It's good to have a goal. Setting goals for yourself gives you a mark on the wall to reach towards, and measure progress against. Getting measurably closer to that end-state validates the hard work you're putting in, and spurs you on to greater gains. And after you meet the mark, set a new one, bigger and better than the first. Simple self-motivation.
The real trick to setting a goal is that you have to write it down. You have to make it a public announcement, even with an audience of one (i.e., yourself). In needs to be short, succinct, and specific, so you can't change your mind as to what it meant at some later date. Tack that sucker up on your door, refrigerator, office wall. Write it on your bathroom mirror with a grease pencil and don't erase it 'til you succeed so you have to look at it every morning. When you start to slack off, or get complacent, or decide that your current state of affairs is good enough, you can look at that cold, hard fact, staring at you accusingly, and be reminded of what you were trying to accomplish. You can't give up without settling, admitting that you were deceiving yourself into thinking you could do better. And that just can't stand. Unless you're a low down, dirty...deceiver. (A cookie for you if you can spot where that came from.)
The Coalition's overall goals in Afghanistan are very nebulous. There's a lot of wiggle room when evaluating whether or not Afghanistan is "secure" enough for us to relinquish the lead. What qualifies as a "professional" Army and Police force? This ambiguity makes these goals difficult to achieve. One general's definition of secure will certainly be different than another reporter's definition. The President and the American people may see "success" from very different (and current polling data suggests that this is the case). Thankfully, I don't have to deal with this ambiguous mess in my job. That's above my pay grade. No, in stark contrast, NTM-A/CSTC-A's goals are rather specific.
NTM-A is responsible for building that "professional" Army and Police force, and we have very specific goals we must fulfill in order to be considered a success. The Army must reach an end-strength of 171,600 soldiers by October 2011. The Police must reach an end-strength of 134,000 by the same date. These numbers can't just be made up of any Joe Schmo, either. The ration of Officers, Non-Commissioned Officers, and Soldiers/Patrolmen is specified, so as to achieve the best balance of leadership and grunt work in the force.
Underpinning these strength goals are several other goals. Training, for example. We have to put each one of these guys through training. That's where the "professional" part of the force comes from. We can't just hand these guys AK-47s, slap em on the back, throw em into the fray and expect quality results (though at points in the past, that is exactly what happened). As such, we have to build and adequate amount of training facilities, hire enough trainers, and design courses long enough to be effective, but short enough to meet our personnel demands in the force. Recruiting is another. We have our target end-strength, now we need to go find the people to get us there. Obviously we can't recruit 134,000 people all at once for the Police, so we set monthly goals that need to be met consistently. High goals are set in the winter, when there's no other work to be had, and low goals are set in late summer and fall, when the harvest time and Ramadan occur (though Ramadan is really a moving target). The big goal is attrition. We know a certain amount of people are going to leave the force, but we have monthly goals that we work our tails off trying to meet so that we can keep the losses to a minimum.
All of these goals are interconnected, some easier to meet and maintain than others. If the recruiters have a bad month, attrition needs to be lowered to compensate, while training space stays empty. If we can't build training sites fast enough, recruiting all the guys in the world won't help, as they'll get tired of waiting for class space and go find another job. If attrition gets out of hand, we're throwing money away training people that aren't doing the job they were hired for, and putting unbelievable pressure on the recruiters to find more people to fill all the vacated positions. The cycle is brutal and unforgiving.
As an analyst, one of the things I get to work on is nailing down exactly what each of these goals should be. We may have money to build training space to house 100,000 people simultaneously, but do we need to spend all of it? Having 2,000 classroom spaces for new policeman isn't helpful if the recruiters are only going to be able to snag 200 new people. Bleeding 70% of the force each year (an actual attrition rate for the Afghan National Civil Order Police (ANCOP) at one point) isn't conducive to growing the Police to larger and larger numbers, but can we get away with 30%? Where does the break point occur between acceptable and unsustainable?
There's also just as much art as there is science when developing goal numbers. Maybe we can get away with 30% attrition, but instead set the goal at 20% to motivate the Afghans to do even better, while simultaneously sending a message to the American public and Congress that we're striving to do better. Setting the recruiting goal at a high mark during a challenging month might be silly from a mathematical perspective, but may motivate the recruiters to work harder than ever that month. These numbers become the marks by which we are held accountable, visible to anyone that picks up a newspaper or surfs the internet, and send a message about our level of effort and our confidence in our work. It's important that these goals be both meaningful and challenging.
And in reality, all of these are moving targets. The only fixed goals are the overall end-strengths of 171,600 for the Army and 134,000 for the Police. Everything else is variable, and changed fairly frequently. The best analogy I can think of is an Etch-a-Sketch controlled by two people. Imagine trying to draw a straight line from one corner to the other with two people, one controlling one knob, one controlling the other. As one person turns their knob, the other must adjust to compensate. Both knobs are being adjusted at the same time, and they have to be adjusted precisely, and in concert with the each other, to succeed in the task. For our problem in Afghanistan, this happens every day, little fine tunings to try and keep us on the glide path to that final end-strength goal. Training classes get extended as our training capacity increases, so that we can pack on even more education before sending fresh faces to the force. Recruiting is usually low at the same time attrition is high, resulting in adjustment of the recruiting goals for the following months. While the overall goal for attrition hasn't changed in almost a year (fixing that is a project I'm working on right now), efforts to reduce attrition, like better pay, guaranteed vacation, and better leadership, are usually implemented as a result of losing too many people in the months prior.
Knobs on the Etch-a-Sketch, all primed and ready to be tweaked to whatever value is necessary. The target is steady, we just have to communicate efficiently and coordinate our efforts. We're all working towards nailing that target dead on.
*****
Speaking of writing goals down, it's about time for me.
I came over here with plans to get in better shape, read my Bible more, and writing on my blog. So far I've done pretty well with all of those (though some of you may disagree about the blog frequency!), but I haven't set my goals in stone so that I can be held accountable. Well, here they are.
- Bench press 200 lbs 6 times (consecutively, no loop holes) before the end of my tour. Currently I can do 185 about twice. My office mates and I have been weight lifting 6 days a week, and they're pretty good about holding my feet to the fire, so I've got a good shot to make this one, I think.
- Finish reading and journaling through Psalms. I planned before I left to read one Psalm each night and write down my thoughts about what I read. So far, I've been in Afghanistan for more than two months and I'm not quite into the 30s yet. /wristslap. I've got more than 100 days left, so I can still make it if I double up for a little while. This one will be the hardest, as my normal quiet time (night) has a lot of distractions, like talking to family, surfing the internet, blogging....
- Make it to every day of Insanity. We're starting Day 1 of 60 on Saturday. I stand a better chance at this than I did P90X because it's at 0630 instead of 0530, and I am NOT a morning person.
- Blog once a week, on average, and keep gaps between posts to less than 10 days. If I've already missed this one, don't tell me, I don't want to know.
- Brief General Petraeus. This one is largely out of my hands, but I've already narrowly missed the opportunity twice, so I'm hopeful. If I keep producing quality analysis, I think I'll get there.
There. Now they're public. Time to get to work.
*****
One last thing: if anyone has specific requests for something they'd like me to take a picture of, let me know. I'm planning a picture-heavy blog post in the near-future, and want to incorporate your requests. It doesn't have to be a specific request. I can have fun interpreting something nebulous. As long as it doesn't violate security measures, or isn't next to impossible to obtain (don't ask me to take a picture of Petraeus eating or anything), I'll do my best. It'll be a fun little scavenger hunt for me, and hopefully satisfy some of your curiosity about Afghanistan.
Until next time. Out here.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
General Impressions
Over the past eight days I have had the pleasure...priviledge...obligation?...ok, ok, I drew the short straw (*sigh*)...of briefing several generals on multiple issues related to the Afghan National Police (ANP). Having never briefed anyone higher than the colonel level before, this was a new experience for me. Briefing to colonels can be tricky. Briefing to generals can be scary. Generals can make things happen, and as such, expect a high quality in the presentation and information they are briefed in order to make intelligent decisions. If you screw up, you're going to know about it.
For reference, all generals are not equal. There are four levels of general in the U.S. Army, each denoted by a different amount of stars, which is the rank insignia for a general officer. Brigadier General (BG) is the initial rank, and has one star. Major General (MG) is the second rank, and has two stars. Lieutenant General (LTG) is the third general officer rank, and has three stars. This is the rank of the commanding general of CSTC-A, LTG William Caldwell. The last rank is simply called General, and has four stars. This is the rank of the ISAF commander, General David Petreaus. (Technically there IS a five star rank, but it's a special rank awarded extremely infrequently. If General Petreaus manages to turn around the situation in Afghanistan, and lead us to unmistakable victory, he MAY be in line for a 5th star. May.)
