Worldwide Joint Training and Scheduling Conference Sept 07

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Worldwide Joint Training and Scheduling
Conference Sept 07

• Joint Staff Officer Study Working Group

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Phase One
Phase Two
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Phase One

• Site visits to all nine Combatant Commands
• Discussions with joint staff officers
• Discussions with senior leadership (Directors,
  SES personnel, GOFOs)
• Individual draft reports provided to each
  Combatant Command
• Errors corrected
• Additional information added as requested
• Combined draft report provided to JS-J7 in
  January 2007
• Executive Summary
• Background
• Individual site reports
• Competencies Identified
• Conclusion

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Competency 1

• Exhibits with a high level of proficiency
  the skills, behaviors, and attributes required of
  a Combatant Command staff officer
• Leaders expect staff officers to be able to
  manage large volumes of materials, know the
  workflow of the command, and successfully move
  packages up to the appropriate level for
  signature.
• To do this efficiently requires a broad
  background of knowledge, an advanced level of
  specific skill sets, and some attitudinal
  behaviors that are very different from the work
  staff officers faced in performing prior tasks
  for tactical and operational assignments.
• One of the most important skill sets, according
  to leadership, is the ability to accurately
  assess a situation, research appropriate
  background information, concisely provide
  optional courses of actions, make recommendations
  to senior leaders, and be able to factually
  support recommendations.

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Competency 2

• Able to write, read, and conduct research at
  an advanced level appropriate for work
  performance at an executive level
• able to think, write and brief with a strategic
  focus.
• must be able to produce a broad array of products
  to include reports, plans, ghost writing letters
  and e-mails for senior officers, and briefings
  with recommendations most staff officers have
  had very little experience with these styles of
  writing.
• must be able to read, digest, analyze, and
  utilize massive amounts of information as
  background materials for preparing work packages.
  
• research, some of which is very extensive across
  a diverse range of topics, is required for most
  tasks a staff officer is rarely the subject
  matter expert for the topics he must address.

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Competency 3

• Understands the organization and missions of the
  Combatant Commands
• needs a solid understanding of the construct of
  the Combatant Commands, the interrelationships
  among them, and the relationships between the
  commands and other US government agencies,
  multinational partners, and non-governmental
  organizations.
• needs a thorough understanding of the mission and
  strategic objectives of respective commands for
  context for developing work products.
• understands the missions, roles, and
  responsibilities of the other Combatant Commands
  helps staff officers coordinate more accurately
  and efficiently those tasks that are
  cross-command related.

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Competency 4

• Able to communicate effectively at executive
  levels and across a diverse workforce
• need for a higher level of basic communication
  skills such as active listening, constructing and
  delivering effective presentations, and leading
  or participating in group meetings and
  discussions
• a different type of interpersonal skill set is
  critical for working successfully across the
  diverse workforce serving at a Combatant Command
  where, in many cases within directorates,
  military personnel are in the minority.
• Joint staff officers must develop a cooperative
  and collaborative approach for effective
  coordination of staffing packages.

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Competency 5

• Able to build constructive work relationships
• Identified by senior leaders as one of the most
  important competencies of a successful staff
  officer.
• The most successful staff officers, according to
  senior leaders, spend significant effort in
  building solid networks of individuals who will
  assist in getting the information needed for
  staff work.
• Working at a Combatant Command requires a
  different style of interpersonal communication
  than most staff officers have needed in prior
  assignments.
• Because the workforce is a complex mixture of
  interagency personnel, multinationals serving in
  positions of responsibility, government
  civilians, and contractors, an approach that
  builds personal relationships based on trust,
  compromise, and collaboration is needed.
• Commanding people to perform at a Combatant
  Command level is generally ineffective. Senior
  leaders feel that an effective staff officer must
  know how to work in teams, both as a member and
  as a leader.

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Competency 6

• Knowledge and understanding of US government
  agencies (State Department, Department of
  Justice, Department of Homeland Security,
  Department of the Treasury, etc.) and their
  relationships with the Combatant Commands
• need for more detailed knowledge and
  understanding of the interagency organizations
  and the coordination process.
• Working the Global War on Terrorism and other
  mission areas (such as Homeland Defense) require
  staff officers to be able to understand the
  relationships of the interagencies in regard to
  command activities.

