CELEBRATING 60 YEARS: PM CCS celebrated 60 Years as one of the longest tenured PM offices in the Army. (Photo by Todd Mozes, Chugach)
How PM Close Combat Systems maximizes employee participation to improve the organization.
by Lisa Spinelli, Catherine Scheper and Michael W. O’Grady
Project Manager Close Combat Systems (PM CCS), within the Joint Program Executive Office for Armaments and Ammunition (JPEO A&A), is taking initiatives to develop employee soft skills, such as communication, leadership and teamwork. Ultimately provide them with the emotional intelligence to excel in their careers, giving them the tools they need to better streamline their workload and mitigate the need for “rework.” The result is an empowered workforce that has a strong sense of belonging to a family, increased workforce efficiency, and greater employee job satisfaction.
PM CCS contributions span across all services and support the spectrum of conflict from lethal, large-scale combat operations to stability and support operations requiring the use of intermediate force. These capabilities are used in multidomain operations to enable efficient and effective joint warfighter success.
PM CCS, established in 1961, is one of the Army’s longest tenured project management offices and manages a diverse product portfolio, which includes 384 distinct armaments and ammunition. This presents a unique challenge to the workforce in that many team members work multiple programs of varying type, complexity and class of supply. PM CCS fosters and embodies the Army values through caring for its workforce and realizing that success is grounded in the strength of its personnel—a team effort. People are the number one priority; the organization is the people; and PM CCS strives for excellence by building the bench.
PM CCS, JPEO A&A developed an organization improvement model that focuses on developing the soft skills of employees. Increasing employees’ ability to use soft skills—including interpersonal and behavioral traits in their careers—provides an increase in emotional intelligence. Encouraging emotional intelligence allows employees the capacity of awareness to control behavior, express emotions and handle relationships in the work environment. Through the organization improvement model, employee involvement, community outreach, mentoring and employee-focused workshops and training, PM CCS strives to encourage employees to personally excel in their careers and fully support the mission of the organization.
SUCCESS THROUGH TEAMWORK: Creating an environment that provides opportunities, the necessary tools to succeed and emphasizes team building contributes to the overall success of the PM CCS workforce. (Graphic by Diane Fee, PM CCS, Bowhead)
ORGANIZATION IMPROVEMENT MODEL
At the crux of their philosophy, leadership embraces the value of using its organization improvement model—a three-phased approach that includes pre-planning, planning and post-planning—to strategic planning developed to align the workforce with the PM CCS mission: provide dominant and innovative lethal and protective capabilities for the joint warfighter through acquisition excellence; and vision to maintain a skilled innovative team empowered to deliver dominating close combat capabilities.
Strategic planning involves the use of tools in the pre-planning and planning phases:
- Environmental scan, which identifies and addresses the internal and external environment of an organization that can influence future strategies.
- Strength, weakness, opportunity and threat (SWOT) analysis, which identifies and addresses internal and external factors.
- Brainstorming initiative development.
These allow leaders, working in conjunction with the workforce, to determine their vision for the future as well as to identify their goals and objectives for the organization.
These tools enable PM CCS to set mission direction and alignment of priorities for the organization. Within their Strategic Planning Organization Improvement Model, PM CCS executes lines of effort (LOE) in five key areas to foster the organizations’ improvement efforts in pursuit of excellence. These key areas are product, people, process, perception and place.
Currently PM CCS has 51 of its employees (about 45% of the workforce) in direct support of these efforts. Each line of effort is important to developing positive change for the organization at large and giving the workforce the chance to think strategically and engage in the future of PM CCS.
LOE 1 was identified to focus on product, concentrating on the integration of our product portfolio with the Army’s priorities. LOE 2 focuses on people, identifying what the organization can do to ensure a committed and exceptional workforce. LOE 3, process, works on the improvement of business processes to allow for resource optimization. LOE 4 is focused on perception, how others perceive the organization and how to increase the effectiveness of communication with stakeholders. Initially charted with four lines of effort in 2019, a fifth line of effort—place—was added in 2022 to reflect a post-COVID work environment for the organization to adapt to the work environment change.
