The Office Suite as Combat Power: Generating Tempo and Regaining Time Through Microsoft Proficiency
Captain Mitchell Teefey
Editors’ Note: This article was awarded Second Place in the CxFile’s 2025 Writing Competition.
A Classic Marine Corps Scene
At 0600 on a Monday morning, an entire rifle platoon stands outside the company office, lined up and restless. One by one, they file in to recite their blood type to a clipboard-wielding NCO, who’s doing his best not to lose count. It’s a scene that plays out weekly across the Fleet Marine Force. At first glance, it looks like old-school discipline; Marines standing by, doing what they’re told. But take a step back and it becomes clear: this isn’t discipline, it’s dysfunction. And it’s wasting the one resource we will never have enough of: time.
This kind of administrative friction isn’t a result of laziness or lack of effort. It’s a result of how little digital fluency we deliberately instill in the very Marines tasked with running the daily operations of an infantry battalion. We’re short on Microsoft Office skills. The tools are already on every government laptop, but we never train Marines to use them to their full potential. As a result, entire days get lost to recreating rosters from scratch, formatting training slides by hand, and waiting on information that should be pipelined and visible to anyone who needs it.
Every company-grade officer and staff NCO should recognize that Excel and PowerPoint set conditions for their field training and operational employment. They are expected to employ these programs just like their M240Bs and M27s. Yet, many of these leaders employ the former with caveman-level skills, which creates unintended constraints on the latter. Rosters are rebuilt every PCS cycle because no one knows how to use VLOOKUP. Training calendars get distributed as screenshots instead of live links, meaning every update requires a full resend. Google Docs gets used for everything from gear lists to fire plans because “at least it works,” even though it’s not integrated with MOL, MCTIMS, or SharePoint and lacks the security standards required for sensitive material. PowerPoint decks balloon into 60-slide monstrosities that take hours to update but still manage to omit what actually matters.
This isn’t just an admin problem. It’s a warfighting problem. Time is our most limited commodity. Every hour lost to formatting errors, information friction, or redundant data calls is an hour that could’ve been used for dry-fire reps, squad attack rehearsals, or tactical decision games. If we care about maximizing training time, we need to start treating Microsoft Office proficiency as a combat support skill.
Civilian Considerations in the Digital Age
Other industries have figured this out. In construction, foremen use Excel-based tracking tools that automatically update materials and manning reports. In logistics, small business operators use Power BI dashboards to visualize inventory, shipping timelines, and staffing; all updated in real time. Smartsheet and Trello are standard tools for event planners and operations managers to track dozens of moving parts across multiple locations.
The common denominator across all of these roles? They are filled by mid-level leaders, roughly the civilian equivalent of a Platoon Commander or Company Gunnery Sergeant. Except they were mostly trained to use the software tools their jobs require. If blue-collar project managers can get fluent in Excel and PowerPoint, there’s no reason Marines can’t.
Red Time, Blue Time, and Where We Fail
This is where the concepts of red time and blue time come into play. These workflow concepts were made popular by retired US Navy submarine Captain David Marquet, author of Turn the Ship Around and Leadership Is Language. Marquet breaks time down into two basic buckets:
Red time is execution. It’s doing. It’s when Marines are in the field, conducting a range, briefing the order, stepping off on the patrol.
Blue time is thinking. It’s when we plan, design, rehearse, analyze, prep. It’s the space where we define what should happen before we move out and make it happen.
According to Marquet, most organizations underperform not because of failure in red time, but because of a failure to properly invest in blue time. They rush into action without investing the thinking required to make execution frictionless. Sound familiar?
In the infantry battalion, we burn red time constantly. We waste it when a live-fire range is delayed because someone forgot to request the correct DODIC on the TSR. We waste it when a training plan is delayed because the range tracker isn’t up to date. We waste it when we manually build the same roster three times in three formats because no one knows how to use XLOOKUP. This isn’t a red time failure, it’s a failure to prepare during blue time.
Blue time isn’t downtime. It’s design time. And in an organization where training hours are finite and competition for calendar space is brutal, smart blue time pays massive dividends in the field. If your Excel roster has conditional formatting, dropdowns, and auto-populated range data, then red time doesn’t get spent fixing errors or calling for clarifications, it gets spent rehearsing, shooting, and improving.
By leveraging tools like Microsoft Power Automate, SharePoint Lists, and even basic Excel formulas, you are investing in blue time to set your team up for successful, streamlined red time. Throw in emerging AI tools that can summarize data, identify gaps, and recommend task prioritization; and now your red time is not only faster, it’s smarter.
