Warriors In Transition: A Feature On The White Rhino Report

I have been featured on The White Rhino Report in a post called Warriors In Transition. The White Rhino Report is the blog of Dr. Al Chase, a friend and the founder of White Rhino Partners. White Rhino Partners is an executive recruiting company out of Boston, MA that as Dr. Chase so eloquently puts it"specializes in placing senior executives who are "Renaissance Men and Women," and who are entrepreneurial leaders - many of whom have had a distinguished military career and/or are Service Academy graduates and hold MBA's from top-tier business schools."

I am honored to be featured in the blog and to be working with Dr. Chase. I look forward to working alongside him to find my way into an organization where I can add value through my unique experiences and professional skill set. Below is the piece that was featured, but do yourself a favor and check out The White Rhino Report for a wide range of interesting topics as Al not only places Renaissance men and women, he is a Renaissance man himself.

Periodically in The White Rhino Report, we tell the story of a warrior who has served our nation in the military and is transitioning to a new career in the private sector. Today I am pleased to introduce the readers of the WRP to my good friend, USAF Captain Matt Bader. Matt is a graduate of the United States Air Force Academy, where he excelled as a member of the hockey team. He has recently returned from a deployment to Iraq. In the following paragraphs he shares some of experiences he had while serving with Tiger team in central Iraq.

Tiger Team in Iraq:

When I was deployed to Iraq I led a team of people responsible for providing contracting support to bases throughout central Iraq. There was seemingly more work to be done than could ever be accomplished, but you worked 14 hour days and did your best to prioritize the work to ensure the success of the mission. After I had been there a month or so I began to settle in and feel more comfortable in my role. Then I was assigned an additional duty as the lead of the DFAS Tiger Team. DFAS stands for Defense Finance and Accounting Service and they are the agency responsible for disbursing payments to all contractors doing business with DOD. I was charged with reducing the outstanding payments that the government owed contractors for goods, services, and construction that had been completed.

It was an additional duty that nobody wanted. The problems were multifaceted and complex in nature and each week the General in charge of all contracting for Iraq and Afghanistan got reports on the progress so it was very high stakes as well.

My team members were made up of DFAS liaisons, contracting personnel, and me. Most of them were less than thrilled to be given additional duties on top of the seemingly endless workload they already had. Our starting point was more than $2 million in outstanding invoices across Iraq many of which were accruing interest payments and costing the government thousands of dollars. We had conflicting interests amongst the key players and we were facing systemic wartime problems to include government bureaucracy, the fog of war, and the language/cultural barrier of our contractors. The DFAS Tiger Team on the prior rotation had made little to no progress in reducing the outstanding invoices and the lack of progress was becoming a sore spot for leadership. It was definitely an uphill battle.

I must admit that when I first took over I was feeling a little overwhelmed but I did the only thing you can really do in that environment which is put your head down, work hard, and give it your best shot. I knew that fostering a real team environment and creating buy in was the first thing I needed to do to get anywhere. I recognized that the DFAS liaisons were undermanned and often took the majority of the “blame” with regard to the outstanding invoices so I sought to earn their respect by immediately showing them that I cared about making a difference with the DFAS Tiger Team. I empathized with their situation and asked a ton of questions about the process. I think my humility and genuine desire to improve our current state won them over which was huge because they were the primary knowledge holders for the payment process and the inner workings of DFAS. I then sought to establish a common vision that was aligned with the overarching mission in Iraq. I described that it was building the Iraqi economy that was going to get us out of the war. Enhancing opportunities for the Iraqi people is the goal of counterinsurgency and there is no better way to do that then to put the Iraqi citizens to work. With that being said, huge damage can be done to our relations when the work has been performed and we do not hold up our end of the bargain with proper and prompt payment. I made sure that everyone on the team was aware that our team could have a direct impact on preventing extremism and that letting the current state continue could actually be fostering terrorism. It was clear that tying our additional duty to the mission of the war effort was a big turning point for the buy in and camaraderie of the team.

