As a side note, if candidates, appointees and families ever wonder what officers do on headquarters staff duty, if I pulled aside the curtain, you would see:
- staff officers and SME civilian analysts from the manpower, training, safety, medical, and other interested staff directorates, all producing and coordinating analyses, stats, medical research, opinions, across, up, down and out to field commands for comment
- one staff directorate would be project lead
- some defense contractor analysts would be thrown at it for good measure
- liaison with sister services and input on their current practices and policies reviewed and compared
- advance liaison with interested parties on DOD staff would occur
- PowerPoints would multiply like ants at a picnic near the pie plate
- meetings, briefings, re-circulation of the latest draft decision paper for review, comment, sign-off would pop up in electronic tasker coordination queues (the "chop chain" in Navy talk, not sure of AF term)
- at some point, a decision package with proposal, background, analysis, plenty of cool graphs, risk summaries, recommendations, draft policy, draft HQ message, timeline for implementation, action steps, press release plan - lands on the desk of the decision-maker.
- decision gets made, execution begins - publishing policy, sending out taskers and timelines, coordinating press releases, solving unanticipated glitches.
- the grease in this whole process is the staff officers keeping it moving, evolving and accurate
Ahhh... action officer staff duty, a rite of passage for most mid-grade and senior officers before the blessed relief of heading back out for operational duty away from HQ.
I wrote this based on Navy and Joint Staff duty, and to share some knowledge for those whom military officer life is a mystery. I am confident my AF kin here will generally agree with my description.
