Contemporary Military Forum II: The Army is People

- And thank you, for joining us, for this ILW Contemporary Military Forum titled "The Army Is People". I am Jerry O'Keefe, one of AUSA's Senior Fellows, and in a previous life, I was the Administrative Assistant to the Secretary of the Army. Over the last couple of months, we've heard our new CSA, General McConville, articulate the importance and priority he intends to place on people. Soldiers, Active Component, Army National Guard, and US Army Reserve, civilians, family members, retirees, and veterans, and this morning, we heard some of the same priorities from our new Secretary Ryan McCarthy. So this CMF is one that is both timely and important. As your professional Association, the Association of the United States Army's Institute of Land Warfare, is proud to provide forums like this one throughout the year that broaden the knowledge base of Army professionals and those who support our Army. This is one of 10 professional-development seminars conducted over the next three days. AUSA will amplify the US Army's narrative to audiences both inside and outside the Army, and help to further the Association's mission to be the voice of the Army, support for the soldier. And of course, AUSA cannot do this alone. AUSA relies on its members to help tell the Army story, and to support our soldiers and their families. A strong membership base is vitally important for our advocacy efforts in Congress, the Pentagon, and the Defense Industrial Base, and to the public in communities across the country through AUSA's 123 local chapters. If you're an AUSA member, thank you for your support. For those of you Army professionals who are not yet members of your professional Association, we encourage you to join AUSA by visiting the AUSA membership booth, booth 307 in Exhibit Hall A, or sign up online at https://www.ausa.org/membership. And now, I'd like to turn the floor over to Lieutenant General Howard Bromberg, US Army retired. General Bromberg is currently the Vice President for strategy for integrated air and missile defense at Lockheed Martin, and he is of course a former Army G1. General Bromberg. - Well, thanks, I appreciate it very much. (audience applauding) It's a great privilege for me to be here today with this distinguished panel for what, I'm sure, is going to be the number one panel of AUSA 2019. Right? Come on, now, let's get a little excited here. Okay, this is a great panel today, and it is. And you know that, I think, on your seats, most of you have the Army People Strategy handout there, so you'll be able to look at that during the event here today. I'm not going to speak but just for a second here, we have a great panel, very senior panel, and they're gonna talk today about the Army's most significant resource for not just today, but as always has been, Army, the people of the Army, soldiers, families, civilians alike, and how we look to the future. And this is a great opportunity for us to hear as they roll out the strategy today. And so you know, most panels, this will run as most panels normally do, where each member of the panel will have an opportunity to make some opening comments, and after that, we'll get into Q and A. So as you can start preparing our questions, please send them forward, and we'll be more than happy to make sure you get your questions answered. So I think all the panel members will agree, one of the most important things today is to have an enriched dialogue and discourse so we can have some good discussion about the Army People Strategy. So I'm gonna dispense with the reading of the normal bios, and I'm just gonna quickly introduce the panel, and then I'll turn it over to General Funk to get us moving forward today. So from my right to your left, obviously our first panel member, General Paul Funk, the Commander of Tradoc, and to his right, Doctor Wardynski, Casey Wardynski, our MNRA, Man Power Resource, Personnel Resource, and then also Honorable Ellen Lord, the Under Secretary to Defense for Acquisitional Logistics, and then Command Sergeant Major Tabitha Gavia, our Command Sergeant Major for United States Army Recruiting Command, who I understand has had a fantastic year this year in Recruiting Command, congratulations, hoo. Been a great, great event. (audience applauding) So as I said, with that, you didn't come to hear me talk, you came to hear the panel members, so I'll turn it over to General Funk, and we'll get started. - So good afternoon, and thanks, Howard. What a tremendous opportunity today, and I wanna publicly thank the panel members to my right here for doing this this afternoon. So my name is Funk, and I'm an American soldier. This is about, we're gonna talk to you about the most important resource we have in our great Army, which is, it's people. And the reason that we're gonna do that is 'cause it's time to change. So if you think back to the War, as we came out of the Vietnam War, we had what we called "The Big Five". Many people believed that "The Big Five" was Big Five Systems, but it wasn't. It was actually five big ideas. And of those big ideas, the ones that stuck, the ones that have stuck were the advent of the Air-Land Battle