Join the Mission Critical Team Institute

OUR MISSION

Improve the Success, Survivability, and Sustainability of Mission Critical Teams

If tomorrow you were told that you had six months to build a team to resolve a future radical change event, how would you do it? How do you teach something you may not have a language for? How do you teach someone to ride a bike? As soon as you start considering this problem, you encounter the Tacit Knowledge Transfer Problem. Just because you may be an expert cyclist does not mean you possess the language or the skills to be an expert cycling instructor.

What would be your methodologies, frameworks, and/or underlying assumptions?

Our goal, in partnering with both researchers and practitioners, is to develop collaborative applied research focused on helping Mission Critical Teams effectively detect, recognize, react, respond, and recover from the radical change events caused by rapidly emergent complex adaptive problem sets

The Instructor Cadres within Emergency Medicine, Urban and Wildland Fire, Tactical Law Enforcement, or Military Special Operations face this problem every day. The Mission Critical Team Institute was founded to partner with Mission Critical Team Instructor Cadres to develop a more precise and scientifically valid language, to more efficiently and effectively transfer tacit knowledge.

OUR HISTORY

The original Mission Critical Team Initiative (MCTI) was founded in 2016 at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania with the purpose of trying to understand and improve how individuals and teams learn to navigate uncertainty. It was created at the urging of specific teams within the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command and the Federal Bureau of Investigation out of a need for an independent applied research and education organization focused on improving Recruitment, Assessment, Selection, Training, Education, and Professional Development of the human factors within Mission Critical Teams. In 2018, the initiative transitioned into the independent Mission Critical Team© Institute, which currently serves a collaborative inquiry community that includes teams in Aerospace (NASA), Military Special Operations (FVEY Community), Tactical Law Enforcement, Urban and Wilderness Fire Fighting, Mission Critical Medicine, and Professional Sports from around the world. Our intent is to support teams to continuously develop their internal resources so that their missions become more successful, sustainable, and survivable through:

Collaborative Inquiry: MCTI Applied Research Model

MCTI is an applied research, training, and education institute which utilizes a “Collaborative Inquiry” research model allowing us to engage in research WITH, rather than ON, our partners. To better protect the privacy of both the teams, and individuals, within the MCTI community, we have adopted the New Zealand Kaupapa Māori engagement principles of initiation, benefits, representation, legitimation, and accountability [23].

Observation Stage: Observing a Novel Phenomenon and research initiation.

Through ongoing engagements and observations of our partner teams, we often encounter emergent issues facing the team’s human factors. Once the issue is identified and seen to be both emergent and in need of investigation, we will author a “Green Paper.”

Green Paper: Ideation and Representation Stage

A Green Paper is an initial description of an emergent issue or opportunity facing MCTs which we author and distribute to the MCTI community to determine if the issue warrants further investigation. A green paper is typically released utilizing the “unfinished principle” to encourage maximum engagement from the MCTI community.

Gray Paper: Legitimation and Accountability Stage

After receiving feedback from the MCTI community and engaging in rigorous academic research, MCTI will transition the Green Paper into a Gray Paper. This is our method for peer review to ensure that the community (which includes team members, academics, and subject matter experts) has an opportunity for final comments or objections. Once those comments are captured and validated, the paper is turned into a White Paper.

White Paper: Final Stage

The final paper is then reformatted into a white paper and distributed to the teams, such as our Residue article.

In cases where our teams are public-facing, or wish to share the research, we will also partner with them to formally publish our findings, such as:

A Better Approach to After-Action Reviews, Angus Fletcher, Preston B. Cline, and Matthew Hoffman, Harvard Business Review, January 12, 2023

A Novel Framework for Routine Versus Critical Communication in Surgical Education—Don’t Take It Personally, Falk, David MD; Cline, Preston EdD; Donegan, Derek MD, MBA; Mehta, Samir MDJournal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons 31(3):p 115-121, February 1, 2023. | DOI: 10.5435/JAAOS-D-22-00912

Update the Curriculum

The information in the White Paper is then reformatted into the curriculum we teach within our MCTI courses which allows us to constantly update our curriculum based on emergent findings from the teams themselves. Our goal is to update modules within our curriculum every 6 to 12 months in order to provide teams with the tools they will need “on Monday.”

Research Distribution

The final step in our process is to record an interview with the authors on our podcast called the MCTI “Teamcast,” where we discuss and explain our ongoing research to the general public.

