I’ve only read it once, but I like it. It should be mandatory reading for all Acquisition workforce supervisors and their bosses.

“Pay, training, authority, tools, and business acumen must be enhanced.”

Jamaal Valentine said:

“Pay, training, authority, tools, and business acumen must be enhanced.”

Did he enhance it while he was on the Air Staff in the Pentagon?

Vern Edwards said:

Did he enhance it while he was on the Air Staff in the Pentagon?

For Air Force, yes. This includes increasing most 1102 grades across the Air Force and creating special duty assignment pay for enlisted contracting officers. He also sent enlisted members to education with industry and some officers to business school, which you are acutely aware of the latter. Under his tenure many of the rules (e.g., agency supplements) were reduced. These are just a few examples.

Thanks.

He's giving a presentation to NCMA next week.

NCMA SAN DIEGO Presents

Anatomy of a Renaissance:

The Future of Contracting and Business Leadership

FEATURING

USAF Major General (Ret) Cameron Holt

President and Founder, Holt Consulting Group LLC

Date:         WED, 14 DEC 2022

Time:                8:00am – 9:30am PT (11:00am – 12:30pm ET)

Platform:      Zoom

Cost:                FREE virtual event open to all NCMA members and non-members

CPE:                  1 Continuing Professional Education credit will be earned

Register at:   www.ncmasd.org/events

Close Date:    11 DEC 2022

There’s nothing I disagree with.  In fact, it’s an ideal objective in my opinion. But getting Congress and Administration to change is an uphill battle.  Their prevailing notion with them seems to be is the status quo is fine.

Okay, the whole Middle Ages-Renaissance metaphor thing was a bust. Historians long ago stopped thinking about the Middle Ages as dark ages. It was a time of great creativity. Mont Saint-Michel and Chartres cathedral were built during the Middle Ages. The University of Paris (Sorbonne) was founded during the Middle Ages. Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales during the Middle Ages. The Magna Carta was signed during the Middle Ages. I could go on.

And I must confess that a lot of the article came across as sloganeering. "We must push authority, tools, training, and data to the tactical edge." Sounds kinda cool, but what does it mean? I expected to see, "Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more," but it didn't happen.

And then there is this:

Quote

We must teach business to all unlimited warrant holders. These business leaders must be freed to align the financial incentives of corporations with the cost, schedule, performance, and robustness-of design needs of next-generation capabilities. Let’s flip the business model from “winner take all” shifting profit earlier in a “speed to market” model like commercial technologies.

Huh? Why do they have unlimited warrants if they don't know business? And where are those untaught "business leaders" leading us? To places like the JEDI fiasco? And how long before they can be "freed to align the financial incentives of corporations with the cost, schedule, performance, and robustness-of design needs of next-generation capabilities"? Before China moves to take Taiwan in late 2024? Will the new B-21 bomber--just revealed to great fanfare, but not yet flown--be ready by then?

And oh, by the way, who is the "we" that are going to do the teaching, and what do the "business leaders" do while waiting to be taught business?

And if the "business leaders" don't know business yet, how does the following make sense, quoting the author's quote of Will Roper:

Quote

This is contracting’s moment, and its professionals are primed,” he added. “I think they have been waiting to be viewed as innovators, as mavericks, as ninjas."

Primed with what, if they don't know business?

Readers must apply some critical thinking to this kind of speechifying.

We need more substantive writing in Contract Management, please, and less rah-rah malarky.

@Vern Edwards  I will go back and read it again.  When I see articles like this (think this was ten pages in length), I tend to skip through all the  background and preparatory wording and get to the points the author is trying to make (probably less than three pages).  I keyed on things like meaningful competition, etc.

In this case, the author would have benefitted from the help of a tough editor. We all would. A good editor cannot be tough enough. Excessive pride of authorship is author suicide.

formerfed said:

I will go back and read it again.

Don't bother. Instead, write something good for Contract Management. They're in danger of becoming a version of People magazine.

Vern Edwards said:

Readers must apply some critical thinking to this kind of speechifying.

We need more substantive writing in Contract Management, please, and less rah-rah malarky.

Interesting. 

Sorry, I can't reach the article to read it so maybe I should just keep my words to myself...but I have heard Gen Holt speak in person and been paying  attention to him since 2018. So I'll share a few thoughts.

Even if the sense of it did not come across to you, I know that there is substance behind the parts you've quoted...an impressive amount of substance, actually.

In addition to the examples Jamaal cited let me mention some of the more memorable ideas or practices, some realized and some which proved only aspirational aims...

Written instructions to address use of ordering procedures to avoid more formal and unnecessary practices,

A meaningful emphasis on creation and use of tools (not rules) to meet mission requirements.

Tackling the urgent national need for respirators at the beginning of COVID crisis,

Confronting a vendor model based more in sustainment than up front costs (my characterization not his),  incentivizing a different profit model for industry.

Locally re-programming funds freed up for better use

Contracting personnel turning to peers as mission partners instead standing apart as in the traditional view of "customers", inspiring mission focused business leaders to be more than they currently are.

You might see hints of some of the above in the article...I do in the parts you referred to.

Gen. Holt worked for a boss (Will Roper) who wanted us to increase virtualization of prototyping (raising formula one race cars as an example...there is no physical prototype of the race car and every part is virtualized) and pursue iterative development to change the industry incentive from "winner take all" efforts (and massive and expensive sustainment costs) to something smaller, sooner & faster (iteratively) with improvements in each new generation. He cited the 100 series of jets as a model. That addresses your emphasis on competing with near peers. 

The tenure of both Gen Holt & Will Roper leave me with the distinct impression from their words and actions that they each gave us quite a bit, but both still had more to offer than we at the time had room to receive. 

I don't think they opened the aperture all the way, but nonetheless they had folks sprinting. 

The above are just my personal impressions, not based on anything representative or official and as indicated above not having read the article.

@FAR-flung 1102My comments were about the article, nothing else. If you haven't read it, then there is nothing to more to say.

Vern Edwards said:

Excessive pride of authorship is author suicide.

Pride in ownership can confuse one so greatly that one’s work is synonymous with the self.  The confusion is a contagion of the mind that spreads to one’s followers.

Identity politics is another symptom of this pride.  It’s a slow suicide - a daily rat poison dose.

Quote

Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.

One of Colin Powell's Thirteen Rules of Leadership

There is a very good article in this month's Contract Management: "The Future of Formal Relational Contracting Is Now," by Vitasek and Frydlinger. Comes with a good, but short, list of additional reading.

Wow Vern!  I think you should get a puppy.

Cameron Holt