Wool Gathering in the CO’s Office

Journal Edition

Abstract

‘Wool Gathering in the CO’s Office’ is an article in two parts. Firstly it proposes a model for the Psychological Contract between Army and its personnel, and postulates that a fundamental role of commanders is to uphold this contract. Secondly, it provides a series of discrete observations about the practice of command at unit level. The author’s aim is to share his experiences in order to assist future COs and provide them with a head start on their own journey of command.

I was privileged to have spent two years commanding 3 CER, and I loved every minute of it. Apart from the enjoyment of being a brigade soldier again, and the pleasure of regimental life, I found the exercise of command to be a deeply intellectually engaging pursuit. The complexity of decision-making was actually pretty simple but, with a wide sphere of influence, responsibility for a large number of people and the need to nurture every aspect of the Regiment for the long term, it was a very thought-provoking time. I have no pretensions to excellence in the role or claims of revolutionary initiatives but I thought it may be of interest to share some of my thoughts.

Mission Command

The most rewarding leadership experience is seeing subordinates achieve wonderful things on their own initiative; feeling pleasantly surprised by the methods employed, happily watching events unfold knowing that you set the conditions for success, yet with a light touch and in a way that your subordinates largely feel they have done it on their own. We don’t always achieve this, despite espousing Mission Command. Why is this? I think it is because of a lack of self-discipline and investment by commanders. All too often, people claim to be Mission Commanders in the belief that staying out of the subordinates’ way is a virtue in its own right. This is simplistic and lazy. What tends to happen is that the subordinate gets poor initial guidance (‘I’m busy and it will do him good to work it out for himself, and I can assess him better this way’), then continues manfully until things stray from the Commander’s (belatedly considered) Intent. By then it’s too late for a light touch and the Commander re-injects himself to get things back on track, employing Directive Control and leaving all parties disgruntled. It is all very well to let people learn from their mistakes, but in reality it is wasteful to make a habit of this: while one leader executes his flawed plan, his subordinates are learning bad lessons, getting frustrated and expending scarce resources. Better to let the lesson be learned ‘virtually’ via the back brief process, than reinforce success via execution of a good plan. I think that the respective roles of commander and subordinate commander in good Mission Command can be visualised as follows:

The notable features of this approach are as follows:

Creation of a sound Command Climate in which people know each other well at a personal level, trust each other and have a confident sense of how each other would react to unforeseen events. This takes time and effort. Examples include social interaction, training to shared doctrine, lessons learned sessions, debriefs and a forgiving approach to well-intentioned mistakes. It is helpful to use Mission Command effectiveness as the base criteria for counselling, whether positive or negative. For example, ‘That was a great initiative and I am glad you got on with it while I was away, this is why I am very happy to employ Mission Command with you’, or ‘What you just did was outside my intent, as clearly expressed to you in the OGp and further discussed in the Back Brief. I am finding it hard to work with you using Mission Command because you keep doing things like this. I will be forced to employ Directive Control with you until we can re-generate the right Command Climate.’
Early investment by the Commander in direction-setting: taking the time to think through the problem, allocate the right resources, then express his intent well. A written Commander’s Intent document works superbly.² This is surprisingly rare. Our culture seems to accept that busy commanders can shoot from the hip—a very false time economy and an abrogation of responsibility.
A good back brief by the subordinate commander. This provides essential clarity, the opportunity to adjust resource allocations, and most importantly a strong sense of confidence. If the subordinate commander’s plan is seriously flawed, then this is the time for the commander to decide whether to allow him to go ahead anyway and learn valuable lessons or, by a process of teasing-out, perhaps allow the same lessons to be learned in discussion with a better plan developed for execution. It is very easy to leave a subordinate alone to get on with it once he has provided a good back brief. A quick series of ‘what-if ‘ discussions during the back brief would also deeply reinforce the Mission Command environment.
Occasional visits from the Commander. The first visit provides an azimuth check and an opportunity for the higher headquarters to troubleshoot in support of the team. All going well, the second visit should simply be an opportunity to recognise success and the third visit to confirm the end game and provide a Warning Order for the next task.
Self-assessment by the Commander. If issues arise during a subordinate’s execution of a task, then the commander should ask himself where he failed: poor command climate, poorly expressed Intent, insufficient attention to the back brief, failure to allocate appropriate resources, or incorrect choice to employ Mission Command with an ill-suited subordinate. Only after doing so should he then consider what went wrong at the lower level.

