Interview with Mr. Robert Love, Director of DoD Business Transformation Agency Warfighter Support Office - Part 1 of 3
February 24, 2006
Mr. Love, a retired Marine Corps Colonel, is Director of Warfighter Support Office, Business Transformation Agency. At the Marine Corps, Mr. Love led the Marine Corps logistics modernization effort. Interview transcript with him is presented in three parts.
Daniel Forrester: Can you locate yourself now in DoD and your role?
Mr. Robert Love: I am in the Business Transformation Agency. I am fortunate enough to head up one of the Directorates within that agency, the Warfighter Support Office.
Daniel Forrester: And what is the mission and vision for this Office?
Mr. Robert Love: The mission of the agency is, "To transform business operations to achieve improved War fighter support while enabling accountability across the Department of Defense". The focus of the agency is on connecting the "corporate," to use a civilian term, level with the warfighter - making sure there are clear linkages between everything we do and what the War fighter’s needs within the business mission area.
Daniel Forrester: How does your office interact with the Office of Force Transformation?
Mr. Robert Love: DoD has established 4 mission areas. There is a Warfighting mission area, a Business mission area, an Intelligence mission area, and the fourth mission area is called the Enterprise Information Environment mission area. We are in the Business mission area, but clearly we support the warfighter. The Office of Force Transformation would be more oriented towards the Warfighter mission area. And they have their own mission.
Daniel Forrester: Can you give us your definition of a change agent? What do those words mean to you?
Mr. Robert Love: I don't know if there should be a clear definition of what a change agent is. We need to maintain some flexibility in that definition. I am not so sure it’s a bad thing to not have a clear definition for what a change agent is. But if pressed, obviously a change agent is certainly someone who has a vision, the wherewithal to implement that vision (authority or authorization). The change agent must also have the protection of the organization within which he or she operates. And that last part is a piece that’s often forgotten.
Daniel Forrester: "Protection." Could you elaborate on that a little bit? What do you mean by that?
Mr. Robert Love: Absolutely. Change agents are lightning rods for change. They become, in our environment, the focal point criticism, they represent the change activity of the organization. The organization has to protect the change agents so that they can continue to do the right thing without fear of retribution.
If things don't go well (in a changing) environment, that’s not bad. We learn from what does and does not go well so we can do better in the next evolution. That would be a change agent’s perspective.
However, from a traditionalist’s perspective they may use a singular ‘failed’ initiative as a way to block future attempts at inserting a best practice into their organization. One way to do this is to remove the change agent. The failed attempt is used as the forcing function to eliminate the problem. If the organization is sincere in its attempts to ‘transform’ it must be loyal to the agent through success and failure. This is what I mean by protecting the change agent.
Daniel Forrester: How does the change agent view failure? And what is failure?
Mr. Robert Love: Each change agent would probably give you a different perspective. But for me, I would say I don't see failures in execution as a failure of the effort. I would prefer to use ‘failure’ as a learning tool so that we can adjust for the next evolution. So if we say, okay. We are going to try something here. We are going to implement this change. Maybe we implemented it poorly. The idea was right, but we executed poorly. Maybe the idea was bad and it failed for all the right reasons. But we learn from it and we move on.. Nobody has all the answers. We need to ask ourselves, "How can we do better?"
Failure to me is a learning experience.
Daniel Forrester: Mark Forman one of the change agents in our white paper, was the head of E-Government under OMB, and he is very much a transformational leader. He said he showed up and 40% of the people got his vision right off the bat, 30% of the people took a little time to come around, and 30% of the people just didn't get it.
Mr. Robert Love: That’s a pretty standard ratio that I think most of us use, give or take. There’s always some percentage that just don't get it, don't want to get it, or don't feel it’s the correct approach. They're great Americans, but for whatever reason, you won't get their buy-in.
Daniel Forrester: How much patience does a change agent have with those who are the "vocal opponents"?
Mr. Robert Love: Well, a change agent has to be extremely patient. I think the question may not be how much patience, but how much time do we invest in those that will not modify their behavior, remembering that those people don't wear a sign stating that they are 'opposed'. There’s no sign that says, "I'm in that last category". So I think you have to have an awful lot of patience, because you don't know who’s in that last category and you certainly don't want to alienate those that are in the middle category - the ones that could go either way. You have got to be careful.
You need an awful lot of patience, but you need that authority, too, for those that don't want to change, that you could when necessary influence them in other ways. You just don't want to alienate people. I used to tell people, it’s hard to keep friends and very easy to make enemies. And we don't have the luxury to make enemies in the change business. It really is difficult to keep friends for a number of reasons. But enemies? That’s easy.
(To be continued in part 2.)