Relevant to workforce development, the LOE 2 team is comprised of PM CCS volunteers from the workforce that are focused on enhancing the workforce by identifying and executing initiatives, including succession planning. In the past few years, PM CCS’ LOE 2 team has developed standard operating procedures (SOP) for rotational assignment opportunities and an onboarding SOP. These support the succession planning initiative by identifying and developing new leaders in the organization. PM CCS also has developed an Army 365 file repository SOP, which provides all authorized personnel a repository that houses the roles, responsibilities, business rules and PM CCS documents supporting effective knowledge transfer throughout the organization. This provides a place for knowledge transfer and collaboration across the organization.
An additional effort executed by the LOE 2 team is the interpersonal skills initiative. The intent is to engage PM CCS staff through interactive discussion. The team provided the workforce the opportunity to view videos of senior leaders discussing various communication topics. This effort enhanced collaboration across the organization by reinforcing effective communication. The videos were fun and lighthearted, yet engaging and informative. In the future, the LOE 2 team plans to develop interactive events focused on the areas of problem-solving, decision-making, active listening, teamwork and conflict resolution.
Another team, LOE 3, focused on process, identifying current acquisition and business processes across the organization with an intent to document, improve, streamline and make more efficient. One of the many efforts that the LOE 3 team executes is enhancing workforce development. This includes the development of functional toolkits which benefit the workforce by providing new and current employees the knowledge of the organization’s unique roles and responsible for all mission critical and support functional areas. For example, a new project officer will be supplied with the “program officer” toolkit. This includes all relevant training outlets, advancement opportunities, points of contact, and all functional processes and standard operating procedures used for that job function as well as those unique PM CCS cultural defined best practices. These toolkits are valuable to a new employee adapting into the organization as well as current employees. They are periodically updated to stay relevant and are made available on our organization’s share drive as well as distributed in our new employee welcome package.
LINES OF EFFORT: By executing lines of effort in five key areas, PM CCS can foster organizations’ improvement efforts in pursuit of excellence. Each line of effort aims at developing a positive change for the organization and giving the workforce opportunities to engage in the future of PM CCS. (Graphic by Catherine Scheper, PM CCS)
ABOVE AND BEYOND
PM CCS actively encourages employees to be involved in mentoring, both as protégé and mentor. As part of LOE 2, a mentoring program was established. This was quickly adopted by the JPEO A&A’s Talent Management Office. The mentoring program matches mentors and protégés through a more formal relationship. The mission for the JPEO A&A Mentoring Program is to provide a forum for the continual development of talent within all levels of the organization through junior-senior employee partnerships. This program is a symbiotic relationship offered to allow personnel an opportunity to learn from and ask questions of experienced teammates regarding career decisions, technical skills and competencies, training, job opportunities and leadership.
Currently there are 123 participants (53 mentors, 70 mentees) in the mentoring program across JPEO A&A, of which 30% are from PM CCS. In addition, the workforce is encouraged to participate in other workshops and training events that enhance development, such as Franklin Covey’s 5 Choices to Extraordinary Productivity, a Getting Mentoring Going workshop and mentoring overview training, among others.
Another facet of developing the workforce is leadership development, which focuses on training and knowledge sharing. An example of this is PM CCS’s Leadership Article Club, which allows the workforce to participate in and lead discussions on various leadership topics, similar to participation in a book club. Every six-to-seven weeks, volunteers facilitate a discussion on a leadership topic selected by the PM’s senior leaders. A leadership article is distributed as well as questions selected by the facilitator a few weeks in advance of the discussion. As of the publishing of this article there have been 16 club meetings facilitated by 16 different emerging leaders within PM CCS. These events receive high participation across the organization and benefit employee development by introducing various soft skill topics, such as leading in the virtual environment, time management, emotional stability, stress management and organizational change management.
Growing the next generation of Army acquisition leaders by encouraging their involvement in strategic planning, mentoring and leadership teaching across the organization goes a long way in ensuring the mission is met. Growing your people, providing them the tools to succeed in a family-like atmosphere is the best guarantee of meeting the mission.
