[Telaneo]

I've been in discussions about Step 7, and my god, the experience was soul crushing. Even more soul crushing was that the result of that discussion was to not document Step 7, because doing that might enforce the idea of what it should be for and why it should be done.

Writing stuff down is great since it provides a baseline to agree upon, and later additions to the team will take it as given and not start to discuss minutiae and bog down discussions into nothingness. And if some point really is worth discussing, it shouldn't be hard to find support to change it. I've heard some wild misunderstandings of how things were based on how they were being done, and now I never want to do anything of any significant size without there being a clear and obvious process to it.

[alexpotato]

> the result of that discussion was to not document Step 7, because doing that might enforce the idea of what it should be for and why it should be done.

In Charlie Beckwith's book about Delta Force [0] there is a line where he says (paraphrasing):

"The SAS never wanted to write down what their role was and what tasks they were trained for. Why? Because they didn't want to get pigeon holed into a role. ... They also never wrote down their SOPs b/c the argument was that 'if you can't keep it in your head, you shouldn't be in the Regiment'. At Delta, we were going to write down our mission AND write down our SOPs."

0 - https://amzn.to/4ahIAJV

[Telaneo]

For a force whose goals can change at any moment, this seems pretty reasonable. The SAS shouldn't be trained for anything in partucular, but rather for anything and everything. Not to mention that in the SAS you have a commanding offiser who can overrule if needed.

Step 7 in a process which already has defined end-goals though? The fact that there were disagreements in the first place baffled me. The fact that it was impossible to write anything down about it without invoking heaven's wrath made me quit.