Operations Officer (S3)

Many Officers will step into an operations officer job right out of the Command and General Staff College without having the luxury of spending a year on a Division staff to learn the cultural norms of their new organization so it’s extremely important to have a game plan when you step into the seat. The following is my best advice to a brand new S3. I’m not looking to insult anyone’s intelligence, but I’ve found over the past 15 years that there is a wide variety in how Battalion Operations sections function, ranging from highly effective to nearly dysfunctional. Below outlines ‘a way’ (not ‘the way’) to function as an S3. I believe it will produce a highly effective and efficient battalion.

First and foremost, give your boss what he wants. Every commander has his own way that he wants to see operations run as well as his own way of receiving information. If you’re unsure about either, ask him. There is no one right way to do something, so look for the best way to execute your Commander’s vision and then articulate it to him in the way that he best receives it and be open to his feedback. You should assume that he got to where he is because he knows what he’s talking about. The other overarching piece of advice I offer is to own everything the Battalion does. Be very clear with your commander, XO, and the staff primaries that the Battalion is run out of the S3 shop. Everything the battalion is doing gets captured and followed up on by the S3. Force the staff to work through the operations section. If there is a requirement for the S6, he owes you status updates that are captured on your task tracker. If there’s going to be a Battalion organizational day, ball, or outreach event, the S3 plans it just like platoon live fires. This is the only way to ensure quality events across all lines of effort and it is how professional organizations operate.

Do not fall into the trap of planning via the assignment of an action Officer to every event on the LRTC who then takes the event from cradle to grave. This ensures two things: first, you’re going to run out of action officers, and second, you’re going to spend more time giving feedback and guidance to individual topics than you should. You must have a deliberate process that begins with a plans officer and gets transitioned to a current operations officer or NCO. While not all MTOEs support the division of your S3 shop into plans and CUOPS, the actual manning for most Battalions does. Every element within your S3 shop should be task-organized under one of the two officers, i.e. land and ammo are likely task-organized under plans while DTMS, DTS, and Schools are task-organized under current operations. A weekly plans working group with your plan’s team and all staff primaries execute a running MDMP on all upcoming events, which eventually get handed over to your CUOPS team to execute. The other part of the planning process which cannot be overlooked is the weekly plans update to the Battalion Commander. This gives you the opportunity to present all the expected MDMP briefs for each event and ensure the commander is given sufficient opportunity to iterate on a topic and provide feedback and guidance.

The S3 owns the Battalion’s calendars, and they need to be accurate. Always. The long-range training calendar (LRTC) is likely a spreadsheet with the big block items, nested with Brigade’s LRTC that goes out at least one year and includes all collective training events as well as any major individual events, i.e. EIB, EFMB, range density, etc. I advise a two-year LRTC with the understanding that it will likely require continual refinement.  The LRTC is your conceptual planning document and should be updated no less than quarterly. The short-range calendar (SRTC) is also likely a spreadsheet that encompasses your Battalion and each subordinate element, down to the platoon level. It is your detailed planning document. It should be at least ten weeks forward-looking and include all training events. I recommend the SRTC be scrubbed and extended weekly. The outlook calendar is what the Battalion fights off daily and should be scrubbed and updated daily by your current operations officer. The outlook calendar should be accurate out to six weeks and should be synchronized daily with the Brigade’s day to day calendar as well as the Battalion Commander’s calendar. I cannot stress enough the importance of this calendar. There should never be any question as to what is happening, minute by minute, within your organization. It should be the definitive time management document for the Battalion’s leaders.

Finally, the Operations Officer position is arguably the toughest job in the Army. It’s easy to get caught in the day to day knife fight with taskings and requirements (why didn’t A CO send anyone to the new equipment training?). It’s equally tempting to get caught in the big block training events (Quarterly Training Briefs, major planning efforts. You cannot allow yourself to get bogged down in any particular priority. You are the composer of the symphony, unlike when you were a company commander your symphony is not violence, it’s the operations process. It’s not up to you to accomplish everything, it’s up to you to ensure your team does.

Executive Officer (XO)

Hopefully, by the time an individual assumes a Battalion Executive Officer position they’ve had several key experiences to draw from CGSC, a year on Division Staff, and a year as an Operations Officer. Better yet, the commander is completing his first year and has the Battalion running just the way he likes and you were his S3 for the last 12 months. If those things are true, I probably don’t have much to offer you that you don’t already know or at least have an idea of how to tackle. However, if you’re stepping straight into an XO job without those benefits, I’ll share some successful TTPs that I’ve either used, wish I had used or seen better officers than me use.

First some general thoughts on being an XO. At the Battalion level, you are the second in command. Therefore, you must earn the full trust and confidence of your Commander and ensure he is completely comfortable with you speaking for him in his absence. You cannot do this solely by focusing on the ALOC. You’re his chief of staff and his second in command, which means you must have a full handle on all Battalion operations and have a handle on all lines of effort. Your job is the current operations fight, both in garrison and in the field, so own it fully and do not be afraid to put your fingerprints on the operations section – but be a good battle buddy and always do it thru your S3, achieve his consensus and never undermine him.

The XO owns a lot of weird tasks that do not fit nicely into a particular staff section or warfighting function at the Battalion level; things like inspections, staff duty, strategic partnerships, outreach, and public affairs. This is where the meticulous organization will be a skill you cannot live without. You must also ensure you are clearly prioritizing efforts for your staff who will otherwise do a lot of things at a mediocre level. Ensure you’ve appropriately tasked these various efforts, not just based on personality but also on longevity. A best practice is to maintain some type of matrix for all of your efforts along with key benchmarks and events, then receive routine updates on them during your staff meeting. Without emphasis from the XO, even your best staff officers will make assumptions about the priority that may not be accurate.