Doctrine, then we brought down, the Chief, then Greg Abrams, decided that we need a unit that we could count on when all the chips were down. That would set the standard and drive change in our military. And that became the 75th Rangers. Also, along with that, was the 160th, so that we had an aviation force that could support that great team. Then we had this CTC Program, or the Combat Training Center Program, and we had to fundamentally change how we trained, how we learned, and how we developed our leaders. And the CTC Program became the Leadership Laboratories that drove change in our Army through the After Action Review Process. Then you take under the modernization, or the M, you know, we always talk about DOTLMS P EP, in this case we'll talk about DOTLM, and in that back... Then you have the five big systems, the Abrams Tank, the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, the Paladin, the Apache Helicopter, and the Patriot Missile System. And those are still in the Force today, that's how fundamental the change was from defensive mindset to an offensive approach and the weapons systems to help accompany that. And then, to change in the leader development, not only did we have the CTC Program, but we also had the change to the Non-Commissioned Officer Education System. And in there, we developed, what was then called PLDC, BNOC and ANOC, which were Sergeants, Staff Sergeants, and then Sergeant First Classes. That changed, we went from MOS, or Military Occupational Specialty training, to more combat-focused training and leader-development training. That changed how we came out of the Vietnam War. In deriving those, so now we have to enter, now we need the Bridging Efforts that are going to take us into, what I think is, now an inter-war period, which, which we're in right now. And those Bridging Documents are the National Security Strategy, the National Defense Strategy, the Army Modernization Strategy, and what we're here to talk about today, which was led by Dr. Wardynski to my right, the Army People Strategy. And then we have the Army Plan which will wrap all these things together and help us drive change in the future. And what does the future look like? I don't know too well, but I do know that it will involve Doctrine, which we believe now will be Multi-Domain Operations. That is already starting to move into our Doctrinal Manuals, and then our organizational constructs, you've probably heard the Chief and the Secretary this morning talked about Multi-Domain Task Forces, which are gonna give you the capability to be in competition, to be constantly focused on your adversaries, and you have to compete in this generation. We'll find, and Dr. Wardynski and I talk about this all the time, we have to compete for people. Our talent matters. Then, you take the Synthetic Training Environment, which will take the soldiers to the training, or the training to the soldiers, not the soldiers to the training, which will fundamentally change how it is we're going to approach our schools, our centers, and, in fact, our live training. Everything will be designed around making our live training more effective. It's expensive to do. And if it's expensive, you wanna do it, and enter it, at the highest levels possible. Our Synthetic Training Environment's gonna allow us to do that. Then we have our eight Cross Functional Teams, been talked about for years, very important. But the single most important thing we're gonna do, 'cause we're probably gonna shoot behind the duck on a few of those things, where we cannot lose, is developing leaders of character. And our Army People Strategy is gonna help us make that happen. So I'll be happy to take any of your questions after this is over, but now I'm gonna pass it off to Dr. Wardynski. Thank you. - Well, if you're in this room, you care about Army People. There's other things to look at and other places to be in this convention center, so if you're in this room, you care about people, and the good news is, our Chief of Staff does, too. And the best manifestation that I can show you, is the Army's People Strategy. On Friday last, the Secretary, the Chief, and the Sergeant Major of the Army signed the Army's People Strategy. It's really the first document of its kind in 244 years. G1's in the Army, Man Power and Reserve Affairs, Assistant Secretaries, Tradoc Commanders, have always worked together to do a better job for Army People. To spell a way, to show a way, to the future of where the Army needs to go with people, but we now have, from the very top of the Army down, a strategy signed off. And that's quite an important event, because, as you know, these are our top leaders. And leadership is really about vision, and what they've done in this document is shared with you, and me, and the rest of us, their vision of where they'd like to take the Army. Not because it'll be easy, 'cause if it was easy, we'd have already gone there. But because it's important, it's important to our people, it's important to our country. Important in many different ways. So for those who might say, "Well, why are we going this new direction?" The answer is because we're in a new time. We confront enemies, and