BRING YOUR CHILD TO WORK DAY: PM CCS hosted “Bring Your Child to Work Day” on April 27, 2023, which included activities and displays for children and adults. These included a pyrotechnic and smoke grenade demonstration, a pizza lunch, certificates for participating children, and plenty of popcorn and cotton candy for the kids to enjoy. (Photo by Diane Fee, PM CCS, Bowhead)
A SENSE OF COMMUNITY
In addition, PM CCS’ workforce is involved in numerous team-building efforts, including the Innovative Morale Boosting integrated product team, which engages employees to participate in various social and charitable events. This initiative encourages employee involvement in team-building events that occur regularly, organized by a different division office on a rotating basis. Examples of past events include holiday parties, denim days, bring your child to work day, a chili cookoff, taco Tuesday, a chicken wing contest and child CPR classes. Many of these events offer the opportunity to donate to a local charity, expanding the impact of PM CCS throughout the community. The Innovative Morale Boosting team also publishes a monthly newsletter that includes relevant and fun information about current events at Picatinny Arsenal, New Jersey, delicious meal recipes, inspirational quotes, pictures from PM CCS events and trivia games. These newsletters bring a sense of family to keep the morale of the workforce healthy.
HIT THE GROUND RUNNING
Another facet within LOE 3, process, was to consolidate information that is required on a regular basis. To this end, PM CCS initiated an onboarding process that has received excellent testimonials and has been replicated by other PMs throughout JPEO A&A. The human resources (HR) office meets with every new employee whether military, civilian or contractor, and welcomes them to the organization with a welcome package. During this process, HR reviews the welcome package with the new employee, explaining the organization. Topics discussed are the project manager’s philosophy, the culture of commitment to a cohesive and flexible work environment focused on leadership and professional development, collaboration and teamwork, and recognition. The HR team discusses the PM’s portfolio of products and how we are unique from the other organizations under JPEO A&A because of our diverse portfolio. This package leads to a quicker learning curve for new employees and is even used by longtime PM CCS employees as a reference. New employees particularly like the “faces” portion of the welcome package, which features a photo of everyone in the organization. This adds to quicker familiarity between the existing and incoming workforce, leading to increased cohesion.
“The onboarding process was great,” said Butch Burgess, a contract employee with PM CCS since 2021. “Even as a contractor I was treated as a full team member from day one. It was like, ‘Welcome to the family.’”
THE DUNK TANK: During the Picatinny Community Day, held on July 13, 2023, the CCS Leadership team participated in the Marine Corps’ Dunk Tank. (Photo by Diane Fee, PM CCS, Bowhead)
CONCLUSION
“Growing your people through involvement in strategic planning, offering them opportunities to lead and providing them the tools to succeed in a family-like atmosphere is the best guarantee of meeting mission,” Joe Pelino, deputy PM, said. A workforce that participates in the evolution of the organization can lead alternative ideas to “traditional” workforce development efforts. It is a positive feedback cycle of ideas and workforce ownership of the organization, that leads to increased workforce satisfaction, benefitting the employees and organization alike.
LISA SPINELLI has served as the lead operations officer, program integration and international at PM CCS since September 2023. She holds an A.A.S. from County College of Morris, and has a Green Belt certification in Lean Six Sigma and Foundational DAWIA certifications in program management.
CATHERINE SCHEPER is a strategic improvement specialist with the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Armaments Center matrixed to PM CCS. She holds an MBA in marketing from Fairleigh Dickinson University and a B.S. in business administration from Berkeley College. She is Black Belt trained in Lean Six Sigma, holds the DAWIA Practitioner certification in program management, and is certified in strategic planning from the Palladium Group.
MICHAEL W. O’GRADY is director of program integration and international for PM CCS. He holds an MBA in management from Florida Institute of Technology and a B.S. in mechanical engineering from New Jersey Institute of Technology. He is a graduate of the Civilian Education Systems Advanced Leadership program. He holds a Green Belt certification in Lean Six Sigma and is DAWIA certified Advanced in program management and a Practitioner in engineering and technical management.
