Communication Planning and the Joint Operational Planning Process
By R. Arin and R. Ferguson
Communication Planners have a dilemma. At Combatant Commands (COCOMs), they are expected to plan and synchronize communication actions with theater and operational planning. However, the methodology and processes that integrate Communication Planning into the Joint Operational Planning Process (JOPP) is nonexistent or at best opaque. As a result, communicators do not fully understand their role or the function of their position in Operational Planning Teams (OPTs) and communication efforts become an afterthought with operational plans insufficiency addressing the activities in the information realm.
This paper is designed to address gaps in communication planning. It will outline a process of integrating communication planning into JOPP. The authors recently participated in a wargame at U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM) where this process was executed. The paper will review what communication related actions occurred during the wargame, what didn’t happen, and key take-aways for communication and operational planners. The overall intent is to improve communication integration with planning leading to fully synchronized and well-developed plans which meet the Commander’s intent.
There are multiple functional areas included campaign, contingency and/or operational plans. A specific joint function that receives a great deal of verbal advocacy, but rarely gets the attention required, is information. Some planners may not think this is an important issue, but the consequences of not having a robust Communication Plan that is integrated and evaluated before execution risks operations costing more, lasting longer, not receiving the support and resources required, or most importantly, not achieving its objectives.
Communication Planning relies on synchronizing communication activities for accomplishing information integration. However, planners have not traditionally developed a Communication Plan in conjunction with the planning process, evaluated that plan in execution, and then modified it based on effectiveness.
The purpose of the operational wargame at USCENTCOM, was to develop and then evaluate multiple courses of actions (COAs) addressing potential changes to the theater operational environment. The scenarios were fictional, designed to emphasize potential counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, or security force assistance operations, while being prepared for conventional operations. These operations would occur while USCENTCOM transitioned to an economy of force environment. In this scenario, information should be a combat force multiplier, especially when resources are diminished or constrained.
During the wargame, the intent of the planning effort was to develop an operational plan, vice execute an operation. Therefore, the ability to assess the success of the Communication Plan in execution was unavailable. Considering this, the Communication Plan and operational COAs were evaluated within a scenario-based wargame.
The basis for developing a Communication Plan is straight forward and constructed upon the premise that information is a joint function, and like other joint functions, integrated throughout planning. Figure 1 outlines the process the authors developed to achieve integration of the information joint function in operational planning. This process outlines the broad actions required to produce a Communication Plan that supports the overall operational intent. Importantly, this process is synchronized with JOPP.
Step 1: Developing a Communication Plan to conduct a Communication Analysis. The plan must communicate to identified target audiences. Before that can occur, a thorough review of the commander’s mission intent and problem must take place. This step is executed concurrent with, or before, the problem appreciation and mission analysis step in JOPP. Communication Planners must first understand the operational and communication problem. This is done by reviewing the relevant history through academic and media sources, and by analyzing statements and actions from relevant world leaders, international organizations like the United Nations, and Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs). Most importantly, Communication Planners must understand policy from the Office of Secretary of Defense, Department of State, and the White House. With the background understood, Communication Planners must outline all the audiences the Communication Plan might affect, and their biases, as well as the communication environment in which they are mostly likely to receive information. This means understanding how information is transmitted and received in the theater, categorized by intended and unintended audiences.
FIGURE 1. Communication Planning Approach to Operational Plan Development
Step 2: Problem Development. This step is conducted in conjunction with mission analysis. After researching the history of the problem, Communication Planners should begin drafting a problem statement for the Communication Plan. This is different than the overall operational plan’s problem statement and serves at the Communications Plan’s foundation. The problem statement should succinctly describe the communication issue to solve and obstacles preventing communication synchronization efforts from being successful. Planners must take their analysis of the history, policies, audiences, and information environment and overlay that on the overall operational mission guidance and determine barriers for the communication synchronization plan from achieving the desired objectives of the Communication Plan. The problem statement should only contain the significant elements of Step 1, and problem appreciation. It should not include what the communication plan will accomplish – doing so causes solution biases before the problem is understood. The problem statement is what will ultimately be solved when operationalized in the execution phase. Concurrently, Communication Planners must consider facts, assumptions, constraints, and restraints. What needs to come out of this step is a problem statement that is specific enough to begin outlining communication objectives and themes in Step 3.
