Royal Army College

Lesson Overview

Staff work divides naturally into areas of responsibility, the personnel, the information about the situation, the operations and plans, the logistics, the communications, the dealings with civil bodies, and a large headquarters has separate staff for each. A small humanitarian home-defence force does not; more often one officer and a few others carry all of these functions between them, one person wearing several hats at once. But the functions still exist and still must each be attended to, whether by a branch of many or by one officer remembering to think in turn about each. This lesson is about those staff functions: what the standing areas of staff responsibility are, why each must be covered however small the staff, and, above all, how they are coordinated so that the staff acts as one rather than as a set of separate efforts that do not meet. A force whose personnel, logistics, and operations staff work in isolation produces a plan that founders where their edges should have joined, the operation no one resourced, the move no one fed, and coordination is the discipline that prevents it.

The lesson takes the staff functions in three parts. First, what the functions are: the standing areas of staff work, personnel and administration, information and the situation, operations and plans, logistics and sustainment, communications, and civil and external matters, so the officer knows the full span of what staff work must cover. Second, covering all the functions in a small staff: the discipline, when one officer wears several hats, of attending to each function in turn rather than letting the urgent one crowd out the rest, so that no area is neglected because no one was dedicated to it. Third, coordination: the central discipline of making the functions work together, so that a plan is whole, the operations the staff plans are resourced by logistics, supported by communications, manned by personnel, and informed by the situation, with the functions' edges joined rather than left as gaps. Throughout, the lesson holds that the functions are not separate jobs but parts of one staff effort serving one commander, and that coordinating them is what turns parts into a whole.

This is the knowledge layer. The hands-on skill, covering the staff functions in a small headquarters and coordinating them so a plan holds together, is practised and assessed in headquarters exercises. By the end you will be able to name the standing staff functions and what each covers; explain why every function must be attended to however small the staff; cover all the functions when one officer holds several, attending to each in turn rather than neglecting the quiet ones; coordinate the functions so a plan is whole and their edges join rather than gap; and explain why the functions are parts of one staff effort serving the commander.

Key Terms

Staff function: a standing area of staff responsibility, such as personnel, information, operations, logistics, communications, or civil and external matters, that must be attended to for the command to be fully served.
Personnel and administration: the staff function covering the people, strength, manning, and administrative support of the force (the domain of the ADM stream).
Information and the situation: the function covering what is known of the situation, the gathering and assessing of information into the current picture.
Operations and plans: the function covering the current operation and future planning, the core around which the others are coordinated.
Logistics and sustainment: the function covering supply, equipment, movement, and the sustaining of the force (the domain of the LOG stream).
Communications: the function covering the means by which the command communicates, the nets and signals that carry its orders and reports.
Civil and external matters: the function covering dealings with civil authorities, partner agencies, and the public, central to a humanitarian force's tasks.
Wearing several hats: one officer holding more than one staff function at once, the normal condition in a small staff, requiring deliberate attention to each.
Coordination: the discipline of making the staff functions work together so the whole effort is coherent and the functions' edges join rather than leave gaps.
The whole plan: a plan in which every function's part is present and joined, so the operation is resourced, supported, manned, and informed, rather than planned in one function and unsupported by the rest.

The functions exist whether or not the staff is divided

The first thing to understand is that the staff functions are not an organisational luxury of large headquarters but the standing areas of work that serving a command requires, and they exist whether or not there is separate staff for each. A command must always attend to its people, who they are and whether they are manned and supported; to the situation, what is known and what it means; to operations and plans, what the force is doing and will do; to logistics, how the force is supplied, equipped, moved, and sustained; to communications, how the command's orders and reports are carried; and to civil and external matters, how the force deals with the authorities, agencies, and public it works among, which for a humanitarian force is central rather than peripheral. These areas of responsibility are intrinsic to commanding a force, and they must each be covered for the command to be fully served, in a large headquarters by a branch for each and in a small one by whoever is there, but covered either way.

This matters because in a small staff the temptation is to think the functions do not apply, that with only an officer and a few others there is just "the staff work" rather than distinct functions. That is a mistake, and a dangerous one, because the functions do not disappear when the staff is small; only the people dedicated to them disappear, and the work each represents still has to be done or it goes undone. A small force that does not consciously attend to logistics as a function will plan operations that cannot be sustained; one that neglects the civil-and-external function will blunder in its dealings with the community it serves; one that forgets personnel will plan tasks for people it does not have. The functions are a checklist of what staff work must cover, and a small staff needs that checklist more than a large one, not less, because in a large headquarters a dedicated branch ensures each function is attended to, while in a small one nothing ensures it except the officer deliberately remembering that all of these areas exist and each must be thought about. Knowing the functions, then, is knowing the full span of staff responsibility, so that none of it is neglected for want of someone whose job it obviously was.

