Re-run: The Sherpatudes

Happy U.S. Federal Fiscal New Year! Time to go back to basics, to start cooking the new books, and to visit this popular post from March 2012:

Here is a list of epigrammatic tips inspired by the most recent Red Bull Rising post. It's a mix of maxims regarding organizational analysis, knowledge management, and working in a tactical operations center ("TOC").

Behold, the "Sherpatudes":

1. Continually ask: "Who else needs to know what I know?"

2. Continually ask: "Who else knows what I need to know?"

3. Never speak with complete authority regarding that which you lack direct knowledge, observation, and/or suppressive fires.

4. Never pull rank over a radio net.

5. Let the boss decide how he/she wants to learn.

6. Let the boss decide how he/she wants to communicate.

7. "I am responsible for everything my commander's organization knows and fails to know, learns and fails to learn."

8. Know when to wake up the Old Man. Also, know how to wake him up without getting punched, shot, or fired.

9. The three most important things in the TOC are: Track the battle. Track the battle. Track the battle.

10. Digital trumps analog, until you run out of batteries.

11. Always have ready at least two methods of communication to any point or person on the map.

12. Rank has its privileges. It also has its limitations.

13. Let Joe surprise you.

14. Don't let Joe surprise you.

15. The first report is always wrong. Except when it isn't.

16. The problem is always at the distant end. Except when it isn't.

17. Exercise digital/tactical patience. Communications works at the speed of light. People do not.

18. Your trigger finger is your safety. Keep it away from the CAPS LOCK, reply-all, and flash-override buttons.

19. The warfighter is your customer, and the customer is always right.

20. Bullets don't kill people. Logistics kills people.

21. Knowing how it works is more powerful than knowing how it's supposed to work.

22. Cite sources on demand. State opinions when asked.

23. Work by, with, and through others. It's all about empowerment.

24. Do not seek the spotlight, Ranger. Let the spotlight find you. Then, make sure to share it with others.

25. Both the Bible and "The Art of War" make this point: It's never a mistake to put oneself in someone else's boots.

26. Humor is a combat multiplier. Except when it isn't.

The Sherpatudes

Here is a list of epigrammatic tips inspired by the most recent Red Bull Rising post. It's a mix of maxims regarding organizational analysis, knowledge management, and working in a tactical operations center ("TOC").

Behold, the "Sherpatudes":

1. Continually ask: "Who else needs to know what I know?"

2. Continually ask: "Who else knows what I need to know?"

3. Never speak with complete authority regarding that which you lack direct knowledge, observation, and/or suppressive fires.

4. Never pull rank over a radio net.

5. Let the boss decide how he/she wants to learn.

6. Let the boss decide how he/she wants to communicate.

7. "I am responsible for everything my commander's organization knows and fails to know, learns and fails to learn."

8. Know when to wake up the Old Man. Also, know how to wake him up without getting punched, shot, or fired.

9. The three most important things in the TOC are: Track the battle. Track the battle. Track the battle.

10. Digital trumps analog, until you run out of batteries.

11. Always have ready at least two methods of communication to any point or person on the map.

12. Rank has its privileges. It also has its limitations.

13. Let Joe surprise you.

14. Don't let Joe surprise you.

15. The first report is always wrong. Except when it isn't.

16. The problem is always at the distant end. Except when it isn't.

17. Exercise digital/tactical patience. Communications works at the speed of light. People do not.

18. Your trigger finger is your safety. Keep it away from the CAPS LOCK, reply-all, and flash-override buttons.

19. The warfighter is your customer, and the customer is always right.

20. Bullets don't kill people. Logistics kills people.

21. Knowing how it works is more powerful than knowing how it's supposed to work.

22. Cite sources on demand. State opinions when asked.

23. Work by, with, and through others. It's all about empowerment.

24. Do not seek the spotlight, Ranger. Let the spotlight find you. Then, make sure to share it with others.

25. Both the Bible and "The Art of War" make this point: It's never a mistake to put oneself in someone else's boots.

26. Humor is a combat multiplier. Except when it isn't.

What I Am Doing Here

In my re-introductions to Red Bull leaders and soldiers here in Afghanistan, I'm still working on getting my task and purpose down to a manageable 25 words or less. Maybe I've worn too many hats and too many masks for there to be a simple answer. Still, I'll admit that to some small pleasure in causing people to do a double-take, when they see me out of usual context--in country but out of uniform.

After multiple attempts, the best I've been able to muster is that I'm a "freelance historian writing a book about the Red Bull deployment." That seems to contain most of the right sentiments:

- I'm not necessarily writing for immediate publication.

