Orders VS Regulations

[sarmed1]

I'm pretty sure "abide by" and "in authority " is the nice way of saying follow orders.  The difference I see is authority means those in an office/position or chain of command... ie some random Capt can't tell some random Lt to do x,y,z just because one has a higher rank.

Also it says "guided by"...  guided by usually does not infer blind obedience....

MK

[NIN]

Having been a unit commander a bunch of times, I've issued orders that seemed to contravene "regulation."

Usually, it was more of a case of "the reg explains this just so far, and we have a little gap, so to address this gap, we'll do this in this way.."

Sometimes it was a case of "interpretation" of the reg, which in some of our regulations is a real sport.

The important thing to keep in mind, at least when I've had to do something like that, is to:

1) Explain why you're doing what you're doing.  I had a pretty participatory command environment (I tended to work on a  "We'll solicit staff input and guidance up until it is time to make a decision, but when its time to make the decision, I expect everybody to salute and execute.." basis).  If one of my officers had said "Uh, hey, boss, this is going to be a problem because of x, y & z.." I would have said "hmmm, you're right.." and likely have made adjustments.  But if you can explain the *why* of your order, you're at least able to say "Yes, we understand that regulation X is in place, but here are the specific reasons why we did what we did in this circumstance."  This keeps it from being a "we violate the regs willy nilly when it suits us" kind of thing.

2) Keep the commander's intent in mind. Sometimes you have to get a little "meta" with the regulations to understand what the commander is trying to accomplish with, and then if you need to issue an order that contravenes that, you should be able to say "Well, we had situation Q crop up, which was not exactly anticipated by the boss in regulation XY-Z, so I felt that was probably more important to do it this way, and err on the side of caution and documentation, so I told folks to do this until we got further guidance."

3) Avoid issuing orders "from the hip."  Nothing will get you in deeper than liberally casting verbal orders about, *especially* if they are either subject to interpretation or directly contravene an existing regulation or instructions from above and you later can't explain your rationale for doing so.    Because if one of your people gets in hot water for doing something the way you told him to, trying to be supportive of the boss, and you say "Oh, uh, well, hhahaha, i never said that.." you will wind up with even bigger problems.

Centuries ago, when I wore diamonds instead of oak leaves, my group had very specific "recruiting areas" for the squadrons to avoid stepping on each other's toes.  This unit had these 3-4 cities surrounding the town it was based in, this other unit had these 4 or 5 cities, etc.  My unit's meeting place had moved 4 miles east of where it had been, which meant that one of the towns in our neighboring squadron's recruiting area was now like a 2 minute drive away instead of 10-15.

We had a guy in the unit who was from that town (we would let people know the other unit existed, but if they came to us and wanted to stay, well, hey, thats the breaks. But the rule was no active recruiting in another unit's area. I lived 3 miles from this other unit, too, but nobody ever told me it existed when I joined) and he wanted to setup a recruiting event at his old junior high. I was a random cadet staff officer at the time, but I seem to recall that recruiting was under my purview somehow, so I went to our squadron commander and said "Sir, Cadet Joey can setup a recruiting event at [other town's junior high].  Is that OK?"

My commander, being the enterprising but "shoot from the hip" sort, said "Well, technically its the other squadron's area, but go ahead."  So we conducted this recruiting drive and got 13 new cadets out of the deal.  The neighboring squadron caught wind that we'd recruited 13 cadets out of "their" area, and complained to the group commander that my unit had deliberately gone outside our recruiting area and poached 13 cadets in a town that would normally be theirs. (my response: "Well, if they had done a better job of recruiting, they'd have gotten these cadets already." Oh, I was a handful as a Phase IV cadet.)

The group commander went to my unit commander, said "Why did you deliberately ignore the recruiting areas?" and my commander, cuz he was a shoot from the hip kind of guy, said "oh, I would never do that!  This Ninness character must have done all that without my knowledge!"

Thankfully (for me) the commander had said "technically its the other squadron's area, but go ahead" in front of a room full of senior members.  When the group commander called me to read me the riot act and threaten to terminate my membership, I was able to say "Sir, my commander told me it was OK to proceed" and was able to list off the other officers in the room when he said that.  They all corroborated my account of what went on.   Commander got canned. I'm still here.

So you gotta be careful.

[Phil Hirons, Jr.]

Sometimes it was a case of "interpretation" of the reg, which in some of our regulations is a real sport.

Or when you try to balance between Reg A which says go left and Reg B (usually from an other OPR) that says go right.

[alpha06]

Actually, what you should do , is report the order to the next person in the Chain of Command, let's say the deputy Commander. The Deputy has a lot more leeway of buffing up against the Commander than we do. Let him talk to the Commander and get it resolved.