Methodology Overview
With 30 WG attendees ranging from academia, DoD poli-cy,
US Government civilians, military planners, and partner
nation military subject matter experts, JCISFA presented its
observations from the deep dive study to assist in developing
a shared understanding of the problem. The observations foc-
used on threshold issues of 1) who in the US government is in
charge of the advising mission, 2) what missions or tasks are
expected of senior level advisors, and 3) how should senior
level advisors be prepare to perform their specific missions
or tasks? The key aspect of the discussion was to
demonstrate the tendency for such groups to focus on the
tactical and operational function of planning focusing on the
perceived “symptoms” of a problem, while paying little atten-
tion to the root cause of the problem.
To “break the mold” of institutional military thinking, Nadia
Gerspacher from USIP discussed her publication, “Sustain-
able Capacity Building: Guidelines for Planning and Project
Design Communities.” The group benefitted from her dis-
cussion on the six conditions for sustainable capacity building
and her observations on the advisor mission. DASD Erik
Leklam, OSD(P) Security Cooperation (OSD(P) SC),
presented his observations as a former Ministry of Defense
Advisor in Indonesia. He discussed the root problems in
advisor preparation, focusing on not only general advisor
skills, but also “tailored design” solutions for each advisor and
their specific assignment. DASD Leklam also addressed
advisor resourcing and doctrine concerns.
The WG split into two sub-working groups focused on the
shared scenario to “Build Capability and Capacity of Border
Security and Police forces in an Afghanistan-like country.”
Although the Afghanistan and Iraq advising missions are not
considered to be representative of the greater advising effort,
the scenario provided a basic reference point to focus the gro-
up’s efforts on institutional solutions as opposed to address-
ing discreet or tactical level issues in either region. By separ-
ately addressing the security and police force issues, both sub-
groups focused on their particular advising requirements and
“backwards planned” to determine the specific support and
supported relationships in required people.
Each sub-WG was to frame their discussion and recommenda-
tions using the following questions:
• Does a specified advisor mission or country-specific
security/police mission (supported by advisors) affect the
training and education pipeline?
• Is their proper alignment of the advisor mission within
the EGO Function construct?
• Should there be an organization responsible to determine
training and education requirements for senior leader
advisors, and if so, why?
• What are the training & education solutions in the
following components: 1) mission requirements determin-
ation, 2) validation of requirements, 3) notification of req-
uirements, 4) pre-deployment training requirements, 5)
on-boarding requirements, and 6) post-deployment Lesson
Learned requirements?
• Describe what training and education challenges your
small group believes the organizations will encounter while
conducting senior leader advising at various levels of gover-
nment or EGO construct?
Workgroup Recommendations
1. Assign Proponency (Responsibility)
Due to the multitude of US organizations with differing levels
of advocacy for advisory missions and a lack of overall
responsibility or authority, a joint-level proponent is necessary
to direct actions and resources. Otherwise, the advising effort
devolves into “random acts of goodness.” A single entity with
the responsibility and authority for supervision and coordina-
tion of the advising effort would greatly enhance a collaborative
environments, while enabling the delegation of responsibility to
the lowest levels. In a joint environment, a single entity
charged with managing the advisor effort could standardize
policy, doctrine, lexicon, and training across the interagency.
Such an entity could also standardize training centers with the
military and civilian government infrastructure to deconflict
funding and personnel resources and mitigate duplication of
efforts.
2. Create a Pipeline for Advisor development (Build)
The relatively short period between the identification of a sen-
ior level advisor requirement and the deployment time, has
resulted in a truncated period to prepare individual's for their
assigned advising effort. To compound this short preparation
time, the advisor mission or end state sometimes lacked suffic-
ient clarity to refine the individual’s preparation effort. With a
clear and understandable advisor goal, mission or task, the advi-
sor infrastructure could organize itself to prepare future advis-
ors. Expectations for advisors can range from persuading an
advisee to take a particular action, to enabling an individual to
conduct a certain task, or teaching the utilization of a piece of
equipment.
Once a basic mission set has been established, an advisor train-
ing pipeline begins at accessions training (e.g. pre-commission-
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