Tell Your Story
I am a husband, a father, a Soldier, an Officer, and an aviator. No matter which hat I am wearing at any given moment in my day, being reliable, consistent, effective, and well-organized are some of my personal standards. These additional standards are none negotiable and unwavering. I could draw many parallels to these standard to that of the Warrior Ethos that has bread to live inside of me. These standards are a way of life for me. As sure as the sun rises and sets every day, these standards are not something I have to manage or consciously think about applying to my daily walk. At work, the primary standards are at the cornerstone of my job. I have to be clear, accurate, relevant, and sufficient at all times. Also, depth, breadth, and precision are very important, especially when we enter into mission planning.
There is no better teacher in life than failure. When I fail to reach a goal or fail to handle something properly that has a negative result, I reflect back on several different things leading me to the failed result. I ask myself if I was focused and committed (reliable) to accomplish the task at hand? Did I put consistent work in to be prepared? Was my approach to accomplish the task effective? Was my mental focus, attitude, and preparation well-organized? If I answer no to any of these things, I can not be overly disappointed or surprised at the result. I have learned through the years that when challenge comes, my performance drops to the level in which I prepared and trained (physically and mentally). If I answered yes to all of these things and I still come up short of what was expected, then there was an outside influence that effected the outcome that was insurmountable. More often than not, when not living up to the standards of being reliable, consistent, effective, and well-organized I failed to get out of my own way.
The primary standards play a vital roll in my professional job. I am charged with planning, briefing, and executing clandestine rotary wing (helicopter) missions in some of the most undesired places on the planet. When planning the mission, all seven critical thinking standards are employed. The mission plan has to be relevant to the ground forces mission plan. The mission planning process has been critically accurate to ensure the safety and mission goals are met. The success of the planning process and the result it produces is directly tied to the decision makers depth & breadth of understanding the mission requirements, precisely (precision) asking and gaining specific details as a need in order to reason through the mission planning process. Then, correctly identifying the complexities and underlying issues that arise. We are then in charge with briefing the mission to all the players involved in the mission. Being clear is the single most important standard for the briefer. If the plan cannot be easily understood, there will be misunderstandings, and mistakes made during the execution phase of the mission, which could cost lives or overall mission success. The briefer can not be vague or ambiguous at anytime. The briefer must have clear understanding in his own mind to ensure clear understanding in the minds of the players involved. The briefer also has to have razor sharp accuracy. The brief cannot over generalize the plan, especially during what we call the "actions-on" phase of the mission. Like I stated before, failure is the most harsh, but most important teacher in life. We have learned a lot from history. The lessons learned from mistakes made, lives lost, and missions failed are so valuable in ensuring success upon the receipt of the next mission.
The late teen and early twenty something Jason was more focused on the non-critical thinking standards. I can attest that I lived for the moment. Now, I don't believe that the non-critical thinking standards are a set-up for failure, but those standards are not strong enough to build a strong foundation on. My opinion of the non-critical thinking standards weigh too heavily on emotion or feelings. When emotions and thoughts are not even keeled, so to are these non-critical thinking standards. There are far too many outside influences that could affect this way of critical thinking. For me personally, there has been no substitute for life experiences and maturity that is derived from increased expectations and responsibilities.
I am in many ways a product of my environment when it comes to critically thinking. It is a job requirement. Some of it I believe is instinctual. Our assessment process to become a member of my team has a method of evaluating a persons critically thinking under highly demanding and stressful situations. If selected, our training further develops and refines a persons ability to critically think, not just in the cockpit, but in the mission planning process as well.
I handle what I should or should believe based on considering what setting the information is coming from, media, a friend, family, or a co-worker. I then consider the subject. I then default to what I personally already know first and whether that remotely matches what I know to be true. Then I consider the actual source in which the information is coming from and evaluate whether the source is trusted in this topic area.
My professional job has a tremendous amount of both standardly analysis and evaluation. The mission requirements, the enemy, terrain and weather, troops and support available, time available, and civil considerations are all apart of our mission analysis. There are dozens of annual and semi-annual tasks of which I have to evaluate others to determine whether or not they are maintaining proficiency. I have to standardly evaluate their oral knowledge and flying tasks in many different environments and flight profiles of which we operate.
Best Regards,
Jason
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