Leaders in the Reserve components fight the constant battle against time; there is never enough of it for all of the items that need to be taken care of throughout the month. A host of competing tasks, whether it’s counseling, IWQ, MOS training, mandatory briefings, traveling to/from training areas, birth month reviews, sleep…, all fight for a place in the 48 hours (for a MUTA 4) that we have to complete them.

Some of the constant ankle biters are the “mandatory” online training classes required to be completed on a yearly basis. What makes these “ankle biters” so important, and often such a mission focus during the limited drill time, it that unlike the intangibles like MOS training, counseling, LPD, etc., completion of these classes are a metric that higher commands can measure and capture. Does completion of these things automatically mean you have a better unit? Probably not, but in a management tool – metric based world, they are the low hanging fruit that higher commanders can easily (and lazily) use to assess subordinates. So they need to be done.

As a leader in the ARNG or USAR, how do you handle these mandatory/online training requirements?

What tips, tricks or loop-holes do you use to meet the requirement?

Or do you accept the risk and just DON’T meet the requirements, hoping your peers are just as honest?

Fire for effect…