- I might be working at a larger scale or word count than a just a couple of newspaper or magazine articles. Hence, the mention of a "book."

- I'm trying to capture not only the "what" of the deployment, but the "why" and "how."

In many ways, I'm continuing some of the same roles I pursued while I was a uniformed member of 2nd Brigade Combat Team (B.C.T.), 34th "Red Bull" Division. As a Knowledge Management (K.M.) guy for the 2-34th BCT, it was partly my job to ask questions about how things get done, and to document and disseminate stories of success throughout the organization.

There are many such stories of success to be found here. Hardship, too. And sacrifice. But the thing I've found so gratifying is that you can see progress here. Perhaps more accurately: You can sense progress here. Together with its Afghan and coalition partners, the Red Bulls here in Laghman Province, at least, seem to have have brought together the conditions necessary toward more Afghan self-protection and -policing, self-government, self-development.

In Army-speak: That's the "security," "governance" and "development" lines of effort. You can't have one without the others.

Of course, transition to full Afghan governmental control is best still considered a journey, not a destination. I am pleased that so many soldiers can articulate not only what it's been like to be separated so long from friends, family, and the farm fields of Iowa, but how they feel they've made a difference on the ground in Afghanistan.

It is a story I look forward to telling and re-telling.

I find that I'm doing a lot of interviews on the fly and on the run, with a digital recorder in hand. I'm filling up notepad after waterproof notepad, too, but it's still hard to keep up with some sources. My shorthand isn't want it used to be. Neither is my penmanship. I'm sure that means many painful weeks of transcription when I return to Iowa later this summer.

In the meantime, my dispatches may seem somewhat random, and perhaps not as considered or comprehensive as I'd like. I do not have regular Internet access; when I do manage to borrow a cup of connectivity from strangers, my priority is first to write my wife and kids, to tell them where I am and how much I miss them.

I look forward to telling them some stories, too.

The View from Here

FORT IRWIN, Calif., Sept. 26--Regardless of size or type of unit, the Tactical Operations Center ("TOC") is the nerve-center, the hub of activity, the reptilian brain of the organization. Working in "current operations," the staff tracks where people and equipment are, what they're doing, and to whom they're doing it.

Twenty-four-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week, working in the TOC is simultaneously thrilling, infuriating, and boring beyond belief. The TOC is like a casino, in that there are no windows. "The sun never sets in the TOC," the brigade executive officer likes to say.

Reports constantly go up, down, and sideways through the TOC. Calls and contacts go out seeking more information, more detail, more ground truth. "We're driving the war from this building," the S3 Operations officer reminds his crew. "But it's the battalions that own the battlespace."

It's like playing a party game of "telephone" while simultaneously assembling a jigsaw puzzle and juggling parrots.

And at least one parrot is always on fire.

Some people love this TOC stuff. Others hate it. The latter are the guys who would be out there doing it, taking it to the streets and to the bad guys, rather than working in the air-conditioned dome, sorting through problems and moving pins around on a map.

It takes all kinds to run an Army, of course. We're all pins, one way or another.

For the next 14 days, the operations staff of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team (B.C.T.), 34th Infantry "Red Bull" Division (2-34th BCT) has set up shop on the first floor of the two-story "Igloo"--a newly constructed, dome-shaped permanent building at the National Training Center (N.T.C.). The layout resembles something like the bridge of Star Trek's Starship Enterprise. There are three or four video screens across the front, depicting maps and real-time video feeds and message traffic.

A battle "captain"--the position is rank-immaterial, and can be held by a captain, major, or seasoned non-commissioned officer (N.C.O.)--keeps an eye and ear on what's happening. Located up close to the video screens, multitasking "radio-telephone operators" (R.T.O.) send and receive communications via radio, telephone, e-mail, Blue Force Tracker (B.F.T.), instant- or text-messaging.

The battle captain sits on a raised platform one step up and back from the "battle desk," in order to be able to take it all in at once. Around and behind him, there is a constantly changing collection of people from other organizations and staff functions, a combination "peanut gallery" and "Greek chorus."

Even in a digital age, technology can't replace the value of embedding a knowledgeable inter-organizational liaison, someone who can answer quick questions about unit status, capability, and location. The same time, these liaisons listen in on TOC traffic, and call their respective organizations with the latest news and heads-ups.

Like a fisherman floating on a favorite lake, if you sit in the right place and watch the water, you can see the physical ripple and flow of communications throughout the TOC. The report comes in here, it should go there and there. Now, watch to see where--and if--it goes. Sitting in the back of the room is where I do most of my "knowledge management" mojo, eavesdropping on multiple conversations, making connections, putting the question over here together with the answers over there. People in the TOC ask themselves a never-ending question: "Who else needs to know what we know?"

