OWNING YOUR BATTLESPACE
included a staff member of the House Armed Services Committee and repre- sentatives from Amazon Web Services Inc. and Boeing Co. We’ve recognized that if you can look at a problem through a different lens, you may be able to apply what other people have done in a different and unique way in your more traditional environment. It allows you to broaden your mind.
BUILDING A NETWORK One of the things we do is what we call speed networking, whereby individual senior personnel rotate to multiple tables of people over the course of several hours. We also ensure that the participants in those courses are not always sitting with the same people. Tey’re getting exposed to and exchanging ideas not only with different thought leaders, but also with different members of their class. Tis allows participants to develop comfort with the people they engage with. It’s very easy when you’ve had a personal and inti- mate conversation with somebody to pick up the phone in the future, call them and say, “Hey, I’m running my program and I’m experiencing this challenge. What do you think? Have you experienced it?”
Williamson used the term “building your Rolodex.” Of course, no one under 35 has any idea what a Rolodex is. But the idea is to build a trust network and a knowledge network, a base of people who already have experienced a similar problem—that colonel or that GS-15 civilian who talked about this same kind of thing—and be able to reach out, pull on that resource and say, “You talked about this. Could you walk me through it so that I don’t have to travel the learning curve again?”
Te big thing we often talk about in our community is that even though there’s a lot of uniqueness to what we do, there’s a ton of similarity in the types of problems
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BUILDING THE BASE
AALPC participants Lt. Col. Frankie Cruz, left, and Lt. Col. Cassandra Forrester, center, discuss talent and organizational management with facilitator Col. Maria Schneider during a speed networking session at the April 2017 AALPC. Such sessions are designed to strengthen relationships among PMs and build a network they can tap into when challenges arise.
we face while running our programs. Walking that PM path doesn’t have to mean reinventing the wheel every time there’s a problem.
CONCLUSION We ask a lot from our AALPC facilita- tors and speakers. We’re asking them to engage in potentially an all-day activity. Even for the lunch and dinner speaker, it’s a commitment of several hours, and often they stick around afterward to con- tinue the dialogue and engagement. It’s draining to participate. And we’re grate- ful for their contributions.
Te feedback we’re getting from the participants, facilitators and speakers has been incredibly positive. Almost to a person, participants have said this is
probably one of the best events they’ve attended to prepare them to take on the roles and responsibilities they are about to enter.
But the more difficult question is whether the AALPC is having a successful impact on the management of programs. Tat’s very difficult to measure, because there’s really no way to tell today that it’s having a net positive effect on acquisition pro- gram outcomes. But the overwhelmingly positive
feedback suggests moving in the right direction.
Here’s the overarching concept for the AALPC: You can never over-prepare a leader to lead.
that we’re
Army AL&T Magazine
July-September 2017
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