Marquet’s insight applies perfectly to us: “Don’t empower people to make better choices. Instead, give them the information and control to design the system that produces better choices automatically.” In Marine-speak? Stop telling squads to train harder. Start building the systems that give them the time and clarity to train better.
What “Proficient” Actually Looks Like
For starters, it means using data validation in Excel to create dropdown menus for inputs like rank, MOS, and medical status. It means learning to apply conditional formatting so that expired quals or overdue training events are automatically highlighted in red. It means replacing hours of manual cross-referencing with a single XLOOKUP function that pulls data from another tab. For more advanced users, pivot tables can be used to summarize performance stats by platoon, while charts and graphs can be generated with two clicks to help visualize trends at the company or battalion level.
On the PowerPoint side, it’s about using SmartArt to cleanly display command relationships or LOGSTAT flows, rather than building everything from scratch with a dozen misaligned text boxes. It’s about creating slide templates with reusable headers and footers so the CO’s expectations for format and content are met every time. And most importantly, it’s about embedding live Excel charts so that brief decks update automatically as the source data changes, cutting down hours of update prep before every battalion-level sync.
For the digitally ambitious, Power BI opens the door to building battalion-level dashboards that display live readiness data, range qual percentages, and T&R event completion rates. While this is a stretch goal, it’s one that is absolutely within reach of a sharp Company XO or Assistant Operations Officer with a few hours of focused instruction.
How to Implement This Tomorrow
The most important thing is that we stop waiting for “digital natives” to figure this out on their own. Deliberate instruction is needed. A simple “Admin Education Thursday” PME block could transform a unit in just a few weeks. The format is straightforward: one hour per week, hands-on only, no PowerPoint briefings about PowerPoint. Week one could cover Excel basics: formatting, dropdowns, and locking cells. Week two might tackle XLOOKUP and linking multiple data sources. Week three could be PowerPoint layout tips. Week four could walk Marines through posting shared live links in SharePoint or OneDrive. Use real company data to teach, so participants walk away with a working product.
Some changes can be implemented immediately. A Company XO can rebuild the master roster using dropdowns and conditional formatting, so that any SNCO can immediately see overdue items at a glance. A training matrix tracker can be built in Excel with platoon tabs and a pivot table that auto-generates summaries for the battalion’s weekly training sync. Range NCOs can use a pre-built template that color-codes qual scores by passing or failing, and a bar chart can be linked directly into the next command & staff brief.
Click Here to Get Smarter: Office Tools Tutorial Library for the Grunt Staff Section
These videos are not for “data nerds.” They’re for infantry leaders who are sick of wasting their own time (and everyone else’s) tracking training, building rosters, or consolidating information by hand. Watch one over lunch, implement it before the close of business. Each video is handpicked and under 25 minutes, most are under 10.
Excel Tutorials
Data Validation (Dropdown Lists) – Technology for Teachers and Students (13:07)
What it teaches: How to create dropdown menus in cells (e.g., Rank, MOS, Med Ready: Yes/No).
Why it matters: Prevents garbage data entries. Marines can’t accidentally type “Sergent” or “0341#.” Great for training trackers or consolidated rosters.
Conditional Formatting in Excel – Kevin Stratvert (6:43)
What it teaches: How to make cells automatically change color based on conditions.
Why it matters: Red = overdue. Yellow = within 30 days. Green = complete. Use it to color-code quals, medical readiness, and PFT windows at a glance.
XLOOKUP Explained Simply – Excel Campus - Jon (3:32)
What it teaches: How to automatically pull matching data from other spreadsheets.
Why it matters: You no longer need to manually cross-reference your roster with the PFT tracker or MedPros sheet. XLOOKUP does it in seconds.
Pivot Tables Excel Tutorials – Kevin Stratvert (13:35)
What it teaches: How to summarize big data into usable insights.
Why it matters: Perfect for summarizing qual stats by platoon, displaying gear readiness by squad, or showing who has completed PME by billet.
Create an Excel Dashboard – Technology for Teachers and Students (14:02)
What it teaches: How to build a clean, professional dashboard using existing data.
Why it matters: Impress your CO and free yourself from building 30-slide updates. A good dashboard shows training readiness, gear shortfalls, and task completion at a glance.
