No Time, Literally, for All Requirements

"Do your duty as you see fit, and damn the consequences."

George S. Patton Jr.

Try to figure out what readiness means and move in that direction. An organization has two types of workload: core work and peripheral work [name them what you will]. Core work is directly related to the mission of the organization. Producing an operations order is core work for a battalion planning section. Attending Quarterly EO is peripheral work and not a part of the mission. Attending EO however is federally mandated and posted in regulation (AR 350-1). While we are overloaded with the mandatory requirements we also create our own non-core work and push it on subordinates.

Are the Sergeant Major's 3 pet peeves federally required workload? Is an S-1 NCO creating readiness when they return a memo to the sender because there were 3 spaces instead of 2 between the subject and the first paragraph? The non-core tasks all tend feather out and compile into this large time sink to where not only do you need to do that quarterly thing but you need to track it and account for it and have meetings about it and other things like it. For officers, every email sent invites a return email. Reading email is not a federally required task but we can sink a whole day catching up on it.

Shoot, move, and communicate, is readiness. Preserving unit strength through good retention management is readiness.

In a culture where everything is mandatory, nothing is. Let two level's up decide what they believe is required. Empower your subordinates to execute the intent rapidly. If possible consolidate the mandatory training as much as possible and shift your focus to the more high yield tasks.