20 years ago when I was serving National Service in the army, I was doing my first Company Orderly Sergeant duty.
My main duty that morning was to take attendance and report strength to my superior. It was the single most frustrating thing I did that day.
It was unbelievably difficult to tally up the different people in different segments based on a poorly organized non-alphabetized nominal roll.
Fast forward to today, and my ranked superior faced the exact same struggle in the morning.
Numbers didn’t tally. Repeated counts were wrong. We didn’t know who belonged where, and we were given different nominal rolls with different names.
In addition, it was really inefficient because 50 men had to line up and find their name on a list with font so small that only 18-year-olds can make out what they say.
I can’t believe how disorganized it was. Then again, these were produced by 18-year-olds with zero work experienced.
Recognizing an opportunity to use my Unique Ability, I quickly put together a Google Sheet to share with the commanders.
It allowed us to organize the names by alphabetical order, and by commander. It also allowed us to spot double entries and men without commanders. Finally, it let the commanders collaborate to enter information in the spreadsheet.
This is why more experienced personnel provide advantage to organizations.
We work smart.
Daniel Tay 