Getting Down to Business

By Judy A. Stokley, U.S. Air Force

I had finally gotten my chance. After being deputy program director of the Advanced Defensive Standoff Missile (ADASM) program for the past few years, I had been appointed program director. The program was very mature. The ADASM system had been in development and production for almost 20 years. Over the past few years, its annual procurement budget had declined by almost 75 percent. But the government support infrastructure (facilities and people) was at the same level that it had been when the budgets were much higher. As a result, more than half the monies Congress appropriated annually were going to pay for government infrastructure. Furthermore, the unit price had begun to skyrocket because of the small quantities we were buying. To people from the outside, the program was a fossil and became a victim of every budget cut.

As they say, "A new broom sweeps clean." Being an optimist at heart, I felt that we could turn things around. I refused to preside over the program's funeral. Not only did I have to make some major changes, I also had to create a new image-of a program that was alive and well and not moribund. I began by establishing two stretch goals to revitalize the program-reducing unit price by at least 15 percent and rapidly reducing the size of the government staff by at least a third.

Working with the contractor and my team, I developed a concept I called Vision 2000. The vision's essence was to transform our practices and our business relationship with the contractor to be more commercial in nature. I spent enormous time and energy getting everyone to buy into the vision. Getting contractor buy-in was relatively easy. Under this concept, the contractor would get more business but would have to take on additional responsibility and accountability. For instance, the contractor (not the government) would verify that the product was being built as the contract required. The government's assurance that the product performed as it should was a long-term warranty-a warranty that hinged to a large extent on the contractor's willingness to back up the product. We were, quite simply, establishing trust as the basis for the new relationship.

But it was a lot more difficult getting buy-in from our own people to alter the way we were doing business. In some aspects it was almost impossible. We created a Business Control Board to evaluate everything that we were spending money for and found that we were continuing to pay for activities that had long outlived their usefulness. We also learned that we were spending large amounts of money on operations and maintenance that provided little or no benefit to the user. Reducing expenditures was a major challenge. This was difficult, because in the end, having a dollars-and-cents focus meant that our people's jobs and senses of self-worth were at stake. It was an extremely painful and sad experience for me, but I did my best to make the change humane. I took personal responsibility for keeping everyone informed about what was happening and why. I also ensured that those displaced by the changes found other jobs and made sure everyone knew that I was deeply concerned about them as individuals.

What did we prove? We proved that an "old" program could effectively turn itself around by adopting modern business practices, by challenging everything, by basing relationships on trust and by accepting short-term pain for long-term gain.

Judy Stokley is program director of the Air-to-Air Joint Systems office at Eglin Air Force Base.

Lessons

• Don't be hesitant or afraid to make drastic changes-bad situations don't get better on their own.
• People who make things happen are often people who expect to make them happen. Top performers are often not realistic.
• Projects must be looked upon as part of the organization's business. This requires gaining support and strategic thinking from top management.
• Collaborative programs of any kind won't work unless you start with faith in your partners.
• Be fully involved in the human side of your organizational change. Don't leave the painful job of informing employees whose jobs are affected by your change to the rumor mill, or even to the professional human resources staff.