Life Coach - Step 55 of 100 - 24 - 48 - 72 hours is all you have

One of the things that we created in our regiment was Service Level Agreements with the troops. What is this SLA business?

Often I end up on the phone waiting to reach a service representative. What irks me is listening to the music with no idea of where I am in the queue. I am relieved if I am told that I am 10th in the queue and I should be speaking to a real human in say 12 minutes. It is this that makes me stay in queue without much cribs. The fact that I can escalate my problem to a senior manager reassures me. The fact that I will receive a response for the concerned within a stipulated time reassures me.

Our soldiers are our customers too. They are recipients of our orders and we need to service them well to get work out of them. They are both are tools to get work done and also our customers. If I extend the logic to family, my parents and my siblings are my customers, my wife and children are my customers. All of them have wants and I need to fulfill them. The uniqueness in this relationship is that they do not repay in money but repay in kind.

Back to our soldiers: they have their families and responsibilities and they need leave, need someone to help them fulfill their obligations, need our intervention, etc. The worst thing for a solider is to go unheard - it is like listening to the music on hold forever. In the worst case scenario we have the solider running amock.

In our battalion we had a clear 24 - 48 - 72 hours SLA policy. If the soldier had a problem he would approach his Platoon JCO / Coy Sub who had 24 hours to resolve the same. If they could not, the problem was escalated to the Company Commander who had the next 24 hours to do something. After 48 hours the CO intervened and his decision was final even if it went against the lower levels.

If a solider felt that he was being denied leave, promotion, etc he could use the SLA. The advantage of having this was that the solider knew as to within what time frame his problem woudl be resolved and if it did not what was that he had to do next. He knew he could go right up to the level of CO within 72 hours.

How many problems reached the CO level? Just a couple in 8 months. Was the system misused - no. Did the troops get their problems resolved - yes.

Not being given justice ( or at least having this perception) is what drives a soldier amock. What kind of system do you have in place for your troops?