Read up before you arrive

You may not have a lot of time once you begin your role. You need to come prepared, read up on leadership, management, command, and training – whatever knowledge you think you are lacking in that your sub-unit needs, but regardless: just read. Take notes from your reading, maybe under those headings or others that you think are important to you. You do not have to organise your thoughts into a plan yet, but anything that strikes you, take it down and reference it for later. Put sticky tabs in books to be able to find passages later. Use the Defence Library Service and your local library for books and electronic media, you will not regret it.

Develop your command philosophy

This is very worthwhile, as you will distil the things important to you. Most things that happen, or that you want to happen during your tenure you will be able to relate back to at least one of the tenets of your command philosophy. Therefore, it acts as the reference point, the constitutional base on which subsequent acts are written. You will have to remind people of it for your whole tenure, which is not a bad thing. It will mean you are consistent. People will begin to see things through your lens.

Reflect on previous OCs you have had. You may have disagreed with their methods or taken away some very good practices. If something is not “you” though, then you need to know enough about yourself to realise that.

Develop your plan

The two years will go quickly but be ambitious – “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion” (Parkinson’s law). So if you give people a long time, that’s how long it will take. If you were given a week to write an essay how good would it be? If you were given a month to write the same essay, how good would it be? More importantly, how much better would it be than the one-week version? Finally – how good does it actually need to be?

You may be able to look at the training program or exercise schedule and work out where you want to do things. Obviously external forces will play a part – the short notice deployment, or the black swan event. Nevertheless, you need to have a plan before you can change it. So write one and begin to execute it. When the situation changes, change the plan accordingly. You will keep the stuff you really want to do, and the next person in the role will have to do the remainder.

Teamwork makes the dream work

You will have probably been a platoon/troop commander with a sergeant or a warrant officer. You now have staff. You, your second-in-command, operations officer, and squadron sergeant major need to be a team (along with anyone else you identify like the squadron quartermaster/company quartermaster or technical appointments).

Our commanding officer wrote a guide to himself about who he was and how he liked to work which was quite helpful. I then did the same when I got new staff in my second year. This will aid them in understanding you as a person – what are your personality traits, your habits, your work likes and dislikes? You need to have your small team understand you and how you work, and understand their roles and be able to execute with a level of autonomy. They should be able to think of the questions you would immediately ask when an issue arises and get them answered or anticipate the things you would do in a situation and carry them out.

Dogs bark but the caravan moves on

Political commentator Jeremy Driver has defined a pervasive negative mindset that has become apparent in some people in recent years. Specifically, he defines it as “the reflexive belief that barriers to policy outcomes are natural laws that we should not waste our time considering how to overcome them”. Put another way it is “automatically dismissing an idea on the basis that it cannot be done, or would be hard to do”.

Many people will be experts in the way things are currently done. We are all institutionalised to adhere to the policy and regulations that are in force. This can lead to stifling of any innovation. But somebody writes all this policy. They are probably an eminently reasonable person who can be persuaded. So, things can be done, just maybe with staff work, consultation, persistence, and inevitably – setbacks.

Additionally, policy will always lag behind innovation. Uber was driving around in Australia for a long time, taking rides, collecting money, and having car accidents without being registered as a taxi or hire car service. You can buy cryptocurrency and have none of the protections of a bank account or financial instrument. These are just parallels, not necessarily examples to follow. You will be able to conceive of something that may not currently be policy; it will take someone to get it to be policy.

Marginal gains

You can google Dave Brailsford and read about his success with the British cycling team using marginal gains. Basically, it boils down to looking at every aspect of your work and making the micro improvements, the one percenters. Do you measure the success of your PT program? What about shooting scores? Admin? How do you know what is being done well or poorly? How would you know if it getting better or worse?

Lead, follow or get out of the way

Beware of those who choose to get out of the way, they’re neither leading nor following.

Enjoy it

You are not going to execute it perfectly every day. Be true to yourself and your vision. Don’t die wondering.