Unit-wide Announcements / Headquarters
Priorities as our incoming Commanding Officer

Captain Korean Falcon

Commanding Officer
UNITAF

Dear all,

 

First, I thank everyone for their confidence in me as the next commanding officer. It is truly a great privilege, one that I had not foreseen when I hesitantly joined UNITAF in November 2020. 

 

What makes UNITAF so great, in my view, is the community. The community that we share, whether your focus is on making new friends, on playing ARMA, or having fun with a bunch of people with similar interests, is the core of everything we do. Without a well-functioning community, a well-functioning UNITAF would be a mere pipe dream. 

 

As I now assume the role as commanding officer, my greatest vision is to cultivate this community and the culture that comes with it, to ensure that we have a community where everyone feels valued, heard and connected. I wish build on UNITAF's position as a community where everyone can enjoy being part of something bigger, whether that is through contributions, being part of FTXs, or merely enjoying our missions from week to week. 

 

While I will be introducing a few short-term changes to further support our growth and cohesion, UNITAF as a whole will not change. We will still continue to work on the Future Training System, we will have our weekly operations and trainings, and most of our other activities and discussions will continue as usual. My goal is to enhance the things we already do well, ensuring that we maintain our strengths whilst making improvements where they are needed. In order to achieve this, I will focus my attention on the following four priorities: 

 

 

1) Officer conversations

 

A well-functioning community is reliant on good leadership. UNITAF is in a very good position currently, with excellent officers and highly qualified staff members. It is now a year and a half since we changed UNITAF's structure away from the troop system, and this transition cannot be defined in other ways than a success. 

 

However, whilst the different commands have implemented good internal policies and procedures, we have lacked an effective platform for inter-command communication and coordination. One of my primary and most urgent duties as the new commanding officer will be to ensure that we re-establish these channels of communication, and ensure that all overlapping interests across commands and J-areas have formal lines of coordination.  

 

2) Communication with our members

 

A big part of ensuring a good community rests with communication with the community. Whilst we have implemented the frontline feedback, other forms of communication with the community at large has been stagnant. 

 

Those of us who have been in the unit might remember hours-long UNITAF podcasts and long written updates. Whilst we will likely not return to the length these updates had, these initiatives did ensure that our members were periodically updated on and reminded of the progress that is invisible for most of you. This serves a few different functions, I'll mention two important ones here: First, it ensures transparency and cohesion within the community. Whilst full transparency will never be a goal of ours, increasing the community's understanding of what developments we are undergoing will ensure that the community as a whole remains a cohesive unit. This is important for a number of reasons, not least retention of members and the recruitment of contributors. Second, in combination with the utilisation of frontline feedback, we can ensure that we gain a broader picture of what the community as a large thinks. Now, we will remain steadfast and true to our roots, but a healthy exchange of ideas and thoughts - if managed well - can give us the information we need to adapt to new challenges and old. 

 

Whilst how these updates will look haven't been decided upon just yet, rest assured that I will seek to update you all on key developments and events on a regular basis. 

 

3) Enlisted Liaison

 

Whereas all NCOs have a clear line of communication should they have thoughts about the unit through their chain of command, this line of communications is very limited for regular enlisted. 

 

To ensure that higher leadership has a good understanding of what's moving in our community, I will therefore also look to establish a liaison position within central command. The person assuming this position would be one of our senior enlisted members without any NCO responsibilities, and their task would be to provide central command as well as the other commands with perspectives and thoughts provided by enlisted themselves. I will return to this later once the details have been formalised a bit further. 

 

 

4) Further improvements and utilisation of the roadmap tool

 

The Roadmap is one of the most important tools to monitor and contribute to the development of the community for anyone interested. It is already a solid tool, and its value will increase the more we use it. It will be important for higher leadership to ensure that we follow up on the submitted items, though, and that the right items are prioritised. We must, after all, remember that everyone in staff positions in UNITAF are volunteers who dedicate their time to ensure that we all can enjoy fun missions, and that we must use our time effectively. This starts with prioritisation and coordination, and this is where central command will have the biggest impact: By supporting our commands in making good priorities, by coordinating efforts across commands where required, and by ensuring that our limited development resources are used effectively. 

 

The roadmap tool is the most important project management tool we have in the unit, and it's therefore important that we also seek improvements to it where appropriate. I will therefore work with the commands to ensure that we use it efficiently, and that any friction preventing use are mitigated. 

 

None of the above is possible without the contributions from staff and contributors. For all your contributions so far, we are truly indebted! The number of mountains we have moved over the last five years have been no less than impressive. Our aim for the next five years is to move more mountains, and to see UNITAF grow - both quantitatively and qualitatively - into the ARMA 4 era and beyond!