The Fundamentals

What are the Fundamentals?

The fundamentals are those aspects or behaviours which underpin everything you do. They are not a list of ‘what’ to do, more the ‘how’ or ‘why’ which you should take into consideration. Think of them as the framework. What I have listed here are some things to think about and in some respects the way I address things – but that is my particular style.

Be the Principal

When you work with or for senior officers or senior staff within an organisation, you will note that they are usually very busy, moving from meeting to meeting, approving proposals within their authority, and sometimes providing advice to the Boss from their area. When you think of a principal, think of a position which has staff attached to it – someone junior who organises their diary, coordinates the things they have to read or sign and basically makes sure they are at the right place at the right time with the right information to do what they need to do.

One of the keys to being a good staff officer is to treat yourself like the principal – have your calendar marked out, plan time to prepare for meetings by doing the work beforehand, obtain the background reading before you walk into a meeting. The only difference is, the person doing that for you is you. It will take time so will need to be planned for – but it will also save time as you become more efficient.

The best way to learn is to do – become the personal staff officer for a Principal in your organisation. Next best is to learn from them, and their staff officer – organise a time to talk through how they approach things and what does or doesn’t work for them.

Treat Your Life Like a Campaign

I’m not talking about an election campaign, I’m referring to a military campaign. What I mean by this is plan out the things you do and understand how they work towards your objective. A military campaign has different lines of effort, and your life does too – personal, family, work, social – they all compete for your time and focus, and they all have a priority attached to them at a particular time (and that priority can change depending what phase you are in. The campaign can be as all encompassing or discrete as you want (although minor campaigns tend to be more of an operation).

By putting some structure to your life and understanding the resources you require to achieve the objective then you will be better prepared. It is also important to not lose sight of the objective (the goal to which you are working towards) as this will assist you in making decisions

Be Human

There seems to be a misconception that as people become more senior and successful that they become hyper-efficient and machine-like. It is important, in my view, to be a person which means having emotions and engaging with people on a personal level. People might engage with you if they know you can do the job, but the people who work with you will be more engaged if you connect with them. I don’t recommend being fake or disingenuous because people will see straight through you. Being human is about being true to yourself and not being someone you aren’t.

Personal Battle Rhythm

I set up a personal battle rhythm to allocate appropriate time to the things I need to do. A battle rhythm is the program of meetings and events that occur regularly to make a Headquarters run efficiently. Ideally (and I say ideally because it rarely happens), each event has a purpose and the outcomes feed into something else. As a staff officer the workday will be dictated to you by the organisation’s battle rhythm – you will have regular meetings to synchronise, develop or approve different things. What you can affect is the space between and around those meetings to organise your own time. And the battle rhythm doesn’t need to just be about work, although unless your spouse is also in the military, probably best not to refer to it as your personal battle rhythm at home.

Some of the things I include in my personal battle rhythm (which I adjust around the work battle rhythm) are my daily start-up and shut-down routines, time set aside for preparation and post-meeting review, reflection time (I’m not a smoker so I set aside time for myself to get out of the office and take a mental break) and team synchronisation. It is important to remember that all the battle rhythm events should feed another higher-level event or make progress toward your objective – so personal reflection time certainly sits on your ‘Personal’ line of effort.

By having your personal battle rhythm mapped out you should find you allocate time to the important things and become more efficient and productive. The time at the beginning of the day to start-up sets me up for the day, whilst the shut-down time makes sure I close things out and prepares me for the following day. I’ll go into more detail when I cover time management.

Invest

Invest in yourself – you are worth it. That and you won’t get the most out of yourself and your work if you don’t invest in the right tools as they will make your life easier, give you more time and you will be more efficient. Investment is in three key areas (there are more, but these are the most important): tools to be better at what you are trying to do; education so you do what you are doing better; and your mental health

Tools. The tools you use can make the difference between getting a good job done (just) and getting a great job done in the time you have. Tools can vary from the everyday to the specialist tools for a particular project. Before you get the tool you need, you should work out what will work best for you. What type of computer do you need, what operating system works for you and what programs do you need to support you. I spend my money on a couple of things because they work for me – all my technology is built around the same ecosystem so it all works together. My information synchronises, my alerts tell me where I need to be and/or what I should be doing, and it is seamless. I also like to mind-map my problems to gain a better understanding so I have invested in the software to let me do that on my computer. Sometimes you can’t get a tool that exactly meets your needs, or your needs change. This where being able to adapt the tool to achieve the ends can be very useful – examples of this are task managers for project tracking, mind-mapping for planning etc.

Education. There are two parts of education that require you to invest – the cost and the time, and both are essential; although time is probably more so.  If there is a course that will make you better at what you do, then do it. Books, articles, seminars (or webinars) don’t necessarily cost much, but the insight which can be gained from them can make a real difference. So investing the time to read and research is time well spent. It doesn’t have to be formal education, often work picks that up for you, but when opportunities come up grab them, because they may not come up again.

Mental Health. This is investing in yourself and your personal well-being. Mostly, it takes an investment of time, but the outcomes are extremely important. Many people burn themselves out trying to be all things to all people: great at their job, looking after a family with their spouse, doing things with the extended family, and not making time for themselves. After a couple of post-deployment interviews (normal procedure to see how we are going), the most common feedback I have received is make more time for myself. I now work on about 40 minutes per day and a solid three hour block per week. And if you set up a personal battle rhythm you can put the time aside, and treating your life like a campaign means taking the long view (it’s a marathon, not a sprint). The human mind and body has an uncanny (and sometimes poorly timed) way of telling you when to slow down if you don’t take that decision for yourself, and usually comes in the form of getting sick because you are run-down.

Tracking Information

Tracking information is all about ensuring that tasks are completed and projects remain on track. Preparation prior to meetings is as important as consolidation after meetings.  I allocate time in my calendar prior to a meeting to prepare, do any research, obtain answers and develop questions that need to be answered during the meeting.

Post the meeting it is important to collate the information and determine what tasks have fallen out. All too often people come out of meetings without collating the information and then wander off to the next meeting (seems to me that as I move up in the organisation I spend more time at meetings. If you don’t consolidate the tasks post the meeting you won’t be able to provide a useful update at the next meeting.

This then comes to how do you track the information so that you can ensure the tasks are done but also track the progress of longer-term and complex tasks. When tracking tasks, using a traffic-light system is simple and effective. What it does require is continual review and updating. When using a traffic-light system, ‘green is good’, but ‘red is important’. Task trackers are useful.

In addition to tracking tasks, it is also important to track queries to be answered. Keeping on track of the things you have been asked will display reliability. Creating a Request for Information tracker will help and act as a reminder.

Learn from Everybody

The last of my fundamentals is to learn from everybody you meet. Everyone has something to teach you, so afterwards take the time to ponder and ask the question – what did I learn from that person? Now, if you haven’t already worked it out you soon will – not everybody will teach you something positive. Many people you will meet and learn a good lesson – something they do which you would also benefit from doing. But just as important are the lessons of what not to do – when you see somebody do something and say to yourself ‘I will never do that’ or ‘if I ever catch myself doing that I will give myself an uppercut’. However a good thing to realise is that seeing something done right (positive lesson) shows you what works for them, but seeing something done poorly (negative lesson) shows you what not to do. You might not realise it immediately, but at some time you will identify what you have learnt from them. Every day is a school day.