Tag Archives: Poor air force decisions

Chapter 90, Following

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I have been a very bad blogger.  I got caught up in the craziness of the holiday season and then I became totally obsessed with a remodeling project which I finally finished last week and now I’m months behind communicating with ya’ll.  One of you even emailed to ask if I was still alive and, other than a few work related scars from a basement that is way too short for normal humans, I am fine.  Thanks for caring!

One of the biggest challenges most folks face is dealing with a new boss.  No two leaders are the same and there are always preconceptions on both sides that need to be either confirmed or dissolved.  It’s something we all go through and not dealing with can destroy careers.  Here’s my philosophy.

1) Give him the benefit of the doubt.  Rarely does someone come to a new organization with the express purpose of destroying it or making your life miserable.  Their leadership style might be different than the one you prefer but, many times, it’s because the organization they came from had different needs.  It takes awhile to learn the dynamics of a new situation.

2) Listen.  The new guy wants to get up to speed as quickly as possible and will be, or should be, trying to pry as much background information out of you to come up with a strategy to move forward.   You, however,  need to know his history and perspectives and that knowledge will help you understand the source of his decisions.

3) Make his goals your goals.  If the guy is a metrics maniac then give him metrics.  If he wants kept up to date on every bit of minutiae then give him every last crumb.  If he just wants broad strokes then give him the big picture.  It makes no sense to butt heads over the simple stuff.

4) Don’t try to become him.  Just because he might like to run marathons or like hockey or love the Grateful Dead doesn’t mean you have do the same things.  He doesn’t need your nose planted firmly in his behind and if he does then he won’t last long anyway.

There is one great truth when it comes to any organization.  Given enough time it will take on the attributes of its’ leader.  I have seen this go very well and I have seen this go very badly.  If a leader is, let’s say, lacking in the integrity department he will gradually surround himself with like-minded people.  Eventually the organization will become infected to the point that the unspoken core values will be that of the leader.  It can take generations of leadership changes at all levels to purge the effects of one bad commander.

There have been an increasing number of incidents in the Air Force, and in the military as a whole, of a lack of integrity.  Cheating on tests.  Lying to the public and Congress.  Failing nuclear surety inspections.  Falsifying records.  You can try to assess blame at the lowest levels but when an attitude and policy of lawlessness is demonstrated at the highest level, it gradually works its way down through the ranks.  When the Commander-in-Chief is flagrantly breaking the law, almost daily, it sends an unspoken message that permeates through the military.  It’s up to you, who are still in, to keep the bar high.  The means are just as important as the ends.  What constitutes an illegal order?  What does the constitution, that you have sworn to uphold and defend, really say?  Unless we change direction I’m afraid many of you will have to make some career ending decisions when faced with the reality of those questions.

Be a good leader and a better follower. Don’t be sheep.

Chapter 54, “Happy Anniversary”

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Happy Anniversary!!  Well friends, it’s been exactly one year since I started on this journey.  At first I thought I would write these things once a month or maybe once a quarter but, if you’ve been with me since last January, you know that I’ve developed an addiction to sharing.  My intention is to keep this up as long as ya’ll are interested or at least mildly amused.  I am, however, doing something a little different today.  You might assume I’m being lazy but the truth is, Chapter 1 is just as timely today as it was a year ago.  Remember, I wrote this before the FSA (Force Structure Announcement).  I was either prescient or  part of a pretty good rumor network.  I’m not telling which!

So here it is, Chapter 1.  Integrity first!  Service before self!  Excellence in all we do!

 

I have lots of books.  I’m not really a book collecting kind of guy, but over 34 years I’ve accumulated a fairly substantial library.  At home I have an office, or man cave in the current vernacular, although I don’t have a TV.  It’s just my computer, my “I love me wall”, and lots of bookshelves (If you know Peg, IKEA of course!).  I’ve got a “do it yourself” section, a theology section, a fiction section, a Ronald Reagan section, and a smattering of political references.  On the other hand my library at work is a bit more, shall we say, eclectic.

I have books jammed in the credenza, in the drawers, on the coffee table and every time I move I’m amazed at how many boxes it takes to empty the office.  I’ve got Ayn Rand, Charles Colson, Natan Sharansky, and C.S. Lewis just to name a few, but there isn’t really an overarching theme to any of it.  Just things I find interesting.

At the top of the “interesting” list is a thrilling read entitled, “Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission, 1995 Report to the President”.  In 1995 I was here at Pittsburgh as the Chief of Stan/Eval.  A job I loved but, after 9 years and multiple ASEVs, decided to leave in 1999 for a DO job in Youngstown.  But I digress.  I remember clearly the day that the proposal was made by the DoD to close Pittsburgh and that moment is captured precisely in the Commission Report with the quote: “It’s operating costs are the greatest among Air Force Reserve C-130 operations at civilian airfields”.  Well, we were gobsmacked!  We knew our financial situation here at Pittsburgh.  We only pay $20,000 per year to lease our property and it includes all fire fighting and crash/rescue services from the County.  Greater Pittsburgh has an international reputation as the most efficient snow removal airport in the nation and the runways are open 24/7 with almost no interruption even with the occasional blizzard.  The county even comes over and repaints the lines on our ramp for free.  We could only conclude that either other airports pay the units to be there or there was something “rotten in Denmark”, or at least Georgia.