   THE STAFF FUNCTIONS  (standing areas of staff work; they exist
                         whether or not the staff is divided)

   PERSONNEL + ADMIN ....... the people: strength, manning, support
                            (ADM stream)
   INFORMATION/SITUATION ... what is known of the situation, assessed
   OPERATIONS + PLANS ...... current op + future planning (the core)
   LOGISTICS + SUSTAINMENT . supply, equipment, movement, sustaining
                            (LOG stream)
   COMMUNICATIONS .......... the nets/signals carrying orders + reports
   CIVIL + EXTERNAL ........ authorities, partner agencies, the public
                            (central for a humanitarian force)

   LARGE HQ: a branch for each.   SMALL FORCE: one officer + a few
   wear several hats -- but the FUNCTIONS remain, only the dedicated
   people are gone. the work each represents is done, or goes UNDONE.
   -> a SMALL staff needs the checklist MORE, not less.

Covering all the functions in a small staff

When one officer holds several functions at once, wearing several hats, the central difficulty is not doing each function's work but remembering to attend to all of them, because the urgent function crowds out the quiet ones. In the press of a developing operation, the operations function shouts, there is a task to plan, an order to issue, a situation changing by the hour, and an officer absorbed in it can easily neglect the functions that are not shouting: the logistics that will not bite until the supplies run short tomorrow, the personnel question that will not surface until someone is over-tasked, the civil relationship that will not fail until a partner is offended. The functions that fail a small staff are usually not the loud ones it was busy with but the quiet ones it forgot, and the discipline is to attend to each function in turn, deliberately, rather than only the one demanding attention now.

The practical means is to use the functions as a standing checklist, run over deliberately, especially when planning. Before an operation is finalised, the officer holding the functions checks each in turn: operations, what are we doing; information, what do we know; personnel, do we have the people and are they fit and accounted for; logistics, can it be supplied, moved, and sustained; communications, can we command it; civil and external, how does it affect and involve the authorities, agencies, and public. Running the checklist surfaces the quiet function's concern before it becomes a failure, the supply that will not stretch, the people who are not there, the partner who must be consulted, while there is still time to address it in the plan. This is the same forethought the planning lesson taught, applied across the functions: a plan checked against every function is a plan whole, while a plan made through the lens of operations alone has gaps where the neglected functions should have contributed. An officer wearing several hats cannot give each function a dedicated mind, but they can give each function a deliberate turn of their own mind, and that disciplined cycling through the functions is how a small staff covers the full span of staff work without a branch for each. The alternative, attending only to whatever is loudest, guarantees that the quiet functions are neglected exactly until they fail.

Coordination: making the functions one effort

Covering each function is necessary but not sufficient, because the functions must also work together, and coordination, making them one coherent effort, is the deepest discipline of this lesson and one of the most important in all of staff work. The functions are interdependent: an operation planned by the operations function must be resourced by logistics, manned by personnel, carried by communications, informed by the situation, and squared with the civil and external picture, and a plan in which these have not been joined is a plan that will fail where their edges should have met. The classic failures of staff work are failures of coordination: the operation that was planned but not resourced, so the force arrives without what it needs; the move that was ordered but not fed, so it halts; the task that was planned without consulting the civil authority whose cooperation it required, so it founders on the ground. None of these is a failure of a single function doing its own work badly; each is a failure of the functions not being coordinated into a whole.

Coordination is therefore the work of joining the functions' edges, ensuring that what one function plans, the others support, and that the parts assemble into a coherent whole rather than a set of locally sensible pieces that do not fit. In a large headquarters this is done by the functions talking to each other and a chief of staff drawing them together; in a small staff, where one officer often holds several functions, coordination is partly the officer coordinating in their own mind across the hats they wear, and partly the few staff deliberately checking that their parts join. The discipline is to plan and check across the functions together, not in isolation: when an operation is planned, the logistics to sustain it, the personnel to man it, the communications to command it, and the civil coordination to enable it are worked out alongside it and confirmed to meet, exactly as the administrative planning of the ADM course coordinated its standing areas so they met. The test of coordination is the whole plan: walk the operation through and ask, at each point, whether every function's contribution is present and joined, the people there, the supplies arrived, the communications working, the civil side squared, so that the operation is supported all the way through rather than failing at a seam. A staff that coordinates produces a plan that holds together; a staff that does not, however well each function worked alone, produces a plan that comes apart where the functions should have joined. This is why coordination, not the brilliance of any single function, is the mark of staff work that serves the command, because a command is served by a whole plan that works, not by excellent fragments that do not fit.

   COORDINATION: JOINING THE FUNCTIONS' EDGES INTO A WHOLE PLAN

   the functions are INTERDEPENDENT around the operation:
        OPERATIONS plans it
          + LOGISTICS resources/sustains it
          + PERSONNEL mans it
          + COMMUNICATIONS carries it
          + INFORMATION informs it
          + CIVIL/EXTERNAL enables + squares it

   classic staff FAILURES are failures of COORDINATION (not of one
   function alone):
     planned but NOT RESOURCED -> arrives without what it needs
     ordered but NOT FED ------> halts
     planned but CIVIL not consulted -> founders on the ground

   THE TEST = THE WHOLE PLAN: walk the operation through; at each point
   is EVERY function's contribution present + JOINED? (people there,
   supplies arrived, comms working, civil squared)
   -> a command is served by a WHOLE PLAN THAT WORKS, not by excellent
      fragments that do not fit.