Step 3: Developing the Communication Approach and Development. In this step, Communication Planners create what the Communication Plan will address and identify the problem statement. This is performed concurrently with the COA Development step in JOPP. In this step, objectives, themes, and actions completed are developed for each operational COA, and operationalized by providing the Plan to tactical messengers or Information Related Capabilities (IRCs) to execute. To be effective, the actions must be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timely (SMART). Planners must ensure IRC actions are linked to the operational COAs and critical events identified during JOPP. Additionally, Communication Planners must outline potential decisions points for communication activities. The actions and messages in the approach should not box in the commander. The term Specific Ambiguity will be applied. This means, providing audiences with the approved narrative and intent, but not in such a way that the commander loses room to maneuver as the operational environment evolves. For each operational COA wargamed, the associated communication approach should include the problem statement, narrative, objectives, themes, audiences, IRC actions, risks, and likely adversary reactions. These must be specific enough to evaluate in Step 4.
Step 4: Evaluate or Assess the Communication Approach. This step is done concurrent with the COA Analysis and Wargaming and COA Comparison steps in JOPP. It can also be accomplished during the execution phase if related to operational orders production. Once an approach is developed for each COA, its effectiveness should be evaluated in the context of the larger operational plan. Here the IRCs – Public Affairs, Information Operations, Key Leader Engagement and Civil Affairs – execute their tasks and associated actions in conjunction with other joint functions. Draft products for public dissemination, which can be overt or covert, are employed. IRCs will use these to inform, educate, persuade and influence, per the communication narrative, in the form of guidance, public statements, talking points, kinetic and civil affairs actions, or engaging various key leaders. Messaging optics are equally as important to ensure a Say-Do-Gap cannot surface. Unity of voice is required to maintain communication synchronization, and words, actions and deeds all require alignment.
Once messengers and messages have been operationalized, it is important to understand if they are performing as anticipated and if they are effective. Messages can be subjective and there is sometimes no clear conclusion as to the success of altering audience actions, beliefs, or perceptions. In a wargame, how actions and perceptions are adjudicated rests on the expertise of the wargame facilitator and the wargame design. This should be informed by common sense and understanding of the operational environment. Communication Planners must understand that the task of wargaming in JOPP is not to determine if the Communication Plan works, but rather, evaluating and comparing the various COAs of an operational problem within which the Communication Plan is the goal. In this process, Communication Planners determine whether to Refine, Adapt, Terminate or Execute (RATE) the Communication Plan developed for that COA. Refine includes minor changes to the approach based on wargame activities. Adapt involves a larger re-write of the approach. Terminate applies to approaches that require returning the planners to mission analysis due to ineffectiveness. Lastly, Execute involves proceeding with the approach as wargamed. From this step, planners can begin drafting the Strategic Communication Annex (Annex Y), to provide further guidance, clarity, taskings, narrative, objectives, themes, opportunities, risks, obstacles, and potential adversary responses which may counter messages.
Following the USCENTCOM wargame, the authors learned three unsurprising but important facts. First, that communication synchronization must be integrated early into planning. Second, communication actions must be specifically outlined in a manner similar to the other joint functions for the team to understand and appreciate the additive nature of information. Finally, the communication team must educate the OPT on how and why the information joint function must be integrated into planning.
Key Point 1: The Communication Planning Team must integrate into planning from the beginning.
The communication planning team was not brought in until after JOPP started and the initial COAs were already developed. The OPT had already completed Problem Appreciation and Mission Analysis. This resulted in the communication team struggling to adapt to COAs that did not fit the information environment problem set. Issues such as operational name changes, conducting Key Leader Engagements with partners, synchronizing allied public affairs actions, or adapting current civil affairs actions, before execution, were not considered. Unfortunately, this is not uncommon. Military planners generally come from the traditional combat arms specialties and often look at planning first through a more conventional military lens. Despite military schools playing lip service to the importance of information, planners tend to focus on the more tangible function such as fires, maneuver, and logistics. Equally as myopic, Communication Planners tend to shy away from inserting themselves into operational planning, failing to engage the process until after the plan is complete. The result is the information joint function is never as robust as its counterpart’s plan and lacks thoroughness of operational planning design and integration. Luckily, this was wargaming, not execution, and the lack of integrating information was identified. However, even though multiple issues were discussed by the communications team, the COAs were not modified, resulting in options insufficiently supported in the information sphere. If this were an Operational Plan (OPLAN), the authors submit the operational planners would be required to return to COA Development.
