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Give them the experience that they need. Give them the opportunity to fail occa- sionally, so that they understand how to make judgments on their own.”
With respect to smart decision-making, he said, “Make the big decisions that you have to make upfront well, because they will haunt you if you don’t.” But that’s dif- ficult in the current environment, he said. “I feel that we burden ourselves,” Kend- all explained. “We burden our managers with too much overhead associated with decision-making,” encumbering them with process. Kendall added that one of the focus areas in BBP 2.0, as in BBP 1.0, is simplifying the bureaucracy to reduce unproductive processes.
“I think we still have a ways to go with that, frankly. … It’s as much, for me, about getting the bureaucracy out as it is about getting the substance in, and making sure we’re focused on the things that really matter in terms of real results, really delivering products, really delivering services.”
ACKNOWLEDGING THE STRESSES “Life is hard right now” in the acquisition workforce, Kendall said, with seques- tration, the furloughs and an uncertain budget. But, he continued, “that’s the time when we have to do everything we can with the money we’re entrusted with.
“I’m very aware of the stress and frustration that exist out there,” Kendall said. “I feel a lot of that stress and frustration myself. I don’t enjoy sequestration very much. … We’ve been living with pay freezes for a couple of years. We’re in our third year.
“None of this is fun,” Kendall said. “None of this makes our lives easier. Shrinking budgets alone add enough stress to what we’re trying to do, because we’re trying to
CULTURE OF SAVINGS
SGT James Flohr, 542nd Support Maintenance Company, makes a part from scratch on Joint Base Lewis-McChord, WA. The 542nd recently purchased a CNC (computer numerically controlled) milling machine allowing it to mass-produce parts—with the potential to save millions of dollars. (U.S. Army photo by SGT Austan Owen)
do more without more … now we’re just trying to do as much with less.”
Te budgetary uncertainties led Kendall to delay the implementation of BBP 2.0, but ultimately, he said, that state of uncer- tainty promised to be the status quo for the foreseeable future.
CONTINUITY AND CHANGE Kendall said he sees both continuity and change in BBP 2.0. “For me,” he said, BBP 2.0 “is a process of continu- ous improvement. It’s not about what’s sometimes called ‘acquisition reform’ or
‘transformational change.’ It’s really about attacking all of the many problems that exist in how we do acquisition, and mak- ing incremental improvements wherever we can, where we can get the most return for investment. Tat’s the continuity. Tere’s a lot of things that we just contin- ued from Better Buying Power 1.0.
“Te change piece is probably about the increased emphasis on people, in the judg- ments people have to make to do a good job. Tere’s a flavor that runs through 2.0
of, ‘Here are the tools that you need, and here’s the way you should be thinking about the problems that you have to solve, but you have to solve them. You have to be professional and really understand what needs to be done.’ ”
To that end, the “professionalization” focus of BBP 2.0 calls for “initiatives to improve standards for those in key leadership positions, moving beyond certification in a functional area to being fully qualified to perform in a specific job, [and] recognizing and rewarding our best performers.”
In his memo, Kendall wrote, “In the end, it is the quality of our people that matter[s] the most, more so than any pol- icy or regulation anyone can put in place.”
During the question-and-answer period at the end of his DAU presentation, Kendall said that establishing specific workforce standards “is something that’s going to happen over time. We’re going to establish some boards that will be peer review boards, basically, with key leaders
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