Focus Part 2
Examples for how to focus on a priority
This newsletter is more military centric that usual. If you are short on time, scroll down to “Predictability” and just read that. Please come back and read the rest later.
It’s Cold Outside
Private snuffy rubbed his hands together vigorously, trying in vain to warm them up. “The cold wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the wind,” Snuffy said to his squad mate, Private First Class Peterson. “It’s never this cold in Mississippi. Wish I was back there,” Peterson replied.
Snuffy said, “It would be nice if we could at least go inside to get warmed up.”
Peterson looked at his watch and said, “well, we can’t leave the motorpool until 1500, so we’ve only got 7 hours to go. Let’s go through the steps in the manual and check this vehicle for problems.”
Snuffy sighed and said, “you read off what needs to be checked and I’ll go check it.”
After going through the first two checks on the list, Peterson stopped and said, “why is everyone else out here? There’s only a handful of us actually working on these vehicles.” Snuffy immediately added, “yeah, and why do we have to be out here until 1500?! Why can’t we go back inside once this vehicle is done?”
Sergeant Smith overheard them as he came walking around the front of the vehicle and said, “motor pool Mondays are about maintenance. We’ve got to take care of our equipment if we want to be an effective fighting force. Now, quit your jaw-jacking and get back to work!”
Both young soldiers looked at their NCO and said, “Roger that, Sergeant,” and quickly got back to work inspecting the vehicle.
Peterson turned to Snuffy and said, “Hey look over there, the line to have the vehicles checked by the mechanics is getting longer, let’s drive over there and get in line before it’s super long.” Snuffy quickly replied, “but we haven’t finished with our checks yet.”
“It doesn’t matter, you think all those vehicles were fully checked before getting in line?” Peterson asked.
“Maybe, how should I know?”
“If we go through all the checks, we’ll be in that line forever. Plus, I know this vehicle is fine. I took it to the field last week and didn’t have any issues with it.”
“But what if Sergeant Smith finds out,” Snuffy asked timidly.
“He doesn’t care as long as he doesn’t get in trouble. Now hop in the vehicle and I’ll guide you over there. Follow me!”
Application
A bunch of you have emailed and texted me about how to apply the last essay, focus. Although I cannot give you concrete advice backed by experience about how to implement these ideas—they are conceptual and vague by design, as all contexts are different—I can provide a few concrete ideas which, although they have yet to be tested in the wild, I am convinced would work brilliantly.
The Motorpool
As the story with Private Snuffy hinted at, the motorpool is an excellent place to operationalize these ideas about focus. The Army has Monday motorpool operations exactly backward—the motorpool gate should be locked to keep the masses out not locked to keep the masses in. Only the right people should be allowed in the motorpool, and while in the motorpool they are focused on completing their assigned task and moving out. The people allowed in the motorpool are also the people with the ultimate responsibility for the functioning of the vehicles.
Groups of soldiers huddled around a vehicle do not make the PMCS any faster. Having masses of people with no purpose hanging out in the motorpool during maintenance Monday creates a gravitational pull towards lethargy rather than focused action. Even if lots of work is ultimately getting done, it is draining organizational energy, rather than preserving it. It is slowing down the important maintenance work that needs to get done, rather than speeding it up.
Having too many people in the motorpool creates a kind of bystander effect. A soldier thinks to herself (either consciously or unconsciously), “there are SO many people out here doing work. My presence is relatively insignificant. There’s really no need for me to look for extra work because it must all be getting done.” If we simply remove 80% of the people and leave only the most important 20% of people, those people are more likely to feel like the work they are doing is valuable.
Infantry Assault
When I was at the Command and General Staff Officer Course, we were briefed that a new concept for “infantry assault companies” was being developed for armored brigades. In this concept, the infantry companies would be comprised of two to three infantry platoons and a mounted platoon. The Infantry platoons would be focused almost entirely on dismounted infantry tactics. They would not drive or gun the M2 Bradleys they would only ride in them. The mounted platoon would be composed of all the drivers and vehicle commanders and would be responsible for gunnery and maintenance.
Obviously, there would be some cross-training, but the infantry soldiers would be freed up to do infantry stuff and not be tied up with the vehicles. Naturally, I think this is a brilliant idea and I hope this concept becomes a reality. This would allow the armor folks to focus on vehicle stuff and the infantry folks to focus on dismounted tactics in support of the larger armor formation. Many have argued that the war in Ukraine has shown that tanks are dead. This is absurd. Tanks and infantry are designed to work together. This is tactics 101. Training the infantry to fight alongside and in support of armor is imperative, and this concept will enable that. But you can only accomplish this if you allow the infantry soldiers in armor units to focus on dismounted infantry stuff.
Time Management
Physical fitness is really important for combat arms soldiers. Anyone who has been in an hours-long or days-long firefight in 100+ degree weather wearing 40 pounds of gear knows that lack of physical fitness will get people killed. Right now, Russian and Ukrainian artillery crews are firing thousands of rounds per day. Those rounds have to be lifted and put in the gun and the gun has to be adjusted. After firing, it has to be hooked up and repositioned to avoid enemy counter-fire. Combat is extremely physically demanding.
