Tuesday, February 26th

One of those days today where I feel totally exhausted, but not a lot to show for it. Team meeting this morning was productive, but I felt that we got off track a bit. During our brainstorming session, it seemed to me that we were discussing more detail than the brainstorming in the PBL format is intended for. Regardless, it was still a good discussion of what we all intended to include in our research for the strategic plan memo assignment. I was assigned as timekeeper for the meeting, and probably should have spoken up when I thought we were getting off track, but I got caught up in the discussion. After our meeting, I met briefly with my chief to pick up his copy of "It's Your Ship", our required reading for week 4. We then discussed various aspects of Staff and Command, and I was glad to hear that he dealt with the same struggles (being overwhelmed and sometimes not knowing where to start on an assignment) when he was a student of the class. When I got home, I got back to work gathering information for the assignment while waiting to hear back from a plumber. I'm no home repair genius, but I'm pretty sure that water coming up through a basement floor drain is not a good thing. While waiting, I was able to get a good amount of work done.

How did the day's activities relate to your real-world work situation?
Working as a platoon Lieutenant, it's not unusual for me to have plans to work on something throughout the shift, some kind of collateral duty, then get sidetracked and not be able to work as much as intended on the original plan. That was today for me. I spent about 2 1/2 hours helping the plumber when he finally arrived, which sidetracked me from working on the current assignment. Luckily, I was able to sit down for a while before he arrived, and then work some more after he left.

How will your real-world behavior change as a result of what you learned today?
Some of the information I obtained relative to our assignment included financial data on revenue my agency receives from our district court and from the city property taxes. Seeing how that can fluctuate, I think it's important for me to relay to my platoon how important it is to continue to make arrests and issue violations, as the revenue we receive from the court depends on how many cases we submit to the court.

What could you have done differently that might have impacted your performance?
I could have spoken up during the team meeting when I felt that we were straying from the intended topics during our brainstorming session. As I mentioned above, I thought the discussion was still productive, but still a little off-track.