Strategic planning for the United States Army Personnel Function

This report reviews and evaluates how much strategic planning concepts used in private industry can be applied to the Army and provides recommendations for improving the Army's ability to do effective strategic planning for a changing and uncertain future. The study recommends that the Army adopt a process patterned on the private industry model because, unlike the Army process, the latter process explicitly considers future uncertainty and evaluates strategy alternatives to deal with it. The process for the proposed strategic planning concept should start by defining and prioritizing goals and objectives. It should then define relevant dimensions of the operating environment and explore alternative future environments. Finally, the process should develop strategies (shaping, operating, and hedging) and define the resulting environment within which the Army plans to operate. The study further recommends that the revised process be implemented incrementally over the next two-year planning cycle.