Key Point 2: Information actions must be as specific and detailed as actions in other joint functions.
As part of the wargame, the communication planning team did a good job at describing the narrative, communication objectives, and themes they wanted to employ. That team was less successful at developing specific actions over time as space. This was only partly the fault of the communication team. The biggest issue for the team was the four COAs were not sufficiently developed with communication in mind. In other words, actions were developed without communication integration. For example, one COA had the Coalition moving forces into a partner country. A planning assumption was the Coalition would be provided access and basing. However, none of the planners understood the communication issues associated with those actions. If Key Leader Engagement were identified as a way to socialize the need, this could have been a means to an endstate. Or effectively using the media environment in the host nation to delicately broach the topic. Essentially, the plan needed communication preparation of the information environment in Phase 0 to make COA actions proceed successfully.
The Communication Planners struggled to specify communication actions completely, and the wargame post-mortem was challenged on how to evaluate the effects of communication activities. Who will do what, and when, were not identified. Questions that should have been asked – What actions required media engagement? What are the processes for integrating Coalition partners into communication activities? Who are the leaders with whom the Coalition needs to engage and when? What are the expected adversary communication reactions? How does the Coalition counter those reactions? These tasks largely fall on the Communication Planners. They must get beyond just objectives, themes, and messages and move to specific IRC actions aligned with the operational plan. This is the essence of Step 3. Unfortunately, in the wargame, the Communication Planners started late and had difficulty completing that step before being forced into Step 4.
Key Point 3: The communication team must educate the planning team on how information is a joint function which requires deliberate integration into JOPP.
This activity is continuous but essentially begins at the start of the planning process. The communication team has the responsibility to speak up and to educate the OPT on information’s scope and abilities, limitations, and requirements as a joint function. If asked, most planners only associate the Communication Plan as the Public Affairs plan. In other words, it occurs after the fact. However, to be effective, communication activities must be included at the onset of all joint operational planning efforts and throughout all planning phases. Communication should always precede kinetics. Operational Planners have it backward. Additionally, communication synchronization is more than aligning Public Affairs, it includes Civil Affairs related information actions, Key Leader Engagement, Information Operations, and importantly, the integration and impact of maneuver and kinetic operations in the communication space.
In the wargame, it became apparent many of the operational planners did not understand communication planning or the need for synchronization. This required the lead communication planner to ultimately give a tutorial of the communication approach process, outlined in Figure 1, toward the end of the wargame. The light bulb then came on, albeit too late, as to why the communication objectives, themes, and actions were what they lacked, and needed, to support their issue of underdeveloped COAs. Lastly, the communicators must outline their requirements early and be recognized as a pervasive joint function. In the wargame, the communication team asked the intelligence team for some intelligence information on target audiences. For the Intelligence team, it appeared to be the first ever request from the communication planning team. Because of lateness of the request and lack of understanding the of the requirement, the information was not provided in the wargame, leaving a knowledge gap in the communication team’s planning factors. This might have been easily addressed early in planning if the communication requirements were outlined.
In conclusion, a way to bridge the gap between communication and operational plans is by aligning communication processes with JOPP. The authors outlined a logical methodology for developing a Communication Plan that incorporates deliberate communication concerns associated with each JOPP step. This methodology requires Communication Planners to aggressively engage, early, with the OPT. Only then will Operational Planners begin to understand, appreciate, and incorporate the positive impacts of a well-integrated and synchronized Communication Plan. When applied correctly, the entire Communication Planning Approach to Operational Development will integrate the information joint function with operational plans and begin performing effectively at the theater level of engagement.
Ms. Rachel Arin is a USCENTCOM Communication Synchronization Planner and retired Army Public Affairs Sergeant Major.
Mr. Robert Ferguson is a USCENTCOM Wargame Integrator and retired Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel.