________________________________________________________________________Richard S. Kem
operational and organizational plans, the requirements documents, all that staffing stuff that
gets you into the game to get one of these improvements. So, my most frustrating thing is I
have not been able to solve the combat development staffing problem, although I've gone
directly at it. We really get a wave off. They really say, "Well, yes, you've got a problem.
We're working on it." Then it goes on and never gets solved because the system's too big.
We're fighting a whole spaces bureaucracy, then a whole faces bureaucracy.
Q:
So, that's something that really is, what? You attribute that to just pure personnel
management and space management?
A:
That's not personnel management; that is space management. That's convincing people that
they ought to take away from other folks that have them now and put them here. In the past,
whenever we've lost, it's difficult for them to give it back. If we're ninth in staffing, to get us
up to, say, fifth in staffing, they've got to take spaces away from somewhere else in
TRADOC. It might be the Armor School or Air Defense School, and all those people will
scream. So, it's very difficult for those decision makers to do it, and so they don't do it. They
just pass it off, and then the people change, and there we are.
Q:
Back to square one again.
A:
Back to square one. It's very vexing to me. The USACE system of staffing that I used to fight
with all the time was much more amenable because it could change. USACE folks, especially
in the construction arena, are used to stopping projects and starting projects, moving people,
hiring up and closing down. I really became convinced that the construction arena was very
mobile, and they know how to do that because they've had to do it so many times.
Q:
Everything being project related?
A:
That's right. If you're not earning, you can't hire against it. So, those chiefs of construction in
all of our districts and divisions in the Corps know well that you've got to meet the bottom
line and they do very well at that and make those tough decisions. The Army, with its
insatiable appetite for more brand-new things, jumps out and resources a new thing, not
recognizing that they might have been better off to spread those resources out on fixing the
old things. By establishing the new things, then they have to go back and pare down all those
old things once again. So, we're always chasing the new initiative. Us folks trying to play
catch-up with the less sexy kinds of items just don't have the time or people to put on it. So,
we're behind in our operational and organizational plans; we're behind in our required
operational capability. It's very difficult.
So, your question was, "What's been the thing you haven't done most?" That's the one I
would put on the table. It's the one I talked to my successor most about, and it's written up in
my end-of-tour report.
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