The first briefing was for a pair of generals, actually, a two for one special. MG Ward, the Deputy Commander - Police (DCOM-P), is the primary audience for most of the things I produce, since I work so much on the police side of things. He's a Canadian, and a bit of an oddity for a general officer. While I've only been responsible for briefing him once, I've been in the room for several briefings where he was the primary audience, and I have never once heard him raise his voice. He speaks very deliberately and thoughtfully, and clearly has a purpose in his words before they are spoken. He also very much likes numbers. He encourages us to produce slides that most generals would throw you out of the room for. That ends up making our job a bit easier, since we can show numerical data without having to fear the general's eyes crossing.
The general I picked up for free in this buy-one get-one deal was MG Beare (pronounced Beer). Also a Canadian, he will be replacing MG Ward starting tomorrow. When I met him, he had only been at Camp Eggers for a day or two, and was still learning to crawl through the mire of ANP. It was obvious his head was still spinning as he tried to keep pace with the work load. After our meeting we talked for a minute or two, and he seemed like an extremely nice guy. He was familiar with Leavenworth, and had actually spent a little bit of time there, so we talked a bit about home, and the CSTC-A commander, who's last duty assignment had him stationed at Leavenworth.
While briefing two generals when only expecting one does cause the stress levels to raise a few notches, I was glad they were both present. The briefing I was giving that day is a monthly update, and will be something I have to do at least three more times. Since MG Ward is leaving, next time it will be the new guy all by himself. Having MG Ward be able to guide him through the briefing once will be an immense help later down the road. MG Beare's level of confusion will be much lower, and his expectations for what the briefing provides will be in line with reality. Having MG Beare at this particular briefing was even better, as we were discussing a couple sticky issues of the police, and I was glad he was made aware of these problems right from the start. There were several times during the brief that I normally would have pushed a little harder to make a point with MG Ward, who has formed his own opinions on things after a year on the job and didn't completely agree with the points we were making, but because I had MG Beare nodding along with me, I let it go. While MG Ward may still have been the acting DCOM-P, it was more important to get MG Beare on board, since he'll be the general I have to live with the rest of my tour.
The next general I interacted with was BG Smith. He's an American, and was requested by name for this assignment by LTG Caldwell. Only 10 months ago he was the assistant division commander for the 10th Mountain Division, fighting in eastern Afghanistan. He wasn't even home a year before being asked to come back for another tour, this time as the Assistant Commanding General for Police Development (ACG-PD). BG Smith is relatively new at Camp Eggers, arriving in the early part of July, but he's been around plenty long enough to know what's going on. He is also quite the thoughtful fellow, but more of a go-getter than either of the Canadians he worked/works for. I haven't gotten to interact with him a whole lot, but from what I've seen, I really, really like him.
Case in point: after briefing, most generals will task you with more work. Change this slide, do this analysis, answer this question. They have things that they depend on you to tell them, and this is the time they can give you guidance as to how they need you to go about finding those answers. Not BG Smith. After concluding my briefing, (the same brief I gave to MGs Ward and Beare), the first words out of BG Smith's mouth were "What can I do for you?" Indeed, there were several issues in the brief that needed to be addressed, and he was in a position to address them in his dealings with the government leaders in charge of the ANP. One issue concerned an Afghan commander at a training site who was not allowing Coalition personnel use of his buildings to house ANP recruits. BG Smith promised it would be fixed by the next day, as he would make it clear to the Minister of the Interior, the man in charge of the ANP for the entire country, that this behavior was unacceptable. Either the commander would allow access to the buildings, or he would be fired. Tomorrow. Our group was thrilled. Here was a leader that didn't back away from a fight and didn't need to put his decision through a group huddle before proceeding. His combatant commander background definitely comes through in his actions.
But that wasn't the coolest part of this briefing. Because we were detailing some serious issues with the ANP, he requested some of the slides from the briefing be translated into Dari so he and the Minister could have a candid discussion. It was BG Smith's intention to clearly layout the very issues on which we had just briefed him, and encourage the Minister to "put some energy" into solving them as quickly as possible. Those translated slides were delivered Monday. Sometime this week, analysis I worked on will be in the hands of the highest levels of Afghan leadership, with an American general advocating action to correct problems that I helped identify. That kind of influence can't even be approached at my job back in Kansas.
The last briefing wasn't actually to a general, but a civilian Senior Executive Service (SES) officer. An SES is the civilian equivalent of a general, in this case equivalent to a two star. Dr. Jack Kem is the Deputy Commander for NTM-A/CSTC-A, so even though he's a civilian, he's technically the second in command at Camp Eggers. He also has a direct line of influence to the CG, and can help to shape the battlefield when trying to get the CG to make a decision on your particular issue. He's a great guy to have in your corner. Dr. Kem also comes from Leavenworth, where he was a teacher at the Army's Command and General Staff College (CGSC). CGSC is where majors and lieutenant colonels who are slated to be battalion and brigade commanders go to get their master's degree. On top of that, Dr. Kem also has an ORSA background. This can be a help and a hindrance. On the helpful side, technical details that can't normally be briefed to leadership CAN be briefed to Dr. Kem, since he has a good understanding of the techniques used in producing our analysis. On the hindrance side, because of his level of knowledge, the level of rigor in your analysis often has to be greater than normal, adding time and headaches to an already difficult task. The extra work only makes the answers better, but the amount of work that has to be put in to get to that level makes the value of that extra detail debatable at times.
Of my three briefings, I considered this one to be the least useful. Dr. Kem only had 30 minutes to hear the brief, and his executive officer was making sure he stuck to schedule. As such, places I had hoped we would have serious discussion were skimmed past, lessening the value of the briefing. Dr. Kem also has a tendency to "chase rabbits", so to speak, elaborating extensively on topics that are only cursorily related to the briefing. My briefing was no exception, and so a tight window became maddeningly tighter. And to top it off, when all was said and done, he told us the reason he had directed us to do the analysis was no longer valid, and the analysis wasn't as important as he once believed. Translation: I don't care that I asked you to look at changing this thing, we're not changing it now and probably not ever. Arrrrrrgh. My analysis WILL help us to more accurately predict the future strength of the ANA and ANP in our mathematical models, but I had intended for the analysis to influence ANP policy as well. That piece got killed. Oh well. Another day at CSTC-A.
I also narrowly escaped a couple more briefings this week to bigger and more important men. I had been put on notice that I would be briefing the CG any day, but that never materialized. It does look like the CG will be a regular in our monthly briefings to the DCOM-P now, so I may have only been given a stay. We'll see. Also, my boss was given 4 hours notice tonight that he would be briefing General Petraeus tomorrow on police related statistics. My boss told me that if we'd been given a day or two days notice that he'd have made me do it instead.
I am Neo. Watch me dodge bullets. /whoosh
*****
A brief Happy Birthday to my mom who turned *cough cough* years old yesterday. And I may as well say Happy Anniversary now as well, as my mom and dad will have been married for 40 years this Saturday. Wish I could be there.
That's all for tonight. Out here.
For reference, all generals are not equal. There are four levels of general in the U.S. Army, each denoted by a different amount of stars, which is the rank insignia for a general officer. Brigadier General (BG) is the initial rank, and has one star. Major General (MG) is the second rank, and has two stars. Lieutenant General (LTG) is the third general officer rank, and has three stars. This is the rank of the commanding general of CSTC-A, LTG William Caldwell. The last rank is simply called General, and has four stars. This is the rank of the ISAF commander, General David Petreaus. (Technically there IS a five star rank, but it's a special rank awarded extremely infrequently. If General Petreaus manages to turn around the situation in Afghanistan, and lead us to unmistakable victory, he MAY be in line for a 5th star. May.)
The first briefing was for a pair of generals, actually, a two for one special. MG Ward, the Deputy Commander - Police (DCOM-P), is the primary audience for most of the things I produce, since I work so much on the police side of things. He's a Canadian, and a bit of an oddity for a general officer. While I've only been responsible for briefing him once, I've been in the room for several briefings where he was the primary audience, and I have never once heard him raise his voice. He speaks very deliberately and thoughtfully, and clearly has a purpose in his words before they are spoken. He also very much likes numbers. He encourages us to produce slides that most generals would throw you out of the room for. That ends up making our job a bit easier, since we can show numerical data without having to fear the general's eyes crossing.
The general I picked up for free in this buy-one get-one deal was MG Beare (pronounced Beer). Also a Canadian, he will be replacing MG Ward starting tomorrow. When I met him, he had only been at Camp Eggers for a day or two, and was still learning to crawl through the mire of ANP. It was obvious his head was still spinning as he tried to keep pace with the work load. After our meeting we talked for a minute or two, and he seemed like an extremely nice guy. He was familiar with Leavenworth, and had actually spent a little bit of time there, so we talked a bit about home, and the CSTC-A commander, who's last duty assignment had him stationed at Leavenworth.
While briefing two generals when only expecting one does cause the stress levels to raise a few notches, I was glad they were both present. The briefing I was giving that day is a monthly update, and will be something I have to do at least three more times. Since MG Ward is leaving, next time it will be the new guy all by himself. Having MG Ward be able to guide him through the briefing once will be an immense help later down the road. MG Beare's level of confusion will be much lower, and his expectations for what the briefing provides will be in line with reality. Having MG Beare at this particular briefing was even better, as we were discussing a couple sticky issues of the police, and I was glad he was made aware of these problems right from the start. There were several times during the brief that I normally would have pushed a little harder to make a point with MG Ward, who has formed his own opinions on things after a year on the job and didn't completely agree with the points we were making, but because I had MG Beare nodding along with me, I let it go. While MG Ward may still have been the acting DCOM-P, it was more important to get MG Beare on board, since he'll be the general I have to live with the rest of my tour.
The next general I interacted with was BG Smith. He's an American, and was requested by name for this assignment by LTG Caldwell. Only 10 months ago he was the assistant division commander for the 10th Mountain Division, fighting in eastern Afghanistan. He wasn't even home a year before being asked to come back for another tour, this time as the Assistant Commanding General for Police Development (ACG-PD). BG Smith is relatively new at Camp Eggers, arriving in the early part of July, but he's been around plenty long enough to know what's going on. He is also quite the thoughtful fellow, but more of a go-getter than either of the Canadians he worked/works for. I haven't gotten to interact with him a whole lot, but from what I've seen, I really, really like him.
Case in point: after briefing, most generals will task you with more work. Change this slide, do this analysis, answer this question. They have things that they depend on you to tell them, and this is the time they can give you guidance as to how they need you to go about finding those answers. Not BG Smith. After concluding my briefing, (the same brief I gave to MGs Ward and Beare), the first words out of BG Smith's mouth were "What can I do for you?" Indeed, there were several issues in the brief that needed to be addressed, and he was in a position to address them in his dealings with the government leaders in charge of the ANP. One issue concerned an Afghan commander at a training site who was not allowing Coalition personnel use of his buildings to house ANP recruits. BG Smith promised it would be fixed by the next day, as he would make it clear to the Minister of the Interior, the man in charge of the ANP for the entire country, that this behavior was unacceptable. Either the commander would allow access to the buildings, or he would be fired. Tomorrow. Our group was thrilled. Here was a leader that didn't back away from a fight and didn't need to put his decision through a group huddle before proceeding. His combatant commander background definitely comes through in his actions.
But that wasn't the coolest part of this briefing. Because we were detailing some serious issues with the ANP, he requested some of the slides from the briefing be translated into Dari so he and the Minister could have a candid discussion. It was BG Smith's intention to clearly layout the very issues on which we had just briefed him, and encourage the Minister to "put some energy" into solving them as quickly as possible. Those translated slides were delivered Monday. Sometime this week, analysis I worked on will be in the hands of the highest levels of Afghan leadership, with an American general advocating action to correct problems that I helped identify. That kind of influence can't even be approached at my job back in Kansas.
The last briefing wasn't actually to a general, but a civilian Senior Executive Service (SES) officer. An SES is the civilian equivalent of a general, in this case equivalent to a two star. Dr. Jack Kem is the Deputy Commander for NTM-A/CSTC-A, so even though he's a civilian, he's technically the second in command at Camp Eggers. He also has a direct line of influence to the CG, and can help to shape the battlefield when trying to get the CG to make a decision on your particular issue. He's a great guy to have in your corner. Dr. Kem also comes from Leavenworth, where he was a teacher at the Army's Command and General Staff College (CGSC). CGSC is where majors and lieutenant colonels who are slated to be battalion and brigade commanders go to get their master's degree. On top of that, Dr. Kem also has an ORSA background. This can be a help and a hindrance. On the helpful side, technical details that can't normally be briefed to leadership CAN be briefed to Dr. Kem, since he has a good understanding of the techniques used in producing our analysis. On the hindrance side, because of his level of knowledge, the level of rigor in your analysis often has to be greater than normal, adding time and headaches to an already difficult task. The extra work only makes the answers better, but the amount of work that has to be put in to get to that level makes the value of that extra detail debatable at times.
Of my three briefings, I considered this one to be the least useful. Dr. Kem only had 30 minutes to hear the brief, and his executive officer was making sure he stuck to schedule. As such, places I had hoped we would have serious discussion were skimmed past, lessening the value of the briefing. Dr. Kem also has a tendency to "chase rabbits", so to speak, elaborating extensively on topics that are only cursorily related to the briefing. My briefing was no exception, and so a tight window became maddeningly tighter. And to top it off, when all was said and done, he told us the reason he had directed us to do the analysis was no longer valid, and the analysis wasn't as important as he once believed. Translation: I don't care that I asked you to look at changing this thing, we're not changing it now and probably not ever. Arrrrrrgh. My analysis WILL help us to more accurately predict the future strength of the ANA and ANP in our mathematical models, but I had intended for the analysis to influence ANP policy as well. That piece got killed. Oh well. Another day at CSTC-A.
I also narrowly escaped a couple more briefings this week to bigger and more important men. I had been put on notice that I would be briefing the CG any day, but that never materialized. It does look like the CG will be a regular in our monthly briefings to the DCOM-P now, so I may have only been given a stay. We'll see. Also, my boss was given 4 hours notice tonight that he would be briefing General Petraeus tomorrow on police related statistics. My boss told me that if we'd been given a day or two days notice that he'd have made me do it instead.
I am Neo. Watch me dodge bullets. /whoosh
*****
A brief Happy Birthday to my mom who turned *cough cough* years old yesterday. And I may as well say Happy Anniversary now as well, as my mom and dad will have been married for 40 years this Saturday. Wish I could be there.
That's all for tonight. Out here.
Monday, August 16, 2010
Measurement Space
Learning a new skill is not usually easy. Occasionally you find something you're naturally good at, that just comes to you, and you're good at it right away. Most often, you have to work at it, practicing until you learn the nuances. Lets pick something crafty, like knitting (one of my mom's favorite hobbies), for an example. The first time you try to knit a scarf, you probably start out staring at the ball of yarn and large wooden needles, wondering where to even begin. I know I would. With a little instruction though, you can quickly pick up the basic concept, and complete a simple project. Comparing your work to the scarf of a skilled knitter, you are sure to notice differences in the quality of the two pieces. Uneven rows, inconsistent stitch sizes, etc, but it's your first try, so who cares. It's made, and your neck is warm.
With repetition, you get better. You can tell you're getting better by comparing your newest product to your previous ones. The stitches are tighter and more consistent across the the length of your scarf. The knots at each end don't unravel after a couple of minutes. You can measure your progress. You can move on to bigger and better things, and even if you haven't been taught how to make a blanket, or a pair of socks, you have enough knowledge about knitting in general to be able to figure it out on your own with some trial and error, and likely ripping out several rows of stitches.
Now, let’s take your instructor away. Ball of yarn. Needles. No books, no teacher, but have at it. The quality of your final product would be quite a bit lower, yes? I'd venture to guess most people wouldn't finish, and some probably wouldn't even bother to start. For those that soldiered on and made something, there's a good chance it wouldn't look much like a scarf. On your next go around, you may or may not get better. For certain, progressing is harder, as the only thing you have to compare against is yourself. You can tell that you're getting better, but you really don't have an idea how good your scarves are relative to what a skilled knitter would make. It may be that you're the best natural-born scarf maker in the whole world, but without someone that knows something about knitting there to evaluate your work, you don't have a clue.
Let's add one more wrinkle. Instead of being told to make a scarf, you're told to make a qaraqul. Huh? What's that, you ask? Well, it’s a hat, like the one that Afghan President Karzai wears. No, I can't give you any more details, I gotta go, look up a picture on Google. Oh, by the way, I don't have any needles and yarn to give you either, you'll have to find your own. But, I'll be back soon, and I expect the best darn qaraqul in the whole world on your first try. Got it? My head is feeling drafty, and I don't want to catch a cold.
Hmmmmm. Where to begin? I know what I'm supposed to do: knit a qaraqul. But I have no idea how. If I don't know what this thing looks like, how do I measure how well I'm doing? If there's no standard to follow, and no established metric by which to measure your work, the chances of successfully making a world-class qaraqul is virtually nil. How will I know if I've succeeded before its time for my work to be evaluated?
This last example is the essence of the problem of handing over responsibility for security in Afghanistan to the Afghan security forces. Just like my knitting analogy, we know what we have to do: build a professional security force that can be responsible for taking care of the country. We started with zero materials to do the job. We had to go find the people we needed to be soldiers, policemen and policymakers. We had to build the government infrastructure in order to have the leadership necessary to manage these forces. We had to equip and train the force. But the entire time we've been over here doing all these things, we haven't had a clue what this thing is actually supposed to look like. We can look at a snapshot of a similar product that was put together in Iraq, but the two forces aren't going to be identical. We are very much knitting a qaraqual without a pattern. While trying to meet a deadline. While dodging hand grenades being thrown at our collective head.
Our solution to this problem has been analogous to knitting the hat while it's on the person's head (and learning how to duck. As silly as that sounds, having the customer there to provide real time feedback on what you're doing right and what you're doing wrong is invaluable when you don't know what the final product is supposed to be. The guy can tell you, "That spot is too itchy," or "I feel a draft coming from 7 o'clock." In our situation, however, the Afghans provide very little feedback on their own. Instead, we have to ask them the right questions. If we tell them what we want to know, they can collect data for us in order to provide an answer. Watching that data over the course of time can tell us if we're improving or deteriorating in a given area. Without the feedback of the Afghan people and the Afghan government, we would have very little with which to measure our progress on building towards this nebulous concept of Afghan security.
But while we can get information, without knowing what our end product is really going to look like, we have very little idea of what information is important. How do we know what questions to ask if we don't know what we don't know? How do we measure our progress without knowing what to measure? Some of the things we've chosen may surprise you.
There are the fairly obvious things. If we're building a force to secure a country, we want to know how big the country is, and, more importantly, how many people it has. Using the measure of size, we can determine how big we need to make the security forces. It's the same as hat size. Before the guy runs out the door after ordering his qaraqual, you need to know how big his head is. We also have deadlines issued to us by Congress and the Afghanistan government, so we know approximately how fast we need to build the force. Unfortunately, there are further complications. People we hire and train to be soldiers and police officers don't always stay in their jobs. Far too frequently, people quit. In order to meet our growth targets by our deadlines, we have to know how many people we're losing, and combat these losses aggressively. This is called attrition. Think of it as your playful kitten pouncing on your needles and string while you're working and unraveling the last 20 minutes of progress.
All of these things are important, and they're also easy to measure, because we can measure them directly. I talked a little bit about direct versus indirect measures in my last entry. If you want to know how long something is, you pull out a yard stick and you read off the numbers. We want to know how many people we have, so we count them. The measurement taken is in the same units that you are interested in.
For the above examples, we can send someone out to the Army and police units to count people (or have the units count their own personnel, which is what actually happens). If we count these people each month, and we count the people we're recruiting and training at the same time, then we can add the amount of new people to the amount of people we counted last month, and compare to the amount of people we counted this month. The difference between the two numbers (last month's total to this month's total) is our monthly attrition. I talked about this quite a bit this post. This type of measurement is a calculated measurement. You use direct measures of contributing factors and calculate the quantity you're interested in. As a kid I was taught to find the height of a tall object by measuring myself, measuring my shadow, measuring the object's shadow, and use a proportion to calculate the object's height. Same thing. In our case here in Afghanistan, the accuracy of these measurements is unknown, and highly suspect, but we can collect something we think is in the ballpark.
Unfortunately, not all things we need to measure can be measured directly. For example: corruption. It is highly necessary to know how much corruption we are dealing with in the Army, police and Afghan government. Corruption directly affects the average citizen in Afghanistan. Corrupt police extort money from people at security checkpoints. Corrupt Army soldiers detain family members of people that won't pay them a bribe. Corrupt government officials divert money from building roads, schools, or power plants to their own pockets. Corruption was a way of life in the Taliban government present before 2001, and is still firmly entrenched in the country. In order to set up a professional, competent security force, corruption has to be minimized, if not eliminated. In order to eliminate it, we have to know how much of it exists, and where it exists.
If we can't do this, the people will not trust in the institutions we've built, and thus will not use them. Instead they'll turn to the Taliban. Imagine suing your rich neighbor over some dispute, and you had a choice of taking him to court where his golf buddy was the judge, or having your hillbilly cousin threaten/beat him with a baseball bat until he paid you. In America, the choice is obvious, as the latter option will end badly for both you and your cousin. In Afghanistan, the latter choice is a viable option, and in the presence of government corruption, probably the best choice. We have to make the government and the security forces into institutions the people can trust in order for them to be effective.
So, how do we measure corruption? In our knitting example, you can think of corruption as the ball of yarn after that darn cat got a hold of it. Tangled, knotted, easier just to cut it out with scissors than try and fix it. In that context it’s also easy to measure. In Afghanistan, not so much. It’s not like we can take a poll of all the government officials and Army commanders and ask them, "Hey, I was wondering, have you taken any bribes lately? I kinda need to know. How 'bout innocent bystanders, locked any up this week?" In the absence of direct measures, like a yardstick or a count of heads, we must rely on indirect measures.
So, what is an indirect measure? Well, it's a direct measure (no, I said that right, keep reading) on
something that is related to what we really want to measure. Usually you need to take several indirect
measurements in order to get the same picture a single direct measurement would give you, but there are exceptions. For example, one indirect measure people use all the time is deciding when to fill up their gas tank based on the reading on their car's mileage counter. You know how many miles you can get on a full tank of gas, and when you start to get near that number, you know you need gas in your car. Measuring gas consumption with mileage is not very precise, and it can be wrong if you've been doing a lot of city driving, or you left your car running in the parking lot so your teenager could keep the air conditioning running while you shopped at Wal-Mart. But it does get you close.
For things that can't be measured directly, you must use indirect measures, there isn’t any other choice. In our knitting example, the quality of your hat isn't something you can measure with a stick. But, by directly measuring several other factors, such as the texture of the thread, the tightness and evenness of the stitches, the amount of warmth it provides, you can come up with a picture of the quality of the hat. In Afghanistan, corruption is one of those cases where we must use indirect measures.
So what kind of indirect measures do we use to get a handle on corruption? There are several. The ratio of money spent by the government on projects and such to the amount of money budgeted to the government is one. Money that can’t be accounted for has likely gone to lining someone’s pocket. Surveys of drivers leaving police checkpoints is another. One measure we've been actively trying to reduce is how many police officers get a change of assignment between training and deployment. A few months ago, it was very common for an officer in the police to bribe an official to get an assignment away from the fighting or nearer to his family. The number of re-assignments has decreased dramatically since that time, a direct result from a change in how we issue officer assignments. It used to be the assignments were given out in private, a slip of paper delivered to the person to let them know where they were going. The only people that knew where that officer was supposed to go was the officer and the personnel office. Now when they give out assignments, they hold a press conference in front of the media and read off each person’s name and where they’re being assigned. If their assignment changes after the fact, then all of their family and friends will know they were running away from the fight and shirking their responsibility. The public shame this would cause has been a sufficient deterrent to this practice.
Another area where we use indirect measures often is security. It’s not possible to measure directly how secure the country is. There are no units of security. Instead, we use several indirect measures. Polling data is a very import measure. Who better to tell us how secure the country is than the people we’re trying to provide security for? Measures of traffic is another, since people won't use the roads if they don't consider them safe. The amount of reports of insurgent activity that are made by Afghan citizens is an important one, as it gives an idea of how many people consider the government legitimate, and also shows how many people feel safe reporting against the Taliban.
My favorite indirect measure of security is food prices. Food has to be trucked to the store in order for people to buy it. The price of food reflects how much money it costs to transport the goods. If security in Afghanistan is good, then transporting goods won’t cost as much at the market, since the supplier doesn’t need to replace or repair vehicles damaged by attacks or IEDs, or pay drivers hazard pay, or provide security for the convoy. Better security means lower overhead for the supplier means cheaper prices for the people. Tracking prices on specific items over time can give us a picture of how security is changing in Afghanistan. It’s not an intuitive measure at all, but it works.
Measuring all of these things feeds into the biggest measure of all: success. Tracking these indicators over time is the only way we can determine how well we are performing our job in Afghanistan. The big challenge comes when we try and determine “what will success look like?” This is very much like trying to measure “quality” when knitting. Quality is a relative term, and without being able to make a side-by-side comparison, extremely subjective. We certainly don’t have a side-by-side comparison to make in Afghanistan, though our experience in Iraq points us in the right direction. Success, unfortunately, is very much a “I’ll-know-it-when-I-see-it” type of thing. We have goals for each of the measures we track, but we don’t know for certain whether those goals are sufficient. At best, measuring success is an educated guessing game played by people much smarter and more important than I. But I try and do my part by informing these leaders on specific measures of interest as accurately as possible. Hopefully, with enough people and hard work, the picture of success will become much clearer in the coming months.
*****
The Invasion of the Generals in my life is almost over, but as with many things, the night is darkest before the dawn. Today was my first briefing I was responsible for delivering at a general officer level, and I got double the fun, two two-star generals for the price of one. That's right, I got to brief the deputy commander for police, plus his replacement that will be taking over full time in the next few weeks. And they found my briefing so stimulating (read: there are a lot of problems that need to be addressed, and I was the one to tell them about them), that I now have a date to brief the three-star general in command of NTM-A/CSTC-A, LTG Caldwell. I don't have a date and time yet, but it will be this week. Oh goodie. Ah well. It's good exposure for me, and good experience. Briefing my Senior Executive Service (SES) officer (the civilian equivalent of a general) back at TRAC won't be so imposing now, at least. I just hope that he doesn't decide I need to go brief General Petraeus. That's the only step left after General Caldwell. Ugh. I'll keep you posted.
And now I'm off to bed. Nighty night. Out here.
With repetition, you get better. You can tell you're getting better by comparing your newest product to your previous ones. The stitches are tighter and more consistent across the the length of your scarf. The knots at each end don't unravel after a couple of minutes. You can measure your progress. You can move on to bigger and better things, and even if you haven't been taught how to make a blanket, or a pair of socks, you have enough knowledge about knitting in general to be able to figure it out on your own with some trial and error, and likely ripping out several rows of stitches.
Now, let’s take your instructor away. Ball of yarn. Needles. No books, no teacher, but have at it. The quality of your final product would be quite a bit lower, yes? I'd venture to guess most people wouldn't finish, and some probably wouldn't even bother to start. For those that soldiered on and made something, there's a good chance it wouldn't look much like a scarf. On your next go around, you may or may not get better. For certain, progressing is harder, as the only thing you have to compare against is yourself. You can tell that you're getting better, but you really don't have an idea how good your scarves are relative to what a skilled knitter would make. It may be that you're the best natural-born scarf maker in the whole world, but without someone that knows something about knitting there to evaluate your work, you don't have a clue.
Let's add one more wrinkle. Instead of being told to make a scarf, you're told to make a qaraqul. Huh? What's that, you ask? Well, it’s a hat, like the one that Afghan President Karzai wears. No, I can't give you any more details, I gotta go, look up a picture on Google. Oh, by the way, I don't have any needles and yarn to give you either, you'll have to find your own. But, I'll be back soon, and I expect the best darn qaraqul in the whole world on your first try. Got it? My head is feeling drafty, and I don't want to catch a cold.
Hmmmmm. Where to begin? I know what I'm supposed to do: knit a qaraqul. But I have no idea how. If I don't know what this thing looks like, how do I measure how well I'm doing? If there's no standard to follow, and no established metric by which to measure your work, the chances of successfully making a world-class qaraqul is virtually nil. How will I know if I've succeeded before its time for my work to be evaluated?
This last example is the essence of the problem of handing over responsibility for security in Afghanistan to the Afghan security forces. Just like my knitting analogy, we know what we have to do: build a professional security force that can be responsible for taking care of the country. We started with zero materials to do the job. We had to go find the people we needed to be soldiers, policemen and policymakers. We had to build the government infrastructure in order to have the leadership necessary to manage these forces. We had to equip and train the force. But the entire time we've been over here doing all these things, we haven't had a clue what this thing is actually supposed to look like. We can look at a snapshot of a similar product that was put together in Iraq, but the two forces aren't going to be identical. We are very much knitting a qaraqual without a pattern. While trying to meet a deadline. While dodging hand grenades being thrown at our collective head.
Our solution to this problem has been analogous to knitting the hat while it's on the person's head (and learning how to duck. As silly as that sounds, having the customer there to provide real time feedback on what you're doing right and what you're doing wrong is invaluable when you don't know what the final product is supposed to be. The guy can tell you, "That spot is too itchy," or "I feel a draft coming from 7 o'clock." In our situation, however, the Afghans provide very little feedback on their own. Instead, we have to ask them the right questions. If we tell them what we want to know, they can collect data for us in order to provide an answer. Watching that data over the course of time can tell us if we're improving or deteriorating in a given area. Without the feedback of the Afghan people and the Afghan government, we would have very little with which to measure our progress on building towards this nebulous concept of Afghan security.
But while we can get information, without knowing what our end product is really going to look like, we have very little idea of what information is important. How do we know what questions to ask if we don't know what we don't know? How do we measure our progress without knowing what to measure? Some of the things we've chosen may surprise you.
There are the fairly obvious things. If we're building a force to secure a country, we want to know how big the country is, and, more importantly, how many people it has. Using the measure of size, we can determine how big we need to make the security forces. It's the same as hat size. Before the guy runs out the door after ordering his qaraqual, you need to know how big his head is. We also have deadlines issued to us by Congress and the Afghanistan government, so we know approximately how fast we need to build the force. Unfortunately, there are further complications. People we hire and train to be soldiers and police officers don't always stay in their jobs. Far too frequently, people quit. In order to meet our growth targets by our deadlines, we have to know how many people we're losing, and combat these losses aggressively. This is called attrition. Think of it as your playful kitten pouncing on your needles and string while you're working and unraveling the last 20 minutes of progress.
All of these things are important, and they're also easy to measure, because we can measure them directly. I talked a little bit about direct versus indirect measures in my last entry. If you want to know how long something is, you pull out a yard stick and you read off the numbers. We want to know how many people we have, so we count them. The measurement taken is in the same units that you are interested in.
For the above examples, we can send someone out to the Army and police units to count people (or have the units count their own personnel, which is what actually happens). If we count these people each month, and we count the people we're recruiting and training at the same time, then we can add the amount of new people to the amount of people we counted last month, and compare to the amount of people we counted this month. The difference between the two numbers (last month's total to this month's total) is our monthly attrition. I talked about this quite a bit this post. This type of measurement is a calculated measurement. You use direct measures of contributing factors and calculate the quantity you're interested in. As a kid I was taught to find the height of a tall object by measuring myself, measuring my shadow, measuring the object's shadow, and use a proportion to calculate the object's height. Same thing. In our case here in Afghanistan, the accuracy of these measurements is unknown, and highly suspect, but we can collect something we think is in the ballpark.
Unfortunately, not all things we need to measure can be measured directly. For example: corruption. It is highly necessary to know how much corruption we are dealing with in the Army, police and Afghan government. Corruption directly affects the average citizen in Afghanistan. Corrupt police extort money from people at security checkpoints. Corrupt Army soldiers detain family members of people that won't pay them a bribe. Corrupt government officials divert money from building roads, schools, or power plants to their own pockets. Corruption was a way of life in the Taliban government present before 2001, and is still firmly entrenched in the country. In order to set up a professional, competent security force, corruption has to be minimized, if not eliminated. In order to eliminate it, we have to know how much of it exists, and where it exists.
If we can't do this, the people will not trust in the institutions we've built, and thus will not use them. Instead they'll turn to the Taliban. Imagine suing your rich neighbor over some dispute, and you had a choice of taking him to court where his golf buddy was the judge, or having your hillbilly cousin threaten/beat him with a baseball bat until he paid you. In America, the choice is obvious, as the latter option will end badly for both you and your cousin. In Afghanistan, the latter choice is a viable option, and in the presence of government corruption, probably the best choice. We have to make the government and the security forces into institutions the people can trust in order for them to be effective.
So, how do we measure corruption? In our knitting example, you can think of corruption as the ball of yarn after that darn cat got a hold of it. Tangled, knotted, easier just to cut it out with scissors than try and fix it. In that context it’s also easy to measure. In Afghanistan, not so much. It’s not like we can take a poll of all the government officials and Army commanders and ask them, "Hey, I was wondering, have you taken any bribes lately? I kinda need to know. How 'bout innocent bystanders, locked any up this week?" In the absence of direct measures, like a yardstick or a count of heads, we must rely on indirect measures.
So, what is an indirect measure? Well, it's a direct measure (no, I said that right, keep reading) on
something that is related to what we really want to measure. Usually you need to take several indirect
measurements in order to get the same picture a single direct measurement would give you, but there are exceptions. For example, one indirect measure people use all the time is deciding when to fill up their gas tank based on the reading on their car's mileage counter. You know how many miles you can get on a full tank of gas, and when you start to get near that number, you know you need gas in your car. Measuring gas consumption with mileage is not very precise, and it can be wrong if you've been doing a lot of city driving, or you left your car running in the parking lot so your teenager could keep the air conditioning running while you shopped at Wal-Mart. But it does get you close.
For things that can't be measured directly, you must use indirect measures, there isn’t any other choice. In our knitting example, the quality of your hat isn't something you can measure with a stick. But, by directly measuring several other factors, such as the texture of the thread, the tightness and evenness of the stitches, the amount of warmth it provides, you can come up with a picture of the quality of the hat. In Afghanistan, corruption is one of those cases where we must use indirect measures.
So what kind of indirect measures do we use to get a handle on corruption? There are several. The ratio of money spent by the government on projects and such to the amount of money budgeted to the government is one. Money that can’t be accounted for has likely gone to lining someone’s pocket. Surveys of drivers leaving police checkpoints is another. One measure we've been actively trying to reduce is how many police officers get a change of assignment between training and deployment. A few months ago, it was very common for an officer in the police to bribe an official to get an assignment away from the fighting or nearer to his family. The number of re-assignments has decreased dramatically since that time, a direct result from a change in how we issue officer assignments. It used to be the assignments were given out in private, a slip of paper delivered to the person to let them know where they were going. The only people that knew where that officer was supposed to go was the officer and the personnel office. Now when they give out assignments, they hold a press conference in front of the media and read off each person’s name and where they’re being assigned. If their assignment changes after the fact, then all of their family and friends will know they were running away from the fight and shirking their responsibility. The public shame this would cause has been a sufficient deterrent to this practice.
Another area where we use indirect measures often is security. It’s not possible to measure directly how secure the country is. There are no units of security. Instead, we use several indirect measures. Polling data is a very import measure. Who better to tell us how secure the country is than the people we’re trying to provide security for? Measures of traffic is another, since people won't use the roads if they don't consider them safe. The amount of reports of insurgent activity that are made by Afghan citizens is an important one, as it gives an idea of how many people consider the government legitimate, and also shows how many people feel safe reporting against the Taliban.
My favorite indirect measure of security is food prices. Food has to be trucked to the store in order for people to buy it. The price of food reflects how much money it costs to transport the goods. If security in Afghanistan is good, then transporting goods won’t cost as much at the market, since the supplier doesn’t need to replace or repair vehicles damaged by attacks or IEDs, or pay drivers hazard pay, or provide security for the convoy. Better security means lower overhead for the supplier means cheaper prices for the people. Tracking prices on specific items over time can give us a picture of how security is changing in Afghanistan. It’s not an intuitive measure at all, but it works.
Measuring all of these things feeds into the biggest measure of all: success. Tracking these indicators over time is the only way we can determine how well we are performing our job in Afghanistan. The big challenge comes when we try and determine “what will success look like?” This is very much like trying to measure “quality” when knitting. Quality is a relative term, and without being able to make a side-by-side comparison, extremely subjective. We certainly don’t have a side-by-side comparison to make in Afghanistan, though our experience in Iraq points us in the right direction. Success, unfortunately, is very much a “I’ll-know-it-when-I-see-it” type of thing. We have goals for each of the measures we track, but we don’t know for certain whether those goals are sufficient. At best, measuring success is an educated guessing game played by people much smarter and more important than I. But I try and do my part by informing these leaders on specific measures of interest as accurately as possible. Hopefully, with enough people and hard work, the picture of success will become much clearer in the coming months.
*****
The Invasion of the Generals in my life is almost over, but as with many things, the night is darkest before the dawn. Today was my first briefing I was responsible for delivering at a general officer level, and I got double the fun, two two-star generals for the price of one. That's right, I got to brief the deputy commander for police, plus his replacement that will be taking over full time in the next few weeks. And they found my briefing so stimulating (read: there are a lot of problems that need to be addressed, and I was the one to tell them about them), that I now have a date to brief the three-star general in command of NTM-A/CSTC-A, LTG Caldwell. I don't have a date and time yet, but it will be this week. Oh goodie. Ah well. It's good exposure for me, and good experience. Briefing my Senior Executive Service (SES) officer (the civilian equivalent of a general) back at TRAC won't be so imposing now, at least. I just hope that he doesn't decide I need to go brief General Petraeus. That's the only step left after General Caldwell. Ugh. I'll keep you posted.
And now I'm off to bed. Nighty night. Out here.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Time keeps on slippin'...
What a week.
When General Petraeus took command at the beginning of July, he stated that he would have a 30 day "settle-in" period during which he would get up to speed on what was happening on the ground. This is the mark of a good commander. Changing things willy-nilly without learning about the process you're tinkering with is a bad idea. With no context of how things work, and no idea of how well they work, making changes is folly, at best. You may be breaking the most efficient part of your organization without knowing it.
For example, a relatively new O-6 Colonel just moved in as the head of an organization a couple buildings over from us. One of his first questions was "what are the duty hours here?" Typical of the rest of the command, the office he now commands worked 8 AM to 8 PM everyday with a half day on Friday and two hours off Sunday morning. His immediate response: "Well that's gonna change now that I'm here." They now work full days on Friday and are expected to be in the office until 10 PM. This change was made within a few hours of him arriving at Camp Eggers. He had no knowledge of the situation in the office, no idea of the quality or quantity of the work his staff was able to complete with the hours they were working at the time. But he thought those hours sounded like people were being lazy, so he changed them. Now his soldiers hate him, they come to work tired as they aren't getting as much sleep as they used to, and they aren't getting any more work accomplished than they were before. These are the kinds of things that can happen without learning about your command and it's processes before making changes.
Thankfully, General Petraeus knows this. He gave himself those 30 days to learn what was going on before he started making policy changes. Unfortunately for me, those 30 days are now over, and the good General is starting to ask for more pointed data to inform decisions. And when a four-star general asks for something, people run around like their hair is on fire until they get it. The requests have been hot and heavy for the past seven days or so, with no sign of a slow down.
And in an unfortunate, cosmic coincidence, the three-star general in command of NTM-A/CSTC-A (where I work) just got back from three weeks of R&R and needs to get be brought up to speed on what he missed. And because it's the beginning of a new month, the two-star general that my organization reports to most often wants to be briefed on last month's personnel data and issues to recruiting and training. That's nine stars worth of generals asking questions. NINE. Those questions require data in order to answer accurately. Guess who gets to provide a lot of that data? That's right. Me. In the past week I've turned in slides for four different briefs and one info paper, and have slides for five more briefings in the next five days, one of which I will be responsible for delivering. And the hits just keep on coming.
All of this work doesn't come without a toll. Just like the last few weeks of a school semester when everything is due at once, you surge your effort over a short period of time and end up exhausted by the end. That is definitely what I am: exhausted. I've been having to sleep late (0730) and skip my workouts in the morning to try and get as much rest as I can. I haven't been able to stay up to type on my blog since I've been getting to back to my room after 10 PM every night (only doing it tonight since I get to sleep in tomorrow. Half-day Friday, yay!) I haven't been able to call my family in the morning back home because I'm too busy trying to finish products for deadlines or am wrapped up in meetings. I can't wait for a slow down. The frenzy should take a chill pill around Wednesday next week. In theory. Hopefully. Probably. Please?
*****
Besides being the start of our "weekend", today is special in another way. As of today, I have been away from my family for exactly two months, and have completed one-third of my deployment. All things considered, the time has absolutely flown by (though I'm sure that's not the case on my wife's end, being abandoned to care for three children and all). I'm hopeful the remaining time will go as quickly.
I try not to watch my time here too closely. Today was a special occasion, since I crossed a milestone, but counting the months, weeks, days, hours or seconds isn't something I do often. Yes, seconds. When I reached 33.33% of my deployment at 3:53 PM today, I had accumulated 5,414,038 seconds in my deployment and had 10,829,161 seconds remaining. Thank you, Excel. Watching these direct measures is too painful normally, as I am reminded exactly how long I have left, which makes the time stretch even longer. Watched pot never boils and all that. Instead, I like to keep track of time through more indirect means.
I'll give a small primer here on direct and indirect measures as preparation for my next blog post. A direct measure returns an answer in the same units that you're interested in measuring. That sounded confusing, so I'll clarify with an example. If you want to know how tall you are in inches, you find a yard stick, hold it next to your body, and read the amount of inches that corresponds with your height. You were able to measure your height directly, without any intermediary steps. By contrast, an indirect measure returns in answer in some other units that you can relate to the measurement you're really after. For instance, using your car's odometer to determine when you need to fill up your gas tank when your gas meter proves unreliable. Knowing how many miles you've driven doesn't tell you directly how full your gas tank is, but your mileage since your last fill-up is related to how much gas you have left. Math people might even say the two factors are correlated. One factor does not directly indicate the other, but they have a relationship that allows you to gain a fairly good estimate of one factor if you know the other.
So, in order to avoid crushing disappointment and despair by looking at a calendar every day and longing for my flight home, I use indirect measurements of the time I've spent away from home. My first measurement was when my boots broke-in. It took quite a while of 24/7 use before my left boot stopped rubbing a sore on the top of my foot, and my right boot stopped squeaking when I walked. But when those things stopped and the leather started flopping over to one side at night when I set them by my bed, I knew they were broken in, and I wasn't "new" to theatre anymore.