we can feel it again, you can hear it in the urgency of the speakers at the beginning with the opening ceremony. We confront enemies, adversaries if you like, who have, in many ways, closed some gaps. In one important way, may surpass a key capability of the United States of America, which is our economy. We have not faced an enemy who could out-spend us, previously. We could always rely on our economy and our American industrial might to be behind us when we got in trouble, and it got us out of trouble in many, many cases. We could also count on not taking the first blow in many cases. To watch the first blow fall on perhaps an ally, learn from that, and better prepare. Those days may be behind us. But that doesn't mean our best days aren't in front of us. And thanks to the leadership of our key leaders, I think they are. Because what they've done in this document, is identify something I don't think our adversaries can copy, and that is America. America is a unique place, I believe it, and I bet you do too, a place in which the human spirit is really what makes you an American, belief in certain fundamentals, and some of those fundamentals enable this strategy. Belief in human dignity, belief in freedom, and what each of us bring to the table. This strategy, if I had to use one word, is a strategy about trust. It's now about trusting, as opposed to the old days, we each trusted in our units, that Big Army knew best, and Big Army would send us what they needed to send us. Today, I'd argue, that Big Army now trusts you, as leaders, to know best what your requirements are, and to flip it, and look at the other side of the coin, and let you see all that the Army has, and rely on you, and your wisdom, and your leadership, your expertise, your knowledge of your team, to reach into the Army and its pool of deep talent, and bring into your teams those individuals with the right skills, knowledges, and behaviors, and preferences, to fill out your team, to meet a challenge. They may join you in the old way, tangibly, for a permanent assignment, they may join you TDY, or they might just join you intermittently over the internet to help you solve some sort of a problem. So as of Friday, my view is, we've really entered a new age, and my teammates here Paul Funk, and many of you in the front row here, General Martin, I can see you, and General Fink, General Evans, I look forward to working with you and the other people gathered here, General Maddox, to bring what has been a long effort to fruition. General McConville shared with me the other day he's been working on this for nine years. I know it began for some others a few years before that. But many, many folks have been after the idea of bringing Talent Management to the Army, and bringing it in a way where people get to apply their gifts, their passions, to the problems that confront our country, and do their very, very best where they can. So that we've got the right person, at the right place, at the right time. This strategy is based on that notion. But it does more. It now allows General Funk and I, working together as teammates, General Garrett and I working together as teammates, General Perna and I working together as teammates, to synchronize resources. We now have a document that tells us where we're going, when we'd like to get there, and what we should do. Now we can line up the resources. So things you've heard of, things called the Program Objective Memorandum, the PPBS, all the resourcing, can now line up over time, to bring this plan to fruition, over the long time, so that we don't go through these cycles the Army's seen so many times, where we fix something and then we break it because we've cured a problem. This'll cause us to stay after things for the long term and keep those priorities in mind, and number one priority of course is our people. If I could, maybe we'll bring up the video? (dramatic music) - [Chief Of Staff Of The Army] People are the Army. They are our most important weapon system. They're our most important asset. (triumphant music) - [Narrator] People are the centerpiece of the Army's competitive advantage. The Army People Strategy will increase that advantage by producing cohesive teams for the joint force. - The strategy has four critical enablers. A 21st century Talent Management system, quality of life initiatives, our values-driven Army culture, and critical resources and authorities. - Those enablers support four lines of effort. Acquiring, developing, employing, and retaining talent. Acquiring talent is our main effort. - Those lines of effort lead to four strategic outcomes. An Army that's more ready, professional, diverse, and integrated than ever before. - [Narrator] Ready to prevail against all adversaries. - The right talent, in the right place, at the right time. - [Narrator] Professional, ethical, expert soldiers and civilians. - Army professionals are trustworthy and cohesive teammates. - [Narrator] Diverse, drawn from every corner of our vibrant, multicultural society. - Inclusive, equitable, powerful. - [Narrator] Integrated, military and civilian, Guard and Reserve. - One team, the Army team. - There's more to learn. - Experience the