2.14: The Parking Brake
One of the key tasks of CHOPS is to get CONOPs approved.1 At some point over the decades of GWOT conflict, what was once a single page sketch of the Concept of an Operation grew into a 40 slide PowerPoint deck.2
For every operation where we needed the commander’s approval, my battle captain would print out three copies of the CONOP - 120 full color pages. Each was printed one slide per page, one side only. These were for the CG, his SEA, and the deputy commander.3 The captain would then print another copy, 10 more pages this time with two slides per, front-and back, for me to brief off. I would take these upstairs, pitch the command team on the operation, and typically be back downstairs only a few minutes later with the CG’s approval. Those 130 pages were still warm from the printer when I handed them back to the battle captain for shredding.
We didn’t keep paper copies because we’d long ago embraced a digital log of everything. I really wanted to stop wasting so much paper, never mind the ink toner.4 But I also knew the command team wasn’t going to make the jump to digital on their own. These leaders were accustomed to holding something in their hands.
So, I got with the J6 and she was able to get an order in for tablets.5 It took four months for the tablets to come in, and another week of her team to work through the kinks before we managed to get the image right. After a few tests we were ready. We had a regular brief each night where we briefed CONOPs for approval that provided a perfect time to roll out the new tablets.
My team took care of everything, ensuring the CONOPs were already loaded and all the OneNotes synched before the meeting. The tablets were logged in and awake as the command team entered the JOC and took their seats.
Unprompted, the deputy commander, a Navy SEAL one-star, picked his tablet up and started playing with it.6 Without a single class of instruction, he began swiping back and forth, opening one of the night’s CONOPs on his own. Then, without any coaching, he instinctively did the pinch-zoom to get a closer look at the map chit in the corner of a slide.7 His eyes went wide with happy surprise as what had always been a struggle to see was now fullscreen in 4k detail. He was playing with it, learning as he went the same way my kids instinctively did when they first held a tablet. The J6 and I shared a smile.
Next to him, the CG sat down, looked at the tablet in front of him and with an air of disgust asked the entire JOC, ‘What the fuck am I supposed to do with this?’
Our attempt to modernize the CONOP process died right there in the JOC that night. The commander wasn’t going to change, and our headquarters was never going to move faster than the speed he limited us to. I could see a horizon, right there, in the four feet between those two leaders. The two-star was the past, and the younger one-star was the future. But just like back in 2014, the ‘future’ of military leadership was still the better part of a decade in the past. Both my kids have never known a world without a digital tablet. Apple’s iPad released is 2012, over a year before my son was born. We we’re lagging even further behind progress than we were in 2014.
Being digitally literate doesn’t mean you are data literate, but I’ve never known anyone who was the opposite. Refusal to adopt digital systems, what I’ve often called the ‘arrogantly analog’, is a sure sign a commander isn’t going to be data driven. That two-star was unwilling to learn a new system, so our whole headquarters didn’t. He also set the example for those around him, and so a room full of colonels saw they didn’t need to learn anything new either.
A commander sets the pace of their organization. In the case of that two-star, he was a parking brake. I left not much later, my year in Iraq over. As I flew out to Okinawa to take command of a battalion, I decided to be an accelerator.
Concept of an Operation. This evolved from a paragraph in an Operations Order into a 40 slide PowerPoint deck.
Pronounced Gee-Wot, the Global War on Terrorism.* We were supposed to stop calling it that back in 2009 and switch to using OCO (Overseas Contingency Operations). Pick your name, there’s plenty to choose from, but we’re referring to the combat since 2001 that crossed North Africa and the Middle East.
*I wouldn’t think GWOT needed a pronunciation guide, but at a recent Pre-Command Course one of the students pronounced it Gwaht, prompting the rest of the crowd to all assume he was a Chinese spy.
CG - The Commanding General. SEA - Senior Enlisted Advisor, the senior NCO in the organization.
It’s not clear what printer toner is made out of but given the cost, I presume it is unicorn tears.
Army staff sections are known by their numbers. 1 is personnel, 2 is intelligence, 3 is operations, 4 is logistics, 6 is signal. There are more, but it all gets complicated pretty fast. These are the main ones.
SEa, Air, and Land. One of the Navy’s SOF.
How is there not a word for this gesture yet?
I feel you, Erik, and I could easily have been you, but I have sympathy for a guy whose team very publicly made a major change on him without warning. Did you lead turn this with his CoS, Aide, or adjutant? Give him desk-side training first? Maybe he was just a jerk and it didn't matter anyways, but even the most consummate professional deserves a heads-up.