Military Review English Edition March-April 2015 | Page 38

are often given freedom to suggest effective ways to
communicate difficult, controversial, or complex
points, whether orally or in written products, such as
journal articles.
The organization is the client, not the commander. This is an important philosophical point that
comes from watching some SAs go about this task the
wrong way. Perhaps, they developed especially pretty or
elaborate PowerPoint presentations and designs for the
commander’s use only or wrote speeches that, if spoken,
would have been self-promoting for the commander
(and indirectly the SA).
However, those SAs ignored the needs of the
organization. Successful SAs know that once the
commander has finished speaking, no matter to which
audience, the staff must act on the message. The audience and the headquarters staff will each want the
slides, so the slides and associated notes pages must be
self-explanatory.

Special Assistant as Special Projects
Officer
I served in several CAGs where we were tasked to
lead some form of strategic review or change effort for
the headquarters. The advantage of having CAGs is
their ability to operate outside of the normal all-consuming staff churn to tackle tough challenges and organizational needs that are otherwise overcome by ordinary events. CAGs can serve as internal think tanks,
conducting important or independent research on
complex topics that fall outside the staff ’s jurisdiction
or exceed the abilities of the staff to tackle, or as special
projects teams, free to explore creative and innovative
solutions to current or future challenges.
Most projects I worked on involved implementing and managing organizational change. Change is
a major part of organizational life, and keeping pace
with the ever-changing strategic environment is hard.
Commanders often look to their CAGs to conduct
research and contribute ideas that may spur redesign of
processes, systems, and structures in their commands.
Depending on the task, these can include preparing
analytical white papers, studying emerging doctrine,
developing concepts, contributing to staff planning,
preparing senior leader communications, and engaging
with subject matter experts outside the military, such
as those in academia and think tanks. Such projects can
36

be interesting and professionally rewarding, although
they can also be demanding and frustrating at times,
especially if a study must be close-hold and nonreleasable due to sensitivities.
CAGs may also be involved if a headquarters
employs an outside consultant (from within the
Department of Defense, other government agency, academia, or private enterprise) to assist with a wide-scale
transformati