In Practice: The plan that held together at the seams

An officer of the Royal Kaharagian Army serves as effectively the whole staff of a small element tasked to support an isolated community after a landslide, wearing every staff hat at once. The operation is demanding and the operations function shouts loudest: there is a route to plan, a task to organise, a situation changing as more becomes known. An officer who attended only to the loud function would plan a fine operation that failed at the seams, and the discipline that prevents this is the one this lesson teaches. Rather than disappearing into the operations problem, she runs the staff functions as a checklist, giving each a deliberate turn of mind. Operations: the task and route. Information: what is known of the landslide and the community's needs. Personnel: are the people available, fit, and accounted for, and is anyone over-tasked. Logistics: can the element be supplied, moved, and sustained for the duration. Communications: can the operation be commanded across the ground. Civil and external: which authority and partner agencies must be consulted and coordinated with, central on a task like this.

Running the checklist surfaces what the loud operations function had hidden. The route the operation favoured, she finds when she turns her mind to logistics, could not be sustained by the transport available, a seam where operations and logistics would have failed to meet; and the task, she finds when she turns to the civil function, needed the coordination of a local authority that operations alone had not consulted. Because she found these by attending to the quiet functions before finalising, she coordinates them into the plan rather than discovering them as failures on the ground: she adjusts the operation to a route logistics can sustain, and squares the task with the civil authority whose cooperation it needs, so the functions' edges join. She walks the whole plan through, checking at each point that every function's contribution is present and joined, the people there, the supplies able to arrive, the communications working, the civil side coordinated, so the operation is supported all the way through.

The value is a plan that holds together at the seams where an uncoordinated one would have come apart. The element deploys on a route it can sustain, with the civil authority's cooperation arranged, manned and communicated and supplied as one coherent effort, and the support reaches the community because the plan was whole. Another officer, absorbed in the loud operations function and neglecting the quiet ones, would have produced an excellent operation that arrived by a route it could not sustain and foundered for want of a civil coordination no one made, failing not because any function was done badly but because the functions were never coordinated. She covered every function despite wearing every hat, and coordinated them into a whole, which is the staff craft this lesson teaches and the mark of staff work that truly serves the command.

Check Your Understanding

Name the standing staff functions and what each covers, and explain why they exist whether or not the staff is divided into branches. Why does a small staff need the functions as a checklist more than a large one, not less?
Explain the difficulty of covering all the functions when one officer wears several hats, and why "the functions that fail a small staff are usually the quiet ones it forgot." How does running the functions as a deliberate checklist, especially in planning, prevent this?
Explain coordination and why it is the deepest discipline of staff work. Give two classic failures of coordination and show that each is a failure of the functions not being joined rather than of one function working badly. What is "the whole plan," and how is it the test of coordination?

Reflection (write a short paragraph): This lesson argues that in a small staff the functions do not disappear, only the people dedicated to them do, and that the functions which fail are usually the quiet ones crowded out by the loud one. Think about your own tendency under pressure to focus on the urgent, shouting problem and neglect the quieter considerations that will not bite until later. Why is the discipline of deliberately attending to every function, and coordinating them into a whole, so much harder for one officer wearing several hats than for a large staff, and what habit would help you cover and join them all rather than producing an excellent plan that fails at a seam?

Summary

Staff work divides into standing functions, personnel and administration, information and the situation, operations and plans, logistics and sustainment, communications, and civil and external matters, and these exist whether or not the staff is divided into branches for each.
In a small force one officer often wears several hats, but the functions remain; only the dedicated people are gone, and the work each represents is done or goes undone. A small staff needs the functions as a checklist more than a large one, because nothing else ensures each is attended to.
Cover all the functions by attending to each in turn, because the urgent function (often operations) crowds out the quiet ones (logistics, personnel, civil), and the functions that fail a small staff are usually the quiet ones it forgot. Run the functions as a deliberate checklist, especially in planning, to surface a quiet function's concern before it becomes a failure.
Coordination, making the functions one coherent effort, is the deepest discipline: the functions are interdependent, and an operation must be resourced by logistics, manned by personnel, carried by communications, informed by the situation, and squared with the civil picture.
The classic failures of staff work are failures of coordination, the operation planned but not resourced, the move ordered but not fed, the task planned without consulting the civil authority, each a failure of the functions not being joined rather than of one function working badly.
The test of coordination is the whole plan: walk the operation through and check that every function's contribution is present and joined, so the operation is supported all the way through rather than failing at a seam. A command is served by a whole plan that works, not by excellent fragments that do not fit.
Cross-references: the personnel function draws on the ADM stream and the logistics function on the LOG stream; coordination across functions mirrors the administrative planning across standing areas in ADM 310 and the sustainment thinking of LOG 210; the communications function rests on the Signals and Field Communication course; and covering and coordinating the functions feeds the running of the headquarters in PME 210 Lesson 10, all in the service of command of Lesson 01.

The Staff Functions and Coordinating Them