Be an agent for change, not a speed bump

  • Published
  • By Maj. David Snoddy
  • 71st Communications Squadron
Vance Air Force Base, Okla. --  During the United States Air Force's relatively short existence, the maxim, "the only constant in the universe is change," has certainly been applicable to our service's evolution and development.
Arguably, there were periods of time when the changes made were slow and deliberate. An example is the decades-long Cold War during which Strategic Air Command ruled supreme and most of our service's attention was focused on maintaining two of the three legs of the Nuclear Triad.
As we know, the Cold War came to an abrupt end in the early 1990s, followed shortly by Operation Desert Storm. Once the dust settled, the Air Force entered a new era punctuated by significant changes. I'm not talking about changes in our major weapon systems; I'm talking about major organizational changes and reductions in manpower.
In June 1992, the Air Force completely realigned and renamed its major commands, many of which existed since the creation of the United States Air Force. Late that same year, the Air Force identified nearly 1,600 officers for involuntary separation. For those in the Air Force at the time, it was a time of significant frustration, confusion and a general gnashing of teeth. Sound familiar?
Over the last several years, the Air Force went through two phases of Force Shaping, and there are ongoing efforts to identify roughly 40,000 manpower positions to eliminate over the next five years. Many options are being explored, some of which may prove to be as wide-ranging as the 1992 transformation.
One of the significant differences between the Air Force of 1992 and the Air Force of 2006 is the baseline number of people we have on active duty. In 1992, the Air Force's active-duty population numbered close to 475,000. Today that number is closer to 347,000. Given this fact, we have long since passed the point of being able to do "more with less." The manpower simply isn't there to keep doing things the way we have always done them.
Recognizing this, the Air Force introduced the concept of Air Force Smart Operations 21, or AFSO 21 for short. Using AFSO 21, Air Force members at all levels will examine their processes from beginning to end, looking for ways to improve them and, where it makes sense, to eliminate non-value-added tasks altogether. In many cases, functional communities will look for technological ways to streamline processes and reduce manpower.
Many major process changes are already underway, particularly in the support side. For example, the finance and personnel communities have started to centralize functions -- downsizing the number of people working at the base level -- and relying on individual Air Force men and women to take care of themselves through Web-based systems such as myPay and the Virtual Military Personnel Flight. Within my own functional community, we are on the verge of some fundamental changes in the way we organize to provide communications and information services to the Air Force. The most visible effect will be the elimination of communication squadrons at bases such as Vance.
One of the common themes expressed in articles on managing change and becoming agents of change is the need to establish and support a shared vision. In our case, our senior leaders have articulated their vision in the "Air Force Transformation Flight Plan," also known as Program Budget Decision 720 or simply PBD 720. In short, all of the ongoing and proposed changes will help the Air Force "transform to a more lethal, more agile, streamlined force with an increased emphasis on the warfighter."
Change rarely occurs without disruption. It is human nature to avoid and resist change because it drives us out of our comfort zones. With the vision now established, the question we must each ask ourselves is, "Am I going to be an agent for change or am I going to resist change at every opportunity?" I would say there is really only one correct answer to the question: it is each of our
professional responsibilities to become agents for change.
Once we each embrace the Air Force's transformation vision, we must seek to understand and apply the concepts embodied by AFSO 21 to look for ways to streamline, replace or eliminate processes within our functional areas and we must support process changes being implemented within other areas across the Air Force.
Accepting your role as an agent for change does not mean you cannot raise valid concerns and observations on the impact of proposed changes. Healthy debate is always constructive. The key here is to raise concerns in a non-emotional way and, as we've all learned in various professional development courses, if you're going to say something won't work, be prepared to offer an alternative.
I once heard Gen. John Jumper say, "There's a 100-percent chance we won't get this 100-percent right." While General Jumper was not referring to the Air Force's current transformation initiatives, his words still ring true. We will encounter problems along the way and some transformation efforts will not work as planned. Be that as it may, the transformation of the Air Force will continue, so the challenge for each of us is to get on board, support the vision laid out by our senior leaders, and become agents for change instead of speed bumps on the road, which will take us all to the leaner and more agile Air Force of tomorrow.