I have so many stories I want to tell and so little time to tell them, but I wanted to share the newest thing I have come to realize about the Army: changing course and moving forward is not their cup of tea. They like to write Fragmentary Orders, or FRAGOS.
When I hear fragmentary, I think of grenades. Most of you may not get that connection right away, but hey, I have been to high-speed, low-drag NARMY training and we learned how to throw grenades. I like to thing something as simple as a change or additional order must be a big deal to the Army, and thus like throwing a frag grenade into somebody's well-laid plans.
It seems that the Army needs written orders for everything they do. If they set up a command, they need an order that lays out the scope of the command; its structure, services, responsibilities and accountability. That part makes total sense.
However, if this scope doesn't include an 11 am weekly conference call with various command components, a FRAGO gets written. You can't just send an invite out to Bob and Bill and Tom with a recurring meeting time, you need an order. Really?
To put this in perspective of my daily civillian life, if you run to Starbucks to pick up coffee for your friends and someone wants to add an order, they can't just call you on the cell phone. If the Army were in charge, someone would have to write an official order and send it to you, your friends and probably even Starbucks.
I just don't get it.
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