ARMY AL&T
Army AL&T: You spoke at the AUSA Winter Symposium about “turning things upside down” in Army S&T. In terms of execution, what are the first concrete steps needed to accomplish this at your level?
Freeman: The process of doing strategic planning and strategic change is well-known. The starting point is a good foundation, built on core values, mission, and fundamental business processes that we already have.
Next, we have to create a vision. It has to be clear and one that everyone can understand and get behind. A vision is a top-level thing. Our new S&T vision talks about empowering, unburdening, and protecting our Soldiers. It talks about technology-enabled capabilities being the key product we deliver. My point is: We are no longer just focused on delivering individual “widgets,” individual technology—partial solutions to things. We are focused on making the S&T product more robust and capability-relevant.
TRADOC [U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command] does the warfighter capabilities. We are focused on providing technology-enabled
capabilities. Going forward, we will strengthen our partnership with TRADOC and work closely with their leadership to make sure that our technology deliverables enable the kinds of capabilities they envision.
The next thing leadership must do is set goals. I show a set of nine goals for Army S&T, which include things like, “world-class S&T.” The words sound great, a big aspiration and all. But what is behind the words? From my perspective, it means having the people, skills, and competencies you need in the right areas to do the job that you’re asking them to do. That doesn’t just mean we need a lot of Ph.D.s. We also need a lot of people throughout our S&T enterprise who understand what it is that the Army needs and how to apply their skills, their competencies, and their knowledge to solve those problems.
Timely transition of the right technologies is another extremely important goal. What do we transition? We transition ideas and concepts; we transition what works and what doesn’t. We transition information. There are a lot of things we transition other than just widgets. Of course, sometimes
we’re going to look at a set of things and say, let us show you how these several technologies work together to give you the capability that you want. Then it becomes a system or a subsystem that we transition. That’s a small part of what this goal is talking about. We’re talking to our PMs and PEOs to inform them about what technologies will work, and what won’t.
Every one of these nine goals is pur- poseful and meaningful. What I expect the community to do, starting with my office and my staff, is to understand what is behind them. They need to internalize these and figure out, in their responsibility realm, what they need to do to achieve the desired outcome.
Army AL&T: Is there a timetable attached to that?
Freeman: Yes. The timetable for my staff is the end of the fiscal year. I’ve asked them each to develop their roles and/or areas of responsibility— to tell me which of these nine goals they are primarily going to work on this year, and what their own goals, vision, and objectives are against these goals for their part of their technology or business portfolio. That’s the first step. At the end of this fiscal year, I’ll be expecting that our center and laboratory personnel will focus on understanding how they can contribute to achieving these goals. Of course, there’s nothing that precludes them from doing that ahead of time.
When you talk about goals, the logical next step is to talk about objectives. If you’re going to reinvent something, if you’re going to reinvigorate it, you have to look at scope, timeframe, and risk, which ultimately enables you to establish pri- orities. If you look at the set of my nine goals, there are three that are fundamental and are the underpinnings for everything else: timely transition of technologies, balanced S&T investment portfolio, and strong internal/external partnerships.
8 APRIL –JUNE 2011
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