execute. There are a lot of people who can develop ideas. I call them idea ducks: They waddle around the barnyard laying idea eggs. But there are very few people that can sit on the clutch of eggs and see the eggs hatch, because it’s just a lot of work.
I think it’s absolutely essential that you get everyone down at the lowest levels involved in developing the vision for the organization, developing the idea of where you want to go, developing the goals and the objectives. And once it’s decided, once you’ve collaborated, it takes leaders to just press that home on a daily basis. If you don’t, change doesn’t happen. And it’s hard even if you do it that way.
Q. The Army encourages the application of Lean Six Sigma principles to identify opportunities for greater efficiency and effectiveness. What do you see as the greatest value of the Lean Six Sigma and other quality improvement processes?
A. Here in VA, the Veterans Health Administration, for one, is an absolute role model in embracing Lean Six Sigma concepts—identifying and removing causes, defects, and errors in the deliv- ery of their daily health care services. But we’re doing the same thing in the pro- curement arena. We haven’t always done it this way, but in the last year, year and a half, we began measuring the health of our procurement organizations across VA.
We do this based on agreed-upon metrics. There are 11 metrics we use.
We’ve created a pod of systems analysts in my office who develop quantitative busi- nesses cases for changes in the way we procure. It’s very difficult to find people with quantitative skills in the government because we haven’t emphasized that in the past. So in this instance, the majority of them are suppliers we’ve hired. What they
do is, they develop hypotheses. These hypotheses say if we do x, we can save y. And then we require them to prove their hypotheses with a business case, and in doing so they develop a range for return on investment. And once a business case is approved, it might tell us we need to standardize. We did this, for instance, with office supplies.
Then the same analysts are required to bird-dog or monitor that program so they can tell us what we’re actually saving. These analysts—I call them my ORSA pod, Operations Research Systems Ana- lysts (sort of like an orca pod)—are doing a great job.
While I promote Lean Six Sigma and its tenets, I’ve seen many times in my career that my bosses were willing to spend money on total quality initiatives, such as Lean Six Sigma, but in many cases they weren’t willing to spend the money on a group of people like we have here in VA who could actually put the business cases together and then bird-dog those deci- sions down the road. My leadership has allowed me to hire people I need. We think there’s going to be a large payoff. We’ve got a long ways to go before we can declare victory.
We’re working with VHA to stand up seven program offices. Each of these program offices will have a portfolio of products. For instance, a portfolio could be surgical. And so, this portfolio man- ager and others who work for him or her will know everything there is to know about products ranging from staples to scalpels, for instance. They will know what the market is, they will know what new products are being developed by industry, and they will in turn work with the analysis team, this ORSA pod, who will constantly develop new business cases for them. Requirements will then be sent
to the Strategic Acquisition Center in Fredericksburg, VA, which will put these requirements on contract.
So we’ve got a three-leg stool. We’ll have program managers, spend analysts, and contracting officers working in concert. We will make data-driven decisions, and we’ll collect data after we make our deci- sions to determine if we made the right decisions. This has never been done in the past here at VA.
If the Army medical folks are doing [portfolio management], that would be a perfect way for us to collaborate.
Q. Do you have any final words of advice for Army AL&T professionals trying to support a climate of efficient and effective business practices and to succeed amid global change and constant competition for resources?
A. I hope VA and DoD endeavor to work ever more closely together as we move into an ever more constrained budget environ- ment. It’s going to take leadership from the top down to make this happen. Lead- ership, leadership, leadership. Without it, nothing seems to take place. It seems every well-intended move to save the govern- ment money has some corollary political or turf issue associated with it. We’ve got to somehow get over those issues and get over them quickly, because there’s gold in those hills to be mined. We owe the American people, I think, our best efforts, and so my advice is we all sit down and work collectively and demonstrate superb leadership in making it happen.
This Critical Thinking column is condensed from a Nov. 28 Army AL&T interview with Jan R. Frye. Read the full interview online at
http://asc.army.mil/docs/ pubs/alt/Critical_Thinking_Jan_Frye_ Access_AL&T.pdf.
ASC.ARMY.MIL 101
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