MEETING GLOBAL DEMAND
moves on to a newer, better technology. Either way, it knows quickly in which direction to move, and it can move faster.
We asked Shoffner, a few days into his new job as RCO director of operations, if he would be willing to share his insight into talent management as well as his expectations for the RCO. Without hesitation, he took the opportunity to address the link between the two communities and introduce himself to the world of acquisition.
Nancy Jones-Bonbrest: You came to the Army Rapid Capa- bilities Office after serving as director of the Army’s Talent Management Task Force, and as part of a long operational career. How has your previous experience shaped your view of Army acquisition?
Shoffner: I’ll answer that question in two parts. For the first, I’ll reflect back on some of my operational experiences in both Iraq and Afghanistan. I think it is becoming increasingly obvi- ous that over the past 15 years, we as an Army have been focused
on winning the current fight, and during that period of time our [traditional] adversaries [e.g., Russia, China] have taken advan- tage of our focus being elsewhere. Tey have started to develop capabilities that really get at our core strengths.
Also, over the past couple of decades, the rate of change for technology has increased. It’s not just Moore’s Law, where every 18 months the processing power doubles—it’s even faster than that. And so if you think about those two factors taken together, that’s what has resulted in us being in the situation we are in now, where there are some gaps between what we need to be able to do and what our adversaries are able to do. So the Rapid Capabilities Office has been established to help mitigate those gaps. We also have to do more than that; just closing those gaps is not enough. We’ve got to make sure we don’t find ourselves in this position five, 10, 20 years from now.
Fundamentally, on talent management, what we are trying to do is move from an industrial-age system where we looked at peo- ple as interchangeable parts to a modern, 21st-century system where we are managing individual talent. One of our strengths as a nation for so long has been our ability to innovate and inno- vate faster. So as it relates to the acquisition community, we are looking to people who have that innovative spirit and who can help us figure out how to close those gaps in short order without having to wait seven to 10 years to field a new system. Tat’s why, with the Rapid Capabilities Office, what we are looking to do is to prototype systems to get them out there very quickly, to get them out to exercises and learn from those experiences so we can make adjustments and field the systems as quickly as possible.
Jones-Bonbrest: What did you learn at the Army’s Talent Man- agement Task Force that can be applied to the Army Acquisition Workforce?
MANAGING CAPABILITY AND TALENT
Soldiers from Field Artillery Squadron, 2nd Cavalry Regiment conduct new equipment training on the Counter – Unmanned Aircraft System Mobile Integrated Capability at Grafenwoehr Training Area, Germany. The training, conducted in February and March, put rapidly produced prototypes into the field to close capability gaps of the kind targeted by the Army RCO. Shoffner sees parallels between the kinds of solutions the RCO is seeking and the Army’s interest in new talent management solutions. (Photo by Sgt. Devon Bistarkey, 2nd Cavalry Regiment Public Affairs)
Shoffner: I’ll start with how we define talent in the Army. We don’t see talent as one single thing that you can put your finger on. It’s the combination of a lot of things—it fundamentally is the combination of an individual’s knowledge, skills and behav- iors. Key to this, though, is that these are shaped over a lifetime. It does include experiences people have in the military, but also includes all the experiences they have outside the military: where they went to school, where they grew up. It’s what their hobbies are, what they are passionate about, how they think. Te thinking part is really, really important. Obviously we can measure cognitive ability. We have tests, assessments that get after noncognitive ability, but what we are really looking for are people who are critical thinkers, people who are innovators
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Army AL&T Magazine
July-September 2017
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