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Competency 7

• Advanced knowledge of parent Service
  organization, capabilities, and business
  practices
• Combatant Commands want staff officers who know
  and understand their own Service organizational
  structures and capabilities.
• Since the Combatant Commands interact on a
  regular basis with Service components, staff
  officers are expected to serve as subject matter
  experts (SMEs) for facilitation, coordination,
  communication, and cooperation with all the
  Services.

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Competency 8

• Knowledge and application of Joint information
  and processes
• Staff officers and leadership feel there is a
  lack of joint knowledge available to them prior
  to reporting to a command, yet that very
  knowledge is essential for completing the most
  simple of staff officer tasks.
• A broader understanding of the relationships
  among the Joint staff and Combatant Commands and
  the Services, joint processes, tools, and
  workflow would make staff officers more competent
  to handle tasks more efficiently earlier in their
  tours.
• Most staff officers said they were learning joint
  knowledge on the job, but that it was extremely
  time- consuming and stressful in their opinions,
  a coursea Joint 101providing an overview of
  joint players, roles, and responsibilities would
  be extremely helpful.

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Competency 9

• Knowledge of law enforcement and legal
  requirements affecting the Combatant Commands
• Each of the commands must conduct its missions
  and activities within a very complex structure of
  governing rules and laws.
• Staff officers identified understanding the law
  enforcement and legal requirements of a command
  as an area where they had the least knowledge,
  had the fewest contacts, and felt the most
  uncomfortable in their ability to research and
  interpret correctly.
• Staff officers feel that based on the increasing
  need to better understand legal and law
  enforcement issues affecting the commands that
  some basic overview in this area is essential.

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Competency 10

• Able to maximize technology software and
  hardware capabilities
• Staff officers are expected to enter the command
  with a high user capability of Microsoft Office
  software this is one of the few standard tools
  across the Joint Staff, the Services, and the
  other commands.
• Staff officers are expected to learn and use
  effectively the command-designated electronic
  tasking management systems, which are different
  for each command.
• Staff officers must learn to use other
  command-designated or directorate-specific
  systems and software packages. Knowledge and
  practice of basic information security practices
  are also important to the job.
• The more technology-savvy a staff officer is, the
  better he should be able to maximize the
  capabilities of the systems required to complete
  work tasks.

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Competency 11

• Able to work collaboratively with and
  effectively manage a diverse workforce
  (civilians, contractors, guard and reserve,
  interagency, and multinational personnel)
• Staff officers and leaders expressed significant
  frustration with working with and supervising a
  predominantly non-military work environment.
• The majority of staff officers had very little or
  no experience or training to help them make the
  transition from an all-military environment
  concerns centered around being able to properly
  evaluate, reward, develop, and discipline (if
  needed) non-military personnel.
• Not knowing the standards of the interagency
  organizations, or of government civilian
  personnel protocols, makes it extremely difficult
  for staff officers to feel they can be effective
  managers.
• Staff officers expressed a need to better
  understand the National Guard and Reserve
  systems, as the regulations differ in many
  instances from those for Service personnel.
• Although this competency is closely aligned
  with the interpersonal skills section of
  Competencies 4 and 5, it was of such
  significance to staff officers and leadership
  alike that it has been identified as a separate
  competency.

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Competency 12

• Able to effectively participate in exercise
  preparation/ planning
• need for better background in exercise planning
  and preparation
• Although all staff officers are not serving in
  the directorates responsible for command exercise
  activities, most participate in the creation of
  supporting documents such as annexes.
• Staff officers felt that training on Joint
  exercise-related tools prior to or soon upon
  arriving at the command would be helpful in
  presenting an insightful overview of the command
  mission and strategic objectives.

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Staff Officer Top Priorities

• Although staff officers and leadership
  agreed on the overall competency categories,
  staff officers listed the following as their top
  three priorities, but heavily emphasized that if
  they only had to select one, they would opt for
  specific content job knowledge as the most
  significant of the three
• content knowledge needed for the jobspecifically
  some type of Joint Staff 101, Combatant Command
  101, and Interagency 101
• significant training in writing improvement,
  reading and research skills,
• collaboration skills for working in a
  non-military work environment which is often more
  personality driven.

