text: Leadership and Training for Sustainment Operations
  DESCRIBE
  7-10. Sustainment commanders must be able to describe the purpose and intent of operations to their staff
  and subordinate commanders to create a shared understanding. They can use collaboration and dialogue to
  ensure subordinate commanders understand the visualization well enough to plan and conduct operations.
  Sustainment commanders should continue to refine visualization during the planning and execution of
  operations. Updates to the visualization must be communicated and balanced with the time subordinate
  leaders have to understand and act.
  DIRECT
  7-11. Sustainment commanders direct operations to achieve results and accomplish missions. Effective
  decision making and timely sharing of information ensures sustainment provides maneuver commanders with
  freedom of action to act decisively. Sustainment commanders who can quickly sense, understand, decide,
  act, and assess provide maneuver commanders with the endurance and operational reach to challenge enemy
  forces when they choose. A knowledgeable and capable staff are essential to effective decision making and
  directing operations.
  LEAD
  7-12. Leadership is the most essential dynamic of combat power. Sustainment commanders lead by the
  personal example they set, the quality of guidance they provide, and the actions they take during operations.
  Sustainment commanders must be able to lead and make decisions in situations that require rapid adjustment
  in brief periods of time. Fortitude and personal presence are required of sustainment commanders when
  making challenging decisions and help overcome the friction inherent in all military operations.
  ASSESS
  7-13. Commanders, supported by their staffs, assess the situation before execution and throughout operations
  to understand conditions and determine what decisions they must or are likely to make. These decisions are
  facilitated by commander’s critical information requirements that identify critical information needed for
  decision making. Sustainment commanders must be able to compare the current operation to what was
  anticipated, remain alert to variance from expectations, and watch for information indicating threats or
  opportunities. The ability to continually assess sustainment operations is essential in anticipating changes
  and quickly adapting forces and support provided to counter those changes.
  SUSTAINMENT COMMANDER AND OPERATIONAL ART
  7-14. Army commanders, both maneuver and sustainment, must use operational art to develop a vision of
  how to establish conditions that accomplish their assigned missions and objectives. Commanders and staffs
  use operational art to develop strategies and operations to organize and employ tactical forces. Using their
  collective skill, knowledge, experience, creativity, and judgement, commanders and staffs integrate ends,
  ways, and means, to achieve objectives. Army commanders use operational art to pursue strategic objectives
  through the arrangement of tactical action in time, space, and purpose all while accepting and accounting for
  risk. Operational art is what allows commanders to translate their operational approach into a clear and
  concise concept of operations that is disseminated in an OPORD.
  7-15. The Army design methodology can be used to shape an operational approach. Through this
  methodology, commanders and staffs gain an understanding of the current state of the OE to include current
  conditions. It allows them to envision a desired end state that must be achieved, identify problems that will
  prevent achieving the end state, and then develop a broad, general plan to solve those problems. From this
  point, commanders use the military decision-making process to develop a detailed plan that includes a
  concept of operations. Maneuver and sustainment commanders use the elements of operational art to
  understand the OE and develop a concept of operations. These elements can be used selectively in any
  operation as required, and not all apply at all levels of warfare. The elements are—
  • End state and conditions.
  • Center of gravity.
  • Decisive points.
  • Lines of operation and lines of effort.