After I got my feet wet and had fostered a unified team environment I got my 8 member team together for a brainstorming session. I facilitated a mini continuous process improvement event for the team. We came up with the challenges we were facing and eventually came up with a set of action items we thought could improve the state of the payment process in Iraq. It was clear that we needed help from outside organizations such as DFAS Rome back in the states who processed all the payments, the Senior Contracting Official for Iraq, and the Brigadier General of CENTCOM Contracting Command. I knew that simply telling higher ranking people and outside organizations we needed help was a recipe for disaster. So we presented our findings in a very strategic manner. We showcased how we brought different stakeholders together and came up with a consensus of the “big rocks” or issues with payment process in Iraq. We then presented what “we,” Regional Contracting Center Central, were already doing to improve the current state. This included new standard work, re-engineered business processes, and visuals to be used as payment processing templates for contractors and customers. It was after our efforts had been showcased that we had a section detailing the help we needed from outside organizations. We tried to portray our findings as “here is what we are doing to help ourselves, but we could really use your help in these areas to take our successes to the next level.”

I presented our findings to my leadership and they in turn passed them onto the SCO-I, and the General. On a visit stateside the General met with the head of DFAS Rome in New York and began forging a new memorandum of agreement between the Command and DFAS.

Within two months the changes our 8 person DFAS Tiger Team had implemented had reduced the outstanding payments by more than 50%. This was without the help of the outside agencies. As I prepared to depart Iraq, The SCO-I emailed me directly for feedback on the memorandum they were drafting to be implemented in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It was an incredibly rewarding experience to take over a program that nobody wanted to be a part of and to build a highly performing team that achieved amazing results. We went from the Regional Contracting Center with the largest outstanding payment issues to the model for entire theatre in less than six months.

Matt will be leaving the Air force in the next few weeks. He and his wife are committed to returning to the Portland, Oregon area. If you know of an employer in that area who could use a leader with the kind of skills that Matt outlines above, his work ethic, leadership abilities and unimpeachable integrity, have them contact me to get in touch with Matt.

Dr. Al Chase, White Rhino Partners
1 Broadway, 14th floor Kendall Sq.,
Cambridge, MA 02142
achase@whiterhinopartners.com
office: (617) 401-2113

Mental Balance And A Growing Trend

It has been a while since I have posted. What can I say? I have been busy. I don't mean to sound like one of those people who always say they too busy to do something, but in actuality whatever they are too busy for just is not that important to them to begin with. I think my commitment to blogging over the past year or so has demonstrated how important writing, learning, and introspection are to me. I must admit that I have consciously chosen to not be committed to consistent posts. I like to think that I am fairly tough mentally, however being put through adversity always does wonders for the psyche as it both builds confidence and strength while simultaneously reminding you just how fragile you actually are. My day to day life over here in the desert has been hard on me. By all accounts I feel fairly blessed to have the deployment set up that I have. There are others who have it much worse. However, working fourteen hour days with a few meals and a workout thrown in for good measure leaves limited personal time to work with. I have found that I have to consciously monitor my mental well being out here much more closely than my normal life. You have to take care of yourself mentally. You have to let loose a bit at night through simple activities taken for granted stateside. Whether it is watching a World Cup game with the boys, playing an hour or two of guitar, or just reading in silence for an hour before bed I have felt the heightened importance of decompressing activities that counteract the increased life tempo I am experiencing in Baghdad. Couple that commitment to a balanced mental state with a strong commitment to dedicating time to the ones I love back home and there just isn't much time I am willing to sacrifice for consistent writing. Life is all about choices right?

With all that being said I have made a commitment to writing when something ignites that spark within and gets the gears churning upstairs. I was forwarded an article today that inspired me to sit down and get back at it. The article I am referring to was published on the NPR website at the end of last month about corporate America's growing appetite for recruiting junior military officers. You can read the article or listen to the podcast in its entirety here.

There are many things that frustrate me about being a junior military officer. I am often frustrated by the bludgeoning bureaucracy of the military. I am often disenfranchised with a system that has limited options for which to distinguish great performers from the average and poor. However, as I look back on my relatively short career I cannot help but be grateful for the incredible opportunities I have been afforded during my service. I think of all the other 27 (28 tomorrow) year olds I know that never served and the great majority just aren't put in the leadership roles that junior military officers are at such a young age.

KAUFMAN: From Amazon to Unilever, dozens of other Fortune 500 companies are also wooing these officers. Rene Brooks recruits military talent for many of them.

