Respond... React

So it's been a week since my platoon leading came to an end. I have been spending my significantly longer days toiling in the Squadron Tactical Operations Center, or TOC, working in the "3 Shop" which is military parlance for "Planning and Operation." Basically, my job at the TOC every day is to help run the Squadron so platoons get to where they need to get on time, missions get accomplished with minimal headache, Soldiers are adequately tasked out, and any information that my boss might have gets passed down to the proper levels. I am a glorified middle man, a lieutenant stuck in a world of captains, majors and lieutenant colonels, not to mention senior non-commissioned officers. Each one of us in the 3 Shop (there is one captain, myself and two second lieutenants, three senior NCOs and about 6-8 Soldiers) has a specific subject matter (be it plans, future operations or taskings) which he is in charge of and which in turn allows our direct superior, a major who is the Squadron "3," to make decisions based on the assumption that he has "subject matter experts" on everything he needs.

"Okay we were supposed to get donuts today... Tom you're the Officer in Charge of Donut Purchases... How are we on that?"

Of course the missing piece is no one in the 3 shop is, by nature or by training, a "planner." We are Soldiers and take our assignments with as little overt complaining (and I stress overt; I do a good amount of subversive complaining) as necessary. Consider: I commissioned in February 2009 and went almost a year before taking charge of a platoon. I went to school to be a Long-Range Reconnaissance Specialist, able to go extended periods of time with little sleep and less direction and still accomplish any mission. By doctrine, as a platoon leader in an Air Assault, Armored Reconnaissance Troop, I can rappel from a Blackhawk with 10 other highly trained Soldiers to a rooftop larger than 25 feet by 25 feet and immediately deploy my most casualty-producing weapon system in an effort to minimize enemy threat so the larger force can accomplish their mission. Yeah, even though Aaron and Kyle make light of it, we are pretty well trained to do pretty cool things.

Well, we did say "DO NOT WRITE IN THIS SPACE." Put in in capslock and everything.

But not anymore. Every day a little piece of me dies when I am told my PowerPoint slide was not "to standard" because after my Squadron's motto I only had one exclamation point, not two.


Sometimes it does seem like we were, at one point, struck by the Good Idea Fairy (which by the way is an ironic name... if the irony of the blog thus far has been lost on you I hope you can finally hop on the train) when George Washington was sitting down with the Marquis de Lafayette and planning the birth of the National Army. Yes, it is easier to have a complex job, like running the Squadron's Operations center, divided up and assigned to the lowest common denominator. But missing in that is while we have a "Battle Captain" and "Tasking NCO" and "Jedi Knight" (probably), we do not have a specific job; rather, we sit in our chairs and wait for something to happen, then we respond and react. We are, by nature, a reactive force, not a proactive one. And the larger point about PowerPoint, namely if you are disciplined enough to always remember it is "Sabers Never Quit!!" and not "Sabers Never Quit!" you will probably see that discipline carry over into your normal life. But. Come. On.

"And, good sir, I say it does not matter if he is wearing shoes or not. He should be at 'carry arms' not 'port arms.' We are on horses, for Godsake! Must I think of everything??!"

The bigger issue can, at times, make you cringe with the inefficiency of it all. I mean, the very fact that we have to take a simple job, like gathering information on what Soldiers have kids graduating from high school this June, and task it down from a Major at Brigade to a Captain at Squadron to me to Troop First Sergeants to Section Sergeants... you get the point. It's simple, but we cannot make it simple. We have to allow people to get their hands on something before it passes beneath them. We complain when it takes us a while to get essential things, like Gatorade or motor oil or ammunition. If it takes us a week to get a basic combat load of ammunition (and, by the way, it took significantly longer) then how long do you think it'll take to get every Soldier's shoe size and kids' first names, especially when you remember that many people hate it when other people do their jobs?

Yet we still wonder why bureaucracy, especially military bureaucracy, is so inefficient. Maybe - just maybe - it is a combination of people doing jobs they learn to do on the fly plus micromanaging to exact standards at every level plus everyone wanting their hands in the cookie jar plus the natural game of "operator" we play when passing information? I don't know. But it sure seems like it.

And now, your moment of Zen