I’d like to revisit my blog on Near Rocks, Far Rocks that I presented a year ago. You may recall my discussion of how fighter pilots managed their tasks as a team to successfully accomplish the mission at very low altitude and very high speed. I related this concept as a way to help every individual and team prioritize and manage their tasks for successful results. Well, I’d like to refresh this idea with the addition of another term we used to remind us to keep a disciplined cross-check of the terrain, our formation and the threats around us. “Keep Your Head on a Swivel " was the term we used to maintain a constant refresh on the world around us and prevented us from getting mesmerized on any one particular task. When things went wrong for our team, it was usually caused by fixating our attention on a single threat or task which allowed another high priority item to fall through the crack.
I believe keeping your awareness of all your normal priority tasks through a disciplined scan of information is important for all of us to do, especially in times of crisis; like our current pandemic. We can’t let this be our sole focus area every minute of the day. Sure, the near rocks protocols for this threat must be dealt with daily. But everyone must also keep their head moving around taking in necessary inputs of the upcoming far rocks to keep in touch with what’s going on in the world around them in order to formulate follow-on game plans. So, if you find your face buried in a smart phone all day or your keister parked on the couch watching another mini-series-it’s time to restart a disciplined routine of increasing your situational awareness of the world around you to see what needs tending to!
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