from huge impact to huge failure

Chief's like me have been trained in the fleet, at the very pinnacle tip of the spear of forward deployment and mission accomplishment. Most of us have had such vast loads of responsibility thrust upon us that our very actions could make or break the unit upon which we serve, mine being the US's surge carrier, being responsible for all the launching and recovering capability of that carrier on a daily basis and to not bat an eye in the undertaking. Literally walking through the fire of harms way and wielding that fire as a weapon. it was time for a step back from the fire.
In 2008, from across the globe, deployed, I called the recruiting district that owned a recruiting station nearest my home town, in Rolla, Mo. I spoke to the Officer Programs Director and the Chief Recruiter who assured me they would do what they could to put me in that Rolla area near my home in Salem. I transferred back there in Feb09 and checked into St.Louis.
During my checkin process the Officer Programs Director, or OPO had shared with me I would be recruiting officers for the reserves only, a job that I had no training and which differs greatly from what I had been taught in recruiting school. I finished check in and reported to NRS Rolla to set up my work station and get acquainted with the staff there. I was further trained by the only other reserve OR in the distrrict. she could not train very well at all and seemed to speak a totally different language than me. I new then and there I would be on my own with gaining a knowledge of how to do my job. I had also met the lady who would do the processing of my paperwork for all my applicants. she trained me a tiny bit on what she thought would be important but it was basically common mistakes in the kits she had been seeing. she had been at the job for a number of years and seemed to speak her own language as well. back to square one, again.
i set about the task of getting a handle on my job in any way i could which involved building my own office from a storage space and contacting all the best reserve or's in the nation to get a grasp on how to proceed. these individuals pointed me in the right directions and i learned a lot. the SOP of the department stated I was to find the applicants, sell them and get their paperwork started, the processor would take it from there with the paperwork and I was to assist in this process as much as needed. I knew my job now and proceeded accordingly. I did not know nor care how the processor tracked incoming documents but would aid in the rework as it came up. several months went by and i had presented my work to my CO and OPO who seemed happy with the amount of people i was working.
then came the huge realization that would cripple my efforts and pull the rug out from under me. The processor had not been keeping any track of the documents my applicants were sending in nor did anyone care if she was or not. i was quickly called on the pad for not keeping up with my paperwork my applicants were required to send in to the processor. i quickly asked how it was spelled out in the SOP and was told i was right but needed to be able to discuss in detail what was in each one of my kits intelligently. months of being called on the pad for my people not being sent to board and the like followed and i was asked quite bluntly if i could do this job. I answered like any Navy Chief would, that i was doing my job and needed others to do theirs. the powers that be were not hearing that, and had quickly labeled me as a leadership challenge to be micromanaged in as many ways they could come up with. from checking in each morning from my desk to checking out at the end of the day from my desk. i had been given the picture that what i had learned was my job according to instruction but the system was flawed to the point where the people in place could not do their jobs as they were so overtasked that the OR's needed to do what i heard from my fellow OR's termed as "processing your own kits" and learning how to force them through a broken system with the right pushes in the right places. the biggest problem was the processors did not work for me so they had no vested interest in anything i was doing or how many kits i was working. they just did what was pressing for that day and went home. i began with the squeaky wheel ideology and was told by my OPO that we weren't going to hear any more processor bashing nor using the processors as an excuse not to achieve mission.
this all continued until 2011 when a new position was opened in the department filled by a member of the Chief's community. the key was, this person was in both my, and my processor's chain of command! finaly, a breakthrough! She checked into the department and quickly learned who was doing bad or good and i was one of the first she called. i had told her my sad story and she believed me. we quickly set out to holding the processor accountable for not working my kits. every peice of paperwork i would turn in went through her first before going to the processor. i went from not netting one or two people a year to making my annual goal in 4 months! this was seen by the command as her straightening me out, but i was still happy with the outcome. my marriage was in constant turmoil but i knew i was doing just as i was supposed to do, only i knew the sad truth, I had been doing it the entire time.
this is just one tail of how a system with sacred cows in it's organization can be led afoul. It took a Chief to fix this by actually forcing a command's hand to let them lead where they were supposed to be leading in the first place.