We had some pretty smart guys here at the time, math/accounting types, so after the BRAC folks provided us their data base we were able to dig into numbers and it quickly became obvious that something wasn’t quite right.  “Someone” had taken many of the highest costs from all of the C-130 units and plugged them into the data for Pittsburgh and in some cases, numbers were just fabricated.  AFRES had decided what they wanted the answer to be and had, through the plans office, made the numbers add up.

The BRAC commissioner assigned to talk with the 911th was a small businessman from Rapid City, South Dakota and as we started the interview I remember him brushing aside discussions of value to the community and economic impact.  His perspective was that all communities suffer when their unit is closed and he just wanted facts.  Well, when the cooked books were presented to him, his whole attitude changed.  He gathered up the spreadsheets and headed out the door.

His conclusions were veiled in the paragraph:  “The commission found costs to operate Pittsburgh International Airport Air Reserve Station were inaccurate.  With corrected data applied to the COBRA model, the commission found Pittsburgh was one of the least costly installations to operate”.  As we all know, the commission eventually placed all C-130 bases on the list and made them defend themselves.  The rumor was perpetuated, and the myth continues to this day, that Pittsburgh pointed the finger at all of the other units when, in reality by attempting to cook the books, HQ placed all units at risk.

Eventually Chicago closed, mostly because the mayor literally told the commission that he didn’t want the unit there.  General Macintosh came to Pittsburgh and apologized at a commanders’ call for “mistakes” that were made and told us that “heads had rolled”, or at least been move to other offices.  But the end result was a community which now rabidly defends the 911th as it does all things “Pittsburgh” and offers its sons and daughters to its Reserve unit at a higher rate than any other C-130 unit in AFRC.

Luckily, we’re much more enlightened these days.  We’ve imbued our AF culture with TQM/6 Sigma/AFSO21 and all decisions are fact based/metric-micro-managed and we can be sure that everything we do is done to save the taxpayer the most amount of money and not to meet petty political parochial agendas.

What happened in the next BRAC – Ditto!

Chapter 47 – “That was Easy”

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I’ve given hundreds of cockpit tours over the years and I think the most asked question is: “How do you know what all those buttons and switches do?” It seems like a pretty silly question to those of us that fly.  Personally, I think there are a lot more interesting things in a cockpit than buttons and switches but as we’ve become a much more technologically adept society we’ve become fascinated with, well, buttons.

I think my favorite button is the magical one on my DVR which allows me to hop through commercials 30 seconds at a time.  I’ve discovered that you can watch a three hour football game in about 30 minutes because the 30 second button jumps almost perfectly from snap to snap.  It’s a wonderful thing.  Even phones and tablets have the equivalent of buttons in Apps.  Just tap the virtual button to get what you want.  So it’s not surprising when advertisers take advantage of our infatuation by including buttons in commercials.

For years Staples has been using the “EASY” button in their campaigns and some folks even buy them for their offices.   Although I’m not sure the message it gives when women put them on their desks.  So I wasn’t surprised to read that the Air Force is now being guided by a new doctrine I’ve recently seen described in some documents from the highest levels.  I think it’s being called the EASY doctrine.  There are many ways of approaching challenges.  Most organizations take a hard look at their goals, do the research to map out a path to that destination and then base decisions on the most economical and strategic path to get there.  The Air Force has now decided that the EASY doctrine can save lots of time.  It doesn’t necessarily save money or meet goals but it’s, well, easy.

Let’s apply the doctrine to some real world crisis.  No one likes losing aircraft or personnel, so if, let’s say, North Korea decides to start infringing on Japan or South Korea it would be lots of work to move forces and deploy aircraft so the “easy ” answer would be one of two choices.  Do nothing or nuke them.  Just pick one, it’s easy.  It might not be the most popular decision, but it is easy.  You can apply this new doctrine to almost any situation and it will always boil down to the two options.  Do nothing or nuke them.  What could be simpler.

Where did I get this new doctrine?  Well it seems that the Air Force has finally admitted that it’s decisions on the, let me be politically correct, Force Structure Realignment is based solely on the EASY doctrine.  But here’s the really confusing part.  They claim that closing the 911th is EASY because of its size, but in reality it’s illegal to close based on Federal law.  In reality, they COULD legally, unilaterally shut down the 908th. That would be EASY and LEGAL.  So after a lot of thought and research I’ve concluded that there must be a part of the new doctrine to which I’m not privy.  Apparently the “We have no integrity” doctrine trumps portions of the “EASY” doctrine and I suspect that there might be a “We’re just too damn stupid and stubborn for our own good” doctrine tucked in their somewhere.  I’m sure glad there’s a first amendment and I plan on exercising it every chance I get.

I think it’s time to press another virtual button.  “Click on Send”