________________________________________________________________________Richard S. Kem
A:
I'm not an automator. I was a manager. You see, the managers had to be in charge. The
managers had to listen and have their ears open to the technicians, but the manager had to
make the decision. You see, I helped open the ears and the minds of the managers to
receptivity to what the technicians were trying to tell them all along. Now he had to
understand because he was going to have to come up and show and tell to the executive
committee how he was to do his business.
So, he listened, and we got a lot of benefit out of the technician helping improve that data
level that we never saw until it was presented. So, we had a lot smarter people and a lot
smarter corporate body.
Q:
So, the decision that General Hatch was to have made, he made that, obviously?
A:
He just did.
Q:
Oh, he did. Okay.
A:
We sent in a regular decision paper a couple of weeks ago. It had a whole list of decisions on
it. He approved them all, one of them with comment because just how these two regional
centers will operate between centralized management, which you must have for that kind of
operation, versus the day-by-day control of centers at the Waterways Experiment Station and
NPD [North Pacific Division] has to be worked out in detail.
So, I suggested he might just want to leave that--because it's contentious between a couple
of the field commanders--and just might want to have the details brought back to him for his
final approval. So, he approved the concept, awaiting the details.
Q:
Here's another area that I was going to ask you about. When I was talking to General Hatch
last, he mentioned the CEAP area, of course, and another area he mentioned was that he had
utilized you as his principal in working with the Army Staff on the EForce structure. That,
of course, is not something new to you, by any means, coming in as the deputy, having
worked that issue at Fort Belvoir, and perhaps earlier and since as well.
At the time that you became the deputy last August, a year ago, where was EForce; what
was the status of that? Obviously some decisions had been made, but there were more yet to
be made. Then we might look a little bit at how it's evolved over the last year.
A:
Well, let me back off and just give a perspective right here and a little bit of the historical
development in executive fashion.
EForce was developed while I was at the Engineer School at Belvoir in 1984'85,
responding to my early education into TRADOC and how it works and the force structure
fights of that fall.
My guidance from then-CAC commander General Vuono and TRADOC commander
General Richardson was that they wanted the proponent, TRADOC's commandant--me in
467
Previous Page