strategy at https://people.army.mil. - [Ryan McCarthy] One of our next big leadership challenges will be people, starting with Talent Management. - [Michael Grinston] To aiding matters and people are first. - [James McConville] People are the Army. (triumphant music) - So that does a pretty good job of summing up where we're headed, and the main lines of effort to get there, of note, acquire is and will remain our main line of effort. This organization, the United States Army, brings in about half of the folks the Department of Defense assesses every year. It's well north of 100,000 fine young Americans into our ranks, and then many, many civilians into our Civilian Corps. That necessitates continued attention to this vital task. And it ends like it begins. The problems we see, the problems we discussed at the opening ceremony today that we must be rid of, the problems of pathologies, sharp sexual assault, many of these enter through our front door. Through a robust set of assessments, through robust appraisal of those entering our ranks, we look to ensure that those who do join our team have the right foundation of expectations when they come on board. That they will be part of our culture, and part of our ethic and not apart from it. Bringing in folks who can operate in the Multi-Domain Operation space will be a key part of this. And of course, the talent aspect of it will be there from the very front. Assessments. You can see it today at ROTC and West Point with talent-based branching. Full-up this year at West Point, next year full-up at ROTC. The whole new way approach to putting officers in branches, and thinking about how they'll apply their gifts over their careers. Very soon, that'll bridge from the Officer Corps, to the enlisted ranks from the Cctive, to the Guard, to the Reserve, on the backbone of IPPSA, the Army's new Talent Management system, a system that has been long into coming, but it is well worth the effort and vital to putting the Army at the forefront of applying the talents of the folks in this room, and our other people, to their best advantage, when they're needed, where they're needed. As you can imagine, our adversaries will have a tough time with that, because there's a key component missing. The IPPSA's based on a wealth of knowledge, and a wealth of shared information from our people, and that requires trust. Trust between our people and the Army, and trust between them and their units, and their units and the Army. It's a three-part trust system. If we break that trust, the system won't work. I know our enemies don't have that kind of ability. In China, data's gathered for the social system to monitor and score you on a 1,000 point ranking. I don't know why anybody'd give their government more data. Our enemies that operate in networks such as Al-Qaeda, they couldn't afford to do this. If we got inside, it would be over for them. So this is uniquely American, and it's uniquely capability we can bring to dominate our adversaries through our most precious resource and our most powerful weapon system: our people. Next slide. As you know, the Army already has a set of strategies, the People Strategy now nests under the Army Strategy. As we've began rolling out the implementing plans, General Funk has key leadership in several domains, with his team at Tradoc, develop and acquire. General Perna and his team work on key enablers such as quality of life, as well as other leaders across the Army will work on their components to bring together an integrated approach which we would expect to begin rolling out by Christmas of this year. And then we'll keep those fresh to keep us moving into the future. Next slide. Key, six key elements for the near term through 2022 are here. You can see what they are. The key among those as well, if you come to our session on Wednesday, will be integrating our civilians into this effort. They're a vital component of the team, and we also have things to talk about in that regard at a different setting. Thank you. - Good afternoon, and thank you, to the Army, for including the Office of Secretary of Defense, that was very inclusive of you. In my role as Under Secretary for Acquisition and Sustainment, I report to the Secretary of Defense, Dr. Esper, and it's my job to enable the services to be successful. Everything we do is under the framework of the National Defense Strategy. Three lines of effort there, one, lethality, we're war fighters, so that's what we're gonna spend our money on. Secondly, strengthening partnerships and alliances. When we go to war, we don't go to war alone, we go with our partners, and it makes a significant difference. And finally, reforming. Reforming the way we do business. And I believe that we are innovating in terms of technology much faster than we are innovating in terms of business systems, and we need to change that. So we have a mission in ANS, it's to enable the delivery and sustainment of secure and resilient capabilities to the war fighter and international partners quickly and cost effectively. In order to do that, we have six goals that we are focused on. One is enable acquisition innovation. Second is to build a safe and resilient