Cartwright at USSTRATCOM Defines Change Agent, Part 2
June 21, 2006
(Part 1 of this post provided some background on General Cartwright at STRATCOM and discussed how he changed the mission of the organization to make it a significant player for coordinating military activities across the globe. Today’s conclusion looks into how he made the changes to make STRATCOM successful. -Ed.)
How He Changed the Organizational Structure
In order to execute these new missions, Cartwright had to quickly and completely reshape his organization. He worked collaboratively with other commanders across the Department who had key resources that STRATCOM would need and had authority that STRATCOM didn’t have. Cartwright worked with these other commanders to stand up a new type of organization called a Joint Force Component Command. These are: Integrated Missile Defense (JFCC-IMD), Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (JFCC-ISR), Network Warfare (JFCC-NW) and Space & Global Strike (JFCC-SGS). Part of what is so innovative about these organizations is that rather than creating potentially duplicative organizations or allowing the new mission alignment to cause conflict with commanders who had similar or duplicative mission definitions, Cartwright established joint organizations with those commanders that allowed STRATCOM to leverage other commands effectively while establishing a new command chain and aligning those commanders to the STRATCOM mission. The commanders of the JFCCs include the Commander, U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command/Army Forces Strategic Command; the Director, Defense Intelligence Agency; Director, National Security Agency and Commander 8th Air Force. He has invested those commanders with a new authority and made them more effective in their roles and in doing so has given STRATCOM much more impact.
How He's Changing the Culture and the Tools
Cartwright has a reputation for disliking the tendency for the military hierarchy to prevent or severely edit communication from lower in the hierarchy, particularly where it becomes a means of ensuring that the status quo is maintained. He has worked to remove obstacles to communication that have made more than a few of his subordinates nervous. Cartwright is a firm believer in deploying simple technology solutions to help facilitate this and is well know for his support of blogging. Blogs at STRATCOM are used to allow the free exchange of data and ideas among people solving real world problems and they do so fast and without regard to rank. Cartwright thwarted attempts to shutdown blogs because they didn’t allow any filtering and "sanitizing" of the discussion. At STRATCOM, everyone from enlisted man to General Officer has a voice, and it can be heard quickly and in a relatively unedited manner.
Cartwright is also a supporter of collaboration and the technology that enables collaboration. He actively supports the use of tools such as IM in the day to day activities of STRATCOM and helps to break down meaningless policy barriers that prevent the use of these kinds of tools. Cartwright fully appreciates that the current generation of commanders has much to learn about the application of technology from the younger junior officers and enlisted men and women and actively supports them by removing obstacles to their use of technology.
Cartwright is also a fierce critic of the current state of the DoD acquisition approach for information technology. He is passionate about finding ways to deliver capabilities into the hands of the war fighters quickly. He sees the time from a requested capability to its actual delivery as a matter of months rather than years. He would rather see a fifty to eighty percent solution fielded in a matter of months than wait years for the perfect solution.
Some Final Thoughts
As a taxpayer and a citizen, it is a great thing to see a man like General Cartwright in his position. It would be a terrible loss for all of us if the system doesn’t allow him to succeed in continuing to make changes and shake things up. He and people like him are desperately needed across the entire Federal Government.
Thoughts or reactions? Please send them to us.