Optimising Human Performance

Wavell Room Audio Reads

Over the past two decades, enhancing human performance capabilities for those operating in extremis contexts (i.e., Armed Forces, Emergency Services, and First Responders) has gained considerable traction in policy-making and scientific circles. To operationalise this concept, the term Human Performance Optimisation (HPO) first emerged within the US Department of Defence (DoD) in 2006 as a conceptual framework to develop the performance capabilities of the military's most important asset - its people. Military tasks, by their very nature, place unique and intense physiological, psychological, and cognitive demands upon all Warfighters. In addition, the contemporary operational environment is arguably more volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) than ever before. Indeed, the return of peer-on-peer conflict and the emergence of unconventional, asymmetric, and hybrid threats, combined with the scale and speed of technological change, has, and will, continue to make conflict a challenging and ever-evolving affair contested not only in the land, air, and maritime environments but also in the electromagnetic, cyber and space domains.However, it is essential to note that while the character of conflict may change, its fundamental nature remains the same: it is a human endeavour that is adversarial, dynamic, complex, and lethal. Given this reality, it is vital that every Warfighter, irrespective of gender, age, rank, or trade, is prepared for the demands of the contemporary operational environment. The importance of developing human performance capabilities for such demands was succinctly put by US Army Colonel (ret.) John Collins who stated that "Humans are more important than hardware, and their quality is more important than their quantities". This point was again highlighted more recently by the British Army Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Patrick Saunders, who stated that "We need 'warfighters' - whether they are cyber specialists, drone pilots or infantry soldiers - to be stronger, faster, more intelligent and more resilient." To achieve this laudable objective, the Armed Forces must develop appropriate training strategies to enable military personnel to perform to their full potential. Indeed, lessons learned over the past two decades have been internalised, resulting in a considerable improvement in the training, competence, motivation, and overall combat effectiveness of the Warfighter.HPO represents part of this evolution and has been defined in the literature as "the process of applying knowledge, skills, and emerging technologies to improve and preserve the capabilities of military personnel to execute essential tasks". Fundamentally, HPO aims to leverage evidence-based information and best practices to make the Warfighter as resilient, capable, agile, and lethal as possible. In addition, due to a reduced size and budget, the Armed Forces cannot afford large numbers of non-deployable personnel. Therefore, a secondary aim of HPO is to improve individual career longevity and reduce injury rates. It is Nothing New Preparing the Warfighter for success on the battlefield is nothing new. Indeed, numerous historical examples of military leadership emphasise the same ideas promoted within this article. However, our collective understanding of the optimal approach to achieve this aim has improved considerably, driven by developments in applied sports science, physiology, psychology, and cognitive neuroscience. To conceptualise HPO, the Warfighter should be viewed as a human platform. This approach allows for the routine monitoring, analysis, and development of critical human performance capabilities no different from traditional military platforms (i.e., weapon systems, vehicles, or ISTAR assets). However, to adopt such an approach, it is essential to define critical aspects of human performance. This typically is done using the Biopsychosocial model whereby human performance capabilities are split into three ...