The University of Foreign Military and Cultural Studies (UFMCS), brings a unique, tailored approach to providing education focused on decision support. The core of our curriculum is based on applied critical thinking, fostering cultural empathy, self-awareness and reflection, and groupthink mitigation. Our premise is that people and organizations court failure in predictable ways, and that they do so by degrees, almost imperceptible, and that they do so according to their mindset, biases, and experience, which are formed in large part by culture and context. Our education involves more than Socratic discussion and brainstorming. We believe that good decision processes are essential to good outcomes. To that end, our curriculum is rich in divergent processes, red team tools, and liberating structures, all aimed at decision support. We borrow techniques, methods, frameworks, and best practices from several sources and disciplines to create an education and practical application method that we find to be the best safeguard against individual and organizational tendencies toward biases, errors in cognition, and groupthink. Our approach has proven effective in units and organizations from brigades to the Joint Staff.
