Military Staff

[AmericanPride]

RTK,

Thanks for your input. I'll do my best to answer your questions. Your statements are allowing me to see more clearly some of the underlying purposes and assumptions in the Army's command culture.

Let me answer your question with two counter-questions: What's the point of a commander? Why aren't units lead by committee?

Aside for his legal obligations, I believe the "point" of a commander is to lead and to execute. He is to inspire by some way, act, or process his men to perform their duties, and to execute the missions tasked to his unit. In the absence of such tasks, he is to ensure that his unit is able to conduct them, or to the best of his knowledge fulfill the intentions of his boss. Units are not led by committee for a very specific reason; however, I believe that leading and planning are two separate and distinct functions. Notable historical commanders, including American ones, often held war councils with subordinates prior to a battle to determine a COA. Some went so far as to hold votes as to which COA to take. I'm not suggesting a democratic staff system, but I certainly think there is room to make staffs more powerful and more effective. Our present conception of a commander's role is not the first held by the Army, and, IMO, open for improvement. Part of my intent is to identify in other staff systems the relationship (in terms of decision-making, planning, etc) the staff had with the commander and what lessons we can draw from that.

For the sake of the team, which is what a good unit functions as, it isn't helpful, productive, or effective to have an adversarial staff. Constant disagreement for the sake of a possibly better product leads to hate and discontent.

I do not doubt that can be true. However, isn't that a cultural problem not properly addressed by training? This is sidetracking a little, but I think the Army only gives lip-service to character development and can do much more in that regard. I imagine that separating one's feelings from one's own ideas would be a mark of professional decision-making. It's one of the components in "self-actualization" theory. People like to 'own' ideas and I think that's a contributing factor to the problem you cite. Can that desire be mitigated?

What loyalties would the Chief/DCO/XO have to the commander? Again, what's the point of the commander?

The same loyalties you cited in your next set of questions: "follow the orders of the President and the officers appointed over us."

It also violates the characteristics of a good staff officer, as outlined in appendix C of FM 6-0, Mission Command: Command and Control of Army Forces.

I will not argue with the desirability of those traits, but I will dispute that adversarial decision-making necessarily undermines loyalty or teamwork. It can and it does undermine, but I do not think that it must necessarily follow from disagreement as you suggest. I also disagree with the connotations of "violate". FMs are not law.

It prevents him from conducting his duties as a commander. It detaches him from reality. Do the New York Giants set up the game plan this week for their game with Philadelphia without Tom Coughlin? Does Eli Manning get with the rest of the offensive starters and figure out how their going to get the ball around Brian Dawkins and then let Coughlin put on the headset Sunday and let him call plays? Hell no!

I disagree with the effectiveness of the analogies and because analogies can quickly spiral beyond control, I'm going to avoid it. I should have clarified my earlier statement: separate was too strong of a word. Perhaps distance would have been better.

It also defeats three of the 16 activities, responsibilities and duties of the staff as outlined in Appendix D of FM 6-0, Mission Command: Command and Control of Army Forces.

1. Advising and informing the commander
2. Preparing, updating, and maintaining staff estimates
3. Making recommendations

In the current understanding of commander-staff relationships and functions, yes. Number 1 clearly sets the tone for the position of the staff relative to the commander (I believe I said "submissive" in another post). Part of my intent is to find out (1) whether alternative relationships exist in other staff systems and (2) if such alternatives can produce better results than what we have now.

That's the way it is.

That's not a helpful answer. If personality types have a measurable impact on performance, then I think taking advantage of that is something worth looking into.

You seem to readily discount the power, necessity, and reality of the fact there's a commander in charge.

Not really. I'm probing the extent of that "power, necessity, and reality". I'm very interested in the abstract principles and assumptions that goven commander-staff relationships, and what, if anything, can be modified and improved. Obviously my comments so far indicate an interest in increasing staff powers relative to a commander. That's liable to make the commander types upset.

I think the major contributing factor to our disagreement is the fundamental contradiction in our initial assumptions: I believe your assumption is that an intuitive, direct single decision-maker will make, on average, better (or more relevant?) decisions than a collaberative, deliberate process. I am assuming the opposite. Am I accurate? If so, what do you think are the implications of those opposing assumptions?

MDMP's biggest problem is that it is an analytical model that doesn't lend itself to time constrained environments, even in an abbreviated format unless analysis is tempered with intuition and judgement to move the process along.

Do you think the thoroughness of MDMP is effective? Also, if a staff were semi-autonomous, do you think it would be helpful for it to run continuous MDMP (with the necessary changes) similar to continuous IPB?