DETECTION

The human brain is constantly engaged in unconscious threat detection. Effective training can increase the speed and accuracy of that detection system.
RECOGNITION

Recognizing emerging threats in complex environments requires more precise pattern recognition and greater cortical authority.
REACTION

To override our inherent fight, flight, freeze response we need to develop intentional automated motor skills. To do this requires the refinement of technique through perfect practice.
RESPONSE

To sustainably and successfully navigate radical change events Operators require the cortical authority to rapidly transition between reaction and response. Response is the ability to think while acting.
RECOVERY

Individuals and teams that can’t find a way to recover after loss will be unable to sustain high performance.

Collaborative Inquiry Community

The Mission Critical Team Initiative was created to support those teams by inviting them into a Collaborative Inquiry Community to share effective practices, validate applied research, and innovate in the area of learning, instruction, and professional development.

We hope that this community will act as an incubator for innovative practices related to questions such as: How do we develop expertise to navigate complex environments? How do we maintain expertise, once we have it? How do we construct and maintain high-performance teams in the face of ongoing adversity?

NEUROSCIENCE RESEARCH

HUMAN PERFORMANCE RESEARCH

SCREENING & SELECTION

AEROSPACE

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

FIREFIGHTING

Fire Department of New York (FDNY)
National Advanced Fire and Resource Institute (NAFRI)
San Diego Fire and Rescue Department (SDFRD)
U.S. Forest Service — Wildland Fire (USFS)
U.S. National Park Service — Wildland Fire (USNPS)
Austin Fire Department
Orange County Fire Authority

TACTIC LAW ENFORCEMENT

Federal Bureau of Investigation
U.S. Secret Service

MEDICINE

Cleveland Clinic
Stanford University Emergency and Trauma Medicine
University of Pennsylvania Traumatology
Shock Trauma Center at the University of Maryland
Mayo Clinic

MILITARY SPECIAL OPERATIONS

Australian Special Operations Command (AUSSOCOMD)
Canadian Special Operations Command (CANSOFCOM)
New Zealand Special Operations Forces (NZSOF)
United Kingdom Special Forces (UKSF)
U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC)
U.S. Army Special Operations Command (USASOC)
U.S. Army Special Operations Aviation Command (USASOAC)
U.S. Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC)
U.S. Marine Corps Special Operations Command (MARSOC)
U.S. Naval Special Warfare (NSW)

MILITARY TRAINING & EDUCATION

U.S. Air Force Weapons School (USAF-WS)
U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School (SWCS)
Naval Special Warfare Training Command

NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS

Team Rubicon — International Crisis Response (TR)
Station Foundation FDNY Foundation
Navy SEAL Foundation

PROFESSIONAL SPORTS

Cleveland Indians (Major League Baseball)
Philadelphia Eagles (National Football League)
Pittsburgh Pirates (Major League Baseball)
Toronto Blue Jays (Major League Baseball)
Cleveland Browns
New Zealand All Blacks
Pittsburg Penguins
Philadelphia 76ers
Melbourne Storm

Our Programs

Collaborative Inquiry Programs
These are educational courses from two to five days in duration on issues such as Assessment and Selection, Instructor Cadre Development Program, Leadership of Tactical Swarms, Detachment Commander Course, and others.

Facilitated
Retreats
These are one to two-day retreats for intact teams experiencing some type of transition.

Research and Development
Members of our team will come to your site to observe the training and education of your personnel and collaborate with the team to prototype solutions to emergent problems.

Public
Speaking
Our faculty are available to speak at larger Mission Critical Team Events.

Mission Critical Teams

Co-Founder, Director: Dr. Preston B. Cline
Co-Founder, Emeritus: Coleman Ruiz

Director MCTI Australia & New Zealand:
Harry Moffitt

Mission: To improve the success, survivability, and sustainability of MCTs via collaboration and applied research focusing on rapidly emergent complex adaptive problem sets.

Mission Critical Medicine Program Director & Chief Medical Officer:
Dr. Dan Dworkis

Mission: To improve the success, survivability, and sustainability both of medical teams operating in mission critical environments and of mission critical teams operating in medical capacities.

Mission Critical Psychology
Program Director:
Dr. Art Finch

Mission: Mission Critical Psychology was founded on a strength, or asset-based, framework focused on supporting operators to make meaning of the residue which emerges from their lived experiences. Individuals who have chosen the hard path continue to need the skills and knowledge to navigate their world without being labeled as broken or in need of fixing.

Mission Critical Story
Program Director:
Clare Murphy

Mission: To support individuals and MCTs in bringing intention and understanding to the narratives they use to describe themselves and their world and influence their destinies. MCTI believes that storytelling is not a soft skill but an ancient technology designed for increased understanding and retention and that MCTs are fundamentally communities with storytelling cultures.