With this in mind, on the majority of days, combat arms soldiers should conduct around two hours of solid physical training per day; high-quality physical training that is holistic. soldiers in combat arms need to have hard and resilient bodies. They should then focus on the maintenance of their equipment and maybe train a technical skill. Then they should leave around 1300. The bulk of training should be reserved for when they go to the field for days to weeks at a time.
Administrative clerks in the S1 section are simply not faced with that level of physical demand. People that work desk jobs, should not be required to conduct physical training or only do it infrequently. They should report to work around 0830, take a one-hour lunch break, and then leave at 1700 every day. There should be very little variation in this schedule and they should rarely go to the field except infrequently for large training events.
Let’s take a sample of one soldier working 100 days.
Desk job:
90 days working 0830 to 1700 w/ 1 hour break = 7.5 hrs per day * 90 days = 675 hours
5 half days working 0830 to 1200 = 3.5 hours per day * 5 days = 17.5 hours
5 days in the field = 24 hours per day * 5 days= 120 hours
Total working hours = 812.5 hours in 100 days = 8.25 hrs per day on average
Combat Arms Jobs
80 days working 0630 to 1300 w/ 1 hour breakfast break = 5.5 hrs per day * 80 days = 440 hours
15 days in the field = 24 hours per day * 15 days = 360 hrs
5 days of PT only = 2 hrs per day * 5 days = 10hrs
Total working hours = 810 hours in 100 days = 8.1 hrs per day on average.
We can see that in terms of average working hours, these two positions are nearly identical. Obviously, this is oversimplified, but it demonstrates the concept that soldiers who often go to the field can work significantly fewer hours on the majority of days and still work the same average number of hours as soldiers who work a desk job.
These two schedules reflect the different needs these types of soldiers have in terms of focus. Clerks are very busy and need to work at a relatively constant pace to keep up with the administrative needs of the unit. Combat arms soldiers should focus on fitness and maintenance and reserve their energy for hard training in the field.
As an aside, 15 days out of 100 in the field is very few for a combat arms soldier. in 100 days, many combat arms soldiers will spend 30 or more in the field. This is why it is absurd to me that Combat arms soldiers work the same garrison schedule as their desk-working peers.
This should in no way be interpreted as a statement about the superior importance of combat arms. I have argued in other essays that the S1 shop is the most important section of a battalion. The simple fact is that different jobs require different allotments of time to allow soldiers to focus on what’s most important.
Mechanics, fuelers, lawyers and paralegals, pilots, intelligence analysts, etc. all have different training needs and different everyday tasks. The rule of thumb should be that all soldiers of the same rank in the same unit (brigade or battalion) should work roughly the same number of hours on average, but that their daily schedules should vary in ways that allow them to focus on what’s most important to their specialty. Trying to fit soldiers with very different jobs into a procrustean bed of the same rigid daily schedule is, in my estimation, foolish.
Predictability
I love explaining semi-complicated concepts to my young kids like they are adults. I find it quite amusing and I am often shocked at home much they understand and retain. The other day I was talking to my 3-year-old and 5-year-old about the concept of opportunity cost and trade-offs.
“Gentlemen (usually how I refer to my two sons), what trade-off would you like this evening? Would you like a longer bath at the expense of only reading one book, or would you like to read 2-3 books at the expense of taking a shorter bath?”
The answer is usually a shorter bath with more books.
My young children understand this idea of trade-offs quite well, but many adults do not.
Every single unit I have been in has claimed to have “predictability” as a priority. Units want soldiers and their families to know what the upcoming work schedule will look like.
Some units try to enforce this by having training calendars published in the company area that tell soldiers what major training events are coming up. But even with training calendars posted, soldiers are often completely in the dark about what days they will spend overnight in the field, or what days they will have to stay at work late, even if it’s not going to be overnight. A standard unit training calendar from DTMS does not give a soldier or her family the kind of predictability they need.
When I was a company commander I made a special printed-out calendar specifically for Soldiers to take home to their spouses. The calendar had every single workday color-coded in Green, Yellow, or Red, (Yes, I know, very original color scheme). Green days meant that soldiers would leave at or before 1700. Yellow meant that they might stay as late as 2100. And red meant that we would be overnight in the field. A lot of commanders make a similar kind of calendar, but not all of them ruthlessly follow it. Because predictability was the priority for me, except in rare circumstances, we almost never violated that calendar. And if we did have to violate it, I would get on the Private Facebook group that had all the families and take personal ownership for violating the calendar.
If leaders want to make predictability a true priority it means that it must come first at the expense of other things. If something else comes before predictability that means that, by definition, predictability is not the priority.
