Continuing the tradition of Naval Institute Blue and Gold series classics such as Command at Sea and the Watch Officer’s Guide, The Navy Staff Officer’s Guide will equip naval leaders for success in the challenging professional environment of a Navy staff. Navy staffs build and equip the Navy, plan its future, and guide its current operations. During a staff tour, a savvy Navy leader can have positive reach beyond the lifelines of a single command, with impact across the fleet and years into the future.  

Staff duty emphasizes a different set of tools from those typically employed in sea duty billets. It has its own formal and informal expectations and its own opportunities, challenges, and pitfalls. This guide provides and explains those tools — and marks the shoals that can wreck the unaware — enabling both new and seasoned staff officers to be prepared for the unique requirements of staff duty. Through extensive use of historical examples and “sea stories,” it introduces the reader to why staffs exist, how they impact the Navy, and how they can offer both professional development and meaningful accomplishment.  

Recognizing that Navy staffs vary in their purposes and organization, The Navy Staff Officer’s Guide synthesizes those differences into meaningful guidance for all staff officers, civilians, and Sailors, whether assigned to a destroyer squadron staff operating from a DDG or to the OPNAV staff in the Pentagon. Effective coordination, clear communication, and an understanding of the commander and their mission are central to staff success and are clearly articulated. In twenty-three chapters covering the many aspects of Navy staff work—including “The Staff Command Triad,” “Communicating as a Staff Officer,” “Civilian Personnel,” “Fleet Commands and the Maritime Operations Centers,” and “TYCOMs and SYSCOMs”—Captain Rielage has “covered the waterfront” (in Sailor-speak) with this comprehensive and readable guide.  

Staffs may not win the fight, but good staff work creates the conditions for victory before the first shot is fired. This guide is the key to ensuring the success of Navy staffs and all those who serve them.