Military Review English Edition July-August 2016 | Page 16

efforts, it became clear that we had a training shortfall. Leaders and the workforce were not achieving
the high level of performance required to move the
arsenal forward.” This became a focus for the next
process-improvement event. “What we learned by
looking at the workforce development process is
that much of our previous focus was on making our
production more efficient and not on people,” Schiller
said. “As difficult as it was to change this process
(workforce development), we knew that our ability
to grow in the Army’s organic base was limited unless
we did change.”14
Similarly, the U.S. Army Recruiting Command at
Fort Knox provides a superb example of an organization that determined its information technology
(IT) systems were failing to meet its needs and took
visionary action to remedy the situation. Army recruiting processes were being serviced by an outdated IT system that did not give recruiters and their
commanders the tools needed to accomplish their
missions. The many recruiting applications were not
integrated, requiring separate log-in, and a laborious
virtual private network (VPN) connection needed to
be established to access routine information, which
was very difficult when the recruiters were away
from their stations.
The Recruiting Command commanding general,
then Maj. Gen. Allen Batschelet, took time to fully
understand the problem and subsequently marshalled
the necessary external support to put the command
on a trajectory to acquiring a state-of-the-art customer-relationship management application. With the
same system businesses use to identify new customers,
Recruiting Command devised the architecture to
make the customer-relationship management application accessible from tablet computers without the
need to first establish a VPN connection.15 Although
the conversion will take years, this is a solid first step
in the right direction.
While in the midst of attempting these changes,
Batschelet shared, “I’m finding bureaucratic courage
more rare than battlefield courage.”16 What he was alluding to was how hard it was to find supporters willing
to shortcut risk-averse processes to facilitate innovation.
Implementing a significant effort like this is difficult and
will typically not succeed without involved leadership
and management. In this case, they were present.
14

Organize to achieve your goals. In a corporate
setting, many companies find they must undertake
moderate organizational change at least once a year
and major change every four-to-five years. However,
similar change is much less frequent in the Army, perhaps because the authority to modify the organization
is reserved for the higher echelons.17 But, hard is not
impossible, and leaders must constantly keep a running estimate of how well their organizations remain
suited to accomplish their missions based on both
effectiveness and efficiency. And, when appropriate,
they must implement change.
Artificial divisions in process management between
organizations, continued organizational conflict, inequitable workload distribution, and excessive cycle time
spent in completing a process may all be signs structural change is needed. This assessment comes naturally
to Army planners when devising a task organization
for a given operation by conducting a troops-to-task
analysis and allocating forces appropriately.
Assessing the need for permanent change in a noncombat situation when members have become very
accustomed to the existing organization is more challeng ing and typically encounters significant resistance.
Army Medical Command’s (MEDCOM) sweeping
reorganization from five regional medical commands
to four multifunctional regional health commands integrating medical, dental, public health, Warrior Care,
and transition functions provides a great example of a
command reorganizing itself to meet emerging mission
requirements and a changing environment.18
Conceived by Lt. Gen. Patricia Horoho, then
surgeon general, the reorganization began in 2015
with the intent to bring the command in line with
the changing needs of the Army and to provide a
single geographic point of accountability for health
readiness in each region, aligned where possible to an
Army corps. Prior to the reorganization, MEDCOM
had twenty subordinate headquarters. Following the
change, it had fourteen, allowing the command to
become more agile and responsive.
However, accomplishing this needed reorganization
proved to be a significant administrative and managerial challenge. Not only was the surgeon general
required to obtain the approval of the Army senior
leaders, but the proposal required repeated coordination with the defense health establishment, as well
July-August 2016  MILITARY REVIEW