ADVOCATE FOR INNOVATION


FIGURE 3


SHARED BELIEFS


L Changing Organizational Culture


innovation, offers no incentive for collaboration and makes the process more important than the product. Many of our industry partners address sequential development by building cultures that prize collaboration. Although their approaches vary, many companies have created product development teams assembled from across the organization. Tese teams define project goals and have the power to make decisions throughout the develop- ment process. (See Figure 3.)


LEADER- MODIFIED


m


CLIMATE a


MODIFIED SHARED BELIEFS


Additionally, many organizations address the misaligned incen- tives created in evaluating project managers solely against their program baselines by conducting a more subjective performance assessment that balances overall project success and stakeholder collaboration with the more traditional cost, schedule and per- formance metrics.


MAKING CHANGE HAPPEN


In changing organizational culture, unresolved problems often require leaders to impose new values and beliefs to modify a group’s norms and values. (SOURCE: CGSC Department of Command and Leadership)


CONCLUSION I fear that, like many of history’s most formidable armies, the U.S. Army may have become too comfortable with its own sta- tus quo. We have an unchallenged advantage in the world, lack a clear threat and have critically low political support. (See Figure 2, Page 133.) Te zero-defect environment of personnel draw- downs discourages career Soldiers from questioning assumptions or campaigning for change outside of their organizations.


In the Acquisition Corps (and the greater materiel development community), the status quo translates to sequential development. A project manager with an approved acquisition program base- line has little incentive to collaborate with capability developers and users. Instead, it is in the project manager’s best interest to guard against changes, ignoring emerging requirements and changing environments. Even innovation-minded project man- agers have trouble breaking the sequential development cycle. Te dilution of authority among the numerous organizations involved in the materiel development process almost guarantees a misalignment of interests and an inability to vigorously evalu- ate assumptions.


Te Acquisition Corps further incentivizes the status quo by evaluating acquisition professionals based solely on cost, sched- ule and performance within their functional roles. Tis stifles


134 Army AL&T Magazine July-September 2016


Without realizing it, I spent the first nine months of CGSC building the vocabulary and passion to address issues that I had previously struggled to articulate. I do not pretend to have a comprehensive grasp of the issues we face, much less a solution to the Army’s innovation issues. Nor am I arrogant enough to think that any connections I have made are original thought. However, because of my experience in CGSC, I now see that I can add value to the Acquisition Corps, not just by working diligently on programs within my sphere of control, but also by advocating for innovation throughout my sphere of influence.


For more information on opportunities for Army acquisition officers to attend CGSC, contact Maj. Isaac Torres, 51C proponency officer at the Army DACM Office of the U.S. Army Acquisition Support Center, at isaac.m.torres.mil@mail.mil or 703-805-1249; or go to the HR Command’s Acquisition Management Branch web- page


at https://www.hrc.army.mil/OPMD/MAJ-CPT%20


Assignments, or the Army DACM Office webpage at http:// asc.army.mil/web/career-development/military-of ficer/ career-planning-steps/.


For more on CGSC and its curricula, go to http://usacac.army. mil/organizations/cace/cgsc.


MAJ. ANDREW MILLER, a graduate of the 2016 CGSC resident course, is now an assistant project manager assigned to the project manager for Soldier Warrior in the Program Executive Office for Soldier. He holds an MBA from Southeastern Louisiana University and a B.S. in marketing from Louisiana State University. He is Level II certified in program management and is a certified Project Management Professional.


+


G


b


T


N


e


H


a


V


I


a


A


s -


N


n


o


K


r


v


I


t


E


i


N


n


g G


g


G


F


i


N


E


d


a


I E


n


Norms B Values New values


New norms


n


i


H


l


e


I


m


l


P


t


r


e


o


x i


l


n


a


n


n


g


y


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116  |  Page 117  |  Page 118  |  Page 119  |  Page 120  |  Page 121  |  Page 122  |  Page 123  |  Page 124  |  Page 125  |  Page 126  |  Page 127  |  Page 128  |  Page 129  |  Page 130  |  Page 131  |  Page 132  |  Page 133  |  Page 134  |  Page 135  |  Page 136  |  Page 137  |  Page 138  |  Page 139  |  Page 140  |  Page 141  |  Page 142  |  Page 143  |  Page 144  |  Page 145  |  Page 146  |  Page 147  |  Page 148  |  Page 149  |  Page 150  |  Page 151  |  Page 152  |  Page 153  |  Page 154  |  Page 155  |  Page 156  |  Page 157  |  Page 158  |  Page 159  |  Page 160  |  Page 161  |  Page 162  |  Page 163  |  Page 164  |  Page 165  |  Page 166  |  Page 167  |  Page 168  |  Page 169  |  Page 170  |  Page 171  |  Page 172  |  Page 173  |  Page 174  |  Page 175  |  Page 176  |  Page 177  |  Page 178  |  Page 179  |  Page 180  |  Page 181  |  Page 182  |  Page 183  |  Page 184