Mission Command is not a condition of service. It is an enjoyable and highly effective leadership approach, but it requires hard work and, in particular, an early investment of time by the commander.

Mission Command is not a condition of service. It is an enjoyable and highly effective leadership approach, but it requires hard work and, in particular, an early investment of time by the commander.

Time Management

How to get Rudyard Kipling’s ‘sixty seconds’ worth of distance run’ from every minute? Somehow all that automation and labour-saving equipment have only added to our workload, and most of us are over-stretched all the time. In the case of ADF units, the demands of operational tempo and corporate governance are nearing extreme levels. Arguably, time management is one of the great challenges of our era. A good leader needs to focus hard on key activities yet spread his influence widely, and to manage diligently yet lead strategically. He needs to be accessible to his people but also remain objective and interconnected with the external environment. The best leaders achieve a balanced existence including cultural interests beyond work, happy family relationships and friendships and time to themselves for rest and reflection. I found time management to be a particularly strong pre-occupation while in command, both personally and as a leadership issue for my people. There are some very good books about this,³ but the key points are:

Be self-disciplined and own your own time
Be as systematic as possible
Ruthlessly distinguish between ‘urgent’ and ‘important’
Jealously guard the time you need for strategic planning and direction-setting
Allocate plenty of time to visiting unit activities and mentoring your people
Fill the gaps with the remainder

This is very tough to achieve. I am certain that if I did nothing but sit at my desk for two years, I would have been fully occupied responding to emails and administrative paperwork. This would not be a good look for the CO of a Combat Support Unit in a high readiness formation. Email is a killer, but has to be managed somehow. The following time management protocols proved useful:

No meetings or phone calls before 0900 or after 1600, thereby leaving people alone at the most productive (or family-oriented) times of day.
Only check emails and do admin three times a day at specified periods, and don’t assume people will have read emails outside these time frames—use the phone if something urgent arises. Switch off distracting email alerts, send cc: emails to a discrete (rarely-checked folder) and get on with real work.
Base everyone’s time management around MS Outlook, with shared calendars and a strong culture of diary management for your own activities and respecting the plans of others.
Email discipline: clearly-specified actions and responsibilities, no use of unnecessary or a@#%-covering ‘cc:’, use ‘bcc:’ only for genuine privacy reasons and empty your inbox daily.
Get written work done early or late in the day and allocate usable chunks of time to getting out and about, conducting battle procedure or planning ahead.
Programming time for family activities is good leadership (e.g. taking kids to school occasionally, lunch with partner, personal admin—all clearly visible in your shared diary).
Avoid and disguise after-hours work wherever possible (e.g. don’t send emails on a Sunday, save them as drafts to send on Monday); it’s subtle but this has a strong effect on work/life culture.
Operational contingencies or urgent personnel welfare issues over-rule all the above.

These proved worthy targets; hard to achieve but immensely helpful at wresting back control of time and well worth continual striving.

These proved worthy targets; hard to achieve but immensely helpful at wresting back control of time and well worth continual striving.

Custodian of the Psychological Contract

The psychological contract between the Army and its people is not written down anywhere, but it is deeply felt and has ten fundamental tenets:

