Today was a long day, but extremely productive. Most of the folks in the department I work in took a day to focus on the way ahead in connecting NTM-A/CSTC-A members that reside outside of Camp Eggers. Specifically focusing on projects at our numerous sites. While this put a dent in my plans to focus on BlackBerry servers and commercial Internet it was time well spent.
Myself along with two other O-4s, an O-5 and four Navy E-7s charted out exactly what we should be focused on projects in the coming months. Not only what we should focus on but how we are going to accomplish it, how we should prepare for it and when we are going to do it.
The first thing we developed was the Table of Contents for a binder that would contain everything (or as much as we could think of) a person should know about a specific site. What the mission of the site, the mission of the unit, the relevant points of contact, etc. These are all things most people that have dabbled in project management know in the back of mind. However, it was rather powerful to put on paper...not to mention have other extremely smart project managers in the room to share their insights and experiences. I mentioned putting this down on paper (and stored electronically)...this is perhaps the best thing we can do, especially in deployed environment where people come into and out of the area of operations every six months. This will be something that can be passed down and built upon for the folks that come behind us to carry the projects and mission forward. I don't know how many times in the past week alone I've wanted to know something (more) about a certain decision or project that just wasn't available because it was on paper (or email).
The work we've done today is the first step in setting out successors up for success not to mention putting field units on a faster track to advise and mentor the Afghan National Army and National Police.
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