We posted an article on the CP Journal blog this morning about the benefits of having a structure to break down and assess an organization’s capabilities, and there is one element of this process that we wanted to expand upon right away. As the Academy offers subscribers opportunities to practice what they learn in ways that deepen their expertise and skills through repetition, we wanted to offer some of our own lessons learned from building and managing capabilities that you can apply in your organizations. We recommend reading the aforementioned article, “The Science of Capability Management”, before reading on.
One of the reasons why capability management is so important for protectors is because it is one of the few areas that they can be in control of. When you, as one of those protectors, consider the three buckets of control and the limitations that protectors and warriors face when focusing solely on the adversary, the capabilities that you develop for your teams and organizations is the way to ensure that you continue to make progress on the important tasks of preparing for the conflicts and battles ahead.
Using the POETE framework that we discussed in our article from this morning as a means to assess the underlying components to a capability is one that we’ve experimented with over the last year since it was released in the 2018 THIRA Guide. The challenge we had in integrating the POETE framework into our process, however, was that the definitions of what goes into the Planning, Organization, Equipment, Training and Exercising of a capability wasn’t deep or comprehensive. Since the definitions provided in the guide were only one bullet point deep, it took some time and iterations for us to determine what we would need in each category to unlock the full potential of an objective approach to assessing a capability.
We will break down and discuss each POETE element separately here in the Academy, with this first post focusing on the “P” – Planning.
The Planning Section of the capability assessment is designed to help create the plans for how your capability will be put into action. The challenge we ran into when we were first implementing the POETE framework, however, was that “go create a plan” as an action item was neither specific nor comprehensive enough to address the questions and challenges that a leader faces when developing and maintaining their organization’s capabilities. Over the last year, we have refined the way we use the planning element to include the following items before we move on to the other elements of the capability comfortably.
What goes into our adapted planning element is the following: