The Way To Be Productive In The Military Office

If you have served in the military or do serve now this article will definitely help

you to cope with the uniqueness of the military office place and to be productive during the business day.

I served in the US Military for about twelve years as a Combat Arms Officer. Combat Arms people are not your typical corporate drones so their office skills generally were not that good. We tended to not like paperwork so we procrastinated about getting it done and it was typically full of errors when it was. Office time came in stints between field duties so there was always a mountain of paperwork to be completed. My bosses were not office drones so just about everything that came to me had to be done right now. Leadership changed so much that I would have to explain to my bosses just what it was that I was giving them when I handed them a report and why it was needed.

Dont try this at home but I learned that it was best most of the time to keep my bosses in the dark about exactly what reports were due as long as I got them done on time and correctly. I got to know the people who I handed the reports or whatever else that I had to submit in to so I got to know exactly what they needed to get out of the report as far as information goes. My experience with the new boss is that he would always want to go through and tell you how to do it a little bit better with ninety per cent of what he had me to do being unnecessary. All he needed to know was that it had been submitted on time and was accepted as being without error. I had to learn to be the master of my own workload.

The typical boss is seventy five per cent concerned with the work on his desk and will only think of you when your work affects his. I once had a boss who loved to work on weekends. He would call me at home on Saturday or Sunday and expect me to be happy to want to come in but I wasnt feeling it the same way. I learned to go through his inbox during the work week and find out what information he would need from me in order to complete his assigned tasks. I would complete it by close of business on Friday and leave it lined up on top of my own desk (not his). When the inevitable call came I would just tell him where on my desk to look. This worked like a charm since he could do what he needed to do without waiting on me and I could enjoy my weekend the way that I wanted to.

One lesson that I learned the hard way was to never turn in a completed project before the time that it was due. The reason for this was that if it sat on my bosss desk for too long he would have too much time to think about it. He would start having thoughts about how to make it better when the reason for providing it was not to invent a new thing but to answer the questions that higher headquarters wanted answered. Nine times out of ten they didnt want anything extra added to it, and really didnt care. I would always complete it as early as I could but hold onto it until the very last minute to prevent him from having too much time to play with it.

Let me give you a case in point. When I was a logistics officer we had to turn in monthly reports which were read and put on punch cards. They had to be error free to help prevent the wrong information from being punched in. We would use a form which looked like the punch card but we had to fill in the blocks with the appropriate information. We had to do it in pencil, check it out and then fill out a totally new form in ink. The easiest way would have been to trace over the pencil with ink but our boss wouldnt allow it.

I had a young man come to me one day because he was filling out the paperwork and ran out of blank forms. He had been looking for a blank for hours. This time was wasted because of the bosss condition that all had to be done on a brand new form. I took the one that he had done in pencil, had him to retrace it in ink, and we turned it in without any problems at all. Sometimes we need to allow common sense to rule in the way that we conduct business. Military Ring Express

by: tishbite

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