Missed Opportunities or The Writing is on the Wall

OPD.

This is where all the magic happens.

Also known as Officer Professional Development, the method by which junior officers blossom into competent mid and senior level leaders. This process gradually weans the new officer off the tete of TRADOC and puts them on a healthy diet of sound Company grade common sense.

Or at least that's how it's suppose to work. Instead, the acronym OPD is now more synonymous with Official Punishment Directive and is purely reactive instead of proactive. Officers who make mistakes, from the superficial to the egregious must present an "OPD" to their peers regarding their poor decision making and how we as officers can learn from said mistake. Naturally these events involve PowerPoint (since nothing involving a group of officers can be devoid of that wonderful program). An hour or two in duration, the OPD gravitates towards a self righteous horse-and-pony show. The terms "commissioned officer", "Army Values," and "leadership" are all overused as the audience attempts to showcase their perfection in comparison with the presenter's fault. Since arriving in Iraq I have been forced to attend three of these public mea culpas, so far I have learned only one thing. That common sense is still a key component and critical aspect of personal decision making.

Which leads me to the point of this ironically pontificating diatribe.
When it comes to bad judgement, proactive leadership trumps reactive punishment every single time. I wonder, if we had been developing officers this whole time, maybe instead of SIGACTs and Blotter reports we'd have a developing, semi-professional officer corps. Instead of reacting to each poor decision, let's return to the original proactive OPD model and instill common sense from the get-go. PS, for those who don't know, SIGACT stands for significant activity and a blotter report summarizes all SIGACTs for someone important. Basically if you do something bad, you are a SIGACT. Which goes on a blotter report. Which goes to the Colonel. Which is how you end up doing a Brigade level OPD in the first place.

Yup. You were just caught drinking in your bunker.

Granted, I'll cede the point that there are a few bad apples in every bushel. Perhaps there should still be a forum for officers to learn from the mistakes of others. I would argue that if companies, troops, battalions and squadrons mentored and developed their young officers in garrison, there would be far fewer Official Punishment Directives. Which would result in less wasted time, less SIGACTs, and ultimately more competent leadership. Since that is the overarching goal of development, proactive OPD passes the common sense test.