"Top Ten List"
This practical hint comes from 30 years of being in the Army, in some
way, Active, Reserve, and National Guard. The best resource I ever used
came from a workshop called the battalion training management workshop.
The top leader WROTE DOWN
for everyone to see The TOP 10 Priorities that needed to be accomplished
to complete the mission, whatever it was.
Using that list, each section
leader then used BACKWARDS PLANNING (looking at when each goal was to be
accomplished) and then figuring out what they had to do, within that
timeframe, to make it happen. Out of that, each leader had a list of
his/her own top 10 priorities.
Sections included administration,
operations, supply, and maintenance. Anything not on those lists was
nice, but definitely extra.
It only took two hours for everyone to
realize that this was the only way to go, and it cut out a lot of
time-wasting second-guessing by people who would rather talk about the
job than actually do it. Units who used this system, even pretty badly,
always did better than those who didn't.
It's virtue was that it forced
everybody pretty early on to focus on the job at hand, and then do it.
It also allowed for rapid change. If things turned around 180 degrees,
you just went through the top-10 process again. Often you only had time
to do the top 3 or 5 things, but at least you knew what problem you were
working.
It sounds simple, but with all the different sections, we
actually executed quite complex tasks as a team, but the system forces a
great amount of simplicity in that you must pick the right set of tasks
to achieve the highest priorities.My guess is that someone at the Rand
Institute dreamed this up, and many people were trained in it, but that
the reason some units were not up to snuff is simply that the leaders
ignored the system once they were done with the training. When used, the
system works.
Submitted by: Joseph F Dunphy MBA
| 
