The organization I am in is an interesting one. My current position has no supervisory requirements, that said, it allows me to look around the organization and understand why things are happening.

-Who is the next person who’s going to leave your organization because they’re underappreciated? My current organization is experiencing an exodus of highly credentialed DA Civilians. My explanation is a lack of concerned leadership and a lack of appreciation for the requirements of the position. Specifically, there’s a tendency to pile on more and more work which cheapens the requirements each program brings. I think under-staffing is one of the major contributors to atrophy in units. To combat this, transparency and planning is key in my mind. Show the authorization document (TDA, MTOE, etc.) and walk your people through *everything*. “Here’s the personnel we have, here are the vacancies, and here is what is being done to address those gaps.” Come up with a plan, both short term and long term. Acknowledge that, yes, in the short term you will take on extra burdens, but with identified incoming personnel, they will take over some requirements. At this point, the key thing is to stick to the plan.
–What messages do you need to keep repeating in your organization? As the sole military person in my organization, I repeat things from higher military leadership mostly. However, one message that I repeat often is that communications need to be concise and in layman’s terms. Often, communications to the CG are full of unnecessary data and details. While these data are important, the body of a position memorandum (with the expectation that the CG reads the entire body) is not a realistic place for it.
–Where are you complying with procedures to the neglect of your overall objectives? I’ll reach back to my company command time for this one. To preface, I do not dispute that accountability is an important thing. It is important for multiple reasons I’ll neglect to mention here. However, accountability reports (IE: the AAAs) were always a major drain on my time and focus on other things that needed to be handled. The fear of inaccuracies in a system that wasn’t meeting the dynamic requirements of my company came at the cost of hours of report scrubbing and document preparation. All the while, improvements in training and other readiness efforts suffered.