My next indirect metric was office turn-over. My predecessor was one of the first to arrive in the group of soldiers that was here when I arrived, meaning he would also be one of the first to leave. As such, I got to say goodbye to each of the others. As each one left, we got closer to having a completely new group of people. When everyone in the office was newer than I was, I knew I was past another milestone, and that much closer to my own departure date, where this time I would be one of the first to leave.
Upcoming "chalk marks" that I'm tracking are my daughters' first day of school, my parent's anniversary, my boss' return from his mid-tour R&R, the ripening of the grapes and pomegranates present on Camp and, far down the road, my replacement's arrival at CRC and in theatre. The trick to these to to not tie them to dates. Tying them to dates defeats the purpose, since my brain will spite me and, over my strongest objections, do the subtraction to figure out how many days I have left anyway.
The last set of metrics I track are on-going, ones that slowly change with how long I've been here. My malaria pill bottle gets one pill emptier everyday, and over time I can tell I'm getting closer to the end of the pills, and thus, my time in Afghanistan. The number of Monday morning "ORSA Breakfast" meetings that I've attended keeps getting bigger, while my time gets shorter. Each "fatburger" I've consumed (one per Sunday lunch) is another tick mark towards home. The number of hail and farewell meetings I've attended increments ever closer to my own farewell meeting. I'm sure there are all sorts of others I could come up with if I tried. The trick is to get creative with them, so that I never have to look at the clock or the calendar.
Tomorrow is the start of third number two. And I press on. All for now. Out here.
When General Petraeus took command at the beginning of July, he stated that he would have a 30 day "settle-in" period during which he would get up to speed on what was happening on the ground. This is the mark of a good commander. Changing things willy-nilly without learning about the process you're tinkering with is a bad idea. With no context of how things work, and no idea of how well they work, making changes is folly, at best. You may be breaking the most efficient part of your organization without knowing it.
For example, a relatively new O-6 Colonel just moved in as the head of an organization a couple buildings over from us. One of his first questions was "what are the duty hours here?" Typical of the rest of the command, the office he now commands worked 8 AM to 8 PM everyday with a half day on Friday and two hours off Sunday morning. His immediate response: "Well that's gonna change now that I'm here." They now work full days on Friday and are expected to be in the office until 10 PM. This change was made within a few hours of him arriving at Camp Eggers. He had no knowledge of the situation in the office, no idea of the quality or quantity of the work his staff was able to complete with the hours they were working at the time. But he thought those hours sounded like people were being lazy, so he changed them. Now his soldiers hate him, they come to work tired as they aren't getting as much sleep as they used to, and they aren't getting any more work accomplished than they were before. These are the kinds of things that can happen without learning about your command and it's processes before making changes.
Thankfully, General Petraeus knows this. He gave himself those 30 days to learn what was going on before he started making policy changes. Unfortunately for me, those 30 days are now over, and the good General is starting to ask for more pointed data to inform decisions. And when a four-star general asks for something, people run around like their hair is on fire until they get it. The requests have been hot and heavy for the past seven days or so, with no sign of a slow down.
And in an unfortunate, cosmic coincidence, the three-star general in command of NTM-A/CSTC-A (where I work) just got back from three weeks of R&R and needs to get be brought up to speed on what he missed. And because it's the beginning of a new month, the two-star general that my organization reports to most often wants to be briefed on last month's personnel data and issues to recruiting and training. That's nine stars worth of generals asking questions. NINE. Those questions require data in order to answer accurately. Guess who gets to provide a lot of that data? That's right. Me. In the past week I've turned in slides for four different briefs and one info paper, and have slides for five more briefings in the next five days, one of which I will be responsible for delivering. And the hits just keep on coming.
All of this work doesn't come without a toll. Just like the last few weeks of a school semester when everything is due at once, you surge your effort over a short period of time and end up exhausted by the end. That is definitely what I am: exhausted. I've been having to sleep late (0730) and skip my workouts in the morning to try and get as much rest as I can. I haven't been able to stay up to type on my blog since I've been getting to back to my room after 10 PM every night (only doing it tonight since I get to sleep in tomorrow. Half-day Friday, yay!) I haven't been able to call my family in the morning back home because I'm too busy trying to finish products for deadlines or am wrapped up in meetings. I can't wait for a slow down. The frenzy should take a chill pill around Wednesday next week. In theory. Hopefully. Probably. Please?
*****
Besides being the start of our "weekend", today is special in another way. As of today, I have been away from my family for exactly two months, and have completed one-third of my deployment. All things considered, the time has absolutely flown by (though I'm sure that's not the case on my wife's end, being abandoned to care for three children and all). I'm hopeful the remaining time will go as quickly.
I try not to watch my time here too closely. Today was a special occasion, since I crossed a milestone, but counting the months, weeks, days, hours or seconds isn't something I do often. Yes, seconds. When I reached 33.33% of my deployment at 3:53 PM today, I had accumulated 5,414,038 seconds in my deployment and had 10,829,161 seconds remaining. Thank you, Excel. Watching these direct measures is too painful normally, as I am reminded exactly how long I have left, which makes the time stretch even longer. Watched pot never boils and all that. Instead, I like to keep track of time through more indirect means.
I'll give a small primer here on direct and indirect measures as preparation for my next blog post. A direct measure returns an answer in the same units that you're interested in measuring. That sounded confusing, so I'll clarify with an example. If you want to know how tall you are in inches, you find a yard stick, hold it next to your body, and read the amount of inches that corresponds with your height. You were able to measure your height directly, without any intermediary steps. By contrast, an indirect measure returns in answer in some other units that you can relate to the measurement you're really after. For instance, using your car's odometer to determine when you need to fill up your gas tank when your gas meter proves unreliable. Knowing how many miles you've driven doesn't tell you directly how full your gas tank is, but your mileage since your last fill-up is related to how much gas you have left. Math people might even say the two factors are correlated. One factor does not directly indicate the other, but they have a relationship that allows you to gain a fairly good estimate of one factor if you know the other.
So, in order to avoid crushing disappointment and despair by looking at a calendar every day and longing for my flight home, I use indirect measurements of the time I've spent away from home. My first measurement was when my boots broke-in. It took quite a while of 24/7 use before my left boot stopped rubbing a sore on the top of my foot, and my right boot stopped squeaking when I walked. But when those things stopped and the leather started flopping over to one side at night when I set them by my bed, I knew they were broken in, and I wasn't "new" to theatre anymore.
My next indirect metric was office turn-over. My predecessor was one of the first to arrive in the group of soldiers that was here when I arrived, meaning he would also be one of the first to leave. As such, I got to say goodbye to each of the others. As each one left, we got closer to having a completely new group of people. When everyone in the office was newer than I was, I knew I was past another milestone, and that much closer to my own departure date, where this time I would be one of the first to leave.
Upcoming "chalk marks" that I'm tracking are my daughters' first day of school, my parent's anniversary, my boss' return from his mid-tour R&R, the ripening of the grapes and pomegranates present on Camp and, far down the road, my replacement's arrival at CRC and in theatre. The trick to these to to not tie them to dates. Tying them to dates defeats the purpose, since my brain will spite me and, over my strongest objections, do the subtraction to figure out how many days I have left anyway.
The last set of metrics I track are on-going, ones that slowly change with how long I've been here. My malaria pill bottle gets one pill emptier everyday, and over time I can tell I'm getting closer to the end of the pills, and thus, my time in Afghanistan. The number of Monday morning "ORSA Breakfast" meetings that I've attended keeps getting bigger, while my time gets shorter. Each "fatburger" I've consumed (one per Sunday lunch) is another tick mark towards home. The number of hail and farewell meetings I've attended increments ever closer to my own farewell meeting. I'm sure there are all sorts of others I could come up with if I tried. The trick is to get creative with them, so that I never have to look at the clock or the calendar.
Tomorrow is the start of third number two. And I press on. All for now. Out here.
Monday, August 2, 2010
Convoy
An example of one of the armored SUVs used to drive around in Afghanistan. Fairly standard looking, except for the tailgate behind the tailgate (look closely), the antennae, and the protruding, armored grille on the front-end.If you are my wife, or someone that is going to tattle on me to my wife, you can stop reading now. Close the blog, step away from your computer, and forget about this post. Come back in a few days and there will be a new one for you to read.
Go on. I'll give a few minutes before I continue.
By reading further than this line you are implying that you are not my wife, nor are you going to get me in trouble by telling her what I am about to reveal. If I get grilled about this tomorrow, I will know one of you squealed, and I will find you. Capice?
I got to drive in my first convoy today.