industrial base. Third, ensure safe and resilient DOD installations. Fourth, increase weapon system capability while reducing operating cost. Recruit, develop, and retain a diverse ANS Workforce. And finally, promote ANS initiatives with key international partners. So, how do we do that? We do all of that through people. And it's the Acquisition Workforce that I'm primarily focused on. So the slide that, hopefully, is going to come up, yes, it's over here to this side, shows you the composition of the Army Acquisition Workforce, and you will see that 22% of it are engineers. We are in a very, very technical era here. And what we have found is the way we are training our Acquisition Workforce is not consistent with the way adults are educated. So we are transforming the Defense Acquisition University to do adult education. We're partnering with all of the services to deliver capability with the Army, we have the Senior Service College Fellowship, the DAU Partners to present a 10-month course. We're also undertaking a credentialing course. To obtain certifications in the past, we sort of locked people down typically at Fort Belvoir for four, eight, 12, 16 weeks, and gave them enormous amounts of material to read through. What we are doing is trying to skinny down those base-line courses and really get the operators in, the people who are using the weapons systems, the people that're using the service contracts, to talk about what works, what doesn't work. We're talking about getting acquisition professionals in to say how good programs went and how bad programs went. What were the key clauses they didn't have in their RFPs, their Request for Proposal? What did they do in their contracts that ended up in perhaps a protest later on? What we're going to do is also credential in the areas that we need to become proficient in to be contemporary in the way we're acquiring capability. So think Agile development for software and hardware. We think of our systems today as hardware enabled but software defined, and we need to really do Agile and DevOps to keep us at the cutting edge. We're also going to have credentials in terms of digital engineering, we need digital twins as we go along, we need to move much more rapidly, we need to plan for sustainability right at the beginning of these contracts. If you have a digital twin, you can then work through the training, you can work through the sustainment. We're also focusing a lot more on the acquisition of services. Out of about the $350 billion a year we spend, 50% of that is in the acquisition of services. Most people don't understand that and don't understand the economies of sCale we could have if we bring a lot of these service contracts together. We also are looking at Human Capital Initiatives. We have been very fortunate in that Congress has given us a lot of acquisition authorities, and has allowed us to do recruiting and hiring a little bit differently for the Acquisition Workforce. We also have a little extra money to train. I wanna make sure we take use, make use, of all these authorities, and that we train the Acquisition Workforce on what all of these authorities are so that we can move out and use them. We also are trying to do more exchange programs. I spent about 33 years in industry before the last two years in government, and one of the things that industry doesn't understand is how DOD works really on the inside, what procurements are really like. And likewise, on the government side, you don't understand what industry goes through to develop a lot of these proposals. So what we started early this year, were Acquisition Industry-Government Exchange Programs. We're gonna scale that to a lot larger group this coming year, and we're using our industry associations, AIA, NDIA, and PSC, to work on that for us. We used them really as our way to convene industry and the way to get our message out. Finally, our Industrial Policy Group in ANS that I like to think of as sort of the help desk for industry is working on a variety of initiatives where we have fragility in our integrated supply chain. We developed a report, DOD was the lead, but it was an inter-agency effort, last year that looked at the Defense Industrial Base. It was an important study because for first time, it gave us a lexicon in which to talk about the Industrial Base, so that we all referred to it the same way. Just as importantly, it pointed out where we are dependent on our adversaries, for some of our critical materials, where we do not have strong business cases for some of the key sub-components we need in our weapon systems and platforms. It's allowing us, again, to go back to Congress and use the authorities we have and get appropriations to stand up these capabilities. One of the things that I'm particularly proud about that our Industrial Policy team is doing is it's working with community colleges and tech schools to look at the trades. Unfortunately in the US, we now fall far short of the number of welders, electricians, other trades that we need, not only for our overall economy, but for our Defense Industrial Base. We're running competitions, we're really putting a lot of leadership and motivation and