The Army will train you well, pay you well, give you lots of benefits, maintain your health and fitness and generally look after you and your family in every possible way. In return we will work you hard, take you away for long periods, force you to move around the country, generally stuff you around and possibly one day order you to go out and kill or be killed in combat.
The Army exists to serve the interests of the Australian people as expressed by the elected government of the day. War and the employment of military force are dreadful events, and should be avoided wherever possible. However, due to human nature, there will always be a need for good people to have force available to uphold justice and peaceful security.
The decision to employ force is strictly not a military one. In an imperfect world of difficult decisions and strategic uncertainty the process of democracy is the best available. Military leaders will provide frank and fearless advice but the decision to employ force is made by government. Soldiers have to accept this. Our decision to keep serving contains an implicit commitment to do whatever is asked, without any discretion to opt out of a specific operation. Mistakes will inevitably be made, but military force will not knowingly be employed in an ill-considered or ethically unsound manner. No matter what the rights and wrongs of a particular campaign are perceived to be, the soldiers are doing their rightful duty and will be supported regardless.
The chain of command exists to accomplish the Army’s missions. This is the enduring first priority. ‘People first’ is over-simplistic: people are the means to an end, albeit the most important means. The chain of command will make hard-headed decisions to get the job done, while also exerting itself to look after people in a selfless manner. Goodwill capital generated by people-centric leadership is a valuable asset, but sometimes tough decisions will draw it down.
If you become a casualty in the line of duty, then you have taken a hit on behalf of every Australian, so you and your family will be looked after for as long as it takes.
In this day and age, conflict is localised and often occurs far from home. Most of society gets on with its prosperous existence unaffected by war, relying on a small military force to uphold security and bear the brunt of doing so. This fact is recognised and appreciated.
The Army is not a cut-throat, competitive organisation where you only advance by undermining others. There is an equitable and transparent system. If you work hard, uphold your values, have faith and let the system do its part, then the right things will happen. Not everyone gets to be a general or serve overseas, but such is life. Grace and realism are the keys to happiness, not success.
You do not need to fight for your rights or conditions of service. That is the role of the chain of command and other advocates. Stay out of it, have confidence in those that represent you, and don’t tarnish the Army’s reputation by being seen as self-serving.
If you are diligent, competent and behave well you will receive good reports, promotion, the best jobs and maybe even some sort of personal recognition. If you are lazy, incompetent or badly behaved you will be identified as such and required to either improve or go elsewhere. There is no point in looking sideways—the truth always comes out eventually.
Army life is fun and adventurous. Our job includes travel, camaraderie, personal challenge, exposure to other cultures and exhilarating experiences. A lot of what we do does not look like work. This is part of the deal. While the chain of command does need to manage risk and corporate responsibilities, the enjoyment and flair must be maintained.

This psychological contract results in Army careers that fit into a very narrow envelope of ethical, practical and spiritual balances. It can be highly rewarding and generates profound commitment. The ten tenets are perhaps idealistic, and we have all experienced breaches of contract (generally by the principal), yet they are very real. A profound and spiritual role of commanders is to uphold this contract on behalf of all their people. It’s not easy, and generally these are the issues you will need to fight for. Expect to spend some time on this and be challenged by hard decisions. Also, your people will need you to provide leadership and understanding—keep the psychological contract in mind when you write your ANZAC Day speech and every other time something difficult happens and you need to speak to the unit.

Decision-Making

One striking feature of command is the sheer volume of decisions needing to be made, often with a time imperative. As noted above, few of these are particularly complex. The trick is to siphon off those decisions that need further attention and otherwise power ahead. ‘Best is the enemy of good enough’ in many cases, and most things arrive on the CO’s desk after passing through a chain of well-informed and diligent subject-matter-experts. A few thoughts follow on dealing with the difficult ones:

The ‘muscle memory’ of 20 years’ service provides great intuition. Make the leap of faith in your own judgment and be confident that the chain of command will back your decisions. Our system has many checks and balances so fear of the occasional mistake shouldn’t slow you down.
As a CO your Situational Awareness becomes very developed and it often takes very little to trigger your sense of disquiet. Follow your instincts and ask a few probing questions if something doesn’t seem right—often a light tap on the tiller will save real problems later.
The truth sets you free. Making tough decisions and being candid and direct are all command responsibilities. Such actions continually reinforce your position and the confidence of your team. Integrity is built slowly. Conversely, a part of something important dies forever with every weak decision or mealy-mouthed explanation.
Statement of Reasons. If an outcome is likely to be controversial or goes against others’ recommendations, then simply providing a rationale with your decision can be very effective. A lot of effort spent on redress action is wasted and could be avoided. If you have the habit of providing a Statement of Reasons with your decisions then people appreciate your effort, respect your candour and generally accept the outcome. Often it is a good mentoring experience for junior leaders too, helping them understand issues they had missed.
Benign neglect. If an issue is vexed and the way ahead unclear, yet resolution is not urgent, then often the wisest approach is to stay defilade and await further developments. People sometimes push you for decisions that really don’t need to be made.
‘Nothing in war is ever as good or as bad as the first reports of excited men would have it.’ You will often be presented with tales of woe and imminent disaster by your OCs and other key staff. Keep your powder dry. Most often the initial prognosis is exaggerated and the crisis never eventuates. The experience gap between a CO and his (generally) young majors is sometimes quite poignant. That said, I suspect that formation commanders may occasionally feel the same way about their unit commanders.
None of us is perfect: you will make mistakes and fail occasionally to show enough strength of character. If you have a shocker then dust yourself off, be honest with yourself and others and get back on the horse.