PowerPoint Tutorials
PowerPoint Slide Master Tutorial – Kevin Stratvert (6:04)
What it teaches: How to create templates that apply across all slides.
Why it matters: No more formatting every slide by hand. Use it for standardized OPORD briefs, LOGSTAT updates, or CO-level syncs.
Insert Live Excel Charts in PowerPoint – Sharon Smith (2:48)
What it teaches: How to insert Excel charts that auto-update inside PowerPoint.
Why it matters: When your range tracker updates, your brief updates. No more copying/pasting screenshots the morning of the battalion training meeting.
Using SmartArt Graphics – Envato Tuts+ (5:05)
What it teaches: How to visually present command relationships, gear flow, or phased operations.
Why it matters: Replaces text-heavy slides with clean, readable visuals. Use for LOGSTAT, gear issue flow, or phased range planning.
SharePoint Tutorials
How to Use SharePoint for Beginners – Bulb Digital (11:41)
What it teaches: Basics of uploading, organizing, and sharing files in SharePoint.
Why it matters: Build a shared folder for company admin docs that updates live. Stop emailing attachments, just send the link.
Create and Share a SharePoint List – Michael Alex (10:10)
What it teaches: How to use SharePoint Lists for shared task or data tracking.
Why it matters: Use it to track company PME, range completion, or corrective actions. These are visible to all leaders, editable by authorized users.
Outlook Calendar Tips
Microsoft Outlook Tips – Teacher’s Tech (23:26)
What it teaches: How to use Outlook Calendar to synchronize events across the unit.
Why it matters: Use it to manage training, maintenance, and other admin timelines in one shared view with reminders so everyone has the same common operational picture.
Bonus: Power BI (Stretch Goal)
Power BI for Beginners – Leila Gharani (23:05)
What it teaches: How to build a dynamic, clickable dashboard with live data.
Why it matters: Replace your whiteboard stats with a live snapshot of company readiness that updates automatically.
Building the Varsity Microsoft Office Infantry Battalion
Pro Tip: Staff and XOs, Watch Together
Want to build unit-wide competence fast? Pick a single Microsoft Office skill video every Thursday during set-aside admin time. Something short, focused, and immediately useful, like conditional formatting in Excel or smart layouts in PowerPoint. Then immediately apply it to a real company product: rosters, EDL trackers, or training support requests.
The XO should act like an information manager-in-chief. He needs to create a system that produces good products consistently. Each company, platoon or section contributes a slice and the XO ensures they’re interoperable, deployable, and standardized. A good XO doesn’t operate in a vacuum; he runs the command information ecosystem.
Here’s the gameplan for that XO:
Assign Roles and Ownership: Make the lieutenants and SNCOs responsible for formatting and formulas across the company. Ensure there is continuity to make sure it’s all updated when billets rotate. This gives ownership to both sides of the officer/SNCO divide and keeps products consistent year after year.
Standardize the Templates: Create a shared folder on SharePoint or the battalion’s internal drive with approved templates for rosters, trackers, and slides. Build them once, save them forever. Every company uses the same design language, fonts, colors, and structure so the battalion looks like a single unit instead of five different units.
Make It Deployable: Ensure every tracker or planning product is NIPR-compliant and lightweight enough to survive a MEU composite. If it can’t travel on a government laptop or migrated over to SIPR, it doesn’t count. The system must survive embarkation.
Enforce and Audit: Operations should spot-check products constantly to keep quality control tight. This isn’t micromanagement; it’s accountability for readiness. A good Excel file is like a clean weapon, it works when you need it.
Institutionalize Garrison Habits: The same process that updates training rosters in garrison should feed the pre-combat checklist in the field. The same PowerPoint designs should drive the company’s CONOPS slides during workup and deployment.
The long game here is tempo. A battalion that can produce clean data, consistent reports, and synchronized visuals faster than its peers moves information at the speed of decision. That’s lethality, just translated into Excel. A varsity Microsoft Office battalion doesn’t win firefights with pivot tables, but it does win the time fight, the most finite resource in any operation.
The ROI is Real
The return on investment is measurable. If each platoon wastes just three hours a week on redundant admin friction, across four platoons and 40 training weeks, that’s 480 platoon man-hours lost time that could’ve been spent rehearsing MOUT, prepping for live fires, or doing actual PME. By teaching basic Office proficiency, we reclaim that time and give it back to the warfighters.
