Thinking Like Historians: A Secret Weapon for Public Leaders

Strategic Thinking in Public Affairs

Strategic thinking in public affairs requires not only forecasting future developments but also reflecting on past events to understand how outcomes unfolded. This dual perspective, looking forward as strategists do and backward as historians do, is crucial for those preparing for leadership roles in government. Lawrence Freedman, in his seminal work Strategy: A History, explores the dynamic between planning and retrospection, emphasizing that strategy is not a rigid set of instructions, but a continuous process influenced by context, contingency, and human behavior (Freedman 2013). Too often, public servants approach challenges with a preferred outcome in mind, failing to consider the broader set of possibilities that might arise. By adopting a mindset that simulates hindsight before action, what could be termed a “historian’s foresight," public administrators and policy advisors can improve decision-making, anticipate unintended consequences, and respond to complexity with agility.

Practitioner Insights and Best Practices

Government practitioners who have navigated complex policy environments often stress the importance of scenario planning and red teaming... tools that mirror the historian’s capacity to reconstruct events and consider alternative outcomes. Scenario planning, as employed by the U.S. Department of Defense and intelligence agencies, involves developing multiple plausible futures to assess the resilience of strategies under various conditions (Gompert, Binnendijk, and Lin 2014). This technique requires decision-makers to suspend their preferences and instead analyze how various forces (i.e., political, economic, social, and environmental) could interact to shift trajectories.

Scenario Planning and COVID-19 Response

For example, during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) employed scenario-based modeling to anticipate how the virus might spread under different policy interventions. This approach allowed federal and state officials to weigh the impacts of lockdowns, mask mandates, and vaccination campaigns based on a range of plausible outcomes rather than a single forecast (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2020). While not all projections materialized, the mindset of exploring multiple futures helped guide resource allocation and policy timing.

Red Teaming as a Strategic Tool

Another method aligned with the historian’s foresight is red teaming. Popularized by military and intelligence communities, red teaming involves assigning a group to challenge prevailing assumptions, test plans, and identify vulnerabilities before a decision is finalized (Zenko 2015). In Kansas, the Department of Health and Environment created a red team to evaluate its pandemic response plans, uncovering gaps in communication, supply chain management, and public messaging. These findings led to revised protocols that improved the state’s readiness for subsequent waves (Kansas Department of Health and Environment 2021).

Institutionalizing After-Action Learning

Practitioners also emphasize the importance of structured post-event reviews. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), for instance, institutionalizes After-Action Reports (AARs) following major disasters. These reports not only assess what occurred but also explore what could have happened under different circumstances. By treating each event as a case study in alternative outcomes, agencies are better positioned to refine procedures and train personnel for future contingencies (FEMA 2021).

Adaptive Programming in International Development

This approach has also been adopted in international development. The U.K.’s Department for International Development (DFID), now part of the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, regularly conducts scenario reviews of failed and successful programs to understand the interplay of local politics, institutional capacity, and cultural dynamics. These reviews often lead to adaptive programming, where strategies evolve in real time instead of adhering to static plans (Wild, Booth, and Valters 2017).

The Core Lesson for Strategy

From these examples, a key lesson emerges: strategic success in government settings is less about precise prediction and more about cultivating a mindset that embraces uncertainty. By imagining that an event has already taken place, and analyzing it with the benefit of hindsight, public professionals can better anticipate the range of possible developments and respond with greater flexibility.

Key Takeaways

• Adopt a historian’s foresight: Reframe upcoming decisions by imagining they have already occurred. Analyze what went right, what went wrong, and what alternative paths could have been taken. This exercise encourages consideration of multiple possibilities, reducing the risk of tunnel vision.

• Use scenario planning to test strategy resilience: Develop several well-researched scenarios that reflect different future conditions. Evaluate how your strategy performs across these scenarios to identify weaknesses and adaptive levers.

• Implement red teaming to challenge assumptions: Create structured opportunities for dissent and critical review. Red teams can uncover blind spots in planning and help prevent groupthink, particularly in high-stakes policy environments.

• Institutionalize after-action learning: Review every major initiative or response not only to document what occurred, but to explore how events could have evolved differently. Use these reviews to inform future training, planning, and resource decisions.

• Accept uncertainty as a strategic constant: Recognize that strategy involves dynamic interaction with unpredictable elements. Embracing, rather than resisting, uncertainty allows for more agile and responsive governance.

References

1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2020. “COVID-19 Pandemic Planning Scenarios.” U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scenarios.html.

2. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). 2021. COVID-19 Pandemic Response: After-Action Report. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

3. Freedman, Lawrence. 2013. Strategy: A History. New York: Oxford University Press.

4. Gompert, David C., Hans Binnendijk, and Bonny Lin. 2014. Blinders, Blunders, and Wars: What America and China Can Learn. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation.

5. Kansas Department of Health and Environment. 2021. COVID-19 Response Review: Red Team Findings and Recommendations. Topeka, KS.

6. Wild, Leni, David Booth, and Craig Valters. 2017. Putting Theory into Practice: How DFID Is Doing Development Differently. London: Overseas Development Institute.

7. Zenko, Micah. 2015. Red Team: How to Succeed by Thinking Like the Enemy. New York: Basic Books.