Sometimes, I am hindered in my eavesdropping efforts. The operations sergeant major attempts to keep the TOC as quiet as a library, and periodically yells at everyone, regardless of rank, to shut the heck up and take all conversations outside of his TOC. Lucky for me, he is stymied by the igloo's poor acoustics and the staff's chatty good humor.

For example, a bulletin board on which "significant actions" ("SIGACTS") are to be listed goes missing. Spartacus starts asking loudly, "Where is the SIGACT board? Somebody took the SIGACT board!"

Pilz, for some reason, is hanging around the battle desk. "We'll need to log that as an incident on the SIGACT board," he tells Spart, "after we find it, of course."

In another corner of the room, one of the wargame referees is whining about the brigade's prohibition on civilian "gut-truck" food vendors in the training area. "That's kind of jacked-up," he says. "Because, No. 1, you're simulating being on a FOB, and you'll have that kind of stuff available in-country. And, No. 2, that's how these guys make their money. They come out every rotation."

Man up, sir. Embrace the suck. The 2-34th is an infantry brigade combat team, not a tasty stimulus package. We're the "Red Bull," not the "Red Burrito!"

There's real lessons-learned stuff to be had, trolling around the conversational airwaves. One battalion, for example, repeatedly calls in emergency medical-evacuation ("MEDEVAC," pronouced "med-evak") request, specifying "red smoke" will be used to mark the landing zone for the helicopter. The TOC staff repeatedly have to validate whether or not the mission is a real emergency, or one that's occurring within the NTC's wargame simulation. "Someone tell them that red smoke is for real-world emergencies only," says the Battle NCO.

Immediately below my perch, a young liaison officer (L.N.O.) from one of the infantry units is schooling the brigade S4 (Logistics) staff on how to use its computer systems to track supplies and equipment. Granted, the kid is some sort of quartermaster savant, but it's a little bit like having a 6th-grader fix daddy's computer. Daddy should keep up with the 21st century, if he doesn't want to get left in the dust.

Just then, the Army laser-tag sensing equipment worn by the brigade information officer starts beeping--indicating he's now a simulated casualty. It's an obvious malfunction--no one has fired a weapon in the TOC, but he looks around, bewildered. Maybe it's a simulated heart-attack. Or spontaneous human combustion.

Another wargame adminstrator walks over with a God-gun to reset the officer's system. "It's all these fluorescent lights," he says. "Working in the TOC will kill you."

Zombie Ice Cream Tastes Like Brainz!

As a member of the unit's Knowledge Management ("K.M.") team--and there are precious few of us right now, but that's OK, because there's precious little knowledge to go around right now--I've been tasked to learn SharePoint.

SharePoint is a MicroSoft product that allegedly helps to structure, find, and archive organizational information. In designing our unit's SharePoint environment, the objective is that anyone in the organization can find any information they require within three clicks of a computer mouse.

I've used the computer application before, on small teams doing small tasks, but I've never before been responsible for administering user-access permissions, and website design, and information architecture. I know what needs to be done conceptually, but I am stumbling around on implementation.

SharePoint is not intuitive. SharePoint is not user-friendly. SharePoint is a dangerous and fickle mistress. SharePoint is a tantrum-prone 2-year-old leaving a toy department. SharePoint is a filibustering U.S. Senate populated by legislative robots who never have to urinate.

SharePoint, in short, is the anti-Sherpa.

I thought I'd won a little victory last week, when I learned how to post a unit-wide "announcement" on the home SharePoint webpage. This was my test message: "There will be an Ice Cream Social in the TOC tomorrow at 1600 hours. That is all." I figured that would be harmless, because no one could POSSIBLY think that there would be ice cream served in our high-tech command center--the heart and nexus of our proficient and professional Army organization.

Instead, people thought I was serious.

I practically got hate mail. And death threats.

Apparently, Rule No. 1 about Ice Cream Socials is: Do not joke about Ice Cream Socials.

A colleague of mine later suggested I should've said something about zombies, because no one could POSSIBLY assume that anything regarding the living dead would be true. While she may not have realized that I've seen an actual draft of the State of Iowa's Emergency Response Plan in Case of Midwestern Corn-Fed Zombie Attack--it's something the boys in the plans shop have been kicking around for a couple of years--I liked where she was headed.

After facing a day filled with icy stares and lactose-generated intolerance, however, I didn't have intestinal fortitude enough to post another SharePoint announcement the next day. The one that got away--the one I should've posted--was this:

"Ice cream social cancelled due to zombie attack. Thanks for SharePointing."