When I got to Kabul back in June, I landed at the airport a few miles from Camp Eggers. Obviously we couldn't walk to our final destination, so we had a convoy of armored SUVs (Suburbans and Excursions) come and pick us up. Each directorate at CSTC-A has a few vehicles for this purpose, as well as delivering people to various destinations around the city as the mission requires. Today's convoy was a little of both. We were dropping off two soldiers for a flight down to the south, and picking up one more arriving for a year-long tour.
It is unofficially required to go to driver school here. The leadership wants everyone to be qualified to drive should the need arise, but the accountability for the training isn't enforced. For those that do go through the training, there are two parts: classroom and practical exercise. Upon completion of both sections, you get a drivers license certifying you as qualified to drive in Afghanistan. I attended the classroom piece of the training not long after I arrived on Camp. This portion included briefings on driving tactics (aggressive, not defensive driving), paperwork required to get clearance for a convoy, requirements for personnel, weapons and vehicles, familiarization with the roads around town, how to operate the jamming systems, what to do if you're in an accident, what to do if you're attacked, etc, etc. In total, it was an hour and a half of fairly dry presentation of important information that I struggled to stay awake through in order to absorb.
For the practical test, I was required to arrange a time to go driving with someone that was already qualified and in my directorate. Usually you just drive down the street to ISAF or the embassy. More than a month after my classroom driving training, I still hadn't had time to do this. This fact came up in conversation a few evenings ago, after one of the guys who drives all the time for our directorate participated in his 100th convoy in just under 6 months in country. He told me that he'd try and work me in to one of the convoys in the near future so I could finish my qualification. As it happened, that day was today.
Any time you go outside the confines of security around, you're supposed to be in a group of at least two vehicles. (Not following this rule ended up being a fatal mistake for two sailors recently.) Additionally, there are rules about how many rifles you have with you in the convoy. I'm not certain of the classification of these rules, so I'll be unspecific. Let's just say that a bunch of guys with pistols can't pile in a van and drive wherever they please. Of course each person is required to wear their body armor and kevlar helmet, but you are also required to have gloves and ballistic eye protection. I foolishly turned down these items when I went through CRC, so I had to go buy some today at the PX (post exchange, the military version of Wal-Mart). Note to self: don't ever turn down safety equipment, even if a recently returned, previously deployed civilian tells you you won't need them. As was pointed out a few posts ago, when it comes to deployments to Afghanistan, your experience may vary. Take the stuff anyway. Thankfully, I didn't have to spend that much money in the first place, and actually was able to get a $20 discount on the goggles because they were mislabeled. They'll be good safety glasses for back home, or if I ever get into paintball again.
At noon we met outside the office and suited up. 35 pounds of body armor, helmet, gloves, goggles, combat first aid kit, ID card, weapon...well, not for me unfortunately. This was the first time I found myself wishing I had a pistol. On camp it would only get in the way, but when venturing out in the wild it has a purpose. Alas. I did have the others in the group show me where the quick release was located so I could pull the gun away from their body armor if needed, as well as where the safety and bolt were on the M-16s we brought along. Just in case. No sense in not being prepared.
On the way to the airport, I was the "TC". This acronym technically means Tank Commander, but in normal convoy ops has come to mean "shotgun". I was responsible for radio communications with the other vehicle, alerting the driver, a 20 yr old, female, private first class with 200 convoys worth of experience, to potential road hazards like careless drivers or preoccupied pedestrians, and watching for potential threats. Vehicles with sagging suspensions are the number one thing to look for threat-wise. A sagging suspension means there's a lot of weight in the car, which could indicate a possible vehicle borne IED, or VBIED (pronounced vee-bid).
Once we were outside the gate, I found it hard to concentrate on my duties. This was the first time in 6 weeks I had been outside the wire. The people, the traffic, the buildings, the mountains. I was trying to absorb them all at once while also trying to help out my driver. Several times I had to force myself to stop gawking at the scenery and pay attention to the road. I was extremely glad I wasn't driving yet.
We arrived at the airport a little early, so we went and had lunch at the DFAC near the terminal building. This was the location of my first meal in country, just a few minutes after touching down in Afghanistan. As I was eating lunch today, I was remembering my first impressions of the place. My astonishment at the number of flies buzzing my food. My unease at being served pork bacon by a Muslim. My anxiousness at having to wait for a convoy much like the one I was participating in today. Six weeks wiser, none of these things were a surprise to me anymore. I guess I've been here a while. (That means its time to go home, right? Right?)
Once our new passenger's plane arrived, we helped her load up her stuff. There were a couple more soldiers on the same plane headed to Eggers, so we grabbed them to come with us, too. I didn't tell my two passengers that this would be my first convoy driving experience. I figured they would realize this fact eventually, and didn't want to draw attention to it, lest I make them nervous.
My TC for this leg of the trip was an Army Major that works in the same office as I do, the same one I had the conversation with to spark this experience into motion. He gave me a few pointers on how to handle the vehicle, how to navigate turns so as to block traffic from coming between myself and the lead vehicle, and on what the proper distance was between the two trucks. In his words, two car lengths was too much as "at least three donkey carts could fit in there." Yes, donkey carts. They exist on the roads of Kabul in far higher numbers than you would expect.
Learning to drive this beast was an experience. It took me back to my high school days, when I learned how to drive on my mother's conversion van. The weight of the vehicle was tangible in my foot on the pedals. It really shouldn't have surprised me. The glass on these vehicles is at least three-quarters of an inch thick, maybe more. When I rolled down the window to talk to one of my convoy-mates, it took seven seconds to lower the window to the height of my nose. And each and every section of the body of the vehicle had ballistic plating behind it capable of stopping most small-arms projectiles. My realization that the vehicle was going to drive heavy was very much a Captain Obvious moment, but I was still surprised. There seemed to be about a half second delay on acceleration and braking. The lag took some getting used to.
This picture was taken after a car accident involving U.S. contractors killed one Afghan civilian and injured three others. Those who witnessed the accident rioted in retaliation to the civilian death. The vehicle belonged to ISAF HQ just down the street, and is very similar to what I was driving. Notice the rocks and the pipe in the hands of the men in the foreground. Now notice that not a single window is smashed through, and the body panels are still intact. Solid stuff. Thankfully, I brought back my vehicle in pristine condition. Not even a scratch.Just before our vehicles left the airport, we passed by some unincorporated land which housed several dozen people in hand-built mud and clay huts. We were passing behind these buildings, looking into the backyards criss-crossed by low clay walls and dotted with vegetable gardens. In one of these fields, two boys, one maybe 10, the other probably 5 or 6, were flying a kite. There is much significance in this action. During the rule of the Taliban, kites were strictly forbidden as they were viewed to be an "un-Islamic" activity. If you were caught participating in this banned form of play, the Taliban would beat you and destroy the kite. Now, it's likely these children were born after the fall of the Taliban in 2001. But the fact that they do not have to fear enjoying a windy day, and that their parents are supporting their activity, is a welcome and positive sign. As we drove past, I murmured encouragement to the two boys: "Fly on, little man."
Once off the airport, it was absolute chaos. Kabul has no traffic laws. At all. The people also are not shy about walking across to road, or down it's middle, or sitting on it's shoulder singing, playing, basket weaving. You think I'm joking. If only. My saving grace was my lead vehicle, a buxom blonde Mario Andretti at the wheel, driving with authority, dragging me through seemingly impassable traffic by sheer bulk and force of will. The traffic circles were four-deep with cars, jockeying for position like riders on a horse track. Holes too small for some NFL running backs to fit through were my road. I hugged the lead's bumper so tightly she could have been towing us. My wife would definitely have disapproved.
My biggest takeaway from this experience: I'm not certain drivers in Afghanistan are aware they have side-view mirrors. It's even possible they've never discovered that their heads are able to turn to the left and right, giving them greater visibility of their surroundings and allowing them to see the GINORMOUS ARMORED SUV BARRELING THROUGH THE SPACE THEY ARE ABOUT TO OCCUPY AND OH MY GOD HE'S CLOSE MAYBE IF I HONK MY HORN REALLY REALLY LOUD I'LL SCARE HIM AND HE WON'T RUN ME OVER. Seriously. Oblivious has new meaning for me after today.
The trip back to Eggers was only a few miles in distance, so it was over in not long at all. I survived, and no Afghans were harmed in the making, so I considered the drive a success. Having someone with so much experience telling me where to go, what to do, and calling out the hazards really made the experience pretty painless. There are obviously several things I could improve on, but that will come with time and practice. What? You're not surprised I'm going to do this again, are you? They always need drivers, and that was too much fun not to make a habit of it. The people we dropped off this afternoon are coming back into town in a few days, and we may drive to a small base on the outskirts of Kabul on Friday to eat Italian and French food. I plan to participate in at least one of those. I will keep you updated on my progress as a crazy convoy driver.
That's all for tonight. Out here.
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