Military Staff

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Why is an adversarial approach in a military setting seldom helpful and overrated? I understand the concern with 'unity of command'. Does separating a commander from the planning process undermine his ability to execute missions?

The function of the staff officer is to do his or her damnedest to convince the commander that he/she has the best solution to the problem the commander has been tasked to solve by higher or has identifed him/herself. Once the commander decides on a COA, the staff officers' duty is to do their utmost to ensure that COA is successfully executed. Adversarial relationships among the members of the staff tend to make this second requirement a lot tougher.

I haven't seen MDMP at 'combat speed'. Can you give me an idea of what drawbacks you think it has to warrant abandoning it?

MDMP is really just an involved way of proposing and evaluating various options. The biggest issue with it is that it can become a crutch for folks who are not too good at simultaneous multi-level analysis. For linear thinkers, MDMP is extremely time consuming because each COA gets worked through in series rather than by working all the COA in parallel or multi-threaded processes.

Army officers tend to be Type A folks who want to call the shots or lead. When you are a staff guy, you don't get to lead; you just get to recommend to a leader, who accepts or rejects your recommendations.

Do you think that's a consequence of Army culture?

As Ken pointed out, your response sort of puts the cart before the horse. The perception of Army culture includes draws certain types of folks. They were type A before joining and that may explain why they joined. It also may explain why some of them leave after having had the revelation that they might get to spend less than 30% of their time being the MFWIC (Mo-Fo Who's In Charge)--Schmedlap already alluded to this as the reason for getting off AD in a prior post


Some final thoughts.
--You might wish to consider that the staff function as something like a deputy or 2IC for a unit. (I think that was how Rommel used his OpsO in the desert).
--One could also split the staff into two sections (each with expertise from all of the various staff sections, 1-9 as appropriate to the HQ level involved)--1 section gets to manage the current operation for the commander while the second section plans the follow-on operation. When the follow-on operation kicks off, that staff section now manages it and the first staff section becomes the planning cell for the next step--keep alternating the process. It would keep folks busy and might lessen the likelihood that they get paid too many visits from the "good idea fairy" while ruminating about stuff outside their areas of competence. (This a variation on the multiple command post theory--a fwd CP that fights the current fight; a Main CP that plans the next fight;and a Rear CP that supports both the current and future fights, cleans up the mess from the last figh, and manages rear area protection to boot.