RILC confused the heck out of me. Not the content, but why I was sitting in the room with mostly O-4s, and why I had to complete it before DCOIC. I still haven't done DIVOLC yet.
Edit: If the Navy Reserve absorbs DCOIC into ODS, maybe they should a few days of those 5 weeks on DIVOLC content, give everyone credit for DIVOLC, and just kill that bird with the same stone.
Yyyyyyep. They probably sent you to a leadership class before your knife-and-fork school because DCOIC didn't count for that 5 year leadership continuum (strange as that policy sounds). The day after you finish knife-and-fork school you were delinquent for leadership training. You probably ended up at
intermediate leadership of all choices because that was all that was available anytime soon and not too far away.
The leadership continuum class roadshow schedule got a little more robust in the last couple years (in other words, we finally got enough resources thrown at this requirement). Those are the various two-day courses that run on Saturdays and Sundays throughout the year, usually at various NOSCs in both flyover country and the fleet concentration areas.
I almost got a nub ensign to
senior leadership class (tee tee) before his DCOIC, but that was when RESFOR was disapproving
all orders of guys who hadn't attended DCO, so they disapproved his travel orders to go there (IDTT orders). That made me sad because it would have been a personal victory for me against the redonkulousness of that leadership continuum requirement.
Speaking of doing anything before DCOIC, I had another nub ensign, with orders to DCOIC (his orders were funded) try to go drill with his cross assigned unit rather than watch the paint dry in our OSU classroom. RESFOR denied those IDTT orders, citing that he wasn't allowed to do any orders before going to DCOIC, no ifs, ands, or buts. Sometimes the RESFOR guys were great and they were often super helpful but this was one of those other times when it was like talking to a brick. A year or two after that the policy got changed/clarified to say no AT or ADT orders until DCOIC complete, but IDTT could be okay case-by-case... well duh.
About a year or two ago, we had a gal on orders to RILC or SOLC only to arrive and find there was no such course. Somebody had cut-and-pasted some of the previous FY's class schedule into CANTRAC. So we'd got her a quota for a phantom leadership class. Doh!!
Last parting shot (and this one really sums up my low opinion on this leadership continuum) and speaking of the roadshow classes, about a year ago there were three of these two-day courses got canceled at the last minute. The funding line for the NLEC instructors' travel had dried up. Whatever behind the scenes stuff they tried to salvage it, it didn't work. So on a Wednesday all of the NOSCs got told to cancel orders to anybody going to leadership class that Friday through Sunday (about 200 people affected across the reserves). I have no idea why a handful of students couldn't get canceled and their funding rerouted to the instructors' unfunded orders... different pots of money don't you know! Keep in mind that many of those people had booked the Friday off from their civilian jobs to go to this oh-so-important class and it wasn't on their regularly scheduled drill weekend. Leadership indeed.
These can't-make-this-$%#&-up anecdotes are brought to you by the letters F and U. I have my DD-214 which means it's someone else's turn to carry the torch and spin their wheels with this stuff.
