While all U.S. military services have strived to achieve greater total force integration and a stronger total force culture, impediments limit the achievement of these objectives. This research identifies policies and practices that contribute to improved integration and a stronger total force culture, focusing on innovative approaches that could impart cross-component knowledge and provide rewards for service members to work across components.

Approaches for Strengthening Total Force Culture and Facilitating Cross-Component Integration in the U.S. Military

Agnes Gereben Schaefer, John D. Winkler, Kimberly Jackson, Daniel Ibarra, Darrell D. Jones, Geoffrey McGovern

ResearchPublished May 28, 2020

While all U.S. military services have strived to achieve greater total force integration and a stronger total force culture across their active and reserve components, significant impediments limit the achievement of these objectives. Thus, the issue continues to capture the attention of policymakers who seek ways to overcome these impediments and facilitate greater integration.

This priority has been addressed most recently by national commissions addressing the future of both the Army and the Air Force. While each of these sets of proposals provides ideas for enhancing integration and providing a greater total force culture, the proposals are neither complete nor fully reflective of all potentially relevant policies and practices. Further, the policy prescriptions are service specific and do not reflect broader insights that cut across services. Last, none of these efforts clearly define the desired purpose and end state for integration against which integration initiatives can be evaluated. For these reasons, a more comprehensive analysis is needed of policies and practices that can contribute to the ultimate objective of improving total force integration and achieving a total force culture.

The objective of this study is to provide insights on policies that can foster cross-component integration and incentives for cross-component service that contribute to the most effective total force possible and benefit individual service members, as well as both the active and reserve components. The focus of this report is on factors that can increase cross-component knowledge and awareness, which contribute to achieving the larger goal of cross-component integration.

Key Takeaways

Several factors facilitate efforts to enhance cross-component integration

  • Initiatives that consider unique service force structures and reserve component (RC) competencies facilitate integration efforts.
  • Integration efforts are facilitated when RC capabilities are included in service strategic planning.
  • Integration efforts are facilitated when leadership sets the tone, message, and pace of those efforts.
  • Integration efforts are facilitated when initiatives define an end state and are implemented deliberately.
  • Integration efforts are facilitated when incentives are used to attract individuals to cross-component assignments (e.g., command opportunities, geographic location, and financial incentives).

Several factors also inhibit efforts to enhance cross-component integration

  • Circumstances that inhibit cross-component integration include cultural differences across the components; statutory and funding constraints; lack of recognition or reward for serving in cross-component assignments; prescriptive and rigid career development paths that inhibit cross-component talent management strategies; lack of formal evaluation, limiting the ability to demonstrate benefits; and failures or errors in implementation.

When looking across the experiences of U.S. civilian agencies, the private sector, and foreign militaries, several crosscutting lessons can be drawn

  • Fostering integration requires a shift in culture and leadership buy-in.
  • Required rotations can improve retention and facilitate a holistic understanding of enterprise operations.
  • Integration is often easier with more-junior employees.
  • Financial incentives are not always the most compelling.

Recommendations

  • To facilitate deeper active and reserve component integration, senior Department of Defense (DoD) and service leadership should first decide whether integration is a priority. If so, top service leadership should clarify the purpose of integration and establish goals and benchmarks for furthering integration.
  • The services should undertake a review of current assignment and promotion policies and determine how these will change. This includes identifying positions for cross-component assignments, determining the number and grade levels of assignees, implementing a program of incentives as needed, and altering promotion policies and practices to reward cross-component service.
  • DoD should continue to make progress on structural changes such as addressing legal and regulatory barriers to integration and implementing system changes that could facilitate component integration. Such actions would set the foundation for any further efforts to integrate the active and reserve components and to achieve the development of a stronger total force culture.
  • Additionally, overarching steps that the services and DoD could take to facilitate implementation of any efforts to deepen integration include defining the purpose of such integration efforts, fostering a shift in culture and leadership buy-in, tailoring integration efforts to unique service force structure and reserve component competencies, and evaluating integration initiatives.

Topics

Document Details

Citation

Chicago Manual of Style

Schaefer, Agnes Gereben, John D. Winkler, Kimberly Jackson, Daniel Ibarra, Darrell D. Jones, and Geoffrey McGovern, Approaches for Strengthening Total Force Culture and Facilitating Cross-Component Integration in the U.S. Military. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2020. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2143.html.
BibTeX RIS

Research conducted by

This research was sponsored by the Office of Reserve Integration within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness and was conducted within the Forces and Resources Policy Center of the RAND National Defense Research Institute.

This publication is part of the RAND research report series. Research reports present research findings and objective analysis that address the challenges facing the public and private sectors. All RAND research reports undergo rigorous peer review to ensure high standards for research quality and objectivity.

This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited; linking directly to this product page is encouraged. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial purposes. For information on reprint and reuse permissions, please visit www.rand.org/pubs/permissions.

RAND is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.