One of the most common misconceptions I hear as the civilian career program manager for International Cooperation and Strategic Planners career program (CP60) is that everyone in CP60 is a strategist. I understand why.
For years, strategic planners have been one of the most visible communities within the Career Program. It’s common to assume CP60 is simply the civilian equivalent of the active duty FA59. It’s always been more nuanced than that.
The reality is much broader. CP60 includes strategists, but it also includes international affairs professionals, security cooperation professionals, linguists, program managers, management analysts, and many others executing the Army’s international mission.
This is how the conversation begins. I use the FA59 comparison because it’s familiar and easy to explain. Replace “strategist” with any profession represented in CP60, and the explanation is the same. The difference isn’t the work. The difference is the personnel system that develops the professional.
An FA59 officer and a CP60 strategist perform the same work. They sit side by side on a planning team, contribute equally to campaign development, advise the commander, and produce indistinguishable work products. The same comparison could be made between a Foreign Area Officer and an International Affairs civilian, or between military and civilian security cooperation professionals. The profession changes. The personnel systems don’t.
Military officers are assigned based not only on what they can do today, but on what the Army believes they can become. Assignments, professional military education, and broadening opportunities are deliberately sequenced throughout a career. The Army intentionally builds experience over time.
Army civilians follow a different path.
Civilian positions are filled based on the qualifications, knowledge, skills, and experience an individual already possesses. The expectation is that a civilian arrives ready to perform the duties of the position from day one. That distinction changes everything. The Army trusts military officers to grow into strategy. The Army trusts civilians because they’ve already grown into it.
Neither approach is better. They’re solving different personnel challenges.
The military deliberately sequences careers.
Civilian careers are individually assembled.
A military officer’s development is largely orchestrated through an enterprise talent management system. A civilian’s expertise is built through accumulated assignments, promotions, deployments, graduate education, overseas tours, and professional experience. The difference isn’t the quality of the expertise. It’s that the sequence is rarely prescribed by the institution.
One career was intentionally developed through assignments.
The other was intentionally selected for assignments.
Yet both arrive at the same planning table expected to solve the same strategic problems. The difference isn’t just how careers develop. It’s who manages them. For military officers, Human Resources Command (HRC) manages careers from an enterprise perspective. Assignments, education, broadening opportunities, and career progression are coordinated across the Army to meet future institutional needs.
Army civilians operate under a different model.
Commands own civilian positions. Commands hire. Commands supervise. Commands evaluate. Commands determine mission requirements and organizational priorities. Career Programs don’t replace command authority. They complement it. Where commands naturally focus on building capability for today’s mission, Career Programs help the Army understand, develop, and make tomorrow’s workforce visible.
So why do civilians so often struggle for credibility? For years, I’ve described it as a credibility gap. I’m beginning to think that’s the wrong diagnosis. It’s really a visibility gap.
Military officers carry visible markers of professional development. Rank. Functional Area. Professional Military Education. Key developmental assignments. The institution tells the story of their professional journey before they ever introduce themselves.
Civilian expertise is different.
It lives in resumes. In graduate degrees. In deployments. In overseas assignments. In years of accumulated experience. The expertise exists. The institution simply doesn’t make it as visible. And visibility matters. Because credibility often follows what people can see. Visibility isn’t just a communication challenge. It’s an enterprise management requirement. Before the Army can deliberately develop expertise, it has to know where that expertise exists. It has to identify the workforce. It has to understand its qualifications. It has to measure capability across the enterprise.
That’s what makes the Security Cooperation Workforce legislation so interesting.
When Congress established the Security Cooperation Workforce through the FY17 NDAA, strengthened it in the FY24 NDAA, and codified it in Title 10, the focus became certification requirements because they’re the easiest to measure. Certification matters. But certification was never the objective. It was a mechanism. Congress wasn’t simply asking the Department to train people. It was asking the Department to identify the workforce. Define it. Measure it. Track it. Understand where expertise exists. Because enterprise decisions require enterprise visibility. You can’t manage expertise you can’t see. You can’t deliberately develop a workforce you can’t identify. And you can’t advocate for capability that remains invisible. Visibility isn’t an administrative exercise. It’s an enterprise capability. Commands naturally see the people assigned to their organizations. Someone has to see the workforce across the Army. This is the space Career Programs were designed to occupy.
Not command authority. Not enterprise assignment authority like HRC. But an enterprise perspective that individual commands cannot provide on their own. A command naturally asks: Who do I need to accomplish today’s mission? A Career Program asks: What expertise will the Army need tomorrow, and how do we make sure the Army can see it today? Training is only part of the answer. The data doesn’t point to a capability problem. It points to a visibility problem.
Across nearly 2,000 CP60 civilians, I see advanced degrees, senior experience, global assignments, and decades of accumulated expertise executing the Army’s international mission. What I don’t always see is an enterprise system that tells that story. The challenge isn’t building expertise. It’s creating an enterprise picture of expertise that already exists.
Military officers and Army civilians arrive at the same table with comparable capability through very different personnel systems. One system deliberately sequences careers. The other deliberately selects experienced professionals. Both produce expertise. Only one systematically makes that expertise visible across the enterprise.
That’s why Civilian Career Programs matter. Their purpose isn’t to manage assignments or replace command authority. It’s to give the Army an enterprise view of civilian capability that individual organizations cannot create on their own. Training develops people. Visibility allows the Army to manage capability as an enterprise asset.
Perhaps the question was never whether civilians have the capability. Across CP60, I see that capability every day. The better question is whether the institution can see it clearly enough to develop it deliberately, employ it effectively, and advocate for it strategically.
Capability builds readiness. Visibility allows the Army to leverage it.
Shana Jespersen 
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