An Army Regiment Improves Oversight Mechanisms to Guide Headquarters Elements in Transforming Their Work Style

An Army Regiment Improves Oversight Mechanisms to Guide Headquarters Elements in Transforming Their Work Style—— Issuing Notifications Without Taking 'Shortcuts,' Requesting Data Without 'Cutting Corners'

■ Geng Yunlong, PLA Daily Reporter Sun Xingwei

Recently, a certain Army regiment convened a work-style review meeting for its headquarters elements. At the meeting, one piece of data sparked heated discussion among attendees: telephone notifications that disrupted grassroots-unit work had fallen by nearly 80 percent year-on-year. This is the result of the regiment's sustained deepening of political rectification training (政治整训), continuous improvement of oversight mechanisms, and guidance of headquarters elements in transforming their work style.

Not long ago, while the regiment's political commissar led a working group to the combat support battalion during a paired-assistance visit, he had a heart-to-heart talk with the battalion clerk, Xiao Zheng. When the conversation turned to the results of relieving grassroots units of burdens—specifically the situation regarding telephone notifications received from higher headquarters—Xiao Zheng said that "superiors have been putting great effort into rectifying work style," but then became evasive and hesitant.

Xiao Zheng's reaction put the political commissar on alert. He subsequently directed the headquarters' troop management section to conduct a dedicated investigation into the situation of grassroots units receiving telephone notifications from headquarters elements.

Within a few days, an investigation report landed on the desk of the regiment party committee's leading group: the average daily number of telephone calls each battalion received from headquarters was not especially high, and the content of the calls mainly concerned three areas—data collection, task notification, and situation inquiries. However, nearly 20 percent of the notification calls received by grassroots units did not come from the regiment's operations duty room, but rather from headquarters cadres who directly contacted units to gather information using military-network mobile phones or office landlines. The investigation data showed that some statistical notifications came from cadres newly transferred into headquarters, and some of the statistical results they sought could in fact have been obtained from data updated daily by the operations duty room; some large-group political education notifications were issued by headquarters cadres who bypassed the operations duty room and sent notifications on their own because poor work coordination had left them scrambling as the class time approached. Moreover, many officers and soldiers reported during the investigation that the duty room contacted battalions and companies at least three times daily to repeatedly collect data on equipment, personnel, fuel, and other items.

"Headquarters cadres pick up the phone, open their mouths, and go straight to grassroots units to ask about situations and demand data—saving themselves the trouble of going to look things up in person, while adding no small burden to the grassroots." The regiment party committee's leading group analyzed that, on the surface, the cause of this phenomenon lay in working methods, but in reality the root of the problem lay in the work style of headquarters cadres.

At the monthly office meeting, the regiment party committee took an unambiguous stance: in conjunction with the ongoing deepening of political rectification training, problems existing in the process of headquarters elements issuing written and electronic notifications (文电通知) would be rectified; through office-meeting reviews, centralized duty-room management, and written-document registration, oversight mechanisms would be established and improved, responsibilities at each level clarified, and document-circulation procedures standardized, so as to genuinely reduce the burden on grassroots units.

Immediately, a rectification campaign targeting written and electronic notifications was launched throughout the regiment. In accordance with regulations, basic information on combat readiness, training, personnel, equipment, and other matters would be collected from grassroots units by the operations duty room, updated through regular verification, and retrieved uniformly from the operations duty room by headquarters elements when handling related matters. Each battalion and company established a logbook to faithfully record the time, reason, and channel of incoming calls from headquarters; each month the logbook would be submitted to the troop management section, which would analyze and sort the month's data. At the monthly handover meeting, the regiment's principal officers would specifically report on five categories of phenomena: "issuing notifications without authorization and without leadership approval," "issuing notifications directly without going through the duty room," "requiring grassroots units to repeatedly submit the same type of data," "making last-minute changes to notification content that disrupt grassroots unit tempo," and "rushing out notifications on Fridays or weekends"—and the leaders of the relevant headquarters departments would be required to explain the reasons on the spot.

At the same time, the regiment required headquarters departments to strengthen communication and coordination and share grassroots information and data; headquarters cadres were required to regularly go down to the front lines to investigate and understand grassroots conditions, and it was strictly prohibited for them to sit in their offices and arbitrarily demand data and materials from grassroots units. In addition, regarding the practice of the operations duty room calling battalions and companies at least three times daily to verify data, after deliberation and review the regiment party committee decided: daily telephone calls to verify data would be reduced to once per day, with grassroots units reporting any changes in their situation in real time.

Another Friday arrived. After Xiao Zheng had filed the battalion's various documents, he began sorting the battalion's combat-readiness data materials. On his desk, the telephone that used to ring from time to time remained completely quiet. The reporter visited multiple battalions and companies in the regiment; when asked about the rectification of written and electronic notifications, officers and soldiers all described new changes: rush-issued notifications have decreased, and work arrangements are more orderly; instances of "orders issuing from multiple doors (令出多门)" have decreased, and the efficiency of handling documents and matters has improved… "Now, when it comes to issuing notifications to grassroots units, everyone's first instinct is that approval procedures must be strictly followed and notifications must be issued uniformly through the operations duty room," one headquarters cadre in the regiment explained. Issuing notifications in a rational and standardized manner has become a work requirement they strictly observe.

"Sustaining the deepening of political rectification training requires adhering to seeking truth from facts, making determined efforts to correct stubborn and chronic problems (顽症痼疾), and vigorously improving work style." The regiment's leadership stated that they have already incorporated whether written and electronic notifications are issued in a standardized manner as an important element in evaluating headquarters cadres, and are using multiple measures to educate and guide headquarters cadres to genuinely improve their work style—keeping grassroots units in mind at all times, getting work done ahead of time, actively reducing the burden on grassroots officers and soldiers, and empowering grassroots-unit development.