While technological capabilities can facilitate an effects-based approach to operations, emphasizing tools and tactics miss the fact EBO is a methodology or a way of thinking—it is not a fixed set of tactics, techniques, and procedures. An effects-based approach starts with the end-game of action as the starting point in planning the appropriate application of each of the elements of security—diplomatic, information, military, and economic—to reach the desired end-state. Accordingly, EBO concepts traditionally take a "systemic approach" to security challenges, evaluating the situation through the lens of strategic centers of gravity—leadership; key essentials; infrastructure; population; and military forces. Each of these strategic centers of gravity can be decomposed into operational centers of gravity, and each of those into tactical centers of gravity. EBO is an approach that looks at the totality of the system being acted upon and determining what are the most effective means to achieve the desired end state.