None of this is about turning infantrymen into S-shoppers or staff weenies. It’s about eliminating the friction that stops Marines from training. A Rifleman wouldn’t be allowed to go to the field without knowing how to clear a double feed. So why are we okay with a Platoon Commander who doesn’t know how to build a roster? Admin will never go away, but we can make it painless. And when we do, we win back time, reps, and sanity.
Like it or not, Microsoft Office is a critical event within the shaping phase for both training and operations. We can either live in denial or act decisively. Good Marines own their sector regardless of whatever position they are assigned. Dominate it, or be dominated - these are your options.
Captain Mitchell Teefey is an active-duty Infantry Officer. He currently serves as Operations Officer for Recruiting Station Sacramento. He can be reached at Mitchell.Teefey@marines.usmc.mil
Great f'n article, to use the doctrinal term. Practical, to the point, and with real solutions.
In long ago days, I use to joke that one had to learn to manipulate the matrix to their advantage. Captain Teefey gives the modern solution as to how to do that.
I've got long experience from paper through semi modern digital management. Managing your info is a key task, both in the everyday and in the execution of regular training. The best NCOs and Officers I served with ensured that admin wasn't a nagging PITA. It was handled succinctly, professionally and....next.
The bureaucracy and the system are not the problem here; it is the cliche yet everyday attitude that managing admin is a chore to be treated as late and little as possible. The trope of the grizzled leader who doesn't do paperwork doesn't help. It is one thing when the admin is excessive and non productive (resubmission after resubmission due to minor non critical edits).
The real grizzled leader knows that to be effective means to ensure the admin is handled accurately and with the least effort needed. This also goes to troop welfare; if a unit can't manage basic awareness of individual Marine info, they are failing to ensure troop welfare.
Finally, this article is a friendly softball pitch to the unit fighting real problems with bureaucratic abuse and 'the system'. There is nothing so easy to shutting down 'the stupid sht' (also a doctrinal term) as having one's own house wired tight.
I'll end with a story. A self professed knuckledragger I know found himself the XO of what, at the time, was arguably the largest company in 2d MarDiv (it was H&S Co, 2d Tanks in the late '90s). During his tenure, the USMC transitioned from Lotus to Microsoft Office. The unit had been managing training records on an Approach database that had been created years before. Of course, record keeping had to be transitioned. It would have been easy just to repopulate into Excel and call it good, or devolve to something worse. However, my friend the knuckledragger took the time to learn the new system and built a new access database. He then figured out a practical solution to populating the new MS database from the old one. It took a lot of time, thought, and effort, especially at a time when there were no resident experts on hand. But it was worth it...the unit was able to go back to efficiently managing training and fighting with CWOs to get their Marines to the rifle range with minimal admin friction. The moral of the story, as Capt Teefey implies, is 'handle your admin or it will handle you'.
Author; being bogged down in bureaucracy is the feature not a bug.
The government doesn’t want the military to have time to train or be efficient, it wants its leaders to be bureaucrats who… mindlessly chained to meaningless administrative tasks, confusing duty with compliance to be *ruined* therein…
And paralyzed, lobotomized.
Author confuses what he thinks is distraction with the Objective .
The objective is to wear down Gulliver with nonsense to render the Giant dull and useless.
It works as you can see.
Hence our record the last generation.
Bureaucracy- This is why when I was a Captain we hated the admittedly toxic field grades , the Captains who stayed became toxic field grades. As for Generals you saw their fate at Quantico. Sad.
I don’t regret leaving or coming back years later for GWOT as an NCO.
The leadership above E6 and LT in OIF had a saying- we went to war and garrison broke out.
They may keep their promotions.
Mind you the system is ruining the NCOs as well with the same methods.
Frankly they’re damaged as a body and the CSM rank is ruined.
Nothing is said here that hasn’t been said for decades, we said this then, it was said and wrote many times later.
It was written down and published before we got there, this is the system.
There may be a window for change now, and respectfully it’s not by embracing administrative and bureaucratic improvement in digital bureaucracy. The extent of your success in saving administrative time won’t be more training time - but additional bureaucratic burdens.
Like every academic you’ll come to realize… no one is reading or heeding all these presentations or reports. This isn’t the way out- just sinking deeper into an infinite pit.
Pardon my candor, but turn away from this path.
As for career impact …
There are 2 men in every soldier , and the warrior kills the careerist or the careerist drains the warrior to a husk.
Kill the careerist fast or he kills you slow.
The careerist is staring at you from the screen.
Do walk away.
VR, good luck.