Photo By Nicole Woods | Lt. Gen. Bruce Litchfield, commander of the Air Force Sustainment Center (AFSC)and Air...... read more read more
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WASHINGTON – Process improvement and remaining focused on making a better tomorrow are among the values that leaders need to exhibit, a top Air Force official told attendees at a recent conference.
Lt. Gen. Bruce A. Litchfield, commander of the Air Force Sustainment Center (AFSC), spoke to military and civilian personnel at the 2014 Air Force Association’s Air and Space Conference about “Achieving the Art of Possibility.”
Litchfield’s presentation focused on developing an effective leadership model with limited resources and time.
The model is geared toward three specific items needed to achieve common goals within an organization: people, resources and processes.
“Our people have to get really good at understanding how to take care of people – from developing their skills, to training,” explained Litchfield. “Because, in an environment of limited resources, we’ll never have everything that we want, but it is still the leadership’s responsibility to get what is needed.”
The model is fundamental in the way that it helps grow leadership within an organization, enabling two-way communication between leadership and staff. If problems arise, it is expected that leaders should be able to talk about those problems and refer back to the model to re-evaluate the processes.
“If you’re not doing process-improvement, and if you’re not focused on making a better tomorrow, today, then you’re not exhibiting the right type of leadership values,” Litchfield said.
There is a scientific methodology aspect to the model, which provides an element of predictability and a process for making a non-linear problem, linear, he said. This enables the model to be applicable in all environments, whether it’s for a bomber, a tanker, the supply chain, or contracting operations.
Thus far, the application of this model has led to operational commanders receiving aircraft back from maintenance status, 20 percent faster, and it has improved supply support by 11 percent, two years running, Litchfield explained. The system allows people to come to work and later judge whether they’ve had a productive day or not.
“There has to be a way to say at the end of the day that, ‘I’ve done what my nation asked me to do’,” Litchfield said.
“If they feel like they didn’t meet their goals that day, we want them to go home and think about what they can do differently tomorrow, to make tomorrow better than today. If you look at what that does, it creates engagement of all the workforce together.”
To move this collaborative effort forward, the AFSC is training and educating not only its leadership, but also its civilian partners to operate under the same model.
“We’re all in this together to have a more informed dialogue on what we can do to improve the way our Air Force sustains its fleet,” Litchfield said.
“As an adjunct professor at Oklahoma State University, teaching supply-chain management, I definitely plan to use this model in my classes, and even in my day job as a defense contractor, said Dr. Jerry McMahan.
McMahan said he was glad to hear what Litchfield had to say.
“His presentation was actually a validation of my academic and my professional background,” McMahan explained. “I’ve heard him speak before, and he’s always been a very creative person, who actually goes out and does what he says.”
“Whether you’re trying to see how we’re overhauling our aircraft, delivering parts, managing our weapons systems in the supply chain – we have one system that’s operating across all the entities – and this is what we found, and it’s pretty exciting,” Litchfield said.
| Date Taken: | 09.16.2014 |
| Date Posted: | 10.27.2014 10:55 |
| Story ID: | 146144 |
| Location: | JOINT BASE ANACOSTIA-BOLLING, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, US |
| Web Views: | 171 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
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