research and practice focuses on three different factors that we can focus on for facilitating our mental agility. Feel free to write this down, take pictures of it, if that is helpful for you. Those factors are defined as personal factors, task factors, and strategic factors. The personal factor quite simply is understanding your thinking preferences, as well as your thinking tendencies under certain situations. So it may be not only understanding whether you have a proclivity towards linear thinking or fluid thinking or somewhere in between, but also understanding and recognizing how you have a tendency to think under time pressure, for example, or during stressful situations. The task factor is recognizing that different problems or different situations demand different ways of thinking. The outer loop does not apply to everything and neither does unconventional thinking, which gets us to the strategic factor is strategically determining which way of thinking best fits the situation at hand. Along with those factors are what we call metacognitive strategies. Big word there, metacognitive thinking about thinking. In this instance, the strategy focuses on questioning. What are some questions that you can utilize to help expand the depth of your thinking? The first question is, am I grasping the information correctly? So rather than immediately honing in on a solution, which I see all of the time, stop and consciously process your understanding. The second question is, are we asking the right questions? It may be that the question being asked does not fully encapsulate the situation or the complexity of the environment. So let me add an exclamation point on this in terms of how important this particular strategy is. Last year, our team in the College of Leadership and Ethics developed and facilitated a leadership course for two-star admirals. And in that course, we covered some of these similar concepts as it relates to higher-order thinking. Someone's taken a picture, I'm in the way. During that course, one of the participants, two-star Navy SEAL, stated that this guidance to consider whether or not we are asking the right question was one of his biggest takeaways from the course. In his words, it was gold. So in other words, there is very real utility to engaging these strategies for advancing your higher-order thinking. And then the third question is, what are the alternative explanations? So I've settled on a decision or direction stopping and ascertaining whether or not there are other explanations for the conclusions that we have drawn. This is where you can build in the multiple perspectives because different lenses can see the same information in different ways. Am I grasping the information correctly? Are we asking the right questions and what are the alternative explanations for the information or the conclusions that we've drawn? I highly, highly encourage you to utilize these strategies continually and persistently throughout this year, whether during your seminar discussions, in writing your papers, and when reflecting upon your lectures, embracing and embodying these metacognitive strategies will help you advance your higher-order thinking skills. Now, I know it may seem like that we have offered an awful lot of theory and conceptual ideas, and I know that works very well for our big picture fluid thinkers, but I also know that I have a room for linear thinkers who need data and some lines. I have them for you. Our team last year conducted a flag officer study which examined the level of preparation of flag officers for their senior leadership roles. In this instance, we engaged 2308s and 1209s in very select operational billets, and essentially we examined their level of expertise on 31 previously identified competencies that are necessary for leading effectively at this level, as well as their development over the course of their careers to include their recommendations that essentially said, given what I know now, here's what I would recommend that the Navy does for developing its future senior leaders. Complex problems, decision effectiveness, and listening actively are three of the 31 competencies. I'm going to show you the results on that in the context of our discussion today on higher order thinking abilities. So I'll break these down to you. This is when you're supposed to say, ooh, ah. Okay, just making sure you're awake, thank you. All right, so one of the items was addressing structurally complex problems. So let's start with the top right hand. What we asked was, we asked two questions here. We asked, what level of addressing structurally complex problems is necessary for the flag role in general? That's the blue bar. The second question was, what level of expertise do you have in addressing structurally complex problems? That's the red bar. What do you notice? Yes, there's a clear gap there. And for my statisticians in the room, we did run statistical analysis. So these are the results that were statistically significant. So the bottom two graphs might provide some insight as to why that gap exists. On the bottom left, we asked them, how did they develop their expertise in addressing structurally complex problems, whether it was education training, experience, or self-study? Blue bar is their response. So experience is key. These flag officers said, I essentially develop my expertise in my ability for higher order thinking as it relates to structurally complex problems by experience. The red bar is their recommendation. The question was, what should, in this instance, the Navy do, or how should the Navy develop its officers as it relates to addressing structurally complex problems? And their recommendation is, we need more deliberate education on this critically important flag leader competency. The graph on the bottom right-hand corner ascertained when they developed their expertise in this critical capability. As you can see on the blue line, the majority of them as 06s