Promoting Individual and Team Cognitive Readiness in Complex Domains

In the complex operational environments that prevail in many organizations, successful operations depend more on the ability to adapt to novel, emerging situations, rather than repeating a learned, proscribed task sequence. In these situations, the cognitive readiness of the individuals and teams involved is critical to insuring mission success. Our understanding of the factors underlying cognitive readiness, the interaction among those factors, and their impact on performance outcomes, however, is still developing. The current paper describes several recent research projects aimed at improving our understanding of cognitive readiness. It details the significant findings of these research efforts and suggests directions for future research needed to fully capitalize on the potential for cognitive readiness measures to predict performance