Improving Organisational Effectiveness of Coalition Operations

Transformation of military operations demands new tools to support the performance of coalition forces in multinational operations. This paper contributes to one of the fundamental objectives of SAS-081/RSY, namely to the objective to share experience from the implementation of methods and tools and latest research results in support of transformation and management in the new security environment. In addition, it focuses on the cognitive and human aspects of defence transformation. The goal of the paper is to investigate potential models and tools for understanding, explaining, and measuring organisational effectiveness of coalition HQs conducting Non-article 5 crisis response operations. The paper will present intermediate results of the work of NATO RTO HFM Task Group (TG)163 “Improving Organisational Effectiveness of Coalition Operations”, which is composed of researchers from 11 nations (i.e., eight NATO, two PfP and one MD). In addition, NATO ex-officio bodies are represented in the group (i.e., NATO Defence College, NATO School SHAPE and NATO SACT). First, HFM RTG 163 organized subject matter experts (SMEs) discussions at NATO School SHAPE and at NATO Allied Command Transformation to define the term “organisational effectiveness” of coalition HQs at the operational level and to categorize factors critical to organisational effectiveness. Second, the TG drafted a theoretical model of organisational effectiveness, based on the results of SMEs discussions, a literature review of the relevant models and variables, as well as products other NATO RTGs had developed; for example, the CTEF Model developed by HFM-087, and the Network Enabled Capability (NNEC) C2 Maturity Model developed by SAS-065. The model implies that most important for organisational effectiveness is strategically aligning Structure, People, Processes, and Culture towards the organisation’s operative goals, which are a) effective and timely sharing of information, b) quick and timely decision making, and c) improved shared awareness of tasks and responsibilities. Third, based on this theoretical model the TG developed a draft instrument (i.e., questionnaire) for data collection that can be used to 1) investigate the impacts of different influencing factors, 2) localize inefficiencies in NATO headquarters (HQ), and 3) determine measures to achieve better organisational effectiveness of coalition HQs.