Continuous Command Post Operations

Guided Discovery.

Artist: GP Photography

Suggested Reading

• FM 6-0, Commander and Staff Organization and Operations

  • Pages 9-1 through 9-16 based on printed document (PDF pages 143-158)

  • Discussion of the processes and actions for effective and efficiency management of command posts

• Link to FM 6-0 on the US Army Publishing Directorate

• This week’s Study: Staff Duty

• All excerpts below are from FM 6-0

Guided Discovery

War does not work bankers hours.

9-1. Army operations are continuous, and units operate at the same level of intensity for extended periods. Units and organizations must man, equip, and organize CPs to execute operations and sustain command and control (C2) without interruption.

Continuous management of the battlefield and all operations is paramount; small failures in oversight, attentiveness, and response times create larger margins for error or opportunities for enemy exploitation.

Plenty of companies have legitimate needs to run continuous operations: utilities, communications providers, emergency services, fuel stations and convenience stores come to mind.

Most other organizations do not have competitive sensitivities or community dependencies necessitating continuous operations, and yet expectations continue to increase for leaders and managers to be omnipresent and omniscient with respect to all activities.

Whether this is a real requirement or inflated expectation, the need exists for some form of continuous operational capability for leadership teams. Most organizations are not good at providing these capabilities.

It’s not for a lack of tools. Dashboards, alert systems, latent crisis teams waiting for activation - there are many digital products and on-demand services attempting to fill the capability gap.

Most organizations struggle less with gathering and compiling real time information and more with executing a systematic approach to triaging information flow, passing information to and between key roles, and making decisions quickly.

If you are going to manage continuous operations (and at one point or another we all will in some fashion), the US Army can provide you guidance. You should rigorously follow four areas of Command Post Operations instructions to most effectively manage continuous operations in your job or life:

1. Stick to SOPs

2. Get Three Roles Right

3. Structure Your Handoffs

4. Build a Battle Tracking System

All of it boils down to the creation of an environment that supports consistency and clarity in communication. It need not be complex, only consistent and clear.

How do you manage continuous operations?
Does the need for continuous operations exist in your organization or is there simply a desire for on-demand information?

Stick to Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)

9-2. During continuous operations, CP personnel perform several routine and recurring tasks to establish, operate, and move CPs. With the assistance of their staffs, commanders develop processes and procedures for performing these tasks. The collective whole of those processes and procedures are encapsulated in SOPs to govern CP operations.

Everyone loves a good SOP. The look nice, written down, put in drawers or uploaded to a Teams site, never to be followed or reviewed. This is not a failure of SOPs, it is a failure of leaders to be involved in SOPs.

9-4. Commanders ensure that comprehensive and detailed SOPs are developed, maintained, trained upon, and used for all aspects of CP operations. In this way, CP operations become routine and are successfully executed in periods of stress and rapid tempo.