This article describes an easy and effective technique for developing your ability to make good decisions under stress. Many of our previous posts have "painted the picture" of some of the challenges we face, and presented tactics, techniques, and concepts that can help you get through them successfully. But they're just words on paper.

You need practice to internalize these lessons, and to gain the confidence that comes from encountering a sudden, threatening problem and instead of freezing like the proverbial deer in the headlights, thinking to yourself, "I recognize this – I've seen it before, I know what's happening, and I know what to do."

Now, you would be very lucky indeed if anywhere in your education and training you'd been presented with exactly the wicked problem that just jumped around the corner at you. That's unlikely to happen. But what we can do is present you with a wide range of plausible scenarios, each one adding to the fund of experience that you'll fall back on when action is needed "right now" in some future situation. Your thought process will actually be a little more like this: "I recognize this – I've seen and solved problems a lot like this before; I've got a good idea about what will work, and what won't. Here's what I'm going to do."

The scenarios we'll present will range from simple to complex, and from low consequence to life-threatening. Some will be tactical problems, some will be social problems, and some will be simple but critical personal survival problems.

The technique is one developed a few decades ago by the U.S. Marine Corps: the Tactical Decision Game, or TDG. Here's how it works.

The idea is to put the participant (you, dear reader) in the role of a leader or an individual facing a problem with limited time and information, and require him to quickly come up with a solution.

We call it a "game" but the TDG is not an interactive game. The TDG presents a specific problem and asks for a solution. It is traditionally used in a group setting that permits discussion and critique of solutions, but it can also be presented in printed form for readers to study and respond, and that's what we're doing here; although, if you have friends, family, or a group that shares your concerns over what lies ahead, you can share these problems in a group of any size. Either way, the problem-solving piece is not a group exercise – each individual participant comes up with his own solution independently.

It's easy and economical. The way to approach these TDGs is to read the scenario description, and jot down the first solution that comes to mind. Take a couple of minutes to refine your solution – if it starts to look impractical or unlikely to work, discard it and come up with something else. This is exactly how Recognition Primed Decision Making works in the real world – something we discussed in detail in Community Defense Part 4. Your solution should not take more than a sentence or two to describe – write it down, and then write a short paragraph explaining your rationale. Come back to Standing Tall in a week or two, and you will find our follow-up: we will recap the scenario, provide two or three solutions that others have offered, discuss and critique those solutions, and refer you to relevant posts in ST, or to other sources that might provide useful preparation, guidance, or better options for that kind of scenario. Chances are there will be some similarities to your own solution, or you may have taken an entirely different approach. There's no right or wrong, it's only practice for making decisions in limited time with incomplete information. The more you practice, the faster and better you will be.

If you decide to make it a group activity, you will start as the facilitator. You only need a safe and reasonably comfortable area to gather – it could be classroom with a whiteboard, a living room, or a smooth patch of dirt under a tree that you can draw on with a stick. Some scenarios will be simple enough that a simple description will be sufficient, while some will benefit from a sketch map, diagram, or other simple graphic. If you use the scenarios we present, you can just read them to your audience and share any graphic that we provide.

From the participant's point of view, a TDG conducted in a group setting works like this:

