First Planning Conference for the Bold Eagle Exercise 2011 was conducted at Baltic Barracks on 2 and 3 February 2011 in order to work on the exercise concept.
While deployed to Afghanistan in 2010, Headquarters Multinational Corps Northeast (HQ MNC NE) members experienced a novel Cross-Functional Team concept used at Headquarters ISAF Joint Command (IJC). Cross-Functional Team is an evolution of a "traditional" military organisation. In a traditional HQ structure, well-known and common functional areas, such as logistics, intelligence, general operational planning, communications etc., are concentrating their efforts on their specific areas and come together only temporarily for a concrete planning effort. In this way it is expected that specialised activities in every functional area will "add up" to form an adequate plan. The coordination and synchronisation of efforts in a traditional headquarters is usually done at a senior leadership level. Cross-Functional Teams, on the other hand, are permanent organisations and have commonly representatives from all functional areas. At Headquarters IJC all processes (i.e. planning, assessment, synchronisation activities, and execution) are maintained by Cross-Functional Teams and the role of functional areas is to provide "in-depth" knowledge of their respective areas.
Cross-Functional Teams were created as a direct answer to the Afghanistan complex environment and latest NATO's developments in the field of Comprehensive Approach. ISAF leadership believes that Cross-Functional Teams can better create holistic situational understanding, enable combined planning in a framework of Comprehensive Approach, and conduct partnered comprehensive counter insurgency operations. All in all, HQ MNC NE members realized that Cross-Functional Teams enable HQ IJC to be fast, flexible and agile.
After learning those experiences through Lessons Learned process, Commander MNC NE worded a problem statement: 'Do Cross-Functional Teams enable HQ MNC NE to be fast, flexible and agile in a very complex environment?', and thereby HQ MNC NE is thoroughly investigating Cross-Functional Team concept in 2011. One important step in the process is a direct comparison of effectiveness and efficiency of the actual Field HQ model and experimental Field HQ model following the Cross-Functional Team concept. The actual Field HQ model worthiness in Stability Operations “heavy” environment, with high operational tempo within all three lines of operations (Governance, Development, and Security), will be tested during the Little Eagle I 2011 Exercise, and, on the other hand, HQ MNC NE will use the Command Support Brigade training event Compact Green 2011 as a basis for the Bold Eagle Exercise 2011 to create a comparable environment with Little Eagle I 2011 Exercise in order to test the experimental Cross-Functional Team concept.
Along with the Planning Conference for the Bold Eagle Exercise, HQ MNC NE has formulated a clear way-ahead and is ready to proceed with the planning.
