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:
- A Threat/Hazard/Risk Summary. The goal of this document is to summarize the reasons why this is a capability worth developing. This should include the context necessary to understand what the capability is going to address.
- The Grey Sky Plan. This is the plan for how you are going to operate and bring the capability to bear when your bad day comes. It is important to only use the resources, whether those are people or equipment, that you have available to you when the plan is written.
- Strategic Plan or Capability Vision Statement. This plan or statement (whatever is needed and makes sense for the capability) identifies what the desired end-state for your capability is. In whatever way makes the most sense for you, what is the required capability that you need to build towards in order to address the threats or hazards you are preparing for?
- Gap Analysis. This is the difference between the capability you have in your Grey Sky Plan and the capability you require in your Strategic Plan. What is the resulting capability that you need to build in order to accomplish that goal?
- The Blue Sky Plan. This is the plan that you will go through to begin working to bridge the gaps you identified in the previous step. This can be a year long, three years long or six weeks long –however long you establish as a planning horizon to execute projects and efforts to chip away at the capability shortfalls you have.
One of the things that we have learned using the POETE process is that the Planning Section needs to include all of the various plans involved in the capability. As organizational leaders want to know what skills and shortfalls are being focused on for development, not having the “Blue Sky Plan” included became a shortfall in the process. Since the Blue Sky Plan is designed to address gaps, designing an improvement plan without also acknowledging the known gaps can result in an unfocused pursuit, wasted time, wasted resources or drained morale.
Also, having a capability that you haven’t taken the time to connect back to a threat or hazard can create a challenge when you’re asked to justify or demonstrate the return on investment for the resources expended creating or maintaining a capability – whether that is time, money or personnel. By beginning the planning section of your capability assessment with information about the threats or hazards that you are addressing, you can shape a person’s understanding of the importance of the effort in a clear, persuasive way right from the beginning.
One of the critiques of the POETE process that we often hear relates the Grey Sky Plan, including questions about whether the plan will actually be used when it is needed. People sometimes say that they aren’t going to stop what they are doing to read a long plan, so what is the point in creating it? Even though we advocate for planning and proactive action, we don’t disagree with these critiques either. If the plan is well written, it becomes a tool to train to and exercise so that you don’t have to read it cover to cover when an event takes place. The plan becomes a benchmark to consider during after action reviews to assess what went well in the incident and what needs to be improved or trained to at a higher level. The plan is a document that helps create an anchor so that objective conversations can be had and so that people have the same idea of what is expected of them.
So what are the differentiators that constitute an effective plan? To us, the plan doesn’t have to cover every possible detail, but it does need to answer three questions:
- Was the plan created by and agreed upon by those who will be executing it?
- Is the plan process-based so that those involved in its execution are able to adapt and not get tied into rote execution of a pre-determined checklist of steps?
- Does the plan allow for it to be trained to and exercised so that people know what they are supposed to do?
When we say that every stakeholder and participant involved in the execution of the plan should also be involved in the building of the plan, we aren’t saying that every participant should have equal participation or say in the process. Those who play a larger role should have a greater say than supporting teams and organizations.
The reason why we see greater value in process-based plans is because the truth is that long, wordy plans are rarely read in their entirety. However, when a plan incorporates flow diagrams and processes to visualize the significant actions, the actions they personally need to take, the decision points that are anticipated and the coordination required along the way, the plan doesn’t become overly prescriptive, but instead allows for people to take initiative during the plans execution.
And, as we mentioned, if the plan can be exercised and continuously improved upon, then it also supports the incremental development and improvement of your organization.
When we began working with POETE as a framework for capability assessment, it wasn’t a framework we chose to use because it was perfect, but it was one that was good enough, used by enough people and something we could begin using to learn how to adapt an imperfect process to meet our needs. In the next post, we will expand on the next component to capability management–organization—and will discuss how it isn’t just about who you have available to execute your plans, but also how you engage them in the planning process, that is the key to success.