One of the projects I'm working on is an analytical effort supporting Army experimentation that will take place over the coming year. One of the things you've got to get done early - and well - are setting your objectives, from that developing the issues, from that decomposing your essential elements of analysis, then your measures of performance and merit, etc. Parallel and in conjunction, all of that helps you define your venues, participants, and how you are going to generate and collect all your data. All of which wraps up into a product called the Data Collection Management Plan. Thank heavens I'm not in charge of it - but I'm on the team that's developing it. I'm also helping in the parallel efforts of scenario design and models and sims support.
All this means meetings. Meetings with smart, very experienced people of diverse backgrounds, from warfighter commanders and operators, to math geeks, to academics.
Meeting after meeting after meeting after meeting of smart, type-A personalities, each and every one of us capable of a detailed-in-the-minutiae discussion of how many angels will dance on the head of that pin.
I don't envy my colleague who has to herd these cats.
Some of this is *hard*. We'll sit there, seeming victims of a Harry Potter-esque "Stupefy" spell, all anxiously waiting for someone else to drag us back from the precipice. Well, that's early in the meeting. Later in the meeting you can hear the conductor in the background yelling "Boaaaard! Last call for the bus to Abilene!"...
Yesterday, in the DCMP meeting, we were discussing differences in commanders and how they gather, analyze, and act on information, and how that relates to what data they need and how it needs to be presented to them. We were talking about explicit and implicit knowledge, and where a commander's knowledge of his subordinates came into play in that context.
It was one of those precipice moments.
And one of us suggested (tongue-in-cheek) that the way to get to that particular element was to bring in a division commander and his brigade and battalion commanders... and run a seminar along the lines of "The Apprentice."
Whereupon someone else noted - "I worked for a commander like Trump - he'd point to you in a staff meeting and say, "You're Fired!"
Heh. After noting that I too had worked for a commander like that - I added that I had also worked for the Dread Pirate Roberts - a commander who said the equivalent of "Well enough for today John. I'll likely kill you in the morning."
So - what famous/infamous/funny cultural characters have *You* worked for?
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