Defense Resource Management Course: A Careerists View

STUTTGART, BW, GERMANY

04.10.2017

Courtesy Story

U.S. Army Career Program 26

By: Ms. Karen Taylor, Chief, NATO Manning Division, U.S. European Command, Stuttgart, Germany

This past summer, thanks to funding from the CP26 Proponency Office, I had the fantastic opportunity to attend the Defense Resource Management Course (DRMC) in Monterey, California. This fast-paced four-week course focuses on the economic, efficient and effective allocation of scarce defense resources among competing mission areas, a subject all too familiar to Army Manpower and Force Management professionals. Lectures covered topics that included a strategic overview of the global political environment, an explanation of the U.S. Defense Resource Management System functions and a delineation of economic and quantitative approaches to problem solving in the Department of Defense (DoD). Participants were challenged to consider tradeoffs among competing goals, identify the opportunity cost of resource-constrained decisions and examine uncertainty and its effect on decisions at both the tactical and strategic levels. As I attended DRMC, my goal was to understand how I could apply the analytical concepts and tools presented in the course to my manpower and organizational management role at a Combatant Command (CCMD).

Services have well-established programs to determine minimum-required staffing and develop manpower models that create efficient and effective organizations based on validated mission requirements. Organizations, such as the Army Manpower Analysis Agency and Air Force Manpower Analysis Agency, develop manpower and organizational models to analyze requirements and provide recommendations to Service leadership. Thus, the Army recognizes that the development and application of an Army-wide standard requirements determination methodology and strategic level organizational designs are critical to adapt the institutional Army to support the Operating Force efficiently and effectively.

CCMDs have small manpower staffs and must rely on the Services or a contractor for such robust analysis. While CCMDs can request additional manpower for new missions through the Joint Manpower Validation Process (JMVP), in the Joint arena there is no overarching institutional process, analytical framework or dedicated organization to periodically evaluate current CCMD authorizations and organizational designs. Even in the JMVP, the CCMDs must independently analyze and determine what additional manpower senior leaders believe is needed to meet new missions. In my view, CCMD manpower staffs have limited capability to provide systematic, “like” analysis and recommendations to ensure their leadership has the ability to allocate manpower optimally within a structure designed to meet assigned missions in a rapidly changing, uncertain security environment.

There is, of course, guidance to the CCMDs on establishing and managing their Joint Manpower Programs (JMP). The Undersecretary of Defense, Personnel and Readiness provides DoD policy guidance for the JMP and is charged with ensuring all Joint activities establish a JMP. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Instruction (CJCSI) 1001.01B, Joint Manpower and Personnel Program, outlines policy for the CCMDs and establishes additional responsibilities and procedures for joint manpower requirements. The Directorate of Manpower and Personnel at the Joint Staff (JS J1) administers and executes the JMP on behalf of CJCS developing further guidelines to identify peacetime, wartime, contingency and mobilization requirements. In turn, CCMDs are responsible for establishing a JMP, including setting internal policies and procedures for determining, validating, documenting and prioritizing joint manpower requirements. However, the CCMDs have no explicit guidance on establishing appropriate analytical systems and methodologies to assess how existing manpower requirements and structure can be reallocated to support their mission sets.

There is tremendous merit in providing CCMDs maximum flexibility to establish and manage their own JMPs. The Combatant Commander, ultimately a warfighting commander, should have great internal latitude to adapt the CCMD manpower and structure to accommodate mission changes within a rapidly changing security environment. However, the CCMDs, other Joint organizations, and the Services have been facing and will continue to face Congressional and DoD imperatives to reduce resources, including manpower, to headquarters activities. In the face of these reductions, and without a relatively robust, objective analytical capability, the principle of flexibility does not always translate into informed decision-making based on rigorous analysis. Instead, staffs react based on fear of the future and the unknown, and “circle the wagons” around narrow equities rather than evaluating problems and alternative solutions within a structured, analytically-based process. As a result, manpower decisions are too often reactive rather than proactive and mission-based. In a reduction environment, leaders too often must default to a “fair share” basis or other factors unrelated to mission in order to allocate limited resources across the headquarters staff.

How did attending DRMC help me think about these manpower challenges in the Joint arena? Simply put, my time at the course reinforced my sense that a more effective and holistic analytical capability needs to be developed to approach manpower and organizational changes in the Joint community. CCMD staffs don’t always have the right training, background and analytical tools necessary to advise their senior leaders so they can make informed decisions under tremendous time and resource constraints. Further, having each CCMD staff independently develop analytical capabilities is inefficient; the use of multiple, disparate analytical (and non-analytical) approaches also impedes the ability of Joint Staff and OSD senior leaders to evaluate and prioritize competing requirements. In an era of scarce manpower resources, it may be time to reevaluate the Joint approach to manpower requirements; these requirements must undergo a more consistent, rigorous analysis to support Combatant Commanders in executing the national military strategy as effectively as possible.

• Date Taken: 04.10.2017
• Date Posted: 04.10.2017 14:50
• Story ID: 229840
• Location: STUTTGART, BW, DE
• Hometown: STUTTGART, BW, DE