Philip thank you for comment. You mention “counseling your NCOs and working much harder on CSDP.”

Prior to taking command, what would you recommend future CDRs do in regards to these tasks? Do you believe these take priority over other preparation tasks? Obviously time being the most important factor.

You bring up a great point. I agree with the importance of counseling your NCOs as that is one thing I did not do prior to taking command.  Time dependent, a commander can definitely knock out NCO counseling forms. A good resource is looking for the NCOER rating scheme that shows all the NCOERs the CDR is responsible for.