The Staff Officer Program – An Overview

What’s this?

This group of articles is the distillation of the things I have learned over my career, which so far has spanned 30 years. I have been very fortunate with the experiences I have had and the people with whom I’ve worked. I have tried to take a lesson away from each interaction – lessons about things that work and things that don’t. Sometimes the lesson aren’t immediately apparent, and sometimes they are right there so you can’t ignore them.

As this is this distillation of my experience, I intend to cover what I consider to be the complete package. Not sure if I will include anecdotes about situations when I have seen these things play out or when I learnt the lesson of what not to do, time will tell.

To Whom is the Program Aimed?

Ideally I’d aim this at the junior leader and manager. I’ve spent a long time in the military, but I would say that the lessons and ideas put forward here are likely to be useful in business and life – because life is just one long string of problems (or opportunities, depending on how you look at them), at the very least we travel along a path and have to make decisions – the better prepared to make those decisions, the better off we will be.

What’s In It?

I have broken the topics into small chunks – easily digestable and able to be referenced at a later time. Depending on my proficiency with WordPress, I will endeavour to include diagrams to support the information and ideas. The program will look something like this:

• Fundamentals
• Plan to Plan
• Time Management
• Task Prioritisation
• Planning
• Managing Crises
• Campaign Assessment
• Lessons Learned

Potentially eight weeks, could be as long as eight months. It will be interesting to see how far I can push this, linking it into Twitter so the releases will be broadcast.