Organizational Leadership

By Alex Licea

Congratulations, you are now a Noncommissioned Officer. First and foremost, be proud of your accomplishment!

Earning the title of NCO is an important step in the military career of enlisted personnel regardless of their branch of service.

There is a lot of work and benchmarks that new NCOs had to accomplish on their journey to become a military leader.

Whether it was performing at a high level to earn the opportunity to attend a promotion board or the countless hours of studying to pass examinations and professional military education courses, the climb up the junior ranks comes from dedication and a strong work ethic.

Being an NCO isn’t only about the pay raise (although who doesn’t love more money) it is a lifestyle; and the title of NCO comes with a series of new responsibilities. From being accountable for several pieces of high-value equipment to being responsible for the professional development of junior servicemembers under your charge, the life of an NCO doesn’t stop at the end of the duty day.

By Chris Ingram

Commanding a line company is the ideal job for most company grade officers; the culminating point of company grade leadership. Being told you have been asked to relinquish command early and take on the responsibility of a Brigade Headquarters and Headquarters Company (BDE HHC) means giving up your time on the line early for a command that, let’s be brutally honest, few people seek out.

Command of BDE HHC, means your brigade commander selected you to lead their company. It’s an honor that comes with both prestige and challenges. Congratulations on your second guidon; now what are you going to do with it?

Enabling the Brigade Fight

Your mission on a line company was fairly simple; something along the lines of “close with and destroy the enemy.” This was accomplished by combined arms maneuver to mass effects on a single objective. The mission of a BDE HHC is nothing of the sort. Your new mission will be to build readiness and enable the brigade fight. Without an effective BDE HHC, the brigade commander loses the ability to execute mission command and the brigade fight turns into a series of uncoordinated battalion fights.

To lead the brigade fight, the staff has to function simultaneously along multiple lines of effort. The officers on staff are primarily focused on the brigade mission, either in planning and resourcing the future fight or synchronizing and managing the current fight. Their focus is primarily on the demand signal from the boss, followed by a requirement to coach and manage their battalion counterparts, and report and coordinate requirements of the division headquarters. Nothing in those efforts is focused on the company mission of BDE HHC.

The company fight, led by you and your First Sergeant, is largely managed through NCO channels. This company fight often receives little input from officers, except when the company fails to accomplish its mission and threatens the brigade mission. Done right, the brigade staff can focus on planning, resourcing, and mission command while the company quietly performs the tasks necessary to ensure mission command systems are up, supplies are on hand, and vehicles are ready on a moment’s notice.  Your mission is not the fight, it is enabling the fight.

Influence over Authority

In a brigade or higher HHC, everybody either outranks the company commander or works directly for someone who does. Each section is led by a field grade officer and every staffer is within arms reach of the Brigade Commander or Command Sergeant Major. Other than your First Sergeant, Company Executive Officer, and Supply Sergeant, nobody in a BDE HHC is rated or senior rated by you or the First Sergeant.  You may have command authority, but without the ability to directly affect their rating, you need to find other tools to lead.

Tinder

By: Megan Jantos

Over the last couple years, the Army has rolled out a new system that allows it to better manage talent while involving active-duty officers in the assignment process. This system, called the Assignment Interactive Module (AIM) 2.0 is basically the Army’s version of Tinder except instead of connecting daters, AIM 2.0 couples talented officers with available Army jobs. According to Tinder’s website, the application allows users to “Match. Chat. Date.” AIM 2.0 follows a similar logic.

Unlike Tinder, AIM 2.0 provides an awkward–albeit well-intentioned–chaperone to escort officers and units throughout their courtship. Before, during and after your matching process your branch manager, now more like a coach, will assist by providing Army assignment priorities, and possible matches based on your experience and place along the career path.

Tinder isn’t perfect and neither is AIM 2.0, but that shouldn’t keep officers from getting excited about this new opportunity. Officers identified by Human Resource Command as a mover are considered “in the market.” If this applies to you, try it and provide your feedback. The Army adopted this system two years ago and seeks feedback to improve it via the site. Here’s how AIM 2.0 works:

By: Megan Jantos

As a commander, leveraging the unique capabilities of a public affairs officer can prove challenging. Sometimes leaders grossly micromanage the PAO with redundant or unnecessary product quotas because they jump to tactical solutions before identifying communication strategies. Other times, PAOs fail their commanders and act as “yes men,” taking on every grip-and-grin photo tasking while failing to communicate about more beneficial opportunities. Both of these result in numerous, yet purposeless products. If a commander is lucky the Army will assign them a knowledgeable PAO they can trust, and will advise the commander with candor. Still, trusting doesn’t relieve the commander of the responsibility to verify. So, how does a new commander quickly identify whether their PAO is properly supporting the unit’s mission and commanders are sufficiently enabling the PAO? I recommend starting with these 4 questions:

