Page 120 - 2020 JSOM Winter

and helps establish associated metrics to assess these demands specificity will enable HPT professionals in each TFF domain
and exposures. The ensuing blueprint is provided to career to align their professional capabilities, clearly articulate their
field stakeholders including career field leadership, HPT per- own CT, and be more precise about what services they can
sonnel, career field managers, cadre, etc., so efforts across contribute at each phase of the HPO spectrum. This can only
stakeholder lines of effort can be coordinated. The blueprint be achieved if HPT professionals have a clear understanding
also provides common targets and benchmarks to evaluate of the communities and the diverse CT and METL of those
return on investment and presents opportunities for synergy they serve.
across TFF domains as well as the HPO spectrum. 15
Enhancing Coordination and Collaboration of HPT
A career-field blueprint grounds HPT efforts in career field
and unit specific needs to ensure all stakeholders are anchored Within and Across the HPO Spectrum
to a common understanding of what needs to be accomplished Cross-boundary teaming is defined as a strategy that brings
to enhance and sustain warfighters’ health and performance. teams spanning organizational and functional boundaries to-
Without an established understanding of career field needs, it gether to innovate and solve complex problems. HPTs are
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will be unclear as to what HPT should be targeting across the complex in multidimensional ways. First, they often embody
HPO spectrum or how to evaluate return on investment for “expertise diversity” or “differences in the knowledge and
embedded health and performance personnel and programs. skill domains in which members of a group are specialized as
These challenges can create several unintended downstream a result of their work experience and education.” HPTs are
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effects including misuse of HPT personnel, redundancies, interdisciplinary teams constructed of professionals spanning
gaps, and overlapping efforts. It may also result in resources across each domain of TFF to include strength and condition-
being directed to programs that do not provide return on in- ing coaches, chaplains, dieticians/nutritionists, psychologists,
vestment or the elimination of programs that are effective but social workers, occupational therapists, and medical profes-
cannot readily demonstrate their return on investment due to a sionals, to name just a few. Second, each individual domain of
lack of established benchmarks for HPT service delivery. TFF may be attended to by multiple subspecialties of the same
discipline. For example, just in the realm of psychology there
The DoD recommends continued assessment of HPT manning may be social workers, clinical psychologists, operational
needs: “Conduct a manpower analysis: Develop a methodol- psychologists, performance psychology practitioners, mental
ogy for estimating optimal ratio of resource providers (e.g. performance specialists, and/or clinical psychologists working
exercise physiologists, health educators, registered dietitian/ side by side. Each of these practitioners may focus on a differ-
nutritionists, strength and conditioning specialists, perfor- ent goal across the HPO spectrum, but all should be working
mance dietitians, cognitive performance specialists, and cer- to support psychological health, well-being, and optimizing
tified athletic trainers) to the population. Propose optimal the performance of SOF warfighters. Enabling complex teams
strategies for incorporating these experts within military ser- to function more efficiently means that each member must
vices to optimize human performance and assure readiness understand their individual roles and responsibilities, and in
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and resilience of Military Service members. Estimate cost and the case of HPT and healthcare teams, how each role is inter-
predict savings” (Item 19) . With a clear understanding of the related to another.
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career field’s health and performance demands that support
unit METL, leaders can make informed decisions regarding The development of skill-based teamwork competencies like
HPT staffing and hiring requirements. For example, if a blue- coordination and communication can inform how complex
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printing process determines that, as a result of the performance teams work alongside and cooperatively with other health and
of specific CT within a unit, members within a specific career performance personnel to avoid duplication or gaps and max-
have are at a high risk for shoulder injuries, then the hiring imize impact. Communication can be hindered by knowledge
and competencies of injury prevention and rehabilitation boundaries: (1) syntactic, or differences in language used; (2)
HPT professionals could be better prioritized. Likewise, if the semantic, or translational challenges presented by novel situa-
performance demands of a specific career field’s CT requires tions; and (3) pragmatic, or competing interests and agendas.
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sustained vigilance and attention to detail for long periods of Each HPT practitioner comes from different educational and
time, mental performance and occupational therapist service experiential backgrounds, and they must find ways to reduce
delivery and best practices could be realigned to support these the thickness of each of these boundaries. Although awareness
capabilities. Only after careful evaluation of the specific CT of the others’ knowledge, skills, and abilities may be limited,
demands, can resource allocation be decided. HPTs must work together to establish a shared lexicon, chal-
lenge assumptions, and navigate differences in interpretations:
Clarity in how to resource HPT positions will then aid in de- they need to create a shared set of interests through education
veloping distinct position descriptions (PD) that are linked di- and negotiation. Members must be willing to work together
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rectly to the CT and METL of a warfighter community. For toward the common goal of improving the health and perfor-
example, if high rates of weight profiling are identified as a mance of SOF personnel and other warfighters in support of
primary health risk with an occupational field, the position their mission capabilities.
description for a dietitian/nutritionist would focus on compe-
tencies related to healthy food choice and weight management. Knowledge-based competencies, like enhancing situation
In contrast, if an occupational field requires greater empha- awareness and transactive memory systems are also effective
sis on performance nutrition, the position description would pathways to bolstering teamwork. Transactive memory, a
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reflect this particular need. Without specificity connected to concept where team members “rely on one another to obtain,
CT and METL of a community, all PD begin to look homog- process, and communicate information from distinct knowl-
enous when the expertise and contextual knowledge required edge domains,” is supported by cultivating a shared under-
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to be successful in each of these areas remain diverse. This standing about where particular knowledge is located among

118 | JSOM Volume 20, Edition 4 / Winter 2020