Washington Pulse 

Memo to Pentagon Brass: Stay Away From Management Bestsellers 

8  2,009 

By Sandra I. Erwin 

A troublesome consequence of the influence of trendy management books is that many Defense Department officials profess that the Pentagon needs to adopt these presumed “best practices” and incorporate them into its programs, says Christopher Paparone, associate professor at the Army Command and General Staff College.

During the past 30 years, “We have witnessed the bandwagon effect of popular management movements such as management by objectives; reinventing government; reengineering; the balanced scorecard; and the latest craze, Lean and Six Sigma,” Paparone writes in Defense AT&L, the journal of the Defense Acquisition University. “Why do we persist?” he wonders. The answer may be in the underlying belief that the pursuit of best practices mimics “hard sciences.” In reality, such best practices are better applicable to “soft sciences.” They make for interesting philosophical discussions but don’t contribute much to weapon acquisitions.

Reader Comments

Re: Memo to Pentagon Brass: Stay Away From Management Bestsellers

I DO NOT agree with the article. I do agree with the comments by those who've already commented.

Working with the brass at the Pentagon shows the ongoing problems with a worn-out cultural paradigm driven by the wrong continued premises (i.e. The Cold War and its needs to fight a traditional force war died in 1989.) because of this: 1) The culture creates gatekeeping rather than execution (if the gatekeepers are great at their job it might work, otherwise ...); 2) The buying culture is designed around cost and risk containment financial strategies. They should be focused on operational needs, or the specs should always be developed via the original focus (not watered-down to make contractors happy).

My points -- Stick to your original focus. Force buyers to buy based primarily on meeting operational needs using DoD (not vendor-developed) specs. Change the culture from the bottom up and GET the right execution dynamics by transformation ONLY AFTER cultural change occurs, not before, or it quickly becomes FUBAR.

Frank Sowa on 02/07/2010 at 12:59

Re: Memo to Pentagon Brass: Stay Away From Management Bestsellers

It's fact that the ONE best practice that must precede and underlie all others - a well developed culture of Execution - is not available as a convenient, faddish, silver bullet. So we pursue every new management bestseller in the hope that it will provide some easy pill that we could pop and rise to the top of the mountain.

In the defense department as in large corporations, getting good at executing initiatives just feels like a particularly hard kind of work - it demands that you string the goals you choose with the executive will to get them done with day-to-day focus, troubleshooting and course correction until they get done. All this might sound simple but is a fundamental skill/competency/culture. Failure to execute is single largest cause of CEO dismissal and of failed initiatives.

Brijinder Singh on 08/13/2009 at 09:44

Re: Memo to Pentagon Brass: Stay Away From Management Bestsellers

I can't think of a agency group that needs to incorporate "Best Practices" into their woeful policies more than Wepons Acquisitions. One wonders "why the opposition to incorporating management CPI". Methinks he doth protest too much!

Jim Watson on 08/04/2009 at 10:52

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