  • You will be presented with a tactical problem, describing a scenario and your role in it at a particular "snapshot in time." You're then asked the question, "What do you do now?"
  • You get only the information that you would have at that point in the situation. You can request clarifications or additional information, but the facilitator may not give you much more. That's just how it works.
  • You'll be given a limited amount of time – usually just a few minutes, and for a simple problem, even less – to come up with a course of action. Solve the problem, don't critique it; no matter how unlikely, unfair, or impossible it seems, it is what you have. Deal with it. Again, it's not an interactive wargame – you're not competing with anyone, or playing a chess-like, multi-step action-reaction-counteraction cycle in your solution. It's both easier and harder than that. Solve the immediate problem. Branches and sequels – what you might have done different if you found out more about the situation, or what your next actions would be, are fine for future exercises, but each one of those would be its own TDG scenario. Your solution can't be, "Well, if x, y, or z were the case, then I'd…" Just solve the problem in front of you, with the information you are given.
  • The facilitator selects you to describe your course of action and why you chose it – give a short rationale. If the scenario placed you in a leadership position, the solution would sound like the orders or instructions you would give to others. If you're alone in the scenario, then it's just, "I'm going to do this… and here's why."
  • The group is then free to discuss that solution. The facilitator keeps the conversation on track and stops it before it goes down the rabbit hole of endless "what ifs."
  • The facilitator then asks if anyone else has a course of action significantly different than yours; if there is one, he presents it, and it gets discussed and critiqued like yours was; and so on. Since anyone might be called upon, everyone has to do their own work. The only bad solution is no solution at all.
  • As a participant, you should try to come up with the best course of action you can, even though it seems like you don't have enough time or information. Real world scenarios are time-competitive. Not only must you make good decisions, but you have to make them quickly. If you don't, even a sound decision will be irrelevant because it will be too late.

Do this a few times to get the hang of it, and you'll find yourself coming up with your own scenarios, based on your own situation and concerns – and so will any others you share this technique with. The great thing about running TDG's in a group is that you learn how others approach problems, learn from them as they learn from you, and perhaps very importantly, you'll develop the ability to predict how they might react in a crisis that doesn't allow you to communicate and come up with an agreed-upon plan or solution. We talked about this too, in Community Defense Part 4, as Implicit Communications and Implicit Command.

The next page presents your first scenario. Enjoy! And watch for our follow-up discussion next week.


Scenario STAS-1: Ditched

It was a good weekend visiting your freshman son at UW in Laramie. It's Sunday, and you and your wife started the five-hour drive home later than you had planned, but you have to get home; the neighbor who was taking care of the dogs is off to North Dakota tonight and the house is going to be a mess if you don't get back.

There's another storm moving in along the I-80 corridor, the temperature is dropping fast out of the mid-30s, and a winter storm watch is in effect. Nothing new about that, it's life in Wyoming. You've got new tires on your 2008 super-cab truck, a full tank of gas, and should be far enough north, quick enough to avoid the worst of it.

North of Medicine Bow, it becomes clear that someone has blundered. The snow is really coming down, with several inches on the highway already, although it's hard to judge in the strong crosswind. There's a WYDOT crew pulling over at the road closure gate as you drive through, feeling lucky to get past it, and still optimistic. It may be slow-go to Casper, but then you'll be home free.

Half an hour on, it's not quite white-out conditions – you can still see the base of the closest wind turbine tower. Although it looks like at least a foot of snow on the road, with no plows in sight, you're pressing on – no choice at this point. Then the rear wheels break loose on a curving downgrade. Violent fishtailing leads to a full spin on the ice you hoped wasn't forming under the snow. After a full 360, you've lost most of your speed, but your passenger side wheels drop off the edge of the shoulder and the embankment is just a bit too steep. The truck tips, rolls over, and ends up in the bottom of the ditch on its wheels.

The road bed to your left is well above your eye level, and the wind had drifted the snow deep enough that where your roll didn't compact it, it's over the hood and almost covers the passenger side windows, which broke out in the rollover. The rest of the glass is badly damaged but still in place. There was no frontal impact, so the air bags didn't deploy, and you are both still belted in. Your wife, however, has a cut on her temple that's bleeding freely. The engine stalled and won't re-start.

The manufacturer's first aid kit, that you've never opened, is strapped to the bulkhead behind the rear seat. Your winter coats – her thigh-length down jacket and your hooded Carhartt – were on the seat, with gloves and hats, a lap blanket, your two overnight bags, a bottle of water and a bag of pretzels. Looks like the inside of a washing machine back there now, the way the spin and roll agitated everything, and it's all tossed with snow that was scooped in through the broken windows. There are hand tools, duct tape, a shovel, folding reflective triangles, and a flashlight in the tool box behind the cab, at the front of the open bed. You're both dressed in jeans, sweaters, and lightweight hiking shoes.

It's 3:00pm, overcast, with continuing blizzard conditions. You have no cellular signal.

What do you do now?