Initiative – I guide myself by understanding my senior rater’s intent and taking action/making decisions to get after it. if you wait to be told to do things you may be behind a bit. Early on, I had my boss pull me off of things (learning mistakes/growing pains) which is far better I was told after, than to be asked to “jump” on this or that.…[Read more]

read – “The Chaos Imperative” but ask yourself first these questions, as they may shape your reading lists. Consider the questions below, they’re drawn from my reflections as a JO, but really as an OC/T at a unique CTC:

1. If seniors say that Captains can’t train their units and aren’t given a fair chance to train their units, what can I do to…[Read more]

I started getting lots of VTIP emails once I was post-command and thus KD in my branch, I think everyone gets them, so plenty of time up to make the change. Officers who want to VTIP usually try to get KD time as CPTs done as quickly as possible so that the Army opens up; not all FAs require successful company-command or other KD – some do not. Lo…[Read more]

congrats.

set an agenda, look at the time, and then trim the meeting/time some and continue working at it, you get better as you go along. there’s lots of information to disseminate and get reports on but what are your priorities and what is important to you? I enjoyed the ability to set the direction of the ship, on what to train, what is…[Read more]

I’ve been in those organizations where NCOs tuned out. Amazingly, all I had to do was (2 things) ask, and then let them do it. NCOs used to tune out when they felt there was no difference/recognition/separation between the doers and the conmen. In the days when everyone got a 1 over 1, that killed organizations, as the conmen got the same report…[Read more]

I designed a coin w/ my 1SG and Soldiers really wanted to earn one. I also gave very short briefs on Friday – 1 min. Safety Brief, touching on the top 3 safety concerns, the top 3 mitigations, and 1-2 last minute updates from S-2. I did this by practicing succinctness before hand – worked out great. I spent another 1 min. talking about the Troop i…[Read more]

Thanks for posting.  I’d actually been struggling with this a bit recently.  While I may be “OOO” I still tend to keep up with email and respond when needed.  I stopped using the OOO message if I was planning on responding, but this article gave me a new way of looking at it as a way to let people know my response time will be slower than usual an…[Read more]

The tasks never stop, do they? A bit of good news is that we have shortened the list of AR 350-1 mandatory training requirements this past year.  Hopefully, people are listening to us as we continuously beat that drum.   Over the years I have learned a few lessons on how to prioritize my list of mandatory tasks.

1.  What metrics are being re…[Read more]

This is great! My rule of thumb is that if I’m going to be gone for more than a long weekend, I’ll put something brief up. I find myself getting caught up in the trap of posting an out of office response and jumping back on my e-mail anyways and responding to messages. It’s definitely something I’ve had to work on and shake the habit.

Micah

Management is definitely a major gap for me.  My last two commands comes down to one very serious problem; “professional development” isn’t a priority from the BN level.  I think I had management at the platoon level down; I’m still figuring out the company command management thing (but I’m getting it I think). However what’s next? The last 2 B…[Read more]

Jefferey,

Congratulations! This was something that I spent about a month trying to figure out, basically as soon as I took command right up until the point that I briefed my company for the first time. I guess it included my speech as the incoming commander during the CoC.

I tried to keep with a theme which boiled down to my vision for the…[Read more]

Can’t go past the first page on the topic threads- I click “2”, click “11”, and on the “->” but it only reloads the 1st page of topics. I am on a government computer and on IE, if that matters. 🙂

I LOVE these ideas! I especially like the idea of hand written notes and homemade food/potlucks. It speaks volumes to thank someone specifically on how they’ve impacted the organization. Meaningful versus generic goes a long way. Giving thanks and showing appreciation should be a part of every Leader’s personal battle rhythm.