Going back to an example from the first essay on focus, when one unit has priority of fire, it means that when another unit calls for a fire mission they will likely be denied. The ammunition has to be saved for the unit that has the priority of fire. Because one unit has the priority of fire it means that other units do not. There is a hard trade-off.
The same is true of predictability. If predictability is the priority, it means that other things must be foregone in support of predictability. Maybe that means you have to pause a training event because time is up. Maybe that means that the project your team started has to get put on hold so everyone can get home on time. Maybe that means you have to be ruthless about ensuring that families receive readable training calendars that are specific to their individual soldiers. The bottom line is that predictability for soldiers and their families is not something that can be achieved through lip service. It requires enormous organizational focus and a demands the expenditure of organizational energy.
Creating and maintaining predictability is worth the required amount of focus and effort. Fewer things can get families to buy into the unit and the commander than creating rock solid predictability. If a soldier is going to be gone overnight, the family needs to know months in advance. And soldiers should not be relied upon to relay information to their families. Commanders should go directly to the family members, including the parents of single soldiers in the barracks, and ensure that they receive the customized calendars. Commanders should also make themselves available to answer questions. As you can see, this requires a lot of focus.
Rodeos
“Rodeos” in the Army are when a unit dedicates time to a specific task. We are really good at this when it comes to administering flu vaccines, which are mandatory every year. Everyone in the unit gets a notice, “next week on Friday at 1300, all soldiers will report to room 1234 to receive their flu vaccine.” That event becomes the sole focus of the unit for that day. When rodeos are given the proper command emphasis, they can be very successful.
Commanders should use the rodeo concept as much as they can.
During a recent field exercise, I watched in pity as the signal soldiers rushed around our command post troubleshooting computers.
“My computer won’t connect to the network.”
“My mouse won’t work.”
“I need help getting to the shared drive.”
“What’s the IP address to the portal, again?”
“How do I create a layer on CPCE?”
They worked non-stop to try and get the digital infrastructure established. This slowed our progress and our digital infrastructure was never quite where it needed to be and our performance in the exercise suffered as a result.
I was determined to fix these issue, so I worked with the G6 (the IT soldiers) and the Knowledge Management officer to create a “computer rodeo” prior to the next field exercise. At this rodeo, members of the unit will bring their special field computers to a big meeting space where we will have them connect to the network and ensure that they can access everything they need to access, that they know how to find and share information, and that they know how to work the systems on the computer. The rodeo will require a few days of very hard work from the G6 staff, but they said that doing this was a “dream” so that they can avoid having to run around like crazy people when we get to the field.
But just creating the rodeo is going to take a lot of focused effort. The KMO and G6 team have to constantly message the staff that this is happening, that they have scheduled blocks of time for individual staff sections, that the event is mandatory, and that it is a valuable use of their time. It’s already required a lot of work. I’ve had to design the thing, figure out where to do it, talk with a bunch of different people to get it approved, and then write and publish an operations order.
But applying this level of focus to this task will, I hope, pay huge organizational dividends.
I use this example to demonstrate that well-executed rodeos generally require a lot of command focus. It’s one thing to throw a rodeo on the calendar, but it is quite another thing to ensure that everything else becomes subordinate to the efficient conduct of the rodeo.
The Indirect Approach
In my essays on Laziness, I talk about the importance of commander’s being as lazy as their situation allows them to be. The main reason to be lazy is to limit the damage that commanders can do at scale. But when commander act, they must act with decisiveness and focus. They should choose a course of action designed to fix a problem and then dedicate their focus to achieving it. This is much easier in combat than it is in garrison.
But commanders should not automatically assume that applying their focus to a problem will fix that problem. Sometimes it will make it worse. This is generally the case with misconduct. If a commander thinks that she can solve a unit-wide misconduct by applying her focus to solving it, she’s likely to be disappointed. Misconduct is a really hard problem to solve because the causes are usually multivariant. It’s usually better to choose to focus on smaller problems that are relatively easy to solve, than to try to apply huge amounts of focus and energy to solving problems that are really hard. (Fixing predictability in a unit isn’t hard. I did it as a company commander in one day. Harder at higher echelons, but not that much harder).
Dave Ramsey is a polarizing figure in the world of personal finance. If you ask a mainstream financial guru how to pay of a lot of debt, she is likely to tell you that you should first pay off the loan with the highest interest rate. This makes sense on paper. But Dave Ramsey will tell you to pay off the smallest debts first. The idea being that if you have a lot of debts to pay, the psychological reward of getting rid of even one small debt will help propel you forward to solving your overall debt burden. You keep paying off your smallest debt until you pay off all your debts. Then you’re debt free!
The military parallel is focusing on small problems that are easy to solve. Generally, this starts with the unit’s administrative systems and processes. Why would you try to solve a unit-wide misconduct problem when you can’t turn-in awards and NCOERs on time? Fix that first, then solve another easy problem. Chances are that your misconduct problem will start to go away on its own. Focus your energy on solving small problems and watch how that snowballs to the rest of the unit.
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