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AETC implementing balanced scorecard

  • Published
  • By Megan Orton
  • Air Education and Training Command Public Affairs
RANDOLPH AIR FORCE BASE, Texas (AETCNS) --  Since his change of command ceremony in June, Gen. William R. Looney III, commander of Air Education and Training Command, has worked to build and improve the command. One significant change is the implementation of the balanced scorecard strategic measurement system.

Balanced scorecard is a strategic planning device designed to put strategy into action in a management system. Strategic planning is reported to be the most widely used management tool within organizations today, according to Bain and Company's 2001 CEO survey published in Fortune magazine, but only one in 10 companies succeed in executing their strategies.

"In my 34 years (in the Air Force), I've lost track of how many different ways we have strategically planned, but there've been a lot of them," said Lt. Gen. Dennis R. Larsen, AETC vice commander. After starting and failing many times with previous strategic plans from the civilian world, he said, we have found that, ultimately, none of them fit the Air Force model.

Balanced scorecard is different.

The balanced scorecard model's implementation has been targeted by the Department of Defense for all services since December 2002. It was adopted by General Looney's last two commands within Air Force Material Command - the Electronic Systems Center and the Aeronautical Systems Center. After seeing how well the program worked at both centers, AFMC decided to implement the system command-wide. Under General Looney's guidance, AETC is following suit.

The starting point for AETC's balanced scorecard was a "strawman" from General Looney, who devised the plan from his experiences at ASC and ESC. Then facilitators from RTS Partners, a non-profit corporation specializing in solutions like balanced scorecard, interviewed senior leaders across AETC to find out what they consider most important to the command. After this information was compiled, a rough outline of the command's scorecard was constructed and compared with General Looney's strawman scorecard.

General Looney then kicked off a four-day workshop where AETC's senior leaders combined these two models into the dynamic map that will be used to monitor the progress of the command. The map is designed to work from the bottom up, eventually peaking at the command's mission and vision perspectives. "Developing and supporting our people" serves as the foundation to what's called the "operational drivers," three fundamental tasks AETC leaders feel are vital to accomplishing the command's mission.

The operational drivers - recruiting, educating and training the force - are not designed to be separate goals but functions that are all being achieved simultaneously.

"Our big problem in AETC is that we look at it as three stovepipes, but it isn't; recruiting, educating and training are all intermingled," General Larsen said. "All of them are really a continuum from recruitment until an Airman's last bit of education that they get, and we have to figure out how to tie them together better."

Each of the three operational drivers has strategic objectives, and each of the 18 objectives is assigned one or two measures, which AETC is working on now. The reason this method has proven useful is because it is measurable, the piece that has always been missing from strategic planning in the Air Force, General Larsen said.

The objective of "balance mission and family," for example, can be measured by how much leave our people are taking, the general said. If people are losing a lot of leave at the end of the year, they may not be getting the appropriate amount of time off to spend with their families. Having this objective on the scorecard lets AETC people see this is something General Looney is interested in, he said.

"It is easy to talk about aspirations, but if you know how to measure it, then the purpose of it becomes real," said Robert D. Anderson, RTS Partners senior consultant and facilitator for AETC's balanced scorecard tasking.

As all of the goals within the operational drivers are met, the mission is achieved.

"Every couple of months our headquarters will be able to look at every single one of the objectives, and in a relatively short amount of time, we'll have a good feeling of what's going on across our command and whether all of our units out there understand what our strategy is," General Larsen said.

Eventually, a process called "cascading" will disseminate AETC balanced scorecard goals to its subordinate organizations. The numbered air forces, and eventually the wings, will configure their own scorecards that will ultimately support the strategy map AETC has created, said Lt. Col. Jerry Perez, AETC strategic oversight branch chief. Cascading should reach AETC's wings by next spring, General Larsen said.

"The vision for this plan is to develop a strategy that everybody in AETC can understand, so everybody in AETC knows what their piece to supporting that strategic plan is," General Larsen said. "This will end up getting filtered down to every Airman in AETC."

He said balanced scorecard will allow everyone down the chain of command to know what General Looney is focusing on, and what the commander thinks is important to AETC. Once it reaches a local level, General Larsen said the job of the individual Airman is to try and fit into that strategic plan.

Implementing the balanced scorecard in the military and civilian worlds are "basically the same," Mr. Anderson said. However, the process of developing the plan within military organizations "seems to go a lot better because there is a more disciplined thinking and focus than in the public sector."

"This is a good deal for the Air Force, not only AETC," General Larsen said. "It's about being able to give the Air Force the right products - the right Airmen, trained properly."