This article will review the authors observed trends of new field grades reintroduced back into their respective formations following their year of study at Command and General Staff College (CGSC). It will provide a synopsis of four areas that new field grades inquire about the most before they take on a staff position and considerations on how the environment has changed due to COVID19 since their last position prior to CGSC.
Gather Context
The recommended first step for current CGSC graduates to take before their reintroduction to the force is to understand the state of the Army and the operational or administrative environment that they are returning. It is dramatically different from those of junior field grades of the past. New staff officers are not falling in on a routine, cyclic long-range training plan. COVID19 is affecting months of collective training and having long-term impacts on the sustainable readiness model (SRM); specifically, in manning, resourcing, synchronization, and prioritization for units across the force.
Upon the lift of Department of Defense restrictions, entire timelines for units must be re-planned, from collective to individual training. The doctrinal templates and procedures CGSC graduates have been learning may not be applicable to the Army upon reintegration. Instead of inheriting a transition and long-range training plan, graduates will have to think about how to apply environmental considerations to build a feasible and executable way ahead almost immediately. Lessons gained from CGSC may help, but rapidly evaluating what lessons to apply and when is far more valuable.
Training models, methods, and SRM are rapidly changing. Resources are quickly being re-sequenced to support the FY 21 Global Force Management Allocation Plan (GFMAP). Units are deploying without Combat Training Center rotations. New ways of doing business incur risk and look different. These non-standard new business rules will concern leaders ingrained in regimented glide paths. The challenge is to provide options founded in a sound understanding of the problems that best align with the commander’s intent and then execute coordination accordingly.
Do Not Overburden the System
COVID19 has had a positive impact. It stripped that which was not essential away from calendars. Limited resources like VTCs, SVOIP phones, constrained staffs into preserving only critical operations, shunting non-essential actions to preserve core function, which has generated white space. Graduates must be careful not to oversaturate this white space. In its “Lighten the Load”, study the Army found new ways to drop the average weight of soldiers’ kit. However, once a reduction was in place, commanders saw it as an opportunity to add back to it. The result was that soldiers carried more weight than the original starting point. Do not be an officer that takes a reduced system, and overburdens it, just because there is an opportunity.
A mistake that some junior field grades make when they return to staff is that they turn off the learning mentality of CGSC, and revert to their last position of authority, most commonly a company commander. Graduates who show up to a unit and try to command staff, rather than learn from it, generally burn bridges quickly. Transitioning oneself from a commander to an action officer is a tough transition, more so in the dynamic COVID19 environment. Some majors execute this transition effortlessly, while some cannot let go of their command mentality. To overcome this, spend deliberate time to visualize how the systems currently work, two weeks with your predecessor is not enough. Understand current systems and processes before you try to adapt them. The system is going to try to achieve equilibrium to where it was before COVID19, let that natural transition occur before adopting it.
Graduates Have Not Yet Begun to Write…
CGSC requires hundreds of hours of reading, but as many graduates know, it is only a lot if you do it. However, graduates could not avoid writing. This constant churn of briefs, papers, products, and orders is not complete. Orders production is about to be a large portion of many graduates’ jobs. Similar to how there is a difference between reading and reading for comprehension, there is a vast difference in the level of writing graduates are about to be responsible for. The shift between routine and graduate-level writing will occur at a more rapid rate than most will have ever endured during their career. Especially when faced with taking very complex products, plans, publications like COVID19 OPORDs or policies, and breaking them down into small executable parts for leaders or subordinates. This is both a skill that has to be developed and an art form learned through observing your audience.
During the initial few weeks within a new unit, study how your commander speaks. Literally, list the verbiage they use, key phrases, terms, concepts. Begin injecting those into your own writing and emulate the commander’s voice. These pay dividends in both ghost note writing, and orders production to ensure that a nested and streamlined message is clearly conveyed and that it best replicates the way with which one commander communicates.
Discerning What Matters
There will be overwhelming periods, even for the most organized and detail-oriented major. It is the nature of middle management. Staff officers are both in between the doers, who will have questions of you, and the conceptual leaders who are generating the requirements asking for subject matter expertise to inform their decisions. Success depends upon how one understands the COVID19 environment and discerns what will apply today, tomorrow, a month, a year from now, and what residual factors changed it for the better. The residuals are the enhanced processes or procedures that will endure. Each of these time horizons requires a different depth of effort and rigor to comprehend. Majors, who can manage this understanding earlier regardless of the environment, generally generate thought freedom of maneuver for themselves, which in turn enables the optimal focus of their time and resources.
Major Lyons holds a Master’s degree in Military Operational Arts and Science from the United States Air Force, Air Command Staff College. He has served in Air Defense and Sustainment Brigades as well as the United States Army Asymmetric Warfare Group as an Operational Advisor, Troop Commander and Group Operations Officer with operational experience in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Arabian Peninsula, Israel, and Africa. He currently serves as the Active Defense Chief at the Army Air and Missile Defense Command level, deployed forward serving within the US Air Force Central Command, 609th Combat Operations Division, Combined Air Operations Center. His other works include Defining Cross-Domain Maneuver for the 21st Century, the U.S. Army Travel Awareness Handbook, and multiple articles within the Small Arms Review, Havok Journal, and the Journal of Asymmetric Warfare.