Financial operations - Column

The last several months have been quite busy as FMP continues to change and transform itself. FMPT and FMPW are up and running, (yes, running is the operative word ...) and I am pleased to announce our FMPT leader has been selected. Mr Richard "Gus" Gustafson was promoted to Senior Executive Service in a special promotion ceremony on June 18th. Gus brings tremendous experience from the private sector from great companies like Oracle and AMS but he also had a very successful career with the Air Force. We are excited by what lies ahead and we look forward to Gus' many contributions to the Air Force FM community.

As I look back at my many years of experience across the DoD, it is clear to me that our Air Force FM enjoys a great reputation for providing strong analytical support to the Air Force and DoD in helping key decision makers make optimal use of resource dollars. You and I can feel quite proud of our accomplishments and our stewardship to the American public for making sure that we were using their financial resources wisely. Our recent success in Iraq and Afghanistan is a reflection of the tremendous success of what a highly capable and trained Air Force can do to dominate and interdict on the battlefield. The sophistication and technological superiority of our weapon systems allows us to optimize our resources to an even greater extent due to the greatly improved accuracy and responsiveness of our bombs and missiles and insures an even higher return on investment.

We are also making significant progress in improving how we allocate, track, record, report, transfer, validate, and audit the use of our financial resources. I am confident that in the next few years we will make even greater progress in insuring the reliability of our financial systems and reporting capabilities. However, behind all of these wonderful improvement in weapon and reporting systems are people and while we have always placed significant resources in developing and investing in our people, it is critical that we continue to put the same scrutiny of investment into our human resources as we do our financial resources.

Too often our human capital has not been treated with the same accord as our financial capital. There are many in the Air Force who find the use of the words human capital inappropriate as it may imply a mechanistic description that perhaps mitigates the humanness of the individual. My view, however, because human beings are not mechanistic, we sometimes do not apply the same degree of attention, focus, and discipline as we would toward our financial resources.

There are many examples of this: we lack meaningful metrics and measurements regarding our human capital; when we send people off to training we don't put in place sufficient accountability to insure that we help them apply their new learning to their jobs so we maximize the return of our investment; when our human capital costs such as salaries and benefits are absorbed in a central account not under our control, we often do not apply the same business case rigor around people investment that we require on financial investment as we can often overlook intangible costs associated with having people work long hours especially during weekends and holidays. When we don't personally carry the financial burden of our human resources, it requires more effort and discipline to scrutinize our human resources in the same way we do as our dollar resources. Another area is in workforce development: we know intuitively that mentoring and developing our people is a critical imperative for maximizing our human capital. Yet, too often our focus on other resources gets more priority and attention because mentoring and development are much harder to measure and more difficult to discern impact and contribution.

Most recently at our PDI in New Orleans, Mr Montelongo indicated close to 8% of the Air Force budget dollars go toward professional development, education, and training. In private enterprise, organizations that invest 5% are considered extraordinary and best practice. While I believe there are many new ideas and programs we can introduce to improve our workforce capabilities, there is much more opportunity to better leverage and optimize the resources we already invest in our people. Those opportunities exist throughout our Air Force FM. In a simple act of taking time to mentor a subordinate to help them understand what are the skills, capabilities, and experiences they need to move up the career ladder to sharing workforce development best practices across our organization, we must approach this with no less energy and enthusiasm as we do in approaching our budgeting and financial reporting missions.

As I indicated in my last column in the April issue of The Air Force Comptroller magazine, whatever success I have enjoyed in Government Service, I owe a deep debt of gratitude to many of my mentors who have taken the time to invest in me. My commitment to them and to our Air Force is that I pay back that debt by investing in and mentoring others. Yet, like many within our organization, I am bombarded by emails, sometimes over 300 a day. I have a schedule that often has back to back meetings from early in the morning to late at night. And all of these time challenges can create significant obstacles to my spending the necessary time to mentor, develop, and invest in those precious human resources entrusted to me. It is when we put equal time, attention, and discipline into our human capital as our financial capital that we will experience even more success and performance gains than we have today.

Because of my role in overseeing the Financial Management Career Program, I have a responsibility to make sure we are maximizing the resources, both human and financial, that are entrusted to us in fully supporting the Career Program. As I look back at my career I see a long and continuous thread that links the most successful leaders that I have had the honor to be associated with or have had the opportunity to observe in action. Each of these great leaders had their own unique identity and personality: some were of extraordinary intelligence, others not so extraordinary; some were extroverted and others introverted; some had energy and enthusiasm that was infectious while others were more reserved ... you get the picture. Yet amidst all the differences were several common characteristics that may offer you some insight about how you can optimize the one human resource you have the most control over: you.

Certainly, all of these successful leaders had a strong work ethic and a high degree of commitment to the organization. Yet, they also had a strong commitment to people and constantly found ways to balance the needs of the organization with the needs of the individual. They exhibited a deep respect for the organization but equally respected the uniqueness of the individual. We learn from a very young age the importance of trust in building and sustaining effective relationships and these great leaders were constantly creating a work environment where trust was the most important currency. When people know they are trusted and respected, they will go often go the extra distance to give their very best.

In addition to this ability to balance the organization and the individual was a willingness to take some risk, especially with their people. Development often comes when we are stretched beyond what we think we are capable of and through the process we learn new capabilities and gain greater confidence. These great leaders found opportunities to stretch others not out of fear, control, or power but instead because of their inherent belief of the individual's capacity to achieve more and their desire to see them grow. I continue to see many in our organization who believe that because we work within a highly developed institutional hierarchy and bureaucracy, that it is much safer to wait to be told what to do rather than do something and potentially make a mistake. My experience with these great leaders is they took risk with people and they themselves took great initiative while encouraging those around them to take the initiative as well. Mistakes were often seen as an opportunity to learn another lesson and because these leaders took the time to create an environment of trust and mutual respect there was a safety net for others to take initiative in the absence of waiting to ask permission.

There is a famous book written in 1899 entitled A Message to Garcia by Elbert Hubbard that speaks loudly to what initiative looks like. When war broke out between Spain & the United States, it was very necessary for the President of the United States to communicate quickly with the leader of the rebels by the name of Garcia. However, no one knew where Garcia was located except that he was somewhere in the mountain vastness of Cuba. The President was told, There's a fellow by the name of Rowan who will find Garcia for you, ff anybody can. Rowan was sent for and with no more guidance then to get the message to Garcia, strapped the letter over his heart, took off for the coast of Cuba from an open boat, disappeared into the jungle, and in three weeks having traversed a hostile country on foot, delivered his letter to Garcia. Hubbard describes Rowan with these words: Here is a man whose form should be cast in deathless bronze and the statue placed in every college of the land. It is not book-learning young men need, nor instruction about this and that, but a stiffening of the vertebrae which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies: do the thing--Carry a message to Garcia!

I will close this column with those great words: Carry a message to Garcia. If you are a leader in our Air Force FM community, I challenge you to step up to the task of maximizing the value, commitment and satisfaction of your people. If you are an individual contributor, seek ways to take advantage of some of the best training and education programs in the world. And whatever you do, give your very best and it will be returned to you in even greater measure.

COPYRIGHT 2003 U.S. Air Force, Financial Management and Comptroller
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group