I was assigned to lead a military transition team, or MiTT.
Ten men and women were assigned to this team and we were tasked with developing more structured processes for the Iraqi district advisory council meetings.
I assumed that, if the Army assigned them to this team, they would have the necessary skills and commitment to complete a variety of different tasks like this, so I didn't take any time to find out what each of these Soldiers were capable of and what they were interested in doing.
We were under a huge amount of time pressure to get this task done, so I assigned each Soldier to a task without putting much thought into it. Boy, was that a mistake! It turns out that none of these guys had the skills I thought they had, nor were they really committed to the tasks I assigned them. We missed some key deadlines and, because of this, the district advisory council wound up disbanding.
In retrospect, I wish I had taken the time to get to know my Soldiers – to find out what they were capable of and what their interests were before assigning them tasks.
I learned that it's important to consider Soldiers' capabilities and commitments when organizing work and determining who the best people are for the job. By taking these factors into consideration, I would have been able to get better results from my Soldiers.