Letter from Karachi, 1942

My recent research at the Air Force Institute of Technology brought me to the archives of the USAF Museum at Wright-Patterson AFB. The archive is located in a warehouse, straight out of an Indiana Jones movie.

One of my favorite discoveries during my hours in the archives is a letter from one Col. Homer L. Sanders, Commander of the 51st Fighter Group at Karachi Air Base. It's dated 26 Aug 1942.

The subject of the letter is simply "Fighter Airplanes," and in this letter, Col Sanders asks the Commanding General of US Army Air Forces in India and China to send him a new plane called the P-51 Mustang to replace the P-40's his squadrons are currently flying.

He writes: "It is an extremely simple airplane and has such perfect handling qualities as to put a smile of joy on the face of any fighter pilot." He goes on to write "It is requested that this Group be equipped with P-51 airplanes as expeditiously as possible. The P-51 is requested in preference to P-47 because of its smaller size, ease of maintenance, economy of operation, range, and because many of the accessories for it are already available in this area... engines, guns, radios, instruments, and many other parts are the same as those used on P-40..."

The P-51 is famous for its simplicity, speed of production, low cost and, most importantly, complete dominance of the air. It's a great example of the FIST (Fast, Inexpensive, Simple, Tiny) approach in action. Given the P-51's epic effectiveness, I wonder why we have not insisted that subsequent aircraft be just as simple. Probably because simplicity is hard to do... and complexity looks impressive.

The Col also reported on some impressive production stats, explaining that North American (the aircraft company) was"... building only 3 1/2 per day, but could raise the production rate to 10 per day within three weeks after being given the go ahead signal by the Air Corps." Ten aircraft per day? Gosh, they must have had some really good Total Quality Management systems, and a solid basis in Lean Six-Sigma practices to achieve that kind of efficiency and speed. I bet they were a real Process Enterprise. I wonder where they keep all their detailed and rigorous process diagrams. No doubt they were CMMI Level 5 and relied on the Program Management Deskbook of Knowledge...

Sigh.

Maybe it's not fair to expect today's aircraft developers to be as fast, inexpensive, and efficient as we were during WWII. I mean, those guys got to use notebooks and sliderules and make stuff up as they went along. We have to use computers and follow Best Practices. Plus, things today are so much more complex than they used to be, now that the Complexity Maximization Law got passed, effectively banning simplicity from our organizations and technologies.

And finally, in the Some Things Never Change category, the Col points out "It appeared there was a tendency by the Materiel Division to hinder the development of this airplane, which can only be accounted for by the fact that it was strictly a North American project, and Materiel Division could claim no credit for it."

Exciting Times!

Lots of excitement here in Rogue World. I've now moved to the DC area and am moving into my new office today. Still have some boxes at home, but we've made a lot of progress getting the house settled.

Gabe and I recently did an interview with our new BFF Traci Fenton of WorldBlu. WorldBlu is a fascinating organization that advocates workplace democracy. We'll let you know when the interview is posted. It was so much fun to do!

We also wrote an article on social media for SIGNAL magazine (the magazine of the Armed Forces Communications & Electronics Association). Whoo-hoo!

AND... we're working on a little seminar sponsored by Defense Acquisition University for later in July. Details forthcoming on that as well. If you're in the DC area and available for 90 minutes on 22 July, stop on by!

More to follow...

Radical Elements Redux

The first book I ever wrote was titled The Radical Elements of Radical Success.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, I have mixed feelings about the Radical Elements project. On the one hand, I can't believe I had the audacity to write such a book. I can't imagine I would presume to attempt such a thing today.

And yet... every time I flip through it with a critical eye, looking for an excuse to take it off the Rogue Press website, I come away thinking "Hey, there's some good stuff in there, if I do say so myself." It got some very nice reviews over the years. And for some inexplicable reason, it continues to sell a handful of copies from time to time.

