June 02, 2024 | Read Online
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General Bill Creech orchestrated a profound transformation.
When he took command of the US Air Force’s Tactical Air Command (TAC) in 1978, he brought with him a couple of fundamental beliefs.
General Wilbur "Bill" L. Creec
The first was that military fighting forces should organize in peacetime as would be required during wartime. In his own words:
“[Wartime] is not the time for reorganization, nor the time to work with strangers—nor, for that matter, the time to find out about some deficiency masked from view by a centralized peacetime organization.”
The second belief was that small teams, oriented around an outcome, were superior to monolithic, centralized functions like those found in the Air Force at the time.
From the end of World War II through the 1960s, private sector industry executives such as Robert McNamara, former president of the Ford Motor Company, infiltrated the US Department of Defense. They brought with them an affinity toward centralization which had been widely used in the private sector to remove duplication of resources, eliminate waste, and improve efficiency.
Large departments of specialists began to form in the TAC. Maintenance, inspection, ground equipment, component repair, munitions supply organizations served hundreds of aircraft across multiple squadrons (note, a squadron is a group of 12-24 aircraft).
The results were lackluster.
Key measures of TAC productivity—monthly training flights (”sorties”) and flight hours—declined. Accident rates rose. Morale was at an all-time low and pilots left the service at a startling rate.
The chart below shows the precipitous decline of "utilization rates," key performance indicators for the TAC.
TAC Utilization Rates - 1969-1978
As a business leader, this probably doesn't sound too foreign to you.
in 2024 we still organize our companies into functional silos according to specialist skill sets such as marketing, sales, customer success, product management, and so on.
These teams often become infatuated with their own inputs to customer acquisition, customer retention, and company growth to the detriment of a cohesive customer experience and the success of the business as a whole.
Ryan Smith, co-founder of Qualtrics, once said it best:
“The modern departmental structure is a disaster for the customer experience.”
Most of our companies are vastly smaller than the 113,000-person Tactical Air Command. But we must remain vigilant in identifying and rooting out siloed, input-driven mindsets, metrics, and behaviors.
But back to General Creech...
Armed with his guiding principles, Creech set about transforming the TAC. He broke down centralized teams and moved specialists into the squadrons where they would be closer to the final product and organized for battle.
The new structure put ”tiger team” crews in control of the outcomes for which they were responsible: 25 flight hours and 18 sorties per aircraft per month.
Over the next few years, the results came into sharp relief. Productivity skyrocketed. Morale improved. A sense of identity and pride returned. Squadrons attained their monthly goals and the TAC over-achieved against its overall goals.
The utilization rates told a much different story:
TAC Turnaround, 1978-1984
While the metrics are compelling, one particular anecdote sticks out as the icing on the cake. This is an excerpt from a book called A Passion for Excellence which recounts a conversation between General Creech and one of his noncommissioned officers (NCO):
The general asked him what the difference was between the old, specialist organization and the new organization, in which the plane and the sortie are the “customer,” where the supervisor… “owned” the plane. The NCO’s to-the-point reply: “General, when’s the last time you washed a rental car?” We think that may say it all. None of us washes our rental cars. There’s no ownership. And there’s no ownership if you’re a specialist, no matter how well trained, if you’re responsible only for two square feet of the right wing of a hundred planes. Only whole planes fly. Only “owners,” especially in competition with flags flying, will go all out to make a whole plane fly. Creech had, pure and simple, made that [officer] a proud owner—with… the wherewithal to get the job done.
Are there people in your organization responsible “for only two square feet of the right wing” across hundreds of customers?
When General Creech relinquished command of the TAC he published a set of fifteen organizing principles, "Creech's Laws," for his successor to consider. Law #12 stuck out as being central to the turnaround he facilitated:
“Provide everyone with a stake in the outcome. Make each job meaningful. Reward good performance (lavishly) in all areas.”
Although most of our companies are far smaller than the US Air Force's Tactical Air Command, departmental silos can take on a life of their own. Teams become enamored with their own metrics. They hoard resources, and establish processes that prioritize efficiency over effectiveness.
You don't necessarily need to reorganize your entire business to solve this. But as a leader it's up to you to get the organization closer to the customer. So everyone feels connected to their results.
How do we do that?
By telling customer stories in all-hands meetings.
By identifying and reporting frequently on a customer-oriented North Star metric (like the TAC's utilization KPIs).
By removing processes that don't directly benefit customers.
By identifying someone to own responsibility for every single customer in your portfolio. Both the large ones as well as groups of smaller ones. "Crew chiefs" of the customer base.
And by arming those crew chiefs with the resources they need to enable, serve, and innovate on their customers' behalf.
Operate daily as if you're going to battle for customers.
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