Yes, same here. Also with "Some were lost multiple times. I had to respect their consistency." Though I have a lot of sympathy here, having briefly been a BN S1; even with a great commander, it can be hard to avoid feeling like you'll never get to the top of the hill.
My white whale, while I was working in the schoolhouse, was TRADOC policy. It's not commonly known outside that community, but TRADOC has their own set of regulations and pamphlets, circulars, memos, etc. The PAMPHLET on how to develop courses and lessons is 285 pages, and was frequently cited to me as why I couldn't revise the curriculum of the class I was responsible for. (I did it anyway.)
Great article. Tone reminds me of the old 'Common Sense Training' by LtGen AS Collins. The idea about having IG teams maintain the good idea data bank is solid. Uses structure that exists and captures ideas that have met IG approval. A good practices and programs 'github' at some level would be a good thing. Probably is something like that at some Centers of Excellence, just disconnected. Although I'm not an advocate for centralization, sharing good practices at an appropriate level for consideration of use is a good thing. Also saves time when someone else has vetted the code for purpose already. As an aside, I was surprised to hear about dealing with paper awards issues in the Army. The USMC had been sucked into end to end digital awards management a long time ago...like the '00s. The digital Awards Program saved on crayons for snacktime, which I suppose is why we were ahead of the curve.
"Step one in our battalion S1 shop’s analogue process appeared to be: lose the paper copy." I laughed out loud.
Yes, same here. Also with "Some were lost multiple times. I had to respect their consistency." Though I have a lot of sympathy here, having briefly been a BN S1; even with a great commander, it can be hard to avoid feeling like you'll never get to the top of the hill.
My white whale, while I was working in the schoolhouse, was TRADOC policy. It's not commonly known outside that community, but TRADOC has their own set of regulations and pamphlets, circulars, memos, etc. The PAMPHLET on how to develop courses and lessons is 285 pages, and was frequently cited to me as why I couldn't revise the curriculum of the class I was responsible for. (I did it anyway.)
285 pages is a novel.
FWIW, I adopted the same approach for a lot of the changes I made.
Great article. Tone reminds me of the old 'Common Sense Training' by LtGen AS Collins. The idea about having IG teams maintain the good idea data bank is solid. Uses structure that exists and captures ideas that have met IG approval. A good practices and programs 'github' at some level would be a good thing. Probably is something like that at some Centers of Excellence, just disconnected. Although I'm not an advocate for centralization, sharing good practices at an appropriate level for consideration of use is a good thing. Also saves time when someone else has vetted the code for purpose already. As an aside, I was surprised to hear about dealing with paper awards issues in the Army. The USMC had been sucked into end to end digital awards management a long time ago...like the '00s. The digital Awards Program saved on crayons for snacktime, which I suppose is why we were ahead of the curve.