MILITARY RELATED CELLULAR USE BY RESERVISTS

[chrisf]

Absolutely.  But in my experience, those people then are the first to complain when they miss taskings, or dates change or don't respond in time or they get bumped off a list.  Or when they get NES letters or whatever.

How often does all this happen in less than a week though?

How did we handle admin before the invention of email, cell phone, and text???

Prior to leaving the forces, I got extremely fed up with what seemed like completely unecassary changes to plans over the course of a week between parade nights.

As far as I was concerned, when the troops walked put the door at the end of a training nighy, there should know exactly what was happening the next training night, giving them a week to prepare and plan around their civilian lives accordingly.

Routinely however, over the course of the week, there'd be a half dozen emails, phone calls, or text messages, changing the plan.

Inevitably, at least some people would miss some of this communication (I have another whole angry rant about the words "didn't you get my text message?")  and it would only end it confusion.

Courtesy of working on a base dispersed over a couple of kilometers, very often the first hour of an evening was wasted just trying to get everyone to the one spot.

Reality is, the reserve world operates 1 night a week and 1 or 2 weekends a month.

Learn to work within those restrictions, it's the system you have.

 

[Remius]

How often does all this happen in less than a week though?

How did we handle admin before the invention of email, cell phone, and text???

A lot. Like last week trying to get guys on course.  Last minute spots opened up.

or when brigade needs names by Friday or dates suddenly change.

Or if said troop happens to miss a training night the one week has now become two.  A lot can change in two weeks.

We'll get staff checks with little detail and when the details become more clear then we have to re confirm. if buddy can't be bothered to respond until next week, I move onto the next person on the list.  Sometimes it will have to be first come first serve depending on how short notice things are.

Keep in mind that it also depends on when your training night is.  if it is a Monday or Tuesday, what you pass on in person might/will have changed by Thursday or Friday. 

Phone calls.  But if you are not going to answer and have no answering machine that isn't my problem.

 

[Remius]

Reality is, the reserve world operates 1 night a week and 1 or 2 weekends a month.

Learn to work within those restrictions, it's the system you have.

Sorry, but that is the theory.  The reality is far from that.

We do.  Which is why I don't bemoan people who don't answer emails or phones calls.  But I also don't care if they chose to do that and missed out. Not my problem any more than it was theirs when they opted not to respond.

 

[daftandbarmy]

A lot. Phone calls.  But if you are not going to answer and have no answering machine that isn't my problem.

Ironically, we still do annual 'fan outs' by phone, just like 1979.

So we will inundate you with the trivial by email daily, then try to reach you at a number (and technology) you never use for the most urgent annually.

 

[Mike5]

The Army's new funding model assumes about 100 days/year for unit command team.

That's five months full-time (at 20 working days/month).  How we expect Res unit command teams to (a) be senior leaders in their civilian jobs (b) be engaged in their community and (c) maintain some semblance of a family life, while working five months a year of evenings and weekends eludes me.


But god forbid a spreadsheet be late.

I resemble that comment .  I am a junior officer of my Res unit and (a) am a senior leader in my civilian job, (b) a Scout Leader, Little League coach and SAR volunteer in my community and (c) have a semblance of a family life.  And my spreadsheets are often late

 

[Remius]

Ironically, we still do annual 'fan outs' by phone, just like 1979.

So we will inundate you with the trivial by email daily, then try to reach you at a number (and technology) you never use for the most urgent annually.

Yep.  Phoning is still the best way to get a positive confirmation that someone received the info...

 

[brihard]

Ironically, we still do annual 'fan outs' by phone, just like 1979.

So we will inundate you with the trivial by email daily, then try to reach you at a number (and technology) you never use for the most urgent annually.

As soon as I get a fan out by any means, I immediately blast it in a succinct email the my section with request that they text or email when they got it. I then text them all to the effect of “fanout just came down, check your email ASAP”. Usually replies start almost immediately, and then I start the phone calls a couple minutes later in descending order of those I know are usually slowest to see email/text. It works well, usually by the time I call 3 or 4 the rest already replied concurrently by written means. Last iteration of this I was at a birthday party when Gatineau started going underwater and we got an 11pm Friday warning order.

 

[Jarnhamar]

"Seek out and accept responsibility" :dunno:

Problem is the guys and girls who seek out and look for loopholes. Then jag gets involved with all their rules and get out of jail free cards  ;D

 

[Remius]

Ours was when immigrants started appearing at the Cornwall border crossing.  Fan out went out during summer stand down...

 

[Lumber]

I'd like to see the reference.

I thought you were serious.  I have a soldier without a phone, as far as I'm aware, and I was curious if there was an actual rule about providing contact info if you have it.

Ok I'm not 100% certain but it really seems like you guys are trying to be lower deck lawyers.

Have you honestly never been employed by a high readiness unit which requires you to be contactable?

 

[SupersonicMax]

Because of the 0.1%, we have to make rules to replace common sense.  Let's keep removing any logical reasonning and leadership from the equation...

 

[chrisf]

Have you honestly never been employed by a high readiness unit which requires you to be contactable?

A high readiness reserve unit?

 

[Lumber]

A high readiness reserve unit?

Their arguments were not specific to reserve units, but whether or not the CO (of any unit) has authority to order a member to provide accurate contact information, whatever it might be.

 

[Haggis]

Their arguments were not specific to reserve units, but whether or not the CO (of any unit) has authority to order a member to provide accurate contact information, whatever it might be.

And that contact information could be a cell number...

...or a landline number.....

...or a grid reference.

 

[Jarnhamar]

Ok I'm not 100% certain but it really seems like you guys are trying to be lower deck lawyers.

Have you honestly never been employed by a high readiness unit which requires you to be contactable?