and at the flag level. Their recommendation, we need to move that right and focus on it much earlier in an officer's career. So in other words, right now, you are in the sweet spot for developing your higher order thinking abilities, particularly as it relates to addressing structurally complex problems. If we look at the data for decision effectiveness, same gap, what's particularly interesting with respect to how to develop your decision effectiveness, these flag officers highly emphasize self-study in addition to more education and training. In other words, you have skin in this game and these officers identify, these flag officers identify the need for you or them as individuals to make a concerted effort to strengthen decision effectiveness. In other words, this isn't something that just happens by virtue of the role that you are in. Again, looking at when this was developed for most of these flag officers at the 05 level and that's primarily because that was when they assumed command. But as you can see for their recommendation is we need to be focusing on moving that much earlier in the career. This is a capability that we should continually work on developing. And lastly, I added this one listening actively. Listening actively actually caught us off guard a little bit when we were doing our analysis. Again, we had 31 competencies and part of our analysis was to determine based on these flag officers' experiences which ones were the most important for effective flag level leadership. Listening actively was among the top 10 competencies. Again, a gap in recognizing this is the level of listening actively that we need and here is the level of expertise that we have. Again, the same gap in terms of recommending more education and training and a deliberate focus on this capability. And then clearly I found this really interesting that these flag officers said they really developed their expertise in listening actively when they were 06s. But really this was something that we should be working to develop all along an officer's career. So even though you may be past the spike where we have the 02s and the 03s, what that means going back to something that Professor Anderson said in your responsibility for developing the climate and the people around you that part of that emphasis is helping them to develop this critical capability of listening actively. So finally, this year really is, as it relates to critical thinking, about developing your habits of mind. And particularly developing the mental capacity to adjust your thinking as the situation dictates. We as faculty and mentors will certainly provide you some guidance and perhaps even some tools or challenge you in your way of thinking, but ultimately the ownership for your leader development belongs to you. And so it is our expectation and our hope that you will work diligently to prepare yourselves for the cognitive demands of higher level leadership so that you can walk at the highest levels with confidence. I will stop there and give us exactly 15 minutes for questions. Thank you. Questions. It was that good? Thank you. You got nothing? There's one, there we go. Thank you. Yes ma'am. Commander Christie Montgomery Navy. Oftentimes when we've come to the Navy leader and ethics course, if we're preparing for executive officer or commanding officer roles, we're issued the Myers-Briggs personality indicator, type indicator tests. And then there's the other big five personality archetype tests. How do you feel like those correlate to our ability to either think linearly or fluidly or alternatively move up the cognitive spectrum towards self-authoring? They're all a part of, thank you, Christie. They're all a part of the helpful tools, if you will, to help us ascertain our preferences. And certainly when you do the Myers-Briggs, there is an association, for example, if you know your letters, if you're an ISTJ, that tends to mean that you have a preference for linear thinking. I think the takeaway from that is to understand where you are in relationship to where you need to go. So it doesn't mean that if my Myers-Briggs says I'm an ISTJ and this is just my preference and this is all that I can do, that I cannot stretch myself in the other direction. So for example, I am the complete opposite. I'm an ENFP. That means I think big stuff. I can barely hold my attention on anything. I'm easily distracted and all that good stuff, but I work for the military. So that means that I have had to consciously work to stretch myself in the other direction, to ascertain and understand when I need to take a more structured approach to something as opposed to a big conceptual approach. So I think it feeds our understanding, which is a part of that really important, those personal factors in your metacognitive strategies. The more you can understand yourself, the better able you are to work towards evolving your higher order thinking. All right, thank you. Someone else? There's one here and then there's one here. Go ahead, sir. Good afternoon, ma'am. Thank you for your comments. Thank you. I'm not sure if this... What's your name? I'm sorry, Captain Derek Westman. Okay. I'm not sure if this has a direct parallel, but from the strategic readiness review and the operational pause that we did, the standardization of deviation was kind of one of the things that came from that. And I think probably many people in this room felt some of the initiatives to kind of overcome that. But just my question kind of is more to the culture that we all grew up in. And we are held to accountable for things of thinking linearly throughout most of our careers. And while we speak to critical thinking and our evaluations and discussion, sometimes it's not necessarily rewarded or recognized or accepted. Sometimes you come up with a good idea and it kind of just fizzles on the way up whether we realize it or not. But how do we... At what level do we expect to start to develop this and develop it