I was one of them. I was a PAO that was primarily concerned with what was happening at home. A wise commander once asked me, “Dave, my number one priority is operations. What’s yours?”
#messagerecieved Mine was operations too, beginning about 4 seconds after he asked me.
It’s easy for a public affairs guy to avoid what is going on in the world, in conflict. It’s easy to brief the hometown news, I love hometown news.
Fuck that. The reason we exist (big we, the Department of Defense exists) is to do operations around the world in order to protect America.
Lead the staff toward operations. The S1/J1 cares about personnel manning? Sure, but help him brief personnel in the context of deployability. What about the J3? Does he care only about the next NTC rotation? He should care about where NTC is training you to go.
By caring, reading, analyzing and briefing operations; real world defense related issues you will make your entire organization more relevant. You’ll key them in to the rest of the world. You’ll educate. You’ll motivate.
Do it.