All the time.  But how is this a matter of trying to be a pseudo lawyer? 

I've seen my unit try and charge soldiers for not answering the phone in the middle of the night and missing unit recalls.  When that got shot down they were given extras.

But where in the QR&Os etc.. does it say a member must have a phone and answer it when called?  I've been put on X hour/day notice to move but never given a pager or cell phone to be contacted on. As pointed out, members must have an address where they can be reached.  Doesn't mention phones as far as I know.



For the reserves and fastballs/tasks I made a Facebook page and would post the times dates and details of the job/task and say first one to contact me gets it.  The Coy OC previously demanded all tasks and coursenominations get vetted through him.  Sometimes that was a 2 or 3 week turn around. Lots of missed job and course opportunities. The unit also wanted certain soldiers not to be given tasks/jobs (as a form of punishment, which I don't disagree with) but refused to put it in writing.

 

[Loachman]

Because of the 0.1%, we have to make rules to replace common sense.  Let's keep removing any logical reasonning and leadership from the equation...

Have you ever been a member of an Army Reserve unit?

 

[daftandbarmy]

For the reserves and fastballs/tasks I made a Facebook page and would post the times dates and details of the job/task and say first one to contact me gets it. 

We had an RSSWO who did exactly that and it was an excellent process. He gathered in all the applications on FB for various courses/tasks, emailed the COC for a fast approval/ denial, then processed everything within the same day. Brilliant.

It took a bunch of reservists to mess up that approach after he left us, sadly.

 

[PPCLI Guy]

I was Ops O in a Reserve Unit, then RSS, and then 10/90, all before e-mail.

The direction from higher came by phone, or by message - the latter a laborious process, and so the phone was preferred.  Orders and directives for an exercise were handraulic, and then went thru the Gestetner or photo copier.

We made plans, and executed them in an efficient and vertical manner, unencumbered by horizontal (ie cc effect) opportunities for everyone to chime in.  We either phoned people, or waiting until Tuesday night.

More immediate comms does NOT equal more efficiency.

I think perhaps texting, Facebook and e-mails are the problem, not the solution.

 

[daftandbarmy]

I think perhaps texting, Facebook and e-mails lazy leaders who can't be bothered with proper battle procedure are the problem, not the solution.

There, FTFY

 

[Edward Campbell]

I was Ops O in a Reserve Unit, then RSS, and then 10/90, all before e-mail.

The direction from higher came by phone, or by message - the latter a laborious process, and so the phone was preferred.  Orders and directives for an exercise were handraulic, and then went thru the Gestetner or photo copier.

We made plans, and executed them in an efficient and vertical manner, unencumbered by horizontal (ie cc effect) opportunities for everyone to chime in.  We either phoned people, or waiting until Tuesday night.

More immediate comms does NOT equal more efficiency.

I think perhaps texting, Facebook and e-mails are the problem, not the solution.

ff topic:  But ...

... speaking as someone who has some knowledge about communications systems and technology and some ~ less than some here ~ military and command experience, I want to say just how important PPCLI GUY's insight is.

I've been retired, retired for a decade now but when I was serving and in my decade long second career I rubbed elbows with e.g. George Cope, CEO of Bell and Bob Simmonds, former Chairman of Clearnet (now TELUS Mobility) and I will tell you that THEY ~ high tech industry CEOs ~ were worried about the impact that mass, immediate, and especially lateral comms was having on their business practices. I watched as the, then CEO of one major firm, did a major "about turn" on the subject of how "connected" his executives and manager needed to be: he went from imagining trying to get a 24/7 "connected" work force to insisting that mobile phones and pagers and so on (now smartphones) went off for at least n hours every day so that executives and managers could relax, "regroup," mentally and ponder, rather than just reacting.

Before that I was instrumental, in the 1970s and '80s at defining some of the technical aspects of military C3; that was, of course, before we had mobile (or even transportable) computing but not before we understood its potential ... and it scared many of our best thinkers because they could not believe that we, humans, could "manage" the incredible volumes of "information" that would be available. We had a test bed at the (then) Defence and Civil Institute of Aviation Medicine (DCIEM) in Toronto and I recall, vividly, a frighteningly bright defence scientist and a very, very fine general (with an MC for bravery) discussing the practical impossibility of sound information management when all people wanted was more and More and MORE.

To paraphrase PPCLI GUY quantity ≠ quality. (I might have made quantity red and quality blue because in tactical C2 I believe that one is your enemy and the other other your friend.) One of the jobs of commanders, from a Recce Pl Patrol Det Commander to a brigade group commander is to decide on what matters and pass it up and put the dross aside ... as an observation by an old, retired outsider if it is on PowerPoint it is very, very likely dross.

Information is a valuable, vital tool: IF you can trust it. You can trust it as much as you trust the source ~ if the source is Sgt Jones in 5 Pl of B Coy then you know it's probably "good gen," if, on the other hand, the source is some fancy and emote 'All Source Intelligence
Center' then I would suggest that your trust should be a whole lot less. We "gamed' this in the 1970s in the UK: we demonstrated just how, in a totally manual system, one piece of information could be "grown" into serious misinformation when it was "handled" in a stovepipe by an intelligence system that stopped, actually, being about intelligence and became, instead, an "information collection" function.

It's a bit like the Internet ~ it is full of enormous volumes of information ... some of which is actually true and useful. (And those two things are not always tied together.)

I'm not going to launch into a diatribe about information management ... but I am not convinced that anyone in the Government of Canada, and certainly not in DND or the CF, actually "gets it."

To repeat: More immediate comms does NOT equal more efficiency.

If you don't understand and believe that then you are part of the problem.

< end highjack>