As I flipped through it again the other day, the thing that stood out the most was the bits about cynicism, apathy, fear, timidity and smugness, and how poisonous these attributes are. I can't say I've got the antidote, although the book does offer a few thoughts on preventing them.

You can flip through the whole book for free online (and of course you can buy the eBook or the hard copy).

Process, Scrutiny & Oversight

n a recent briefing someone described their organization’s contribution in these terms:

“[we provide] processes that can stand the scrutiny of unprecedented oversight.”

Are they really saying that the objective of their proposed “methodical, rigorous and standard processes,” which are “demanded by the complexities of 21st century weapon systems,” is to prevent criticism? Yes, they are. I’m not surprised it’s come to this, but it is a little bit funny to see the CYA mentality stated so explicitly and with such boldness.

Withstanding scrutiny & oversight is fine, but it shouldn’t be the bottom line. What happened to delivering capabilities (which the briefing NEVER MENTIONED!)?

In a process-centric environment, compliance is apparently sufficient to shield poor performers from criticism. The team didn't deliver what the end user needed? Well, the boss won't object to the poor performance as long as the team complied with the process. Maybe we need to make the process more rigorous. Let's start a Continuous Process Improvement Initiative.

When an organization is process centric, people know it. So rather than seeking to simplify our excessively complex systems, processes and organizations (and focus on results), they instead develop rigorous and standardized processes, as a talisman against accusations of inadequacy.

If processes are going to be of any value, they should make the product better. They should streamline operations, enable smart decision making, foster better problem solving, encourage innovation, and deliver the required systems faster & cheaper. When we use them primarily as shields against scrutiny, something is horribly wrong.

Which Is Better?

In a meeting recently,* the Big Guy at the Head Of The Table suggested the following "A bad process is better than no process."

Um, I've got to disagree, although sadly I did not have my wits about me with sufficient speed to object during the meeting. So I'll just do it here - and save this answer for the next time I hear such an opinion expressed.

Here's how I see it: A process gone bad is generally one that puts up barriers to smart, effective behavior. It institutes needless delays and complexities. It increases costs. It discourages initiative and accountability.

An absent process, on the other hand, does not provide guidance about what to do, but neither does it introduce artificial friction into the works. So it doesn't help much, but it doesn't hinder either. A bad process hinders. I'd say that's worse.

*By "recently" I mean at some point in the past. No sense in trying to guess where I was or who the offender was.

Gabe's Take on the DAG

The proper name of one of the hundreds of Defense Acquisition Guidebook (DAG) processes:

Technical Planning Technical Management Process

A real term with a unreal meaning. Can somebody help me out here?

People > Process

Another excerpt from the 3 June 09 testimony to the House Armed Services Committee's Defense Acquisition Reform Panel. The speaker is retired AF LtGenl Ron Kadish, who chaired the 2006 Defense Acquisition Performance Assessment. Emphasis is added.

LtGen Kadish: “It's remarkable that the people we have out there doing this every day can make this work still under the systems that we impose on our self. And all for good reason. There are a lot of heroes out therereally making this work and I would almost say in spite of the system

I don't think process is going to fix this problem. When we add process and improvements, we tend to really add things and not take things away. And under that approach, I think we will just increase complexity. So I would advise a lot of caution in adding things without asking the question, "What are you going to take away to make these processes more integrated and less complex?"

And at the end of the day, it's the people doing the job, making more right decisions than wrong decisions that our going to produce the outcome here. And it really does. It might really come down to the fact that we could make an administration system and as good as we can make them in human terms. But its going to come down to people doing the job every day. And we've got to select them right. And we've got to support them and make them perform and hold them accountable.”

There's a lot there I can hang my hat on. It's stuff I've been saying and writing about for several years now, so this is a nice bit of confirmation that I'm on a good track.

I really should have some t-shirts made that say "I don't think process is going to fix this problem." Let me know if you want one too and we can do a bulk order...