The MCTI Team

The Team

Co-Founder
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DR. PRESTON B. CLINE
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DR. PRESTON B. CLINE
Co-Founder

Dr. Preston B. Cline is the Co-Founder and Principal at the Mission Critical Team Institute where he spends his time as Director of Research. After beginning his career in the late 1980’s leading 60-day remote wilderness trips with adjudicated youth out of New Jersey he has since been cold wet tired and hungry on all seven continents leading both terrestrial and ocean expeditions. His previous training as a Wilderness Emergency Medical Technician, an NAUI Rescue Diver and an Ocean Lifeguard Trainer meant that Preston has led primary, secondary and tertiary responses to numerous critical and catastrophic incidents. It was these experiences that were the catalyst for 30 years of academic research on human interaction with uncertainty. The question of why some people make it, while others do not. Preston has received a Bachelor’s of Science from Rutgers University, a Masters of Education from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education, and a Doctorate in Education from the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. Since 2008 his primary research and practice has focused on supporting the Instructor Cadres of Mission Critical Teams: Small (4-12 agents), integrated groups of indigenously trained and educated experts that leverage tools and technology to resolve complex adaptive problems in an immersive, but constrained (five minutes or less), temporal environments, where the consequence of failure can be catastrophic. These instructor cadres represent Collaborative Inquiry Communities of Practice within Military Special Operations, Emergency Medicine, Tactical Law Enforcement, Aerospace and Urban and Wilderness Fire Fighting Organizations within Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom and the United States. When he is not working with Cadre, he resides outside Philadelphia with his extraordinary spouse Amy who, when not teaching, plans and leads their international sailing expeditions. Preston@missioncti.com
Co-Founder
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COLEMAN RUIZ
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COLEMAN RUIZ
Co-Founder

As a Co-Founder, Principal, and Director of Performance at the Mission Critical Team Institute (MCTI), Coleman focuses primarily on the applications and practices of Mission Critical Teams which are small (4-12 agents) integrated groups of indigenously trained and educated experts that leverage tools and technology to resolve complex adaptive problems. Mission Critical Teams operate in immersive but constrained (300 seconds or less), temporal environments where the consequence of failure can be catastrophic. Coleman is a U.S. Naval Academy graduate and former officer in the Naval Special Warfare community (U.S. Navy SEALs). Coleman spent 13 years on active duty in the U.S. Navy serving overseas during six (6) combat deployments in both the Afghanistan and Iraq theaters of war. While serving as a troop commander and joint task force commander, Coleman led hundreds of operations and dozens of sensitive military programs. He also served in U.S. Embassies in both Yemen and Kenya working directly with the Ambassador’s country team and host nation forces. Coleman also served as both a basic and advanced training officer in Naval Special Warfare, and is a former Director of Human Performance at the Naval Special Warfare Development Group. Through the MCTI, he’s now serving both the instructor cadre and students from training pipelines where he led the training, education, and development of the U.S. Navy’s most advanced special operations programs. In addition to his work at the MCTI, Coleman has also served as a trainer, educator, and advisor for dozens of collegiate and professional athletic organizations. He serves as a U.S. Naval Academy Trustee for Athletic and Scholarship Programs. He’s a General Partner at special asset holding company, Anchor Capital Holdings, and a board member of a former portfolio company. In his “free” time, Coleman has served as the Executive Director of Carry the Load in Dallas, TX, a 501(c)3, as a board member at Tip of the Spear, a veteran-focused non-profit, and is a volunteer mentor at both the Station Foundation, and the COMMIT Foundation, both veteran transition programs. Coleman graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy with a B.S. in Mathematics and earned an MBA in Finance at the Government School of Business & Public Policy from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA. He lives in Annapolis, MD with his wife Bridget Ruiz and their three children, Coleman (age 16), Ben (age 13), and Oliver (age 9). Coleman@missioncti.com

Director of Operations
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JANESE JACKSON
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JANESE JACKSON
Director of Operations

Janese Jackson is the Director of Operations at Mission Critical Team Institute. After receiving her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania and a Master of Science in Business Management from the University of Notre Dame, she went on to pursue a career in event planning and coordination with Wharton Leadership Ventures at the Wharton School of Business. For almost four years she facilitated self-discovery, leadership and character development for MBA and Undergraduate students while coordinating these ventures and traveling domestically and abroad. Now as the Director of Operations at MCTI, Janese leverages her leadership and management skills to insure all coordinated events, seminars and courses for the Instructor Cadres of Mission Critical Teams are completed to the satisfaction of our member organizations. Janese is responsible for ensuring that day to day communications and logistics of MCTI run smoothly and effectively. When not working, Janese is an amateur chef, always trying out new recipes and ingredients in the kitchen, and traveling to new countries with her family. Janese@missioncti.com
DIRECTOR
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HARRY MOFFITT
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HARRY MOFFITT
DIRECTOR

