Brother, every organization is unique… so on and so forth, disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer.

Now, down to business. Yes, you should be planning your calendar a full fiscal quarter in advance. Yes, you should be “locking” your calendar 6-8 weeks in advance. Then (optional – my personal technique), you should go nuclear when there are changes imposed from higher within two weeks. This level of forecasting and planning absolutely does and can happen in any Army organization no matter how dynamic the mission set.

If the higher HQ isn’t providing you the training schedule consistency you need, it’s time to diagnose the cause of the issue and start leading some bottom-up change. Hit me on a DM, if you want to dig in to your organizational specifics and techniques for how to eat that elephant. In the past, I have sent my unit battle rhythm to higher (including how I envisioned it nested to their battle rhythm) as a subtle way to encourage them to acknowledge my schedule and nest to me… it’s a method. [This actually relates to previous JAM posts about JO’s and training them how to plan. It’s not wrong for the Commanders/Company XOs to occasionally help the staff. The reality is that often times they are the ones with the experience and training to properly develop solutions to the staff’s problem sets. #SameTeam]

There are no “good” times for ANY battle rhythm event. That’s why you produce a battle rhythm! That’s a common misconception, the battle rhythm – it’s not for convenience, it’s for accountability. It’s not convenient to do the company training meeting at 1630 on Friday, but if that’s where it fits and we said that’s when we do it… We are accountable to that agreed upon schedule (whether or not it is convenient in that particular week).

~Jeff

BOLC Topic Lead