Ms. RENE BROOKS (Recruiter): They say there is no room for a failure. And they feel like these junior officers who have immense challenges under their belt, who understand accountability, mean you must get results, these are the kind of people that they prefer to hire.

KAUFMAN: In the military, young officers hone their decision-making skills by making lots of tough calls, sometimes with life or death consequences. Even Zadack, who wasn't in combat, made recommendations about who in her unit would be sent to Iraq or Afghanistan.

Mike Useem who teaches leadership at the Wharton School says the young officers have their decisions scrutinized all the time through after-action reviews. They quickly learn what works, what doesn't and why. And says Useem, they have a strong sense of mission.

Professor MIKE USEEM (Leadership, Wharton School): And people do acquire this amazing ability to cut to the chase and say, look, here are the steps in this order we really have to take to make this happen.

Obviously I am excited in that I am currently a junior military officer, but I am also excited that corporate America is beginning to recognize the value that I see in so many of my peers. I love the fact that the military focuses so intently on character and leadership. I have seen why this approach is so beneficial first hand. People who have good character and leadership skills can always learn new jobs and skills. The military environment is full of uncertainty and ambiguity. Military leaders are often thrust into new jobs, new positions, new areas of responsibility and are forced to adapt quickly. I think military leaders are used to dealing with change, and change at a high operations tempo. When you have the ability to successfully navigate new challenges rapidly and have a solid base of character and leadership skills I think you are a valuable member of the team no matter what that team is.

KAUFMAN: On a recent afternoon, Zadack was conducting an employee team meeting at the Wal-Mart store in St. Helens, Oregon. At 27, she's one of the company's youngest store managers. Ordinarily it takes years to become a manager, but
Zadack did it in just six months, this in spite of the fact that she knew nothing about retail when she was hired.

Ms. ZADACK: No. I'm not even one who really shops very much. And honestly, I had never even set foot in a Wal-Mart.

KAUFMAN: But she had overseen training missions involving hundreds of soldiers, making sure transportation was in place, meals were hot and that everyone from cooks to intel officers learned what they needed to know. She kept tabs on millions of dollars of equipment spread across eight different sites and often had to show that she was in charge.

Ms. ZADACK: People assume that in the military you would just say jump and they'd say, how high? That's not the truth. You have to buy in, no matter what organization you're a part of. So it's different, of course, but it's not tremendously so because people are people.

KAUFMAN: Junior military officers learn to accomplish a variety of assignments quickly. In the process, they learn flexibility, responsibility and accountability.

Mr. GARY PROFIT (Former Brigadier General, U.S. Army): Each of these young men and women has benefitted from a large national investment in his or her leadership capabilities.

KAUFMAN: Former Brigadier General Gary Profit is in charge of military recruiting for Wal-Mart. He describes the junior officer corps made up primarily of captains and lieutenants as the largest, diverse, talent-rich pool in the world. And two years ago, the giant retailer launched an aggressive effort to recruit the young officers.

Earlier this month I read a similar article that garnered the cover story of March's Fortune Magazine. The article, titled Meet The New Face Of Business Leadership, cites some interesting statistics that certainly caught my eye. According to the article in 1980 59% of America's large publicly traded company CEO's had military experience. By 2006 that number had decreased to 8%. The large representation of board room veterans in the 80's was attributed to a WWII generation that learned valuable lessons in leadership during a time of war. Could the resurgence in junior military officer recruitment today be attributed to a new generation of leaders whose skills were honed in two wars? The Fortune article seems to present that argument. However, the article also attributes the recent aggressive recruiting push to the nature of American business itself. With the prevalent character and ethical voids visible for all to see many corporations are looking for people that can handle today's fast paced environment, and can do so with integrity. Seeing as the military is consistently one of the institutions that the nation has the most confidence in, 82% according to Fortune, the junior military officer recruiting play seems like a natural fit

I think everyone has experiences that are unique and valuable to a team, however there are many military experiences that just cannot be replicated in other environments. Does this make military veterans more valuable than the next person? Not necessarily, but the transcendent skill sets that many veterans possess would certainly make them unique and valuable members of many of the high performing organizations the nation has to offer. Judging by all the articles I have stumbled across lately it looks like I am not the only one who holds this sentiment.