1-Does our unit have a communication plan? The plan should outline a goal that solves an organizational problem or seizes an opportunity, all while nesting with higher headquarters themes, messages, and goals. Though not doctrine, I use the 6th Edition of Strategic Communications: Planning for Public Relations and Marketing to tailor the “plan” and “assess” steps of the Army’s operations process to communication. The most fundamental rule of communication is that you can’t NOT communicate. Even inaction communicates something (e.g. apathy). Additionally, Army Regulation 360-1 requires commanders to develop plans that communicate effectively with key audiences. So, if they must communicate, then the organization needs a purposive goal, and I don’t mean “because the CG says we need to write two articles per week.”

By: LTC Joshua Trimble

Being a signal Soldier can have its difficulties.  What is the unscientifically calculated most heard phrase at AAR’s?  “Comms could have been better.” The Army’s communication gear, with its necessary security standards and ruggedized encasements, is not as simple as operating your smartphone. Your fate is largely sealed by entities and personnel that exist in buildings on the other side of post or out in some high plateau desert whose last time spent in the field was probably for their son’s or daughter’s scouting adventures.

And, if being a signal Soldier can be difficult, then it is not a stretch that leading and managing one as a S6 in your formation might be something that doesn’t come natural.  It can be difficult to lead and mentor a Soldier in a skill that is not your own. How do you know what to expect from an “expert” of a service you know that you need in spades but might know little else?

The answer is simple. You should expect from an S6 some of the same things you would expect from any other expert of their warfighting function. The specifics are just a little different. The S6 should be able to provide you with the services that enable mission command. The S6 should understand what their signal portion of mission command provides to operations and planning.

by Lennard Salcedo

Whether you are an assistant operations officer muddling through endless daily tasking orders or a company commander looking for opportunities to develop your platoon leaders, one key to success is the ability to assign tasks to the right leaders. Not only must you configure your team properly, but you also must know who accomplishes tasks efficiently. I use “sifting,” or assigning tasks to the appropriate level, as a method to alleviate work overload and invest in junior leaders. Sifting is a framework for assigning tasks to grow leaders and accomplish the mission.

Individual Sifting: Sorting Urgent vs. Important Tasks

The first step in task sifting is for leaders to understand which tasks are urgent and which are important, an idea frequently conveyed using the Eisenhower Matrix. Then, leaders must use and implement this understanding to assign tasks to subordinate leaders within their organization. As a new officer, I frequently struggled with task management while serving as a squadron adjutant. My duties were different than those of a traditional S1. I worked directly for my senior rater with no supporting staff section and all tasks were mine to complete.

Initially, I tried to accomplish several tasks at once, hoping to make room in my work schedule for when the commander needed me. I quickly found that I was confusing important and urgent tasks. Important tasks, such as the dreaded Unit Status Report (USR), are best started once the rest of the staff accomplishes its portion of the task and is ready to provide the correct information. Understanding that important tasks deserve their own time and space for collective efforts helped me to prioritize my time in the interim on urgent tasks that the commander assigned to me.

By Eero and Rose Keravuori

With recent studies stating the Reserve needs to continually integrate with the Active Force to sustain the Reserve Component’s readiness, and given our recent focus on great power competition, America’s Army Reserve should deliberately place mid- to senior-level Reserve soldiers in Combatant Commands (CCMDs) to maintain an expeditionary mindset in our operational reserve.  Experience with the active component at the tactical level is regularly available; however, intentional participation at the CCMD level is not. A deliberate process that supports competitive Reserve senior soldiers serving in strategic-level positions at a CCMD as a broadening opportunity is a not-to-be missed opportunity of mutual benefit to the CCMD and to the Reserve force.  

What is needed

A recent RAND study stated one of the lessons learned from Reserve integration over the last 17 years in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom is that the Reserve needs to continually integrate with the Active Force to sustain the Reserve Component’s readiness.  The Reserve force has acted as a manning solution for the active component, with Reserve soldiers bringing necessary diverse skills, many acquired in a civilian capacity.  What started as a need for manpower from the active component, has helped maintain the expeditionary mindset and culture within the Reserve, essential for an operational reserve and its latest Ready Force X construct.  Reserve Soldiers currently augment the active component from the tactical to strategic levels, with tactical level augmentation regularly available.  However, Reserve leaders should intentionally emphasize the need for Reserve soldiers to participate in combined and joint experiences at the CCMD level.