________________________________________________________________________Richard S. Kem
ready to deliver because a quality product is only quality when it's delivered at a point in
time that it influences the action. If it's delivered two weeks late, it's then overcome by
events and doesn't mean anything.
So, just time and time again I find the action officer has come in on something, and I ask
where are we, and he responds, "Well, we're still waiting for coordination chops out of this
directorate or that directorate."
"Well, okay," I ask, "how long has it been?" "Well, it's been three weeks." "Three weeks?"
You should never have to wait three weeks. You don't get it in three days, then they probably
didn't want to comment, or you probably shouldn't have asked them, or something. I mean,
there's some phenomenon that's apropos here.
So, two problems. One is we've gotten into this environment where it's all right to never give
a person's paper back. Second, our action folks don't know how to get attention to get
something back on a timely schedule.
We've sort of grown to that. That's become our thing now, I think, and we really need to get
away from that, so when we have a paper, the action officer has talked it around enough to
know that they're about to have a consensus or not. You get it there so you can get a
concurrence or nonconcurrence quickly, walk it around or whatever. If we get the
nonconcurrence, we write the statement of consideration rather quickly and get it up to a
decision maker so that the problem hasn't festered and become worse, so the problem isn't
overcome by events, so that it's more meaningful. So, that's what I mean.
Q:
How do we get out of this problem?
A:
We really need to work those faster. Today we assign ourselves deadlines that are too long.
Q:
Yes?
A:
I mean, the Secretary of the General Staff will assign a three-week deadline, which, in my
view, usually means two weeks on the back burner, and then they pull it forward and work it.
So, if you really need something, then you ought to assign a week deadline so they work it
right away instead of putting it on the back burner. Now, you can't do everything that way,
you have to measure importance and figure out how you cut the amount of work. I think what
we're doing is, our staff folks are putting a lot more work in some things than is really
needed, so we're spinning wheels; that's really needed for the decision maker. As a measure
of productivity, that's pretty bad because we're not getting any productivity.
So, we need to find the way by pushing the system so that we get the right, smart person to
do the right thinking, to come up with the right conclusion, and we don't spend process time
trying to get that right conclusion to whomever is going to make the decision.
If we study an issue and then restudy it and overstudy it, then that's not going to help. So, I
think we've got a way to go to get that one squared away.
453
Previous Page