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Leadership Top Priorities

• Whereas staff officers identified content
  knowledge improvement as what they needed most
  for improved work performance, senior leaders
  identified the top three priorities for staff
  officer competency as
• interpersonal communication skills for building
  collaborative partnerships across a diverse
  workforce
• the ability to think and write strategically for
  presentation to an executive audience
• understanding the role of a staff officer and
  executing at a high level of performance.

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Methodology Hales Human Performance Model
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Hales Model Elements
Hale, Judith. The Performance Consultants
Fieldbook, Jossey-Bass, Pfeiffer. 1998. pp.97-98
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Macro-organizational Issues (OSD,DoD, Chairman,
Joint Staff, Services)

• Need for standardization of tools and formats for
  staff work
• Need for joint knowledge and experiences sooner
  in career path
• Need for assigning personnel better against
  individual skill sets
• Assurance that proper clearances are in place for
  joint staff officers before reporting to a
  Combatant Command
• Assurance that personnel assigned as joint staff
  officers get to JPME 1 and/or 2 prior to arrival
• Assurance of multiple venues for JPME 1 and 2
• Assurance that O-3 personnel are given Joint
  service credit for Combatant Command assignments
• Services need to take joint assignments more
  seriously and not see them as checking the box

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Micro-organizational Issues (Combatant Command
and Directorate specific)

• For work products need for better guidance from
  top down as to what is acceptable, why it is or
  is not acceptable, and how to prevent similar
  problems in the future
• Need for improvement in task assignmentunable to
  give back improperly assigned tasks
• Enforcement of single format (e.g., font size,
  color, style) for each type of work product
• Horse-trading or stealing of staff officers needs
  to be limited
• Sharing of information across directorates needs
  to be improved

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Job-related Issues

• rules, procedures, processes associated with
  jobs/tasks need to be reviewed and streamlined
  and where possible standardized across the
  Combatant Commands
• too many technology systems are in place and
  often overlap or are redundant, and most are not
  being utilized to maximum capabilities
• business relationships required for joint staff
  officer work are not always mature functional
  e.g., staff officers are required to work across
  a more diverse work environment that in prior
  military assignments, and have little or no
  experience working with interagency,
  multinational, contractor personnel
• clear, accurate, and timely work information is
  rare most taskers are high priority, often
  arrive after deadline has passed, are often
  assigned to the wrong directorate or person it
  is often difficult to locate SMEs in some cases
  people are not willing to share information or
  collaborate
• volume of work is usually overwhelming to
  incoming staff officers when work product
  formats are not standardized and enforced the
  workload triples for staff officers very little
  feed back provided when staff work is done right
  or done wrong

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Individual Skills

• When peoples capacities and capabilities change,
  the balance at work is disrupted.
• For most staff officers this is the first time
  in a joint, multinational, interagency
  environment very few have the knowledge to
  quickly produce accurate work products
• When the job is dynamic and requires new
  knowledge and skills, individuals may be
  unqualified for new requirements, or may feel
  inadequate to perform new tasks
• This pretty well sums up the feelings of all the
  staff officers who participated in the
  discussions of Phase One
• The less knowledge of content, unfamiliarity with
  core systems, unfamiliarity with core processes
  and requirements, the longer and steeper the
  learning curve.
• Staff officers reported steep and long learning
  curves, sometimes as much as 2 years due to lack
  of knowledge, having to learn core systems,
  processes, and work requirements.

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Phase Two

• Staff Officer Survey sent to joint staff officers
  in all Combatant Commands
• Web-based
• Combatant Commands determine who they consider to
  be joint staff officers (e.g., SJFHQ, SAO, JTF
  personnel)
• One-week turn around
• Leader Survey sent to Senior Leadership in all
  Combatant Commands
• Web-based
• For all J-code Directors and above, including SES
  personnel
• Individual site reports written for and submitted
  to each Combatant Command
• Opportunity to review, ask questions
• Corrections, as required, made
• Combined report written and submitted to JS
  J7-JETD