Sometimes I Wonder

There are times I sit in amazement and wonder -- why am I am so disconnected with the reality confronting me at the moment.  Friday (20 Jan 12), was one of those days.  I was caught somewhere between “Where’s Flick?” from A Christmas Story and “The Time Warp” from The Rocky Horror Picture Show.  The life of a petty bureaucrat can be that way sometimes. 

Right now, with the overseas commitments the Air Force supports, the stress of dealing with impending and significant budget cuts, reductions in the people available to work various projects, and at my level, a commander who wants to change direction 180 degrees and do it instantaneously there is tremendous stress on the people who make up the intellectual power of the command.

There has been a noticeable increase in suicides over the past several months and the Chief of Staff of the Air Force has sent down direction for all the senior officers are to take time out to talk with their staffs, and the people that work for them to assure them there is support if they are feeling burdened and stressed out to the point they are considering suicide.  Sooooo, as I sit in the briefing that was supposed to start as 3:30, but doesn’t begin until 4:00, and listen to the commander discuss the support that is available and then wander off into what kind of organizational changes should we make, and how people at his last job dealt with problems, and how he now wants to make sure that people outside our organization are consulted before we do the routine tasks we do everyday I sit and think through the day, until he comes to the point of asking, “What would you like to tell me?”

This is where I am caught in the horns of a dilemma?  What do I say that has even a remote possibility of improving things?  Something that would show the need for everything right now means we compromise our ability to think forward as we put effort against the crisis de’jour.  As in any organization that involves more than one person there are three things that affect the achievement or advancement of goals -- money, vision, and focus.  An organization that has a vision and purpose and can focus the work effort of its people can do nothing if it does not have the capital to proceed.  Likewise an organization without focus will dither away its capital without achieving the long-term vision.

As we reduce funding, and our leadership changes vision it is inevitable we loose focus, but the demands of instantaneous analysis without the depth or time to accomplish it bothers the heck out of me.  

In today’s world, as we transition from sustained war, and shrink to a smaller force, the one question, unasked and unanswered, is does a Commander ever have the courage to say, when pressed by his or her commander, I can no longer do a mission I am assigned but no longer resourced for?  Having spent forty-years associated with the Air Force there is one fundamental truth, you don’t get promoted by saying “We can’t do that!” 

I am fortunate to work with friends and peers who have all grown up in the same environment I have.  They take pride in their work and they have, for the most part, secure family and social circles.  They have demonstrated the ability to work well under pressure, but as that pressure increases my challenge will be to modify my demands on them, or figure out how to provide them sufficient information to minimize the inevitable increase in stress, as now they have to worry about their job security.  Something new for most of them, since government employment has historically expanded, not contracted.