in our people? And when do we kind of start to really value that in a person's career? Okay, so let me answer the latter part of that first before addressing the earlier part of that. I think it's never too early to start working on developing that in your people. I mean, you see this from the flag leader study. Developing your critical thinking abilities isn't a one-time injection. It's not a shot. It's not a one-hour course. It says take this course and now you're critical thinking or an effective critical thinker. It is something that needs to be continually developed and to your point, reinforced. So the challenge or the reinforcement, I think you identify that very well and that ties back to Professor Myers' presentation on the bureaucracy. Unfortunately, the tendency of the bureaucracy will be to squash that, right? And so we are absolutely right in identifying that as a challenge and yes, the emphasis on standardization. It's not an either or. You need standardization, particularly for some of the things that you do, but it doesn't mean that you have to stop there. I can say from the Navy perspective that there are efforts underway to adjust the culture to be more receptive to inputs that may not fall in line with a straight way of thinking. I can also say, because our team focuses heavily on flag officer development, Professor Anderson mentioned earlier today that he has engaged what, 52 of some odd flag officers that those who are in the position to genuinely affect the culture and now recognizing this as well are in a position to begin to shape that. So you have an opportunity actually to shape that culture within your sphere of responsibility and there are efforts underway to strengthen the culture, particularly from the Navy's standpoint as well. I would emphasize, again, it doesn't have to be an either or, and you certainly have an opportunity to develop that within your people. Some makes sense? All right, and there was another one down here. And ma'am, thanks for your talk. Lieutenant Colonel Terry Brown in US Army. When we examine the corporate culture with their executive levels, what you find is on their calendar, they have lots and lots of time and space for thinking and just giving vision. Flipping that over to the Navy and all the services with studying flag officers and they all do this. So here, that's what they need to do. What's actually being done to give them more time to Secretary of Defense Manus's memo about thinking and not being directly involved in so many tactical levels. Yeah, thanks, Terry. That's a great question. So what are things that we emphasize as part of your leader development and certainly in building your higher order thinking skills is reflection. And you're absolutely right. You hear the word reflection and you think, I don't have time for that. You know, I got this, this, this, this and this. However, let me tell you why we started emphasizing reflection as part of the leader development process. Several years ago, I had an opportunity to sit on what I describe as one of the best leadership incubators that I've ever sat in on. And it was a couple of two stars and three stars, JTFs, et cetera. And they were involved in a conversation that just sort of naturally moved into this leadership discussion. And for the next two hours, they just talked about what they're good at, what they're bad at, what they've learned, what their challenges are. And one of those leaders said, I wish I had learned early in my career how important reflection would be to my leadership. And so now, I think he was a two star at the time, four star now, says I deliberately build white space into my calendar. All the people who work with me know that I have a certain block of time that is just my white space and it is protected for me to do just that. And it's not necessarily reflecting on my things to do. Here's a list of things that I need to check off and get done today, but rather an opportunity to think through the situation at hand. And so there's a deliberate requirement in there to build that into your schedule. How that works for you, I know some people may get up earlier, some people may build it in at lunchtime. We also had, I think last year, the general, the army general said he built it into his schedule as well, that he makes sure that there is a block of time that just allows him to think. Now, you could be like me, my best thinking time, this is probably TMI is in the shower, right? So it could be something like that, that there's something that you automatically naturally do. Maybe it's during your PT time that you can figure out a way if you are that dexterous to spend that time thinking and processing and reflecting, whereas when you are in your operational day to day, you just don't find the time to do that, but you can do it. If you find that it's important and necessary, you will find a way to do it. Another question back here. Lieutenant Commander Saad from Djibouti. As we know, necessity is the mother of innovation, and we know we study from critical thinking. Sometimes when I am very necessity, I think very critical. What is the related factor between both of them, like necessity and critical thinking? So what's the factor between necessity as the mother of invention and critical thinking? Yes, because sometimes when you are a problem, you think critical without automatically, but when you are normally, you want to think deeply, you can't do it. What is the factor relating this? Can you clarify at this point? To the best that I understand your question, what I think of innovation, the mother of necessity, that tends to lead me down the trail that there's a problem that needs to be solved. And so if there's a problem that needs to be solved, I may need to find some creative solution. That in and of itself, if we think of critical thinking as existing on this continuum, would absolutely align with critical thinking. I would also say though on the other end of