Harry Moffitt is a Director at the Mission Critical Team Institute (MCTI) responsible for operations in Australia and New Zealand. He focuses on the capability and practice development of mission critical teams across emergency medicine, urban and wildland fire, tactical law enforcement, aerospace, and military Special Operations. A former SAS Team Commander, Harry spent 28 years with the Australian Defence Force, including over 20 years with Special Operations. He completed 11 active service deployments globally, including being wounded in action in 2008. Harry completed his time with the SAS as its Director of High-Performance and senior cadre instructor. Harry is a registered psychologist having received a Master of Psychology from Deakin University in Victoria, Australia. His primary research and practice remains dedicated to the instructor cadres of mission critical teams: small (4-12 agents), integrated groups of indigenously trained and educated experts that leverage tools and technology to resolve complex adaptive problems in an immersive, but constrained (five minutes or less), temporal environments, where the consequence of failure can be catastrophic. In addition to his work at the MCTI Harry is CEO for his own performance company and is the founder of the Wanderers Education Program, a multimillion-dollar initiative that provides current serving operators with education opportunities. He is also serves as the Victorian State Manager for the Wandering Warriors—a veteran transition organisation—and is a partner with Point Assist a veteran adventure and expedition training program. Harry lives in Melbourne, Australia, with his wife Danielle, and has two adult children Georgia and Henry. Harry@missioncti.com

Director of Story
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CLARE MURPHY
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CLARE MURPHY
Director of Story

Clare Murphy is a Director of Story at Mission Critical Team Institute USA. Dublin born, now based in Bristol UK, Clare has worked as an international storyteller since 2006. She was raised by an actor and a poet, and began her life as a storyteller at the age of 30. She learned her craft by watching storytellers from 2001-2006 before beginning her career as a performer. Since then Clare has performed in more than 20 countries and in two languages. Because storytelling can work in a formal and non-formal environment (i.e. she does not need a stage, a costume, or any props) Clare has performed in a lot of unusual situations including at a dinner for the former President of Ireland, for 120 quantum physicists at the Von Karman Lecture Series for NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and for the General Public at the National Theatre London. Her performances can last anything from two minutes to two hours. She has performed in converted potato cellars, medieval roundhouses, beaches, castles, theatres, art centres and universities. Clare has been teaching and training all kinds of groups to use storytelling skills since 2007 from veterans to actors, scientists, academics, lawyers and sports coaches. She has a BA International from National University of the Arts at Galway in English and Spanish. When not working, Clare is a wild gardener, book addict, and world traveller. Clare@missioncti.com
Chief Medical Officer
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DAN DWORKIS
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DAN DWORKIS
Chief Medical Officer

Dan Dworkis, MD PhD FACEP is the Chief Medical Officer at the Mission Critical Team Institute, a board-certified emergency physician, and an assistant professor of emergency medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. He performed his emergency medicine residency with Harvard Medical School at the Harvard Affiliated Emergency Medicine Residency at Massachusetts General Hospital / Brigham Health, and holds an MD and PhD in molecular medicine from the Boston University School of Medicine. Dr. Dworkis is the founder of The Emergency Mind Project, and the author of The Emergency Mind: Wiring Your Brain for Performance Under Pressure. Dan@missioncti.com

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Join the Mission Critical Team Institute

OUR MISSION

OUR HISTORY

Collaborative Inquiry: MCTI Applied Research Model

DETECTION

RECOGNITION

REACTION

RESPONSE

RECOVERY

Collaborative Inquiry Community

NEUROSCIENCE RESEARCH

HUMAN PERFORMANCE RESEARCH

SCREENING & SELECTION

AEROSPACE

FIREFIGHTING

TACTIC LAW ENFORCEMENT

MEDICINE

MILITARY SPECIAL OPERATIONS

MILITARY TRAINING & EDUCATION

NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS

PROFESSIONAL SPORTS

Our Programs

Mission Critical Teams

The MCTI Team

The Team

Co-Founder

DR. PRESTON B. CLINE

DR. PRESTON B. CLINE

Co-Founder

Co-Founder

COLEMAN RUIZ

COLEMAN RUIZ

Co-Founder

Director of Operations

JANESE JACKSON

JANESE JACKSON

Director of Operations

DIRECTOR

HARRY MOFFITT

HARRY MOFFITT

DIRECTOR

Director of Story

CLARE MURPHY

CLARE MURPHY

Director of Story

Chief Medical Officer

DAN DWORKIS

DAN DWORKIS

Chief Medical Officer

MCTI aims to improve the success, survivability and sustainability of Mission Critical Teams.

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Mission Critical Team Institute