Lesson learned this week: learn to communicate to a broader audience to get work done quickly and the right way, the first time.
So I took a few weeks off to go to Marksmanship Coaches Course, which was an interesting and fun experience. Upon my return to my work center, however, I learned that I had been moved to a different job in the division with more administrative responsibilities. New challenges, new environment, new boss. What I hadn’t anticipated being a challenge was communication. The difficulty didn’t come in the usual way, where there is either too little or too much, it was simply of a technical and environmental nature that I hadn’t grown accustomed to.
As an example, sometime in the middle of last year, I had to go to one of our administrative offices to acquire a vehicle to take a part to another base. I quickly discovered that, despite how intricately I understood my own situation, how important I knew it was to get this vehicle as soon as possible, and how confident I was that I could convey all this information to my colleagues, I simply could not break down my information into layman’s terms. “But this piece of gear is an ExRep! It’s holding down a bird and we need this van so we can go test this today!” Two things were wrong with my approach.
First of all, I said the word ExRep, which is a concept understood very well by everyone in my division, but not so well outside of it. I should have thought about that before I began my explanation. “There is a helicopter that is unable to fly because we have the only part on base that can fix it, and we need to check it today to get it back on that helicopter. It is of the highest priority.” That is what I should have said.
Secondly, I had forgotten that the scope of my job goes no further than the part that I’m trying to fix. The only outside information I ever get is how many of these parts Supply has on their shelf available. If they don’t have any, than the part we have in our shop is in a top priority status. Makes sense, but what does that have to do with the aircraft? Well, honestly, we don’t know. All we know is that if the part is the highest priority, then it cannot fly if it needs to. We do not know if the helicopter is even scheduled to fly later that day at all, or if anyone is specifically waiting on this particular bird to be flight ready. So what might seem very important to me, might not be as big a deal to the squadron as a whole. Maybe there’s a different bird that DOES have scheduled time for that day, and the people fixing that one needed the van. That would put me in line after them.
It was a good learning experience. You have to be aware of the scope of your job when you do anything outside of your normal environment, because what may seem to be really important to you, may not really be that pressing an issue when you look at the whole picture. Also, learning to explain your situation to someone who does not have your depth of technical knowledge is something worth practicing. If you can make someone else who doesn’t do your job think that what is important to you is important to them, you’ll find yourself winning many more battles.
At this point, I’m on the receiving end of this, since now I have to interpret what my bosses are saying, who have a far greater depth of administrative knowledge (what, so I’ve never used Access before, sue me, I’m learning) than I do. The learning curve is steep, but I’ll reach a plateau soon enough. I hope. 
