1-11. A whole-of-government approach guides the development, integration, and coordination of all instruments of national power and integrates the collaborative efforts of the departments and agencies of the USG to achieve unity of effort toward a shared goal. This approach enables achieving the balance of resources, capabilities, and activities that reinforce progress made by one of the instruments of national power while enabling success among the others. Success in this approach depends upon the ability of civilians and military forces to plan jointly and respond quickly and effectively through an integrated, interagency approach to a fundamentally dynamic situation. Civilian and military efforts often encounter challenges during a whole-of-government approach. Military forces must coordinate efforts with USG departments and agencies and host-nation and other government civilian agencies to mitigate these challenges. These challenges may include differing organizational capacities, perspectives, approaches, and decision-making processes. In practice, USG civil-military interaction is often not as robust or complete as desired. To encourage collaboration and to coordinate the myriad of stability operations tasks among military forces, host nations, intergovernmental agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and international partners force establish a civil-military operations center. Additionally, USG civilian departments and agencies may not be able to participate until the operational environment is conducive and resources are available. Joint force commanders may have to temporarily assume responsibility for tasks outside those normally associated with the joint stability functions. The joint force commander must work with the chief of mission, Department of State (DOS), and other interagency entities to integrate civil-military operations with the diplomatic, informational, and economic instruments of national power in unified action. Additionally, the whole-of-government approach must address the root causes of the instability. Other USG departments and agencies may remain after military forces have departed. (For more on the whole-of-government approach, see JP 3-07 and JP 3-08.)