Train your Marines as a team

Every waking hour Marines should be trained and schooled, challenged and tested, and corrected and encouraged with perfection and teamwork as a goal.

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Back to the universal principles

Calibration

Under, just right, over.

SituationUnderJust RightOver
The next hard week is comingLets each person practice alone and hopes they will join up under pressure.Practices the real handoffs as a group, with the same load they will carry.Schedules so much group practice that nobody can finish this week's work.
Someone is new to the teamLeaves them to discover their seat by colliding with someone else's.Makes the role, the handoff, and who they back up explicit, then practices it.Writes a role chart so detailed that they cannot move when the plan breaks.
A group of specialistsStaffs the seats and treats a team as something that appears later.Trains and reviews as a group, so each person knows how their piece serves the others.Blends every role so thoroughly that nobody is accountable for a piece.
Practice could be easy or realRuns a rehearsal that never stresses the weak join.Makes the practice hard enough that the real day is familiar, and corrects without humiliation.Turns practice into punishment, and people hide the misses you needed to see.
The team missed togetherPicks one person to blame and leaves the join-up unfixed.Names the handoff that failed, practices that piece, and keeps the people in their seats.Makes every miss a full reset of the team.
They do not know who backs them upFinds out on the day someone is out.Practices the backup before the day it is needed.Cross-trains everyone on everything until nobody is deep in their own seat.

Further reading

Sources and essays on this principle.

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