Making tough decisions and being candid and direct are all command responsibilities.

Pilot's Advice, Captain's Orders⁴

COs are provided with advice from many quarters and it is not always correct or consistent. We need to be robust in maintaining independent judgment. This point is not always well understood. For example, it is easy to be seduced by legal advice in the mistaken belief that it is direction, and therefore definitive and inviolable. This is not the case. Bear in mind that the legal profession spends much of its time second-guessing its own ‘judgments’ through the appeals system, and that legal advice is only based on a narrow field of view compared with the array of competing priorities faced by a commander. Listen to the advice, then make your own decision and instruct the legal adviser to find a way to codify and protect your chosen course of action. The better lawyers get this and will be only too happy to help—you are the decision-maker and they are but one of the ‘consultants’ there to help you.

COs are provided with advice from many quarters and it is not always correct or consistent. We need to be robust in maintaining independent judgment.

Other ‘consultants’ out there include health professionals, logisticians, Military Police, Padres, engineers, OH&S advisers, Military Risk Managers, security advisers and the Technical Regulatory Framework. The same principle applies—listen to the advice, make your own judgment then require the specialist to use his expertise in support of your plan.

Training

Regardless of the Strategic Reform Program, our training time and resources are precious and good training builds people’s confidence in their leaders. A talk-crawlwalk-run approach is best, yet we often seem to be learning in the field, leaping far ahead of people’s understanding. Far better to educate people, then practice and rehearse them at small scale, and only then attempt the real thing. We have all been trained in a great diversity of skills and are therefore rusty at most of them. Start a training activity with classroom revision, followed by some sort of simulation (e.g. a war game or Rehearsal of Concept Drill using a mud model, or computer-based simulation, or simply working through it on a whiteboard), then conduct a small-scale rehearsal at slow tempo with instructors present, then finally do it for real. The results will be far better than business-as-usual, and will make considerably better use of scarce resources.

Retreat to Advance

Take your team away occasionally, somewhere outside mobile phone range and DRN connectivity. This needn’t cost much (or make you undesirably famous for gross breach of the Strategic Reform Program). For example, a handful of unit CSS personnel can support a good retreat activity somewhere in a training area—a bit of imagination will provide good options. Get the sub-unit commanders and their sergeant majors plus your Tight 5 and spend two days outside the box. I suggest three key objectives: firstly, simply get people to know each other; secondly, pick out some key strategic planning tasks and get them knocked over without distractions; and finally, select one area of professional development that will benefit everyone. For example:

Inspirational Person: Require everyone to give a short brief on someone that inspires them. This is a good icebreaker and very interesting. More importantly, it allows people to share something personal and immediately breaks down barriers of rank and unfamiliarity. Many late night conversations arise from this.
Ten Targets: Each person briefs on the ten things they would like to see happen during their time in the unit. This activity recognises that there are many people in the unit that are just as passionate about it as you and the RSM. It is unifying, and the varying perspectives are fascinating. Everyone walks away with a strong sense of how to help others succeed in their particular lane, and for the CO it is very informative (and humbling) about what makes people tick and how the unit works.
Professional Development: Spend a few hours on a key topic, whether military or more general. Try and pick something relevant but more sophisticated than normal Professional Military Education sessions. Examples might include time management, cultural awareness or campaign planning. While you could pay for an external instructor there are alternatives such as harnessing the knowledge within your own team.
Guest Speaker: Bring someone in to speak with the group, preferably in a relaxed setting (over dinner with a bottle of red if you can arrange it). Your choice of speaker may be related to your chosen area of professional development, perhaps someone that you think will inspire the group in other ways, or maybe your formation commander. There are lots of Army tribal elders who enjoy doing this and who will cost you only an airfare.

This activity recognises that there are many people in the unit that are just as passionate about it as you and the RSM.