As I’ve stated repeatedly, you should delegate everything. You must also remember to support those whom you’ve delegated to. Don’t assign a lieutenant to be the USR Officer and then leave him to beg Captains to accomplish their USR tasks. There should be no doubt that the expectation within a professional organization is to support every member of the team as they accomplish their duties. If that does not happen, there should be no question that the delinquent team member will have to answer to the XO. You do not need to take this to the extreme or be a jerk about it. Simply enforce standards. Ruthlessly and without exception.

As the battalion XO, you will find yourself in a lot of meetings with your higher headquarters and likely with your brigade Commander. Even if you’re not required in those key Brigade meetings (like the training meeting), find time to accompany your commander anyway. Build your understanding of where the brigade is and what the commander is thinking. There are usually great nuggets of understanding and context from hearing the brigade commander’s words spoken directly, likewise from hearing the positions of other battalion commanders or what the brigade staff is briefing. Then provide a feedback loop to your subordinate Company Commanders. You might be surprised how often you get creative solutions and ideas from subordinate elements that are worth sharing across the Brigade.

Synchronization, shared understanding, and common operating pictures is the XO’s bread and butter. Get those things right and you will be successful. The single best way to drive all three is through the Battalion’s battle rhythm. Every commander will have specific ways he wants to run the Battalion and certain ways he wants to receive information. If you find yourself immediately getting slammed because the Commander is not getting the information or interactions he wants, or you find yourself in long meandering meetings that go off track because the commander isn’t getting what he needs, I would challenge you to immediately analyze your battle rhythm and the events incorporated in it. Are they logical in sequence? Do they nest with higher headquarters? Are there clearly defined inputs and outputs?

Many cringe when the word meeting is used. Personally, I’m not one of those people. A series of well run, organized meetings is the best way to ensure shared understanding and synchronization in an organization. The XO should put some personal time into ensuring each meeting on the battle rhythm has defined in-puts and out-puts, is efficient, stays on track, and accomplishes something. No meeting should last more than one hour at the Battalion level.

The following are key meetings I recommend you (or the S3) hold throughout the course of a normal week. I’m a big fan of the daily ‘stand to’. My personal opinion is that every day should start with a quick calendar review with the Battalion Commander and Staff Primaries to include all the days training events conducted by the Companies, and then a quick around the horn for key items and initiatives from each staff primary for the last 24 hours and next 24 hours. This gives the Commander day to day insight and interaction with the key drivers of his battalion as well as full situational awareness. It can limit the need for time-draining touchpoints throughout the day or identify a need for a more in-depth touchpoint. It also gives the XO a quick face to face with the staff each morning. This is commander dependent and might not be possible. Personally, I think it works best every day and easily translates to a tactical battle rhythm that starts every day with a Battle Update Brief.

If the XO is unable to conduct a daily stand-to with the staff, then I recommend a weekly staff meeting on Monday afternoon following maintenance. This gets everyone centered for the week and gives you that face to face opportunity for a touchpoint. More importantly, it gives the staff a shared understanding of everything the Battalion has going on, rather than allowing them to stove pipe within their warfighting functions.

As the XO it’s your job to ensure the right touchpoints and meetings are happening and enforce attendance, but the S3 will drive several of them. Among these are the plans working group, the plans update to the Battalion Commander, the training meeting, and the training resourcing meeting (I’ve seen this meeting run by the XO, S3, or S4; all can work).

The command and staff may be a weekly event or bi-weekly (offset by the training meeting), these are notoriously painful, but they don’t have to be. A Battalion command and staff meeting should take NO MORE THAN ONE HOUR. They should be focused and ruthlessly enforced for accuracy. Briefing by exception because ‘somehow the updated slide didn’t get included’ is simply not acceptable and grounds to re-do the meeting. You won’t have to do that often, I promise. Focus this meeting on what your higher headquarters is expecting from your Battalion and do not hide anything from your commander because the data is ugly. Too often Commanders do not have an accurate view of their Battalion because nobody wants to show them the truth. As a Battalion XO you must understand that you’ll never be perfect at everything, but hiding the facts or, worse, blaming higher headquarters for the data is the worst thing you can do. If the numbers aren’t adding up to what your Brigade is seeing, roll up your sleeves and work with the higher headquarters proponent to figure out the disconnect. This is your opportunity to get command emphasis on all the extraneous requirements that can turn into major friction points if not handled on time and on target, i.e. lateral transfers, FLIPLs, personnel readiness, etc.

The final touchpoint I recommend is an XO closeout. Get your company XOs in the same room, along with your staff primaries, and follow up on major initiatives and the week’s requirements. Give your company XO’s the opportunity to voice what they need from the staff and then ensure they get it. Likewise, this is an opportunity to follow up on delinquent tasks and ensure everything is closed out prior to the weekend. This should be pretty quick and it should be an open discussion with no “thin skins”. If you’re going to do it on Friday, do it early so your people have time to action any hanging chads. Thursday afternoon would probably be better if the battle rhythm and training calendar allows.

UPCOMING – Part IV: Leadership – the most important thing we do.  Keep your eyes out for our initiative on “Meeting Your Battalion Staff” released tomorrow afternoon!

MAJ Joe Owens is an Engineer Officer who recently completed 36 months of KD time in 1/101st Airborne Division culminating as the BCT XO both in garrison and deployed. An Engineer Officer, Joe has experience in Airborne and Air Assault Brigade Combat teams as well as EAB Engineer Battalions and SOF formations. Joe has operational experience in OIF, OEF, and OIR. He holds an MS in Engineering & Technology Management from Oklahoma State University and a Master of Military Operational Art & Science from the Air Command & Staff College. Joe is currently serving as the Deputy Commander of the Charleston District, US Army Corps of Engineers.