Military Review English Edition March-April 2015 | Page 40

solid working relationships with the headquarters staff.
Strong relationships with the chief of staff provides better
access to feeder input for commander products and better
chances of the commander’s communications promulgating through the organization.
What roles do the SAs tend to play? In addition
to determining how well your strengths align with the
activities the CAG performs, these roles also determine
the CAG’s primary contacts within the staff. If a CAG is
being used as primarily as a speechwriting team, then how
strong is the relationship with the public affairs officer?
If special projects, then what is the relationship with the
division chiefs and action officers in the C/J/G-3, 5, or 8
(general staff)?
If internal consultant, which would be less common,
then what is the role of the staff judge advocate, inspector
general, or deputy chief of staff? If archivist, then what
are the expectations of the executive officer and aidede-camp? If these working relationships are strong, then
SA efforts are much more likely to be productive and
rewarding.
Is the CAG being used as a shadow staff? I am
happy to say that this became far less common in my later
years in CAGs but was more prevalent a decade earlier
and is something worth watching out for. If a CAG is
being used to routinely vet staff products (that is, being inserted as a gatekeeper between the staff and commander)
or duplicate staff actions, that is a CAG to avoid. Usually,
checking into the relationship between the CAG and key

staff members will give indicators that this is occurring,
but not always.
A corollary question is who does the CAG work for?
What I said earlier about speechwriting applies across
all CAG functions: the organization is who the CAG
serves—and not just the commander. If the CAG is singularly focused on the commander to the exclusion of the
rest of the headquarters, then you should look for signs of
strain between the CAG and the staff. If so, building relationships with the staff becomes an important early task.

Tough but Rewarding Duty
Duty as an SA is challenging and rewarding. It provides a great opportunity to understand broad organizational dynamics and gain insights into the world of
strategic leadership. It can offer opportunities to pursue important creative and innovative projects, aid in
transformation efforts, and help organizations address
difficult challenges.
It is also delicate, a duty that requires well-honed
interpersonal skills and professional judgment to work in
some of the sensitive matters addressed at the senior levels,
and no two general officers utilize their SAs the same way.
From my personal and professional experience, it is one
of the most interesting and impactful assignments that an
officer can take.
The author thanks Professor Chuck Allen and Col. Michael
McCrea, both of the U.S. Army War College, for their contributions and comments on earlier drafts of this article.

Col. Thomas P. Galvin, U.S. Army, retired, is a faculty instructor in the Department of Command, Leadership, and
Management at the U.S. Army War College and a doctoral candidate in the Executive Leadership Development
Program at George Washington University. He previously served 11 years as special assistant to various commanders in service, joint, and combined headquarters, culminating with assignment as chief of the Commander’s Action
Group, U.S. Africa Command.

Notes
1. When I joined my first commander’s action group in 2000
and asked the chief what the duties entailed, these four words
were the initial response.
2. Kevin Baron, “Inside the CAG: Dempsey’s Inner Circle,” ForeignPolicy.com, 12 October 2012, http://foreignpolicy.
com/2012/10/12/inside-the-cag-dempseys-inner-circle/ (accessed
3 February 2015).

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3. Merriam-Webster Online, s.v. “empathy,” http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/empathy (accessed 16 January 2014).
4. Harry Levinson, Organizational Assessment: A Step-by-Step
Guide to Effective Consulting, 1st ed. (Washington DC: American
Psychological Association, 2002), 37-39. The author provides a
theoretical perspective on internal consultants.
5. Ibid.

March-April 2015  MILITARY REVIEW