Since the Governments commitment in 2000 to rebuild and reshape the NZDF, significant progress has been made in replacing and upgrading major equipment, improving service personnel pay and allowances and meeting our regional and global commitments. The Government Defence Statement of May 2001 further identified the importance for New Zealand to be able to contribute well trained, adequately equipped, and well supported forces to the tasks Government directs.
Progress in implementing the Defence reforms and the Long Term Development Plan reflects the Government’s commitment to maintaining a modern and effective suite of military capabilities that can make a valuable contribution to New Zealand’s interests locally, regionally, globally, and in support of our friends and partners.
Our first priority, therefore, must be to continue to provide a broad selection of NZDF force elements from which to draw appropriate forces to contribute to operational missions, and to provide the best possible support and protection for our personnel serving in widely varying situations around the world. To achieve this, we must strive to maintain the highest possible standards of training and leadership, commensurate with allocated resources.
It is within this setting that we have adopted the NZDF Strategic Themes of Resource Efficiency, The Agile Force, and Valued Partner, described below.
As depicted below, our strategy is described by several parallel and complementary themes that form the cornerstone of the NZDF strategy execution model. Each theme consists of a chain of cause and effect relationships that link the objectives and measures within the Enabling Processes perspective of the balanced scorecard, each supported by one or more strategic initiatives. The complete portfolio of initiatives identifies the resources and actions required to implement the particular theme.
The collection of strategic themes articulates how we will work together to deliver maximum value. In effect, our strategic themes provide the ‘glue’ that links the separate objectives and initiatives of the organisation together to deliver the synergies of the whole – in our case, the Joint Effect1.
“The ability to contribute air, land and/or sea capabilities to military operations that are relevant to New Zealand’s national interest and security strategy. These capabilities, by reason of their training, command structures, equipment functionality, leadership and values are able to be responsively mobilised and integrated to work confidently and credibly in joint force missions either independently or in association with allies and friends”
Our mission is “to secure New Zealand against external threat, to protect our sovereign interests, including in the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), and to be able to take action to meet likely contingencies in our strategic area of interest” now and into the future. Our shared vision is to become “Three Services as one Force, being the best in everything we do”.
Our strategy to achieve this vision is three fold. We must develop greater Agility for operational effectiveness; we must gain maximum effect from allocated resources; and we must develop the organisation capacity we need to be regarded as a valued partner by internal and eternal stakeholders. All our activities and projects will be aligned with these three broad strategic themes.
Execution of this strategy and our objectives will continue to depend on our foundations: heritage and culture, sustained by our people, who reflect our core values, and our warfighting ethos.
Success will be measured by how well we achieve our mission, and the progress we make towards our vision. To achieve this, our strategy is organised around four perspectives – stakeholder, enabling processes, learning and growth, and resources. Together these perspectives comprise our balanced scorecard which we will use to implement a range of objectives and initiatives.
Our results will ultimately determine the level of trust and confidence that the Government and the people of New Zealand, along with our international partners, have in our ability to meet the demands of current operations and training while preparing for the challenges of the future. Understanding those challenges is a key outcome of our contribution to the Government’s Defence Policy.
Delivery of current and future outputs must be driven by sustained improvements in our organisational processes across a broad front: from business management and delivery of the logistic support that supports and sustains our forces; across military policy advice and shaping future capabilities; to how effectively we contribute to wider Government initiatives and sustain important relationships with our partners.
The third and perhaps most important dimension of our strategy is to deliberately grow the people and tools that are the foundations of our future. This will require an agile and learning organisation that fosters innovation, efficiency and change. It will require a sustained investment in how we manage our personnel so that they are motivated and able to give of their best – all the time in every place, and will be critically dependent on improved management and utilisation of organisational knowledge.
Finally, meeting our Defence commitments will only be achieved by optimum use of resources. We must maximise the outputs that we generate, equipping the force of today while building for the future, within an appropriate infrastructure.
This strategic plan provides the executive tools to progressively align subordinate planning and activities across the NZDF, within the wider context of the Defence Planning Framework.
Many of the building blocks of our strategy already exist in current corporate documentation, or are resident within planning frameworks such as the Capability Management Framework (CMF), particularly in the embedded strategic capability planning process of the CMF. Also, single Services to varying degrees already have well-developed strategic plans to support their own requirements.
This plan has largely been derived from existing NZDF priorities and programmes found across the organisation and described in publications such as the current Statement of Intent and the Output Plan. Progressive alignment around our new strategy and strategic themes is ahead of us. It will be a dynamic and consultative process, supporting and supported by the ongoing development of the Defence Planning Framework.