that, if we're thinking proactively, so it's not necessarily we're responding to something, so we need to be creative to respond to a problem and find a solution. If we are thinking proactively, anticipating what may lie in the future or considering future situations, then that's when the fluid, the mental agility and the ability for adaptive thinking comes into play. So I guess my answer to your question is, they're interrelated. They're certainly associated. I don't necessarily see them as separate entities, but rather that critical thinking absolutely can feed into this notion of needing to be inventive and innovative and creative to solve a problem, but also to think proactively to perhaps address a problem that you don't even know exists at the moment. Does it make sense? Okay, all right. I think we have time for at least one more question. There's one back here. Hi, ma'am. Jeff Hutchinson from Canada. I'm wondering if you've noticed or researched any generational tendencies towards the fluidity of thinking. Just thinking that the younger generation may be more open to different ideas and different processes. Yeah, I have not researched that, but I can, I would probably agree with that assumption, potentially. And I think that gets back to the question that was asked of Dr. Cavalero in terms of nurture versus nature. I think we exist in an environment now that is a lot less structured than the environment that many of us grew up in that would shape the way that we might think or even the way our households are structured. So I don't know of any particular research that says that, but I would hypothesize that there are potentially some differences in those preferences. I will say that there are some identifiable differences with respect to organizations and the structure of organizations. So if I were to ask that same question of, which one is your comfort zone at a tech startup or something very entrepreneurial, it would likely be more in the fluid lane. Here, by the nature of what y'all do for a living, there's an awful lot of standardization which would align with an inherent and natural tendency towards the linear thinking. All right. I actually have two more minutes. So anyone have another before we take, I shouldn't say take a quick, okay, there we go. There's one right there. Hi, ma'am. Dougal Clelland from Australia. So based on the presentations today, we now understand critical thinking is going to be important for innovation and dealing with complexity. I expect this afternoon we'll be given a moral and ethical framework in which to do that. How do I then negotiate and sell my ideas across agencies and up the chain of command? Because that was raised as a point today. So it appears that negotiation for us is the next piece in the puzzle. Where do you see that fitting in our development as future senior leaders, strategic thinkers, the ability to sell our ideas that we've developed through your critical thinking? Oh, okay. So if I understand your question correctly, I'm gonna say Mr. Australia, is how does critical thinking fit into requirements for negotiation at the higher levels? Negotiation and being able to develop these higher ideas. The competencies embodied some of those abilities, if I would say it that way. So for example, the broadening perspectives, being able to hold and understand multiple perspectives is a key aspect of being able to negotiate or offer broader ideas as senior leaders. You ask whether or not there is a specific model or framework for that, correct? And whether or not we'll be presenting you with specific models and frameworks to do those specific things. So let me answer that question in two ways. There is an elective, if you're looking specifically, I think they're still an elective, if you're looking specifically on tools for how to negotiate and sell your ideas, there is an elective on that. But I will say more importantly, I shouldn't say more importantly, I would say more over that developing that capability is intertwined with advancing your mental complexity. Because if you think about what Dr. Cavillero talked about, if I am working towards expanding my mental complexity, that means that I'm also developing this ability to share and interpret and develop ideas beyond what I am normally accustomed to doing. So my sense is that as you are going through the development, not only in the leadership or the profession of arms courses, but in the way that you are going to be engaging in your seminars, you will develop some skills and abilities to do the very things that you're asking about. One of the things that I would challenge you with is that a model or framework has utility, but there are times when a model or framework will actually not get you to the correct end. What I have found, particularly in our critical thinking work, is there is a tendency to rely upon models that can be stifling. So they may serve as a good tool or a good starting point, but if that is our primary reliance, then particularly in a complex environment, the models or frameworks can lead us to sub-optimize. So I think as you are going through your coursework here, both in terms of the core courses, the leadership or profession of arms, as well as any electives that you might take, I would take your question, which I think is a really good one. And at certain points during that learning, stop and ask, this is the reflection part. Stop and ask, how is this helping me to develop the abilities to do the very things that you're looking at doing? And that's the part that Dr. Cavalero is talking about in terms of being able to use your experiences, learn from your experiences, learn from your current experiences to get after the questions that you are most after. Make sense? All right, I like that. All right, thank you very much. We're gonna take a 15-minute break, and I am really bad at math because I'm on the other end of that spectrum, so 33 plus 15 means 48. All right, thank you.