Friday, January 21, 2011

Information Warfare Officer Community Management Guidance From RADM Deets

1. The IW Officer community is rapidly evolving to meet new and expanded Navy and Joint IO missions. In addition to our strictly cryptologic and SIGINT missions, there is a growing demand signal for IO leaders at sea and at Joint commands in most IW pay grades. These new IO billets represent key mission growth that is vital to global naval and Joint operations. Consequently, IW officer career planning must adapt to ensure a stable and maintainable workforce capable of fulfilling current and future requirements.

2. The fundamental building blocks for a successful naval career remain unchanged, and include, first and foremost, sustained superior performance across a variety of assignments including tactical and operational jobs, sea and air tours, leadership positions, interleaved with joint experience and built upon a strong foundation of SIGINT and IO skills and experience. Effective mission execution in wartime demands that we reward proven performance in challenging circumstances with advancement and expanded responsibilities.

3. The priority for assignment will always involve detailing the most talented officers to the most demanding positions and a successful assignment process includes milestone screening. One of the questions that leadership hears most often from IWOs is about career paths: “the right jobs,” promotion criteria, and the like.  Establishment of the screening process and advertised milestone jobs will bring a new level of rigor to career management and help to clearly define what is necessary for you to achieve a successful career."

Other aspects of the message have changed sufficiently so as not to be relevant any longer under the Information Dominance Corps umbrella.  The full message/memo is (was?) available on the IWO page of NKO.  Not sure those pages (NKO) or the pages on npc.navy.mil are maintained (updated) any longer.

From RADM Deets' guidance in 2007.  I've not seen an update.

7 comments:

General Quarters said...

"Hit hard, hit fast, hit often." Admiral Bill Halsey

Now THAT was guidance.

Anonymous said...

"demand signal"....a phrase used often around where I work by many...that for some reason instantly tightens my jaw (along with "wirebrush"..."socialize"...and a few others).

Any reason we can't just say "demand" ?

Mike Lambert said...

Because we are 'signals' folks.

Anonymous said...

The IW NKO page has been in a perpetual state of disrepair for years now. While I think the direction the community is going is important and positive, the lack of community leadership that left with the disestabslihment of CNSG is still felt today. Ideally, the senior 1810 would fill this role no matter his or her position, but that has not happened... to the detriment of junior officers like me.

Anonymous said...

Wholeheartedly agree with anonymous 2:39 PM.

For an Information "Dominance" Corps our web presence is a joke.

I have said this before, and will say it again, as long as I receive community information from this blog and nowhere else, our community leadership is failing.

Anonymous said...

No update from the IW/Cryptologic community lead since 2007? Not surprising. I don't mean to malign RADM Deets personally, but when our community leader is primarily responsible for non-IW/Cryppie matters, no matter how hard he tries or well intentioned, he will lose touch with the community. I'd recommend the community leader portfolio shift from the senior 1810 to a flag who actually works the issues and has a cryppie staff on a day-to-day basis. Why not choose the RDML in N2/N6 (to align with the IDC leadership) or deputy FCC/C10F (to align with the NIOC chain of command), much like INTEL community lead used to reside with OPNAV N2 even though he wasn't the most senior 1630.

John Byron said...

January 23, 2011 2:11 PM: Interesting comment.

Observation is that staff corps and restricted line reflexively regard their most senior as their community leader regardless; URLs absolutely do not.

In the long run I suspect the latter course is better, giving the role-players in the community junior to its most senior more instinct and opportunity to do their jobs within the command structure and not have undue 'enlightenment' from outside their chain nor temptation to 'request guidance' (Ernie King's most hated query) when they should instead be just doing their jobs.

But ultimately it will be community culture that decides ... and probably its current most-senior who vectors that decision in this new community.