When faced with a limited resource environment, Winston Churchill told his senior staff: “Gentlemen, we have run out of money, now we must think.”
As we watched the news recently, read the paper or listened to the radio, none of us could avoid getting bombarded by the ongoing U.S. debt ceiling debate. Nothing in this world is certain, but the signals are strong that our Department of Defense will face significant budget pressures in the near future.
While senior military staffs in Washington, D.C., will make tough force-structure and mission decisions, it is critically important for U.S. service members at all levels to embrace the challenge and set new conditions for mission success.
I don’t believe future success rests solely with senior leaders back at the Pentagon. Today, our Air Force has the smartest and best-educated Airmen we’ve ever had.
As an organization, we owe it to ourselves to leverage this powerful capability as much as possible. Simply put, today’s Air Force leaders must create a work environment that empowers every individual in every unit to look beyond the regulative and bureaucratic constraints that shape how we currently do our jobs. We must all work together to find new and innovative ways to be more efficient while still complying with standards.
A great example of this kind of leadership and innovation was recently championed by the 86th Munitions Squadron. The professionals who ship hazardous cargo were operating under an outdated, inefficient process that required the manual transfer of paperwork between multiple organizations. As a result, more than 200 coordination folders proved to be lost or delayed. Empowered Airmen saw this as an opportunity to improve the scheduling and transportation process. Using available collaboration software, a team of cross-functional experts developed a “total shipment visibility” dashboard. TSV enabled all staff functions to use a single, transparent and integrated transportation scheduling process.
Leadership and teamwork made TSV an impressive success; in only a few months, the shipment backlog disappeared. While TSV did not change directives or governing policy, it leveraged the principles of transparency, integration and cooperation to significantly reduce the manpower required to navigate a complex process.
While TSV is only one example of innovation, it showcases how Airmen willing to look beyond long-standing and bureaucratic processes can reduce manpower while simultaneously enabling more effective, more responsive and more compliant operations. An important lesson is that leadership is more than leading and managing under the mountain of regulations and policies that tell us how to do our job. Our Airmen deserve leaders willing and able to set a course that seeks out innovation.
Today, our military must work smarter, not harder. We are privileged to have a force comprised of amazing, smart and energetic Airmen. When empowered and encouraged, our Airmen will develop more efficient processes … they are ready to innovate.
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When faced with a limited resource environment, Winston Churchill told his senior staff: “Gentlemen, we have run out of money, now we must think.”
As we watched the news recently, read the paper or listened to the radio, none of us could avoid getting bombarded by the ongoing U.S. debt ceiling debate. Nothing in this world is certain, but the signals are strong that our Department of Defense will face significant budget pressures in the near future.
While senior military staffs in Washington, D.C., will make tough force-structure and mission decisions, it is critically important for U.S. service members at all levels to embrace the challenge and set new conditions for mission success.
I don’t believe future success rests solely with senior leaders back at the Pentagon. Today, our Air Force has the smartest and best-educated Airmen we’ve ever had.
As an organization, we owe it to ourselves to leverage this powerful capability as much as possible. Simply put, today’s Air Force leaders must create a work environment that empowers every individual in every unit to look beyond the regulative and bureaucratic constraints that shape how we currently do our jobs. We must all work together to find new and innovative ways to be more efficient while still complying with standards.
A great example of this kind of leadership and innovation was recently championed by the 86th Munitions Squadron. The professionals who ship hazardous cargo were operating under an outdated, inefficient process that required the manual transfer of paperwork between multiple organizations. As a result, more than 200 coordination folders proved to be lost or delayed. Empowered Airmen saw this as an opportunity to improve the scheduling and transportation process. Using available collaboration software, a team of cross-functional experts developed a “total shipment visibility” dashboard. TSV enabled all staff functions to use a single, transparent and integrated transportation scheduling process.
Leadership and teamwork made TSV an impressive success; in only a few months, the shipment backlog disappeared. While TSV did not change directives or governing policy, it leveraged the principles of transparency, integration and cooperation to significantly reduce the manpower required to navigate a complex process.
While TSV is only one example of innovation, it showcases how Airmen willing to look beyond long-standing and bureaucratic processes can reduce manpower while simultaneously enabling more effective, more responsive and more compliant operations. An important lesson is that leadership is more than leading and managing under the mountain of regulations and policies that tell us how to do our job. Our Airmen deserve leaders willing and able to set a course that seeks out innovation.
Today, our military must work smarter, not harder. We are privileged to have a force comprised of amazing, smart and energetic Airmen. When empowered and encouraged, our Airmen will develop more efficient processes … they are ready to innovate.