The Boss

It is surprising how little a CO sees of his formation commander, much less than an OC sees of his CO for example. COs have a lot of autonomy and formation commanders are extremely busy people. As a general rule, your formation commander will expect you to get on with business and be responsible for your own decisions, and will be grateful to be left in peace most of the time. Some good advice provided by a former Brigade Commander is to batch process—if you haven’t spoken with your boss for a while (say two weeks) then gather up a list of things to catch up on, and arrange a time at his convenience for a telephone chat. You will soon work out what he wants and needs to know about or be consulted on, and how. It is also good for the command climate to keep in occasional contact like this. It is best to avoid badgering him by email (especially unnecessary cc:), and if you want an issue resolved prepare a short written brief. It will be appreciated if you make a point of always acknowledging directives and provide feedback as appropriate (e.g. ‘we will achieve this by ...’, ‘the effect on my unit will be ...’, ‘this is unachievable because ...’). No commander likes to be seen to change his mind so, if you see a decision looming and believe it will be wrong, get in early before your boss risks losing face.

Command at all levels is sometimes lonely, perhaps more so at formation level than in the regimental environment. Therefore don’t be afraid to provide positive feedback upwards when warranted. We tend to shy away from this, for fear of being seen as currying favour, but the boss has got his heart in the job as much as you have and when something goes well it is good to celebrate it. That said, your boss doesn’t need to know how clever you are. Most of your own initiatives and successes should stay within the unit.

Command at all levels is sometimes lonely, perhaps more so at formation level than in the regimental environment. Therefore don’t be afraid to provide positive feedback upwards ...

Bad Things Happen in Good Battaltions

I don’t know who said this first, but I often had reason to think of it. When something goes wrong don’t take it personally or feel a need to manage it in-house in order to guard your reputation. Problems are a fact of life and our responses say more about us than the problems themselves. The Quick Assessment is an excellent tool for this. There is considerable strategic sensitivity to any incident that may harm Army’s reputation. Accept this and just call things as you see them. The CO’s comments on Quick Assessment quickly make their way to high places via the Army Incident Management System. Decisive, well-considered and ethical action will be respected.

Closing Thoughts

Command is a wonderful life experience. Those who get this chance are very lucky. Many of my friends who were at least as deserving did not get the opportunity. I often reflected on this and sought to do well in their honour as well as for the normal reasons. It would be good to bottle the experience and then open the lid occasionally for the rest of my life and have a sniff. I sought to achieve this by maintaining a daily journal and this has become a prized possession. Command is a philosophical journey, with many lessons learned and humbling experiences, as well as all the glamorous bits and the fun. Getting it down on paper is cathartic in the short term and fascinating in review.

As one of my peers said, command is pretty easy because you inherit a mantle of respect and authority, and (nearly) everyone in the unit just wants to help you succeed. It is humbling and confronting to see just how much respect is placed in the institution of a CO. With our feet of clay it is hard to be everything that is expected of us, but that is the role. The concept of love could be defined as ‘caring deeply about someone, being fascinated by what they do, wanting to help them grow, accepting them as worthy despite their faults and wanting to do everything possible for them without demanding reciprocation.’ That is also a good definition of the mindset a CO should have towards his people en masse. I am deeply grateful to have had this opportunity and I will always remember the magnificent people of the regiment I was privileged to command.

About the Author

Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Hoskin is a Sapper officer, currently in command of the 3rd Combat Engineer Regiment. He has served in a variety of command, staff and training appointments in 3 CER, 3 Bde, 21 Construction Squadron, ADFA and Army Headquarters. He has tertiary qualifications in engineering, business administration and defence studies and is a fluent French linguist. He has served on operations in Timor Leste and Bosnia. His career has included several non-military roles, including as a water engineering consultant to the UNHCR in Niger, as a project engineer building a jetty for Woodside on the North West Shelf of Australia, and as a site engineer on the Jubilee Line Extension Project in London.

Endnotes

1 ‘Wool gathering’: an old English expression meaning ‘to indulge in wandering fancies and purposeless thinking’. It originates from the practice of sending children out to collect tufts of wool windblown onto hedgerows, a relaxing past-time that left plenty of time for idle chatter and distracted pensiveness. An example of modern usage would be ‘Plagued by guilt, they took refuge in wine, women and wool gathering’ [Ruthless Trust, Brennan Manning].

2 For example, 3 CER employs a template, filled out hastily by hand or typed. Fields for Title, Individuals Responsible, Purpose, Method, End State, Back Brief Requirements, Commander’s Remarks.

3 For example: Steven Covey, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Free Press, 1989.

4 A nautical expression referring to the employment of locally expert pilots to aid navigation: no matter what the pilot says, the ship’s captain always maintains command of the ship and responsibility for safe passage.