A wasted day

My last post was about how stressed I was with all the things going on at work. While today would have been a great day to deal with those things, sadly, it was not to be.

Instead, I cancelled an optometry appointment, failed to pick up a package, and missed out on a rewarding volunteer opportunity to attend a meeting two hours away that just sucked up everyone's time. Thumbs down. I did, however, refine a maxim that I've been thinking of since my time leading a detachment in Afghanistan:

What your higher headquarters doesn't see, it won't understand. What it doesn't understand, it can't prioritize. What it can't prioritize, it just won't care about.

On the other hand, you don't always want them to work the reverse. Once a commander becomes interested in what you're doing, their staff gets new priorities. With their new priorities, they want to reshape what you've been doing to meet their own interests. And once they start putting their hands in your project, it's no longer your own achievement.

In Afghanistan, this manifested itself in the way no one cared when our detachment had small problems (like maintenance). However, when problems blew up, *everyone* wanted to have their hands in the pie, because the boss was watching.

Similarly, up to this point no one in our higher HQ gave us any direction on how we were supposed to run our joint exercise with the Korean Army next month. That is, until this week! -when the commander took an interest in it. In our meeting today, we had three field grade staff officers with us, and all the plans we'd let the companies design now have to be rethought. Thanks a lot, higher HQ.