excitement into the process to make sure we highlight how important these trades are for us. So I think overall our number one challenge is to make sure the Acquisition Workforce understands what they have in terms of capabilities and authorities and that we empower them to go and exert what I call "Creative Compliance". We've driven a little bit of a Risk-Averse culture into Acquisition, where people are very worried about getting called up to the Hill to testify on programs that went wrong. They're concerned about the media highlighting what didn't go well. We need to empower our workforce to understand what they have to do their job and make sure that they really employ the critical thinking so that they can critically come up with creative ways to comply to get capability down range to the war fighter as quickly and cost-effectively as possible. Thank you. - Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, it's quite an honor for Recruiting Command to be part of this panel. As stated earlier, we did have quite the banner year, but we've only scratched the surface. So under the leadership of Major General Frank Muth we've made quite a number of changes in USARC, but we still have a ways to go. Many of our adversaries such as Russia, North Korea, and Iran, have conscripted armies of some form. They pull from the entire population to man their military. Therefore they can more easily and rapidly grow than we can. We can argue that their quality might not be equivalent to ours, but their quantity may exceed us at a pace we simply can't keep up with. China, on the other hand, rarely uses conscription because of China's population size. They have more than enough people to volunteer to serve. Their all-volunteer Army is 2.5 million soldiers, much larger than our one million Active, Reserve, and Guard Force. So as part of a Multi-Domain Operation, we must attract, retain, and make maximum use of high quality, physically fit, mentally tough soldiers who have the skills and expertise to conduct Multi-Domain Operations. The Army's People Strategy is a key component of the Multi-Domain Operation, and acquiring people is the first step. Several factors impact our ability to acquire people. Inability to meet weight standards, unable to pass medical and physical requirements, unable to pass the drug test, and low unemployment. Potential soldiers' families, teachers, friends, and other influences in their lives are concerned that we've been a nation at war since September, 2001. Additionally, 50% of today's youth in the ages between 17 and 24, are quite unaware of the Army's opportunities and benefits. However, as you saw earlier today at the swearing-in ceremony, today's youth have a desire to serve something greater than themselves. This desire will make them effective leaders in tomorrow's Army. We are an all-volunteer Force that brings higher-quality individuals that want to serve. After serving in USARC for over a year, I've seen first hand, over and over again, as I traveled throughout our country, young men and women that raised their right hand to serve their country, and I'm optimistic that these young people will be the future leaders of our Army. And it's our Army. Our young recruiters who acquire people to fill the units of the Army. USARC is embracing the role, our role, in the People Strategy. We are calling FI-20 the "year of the recruiter". It is our job, not just as senior leaders in USARC, but the senior leaders throughout the Army, to empower our young Non-Commissioned Officers to do this daunting task for us. And like our former Secretary of the Army, now Secretary of Defense, Dr. Esper said last year, "Everyone is a recruiter." And as the Army rolls out the People Strategy, that statement will not just be about recruiting enlisted soldiers, but building up our most valuable asset: our people. Soldiers and civilians. Achieving this mission, as I said before, is challenging. But our recruiters are up to the task. And every Army leader that's helped us this past year have more than embraced this. You truly understand the importance of working this together. Accomplishing this Acquisition Mission of people for the Army is not just USARC, Cadet Command, and West Point, it's the entire Army. We need your help to ensure we keep pace with our adversaries. Our adversaries' ability to recruit, and/or conscript their Force, will create challenges as we work to grow to address future national security challenges. The Army must exercise careful Talent Management to make the most of our high-quality personnel and integrate them into trusted teams of professionals who are able to thrive and adapt quickly. We are doing this, USARC is doing this, modernization by how we recruit. We're doing it through innovations in marketing. This past year, we launched the Marketing Recruiting Integration Program in Chicago to aim internet advertising at 17 to 24-year-olds in specific neighborhoods across cities and surrounding suburbs based on their interests. This year, we're launching it in Phoenix, Dallas, Boston, Atlanta, and Minneapolis. We need to determine what youth in these areas are interested in, and to do this, we use analytics and research. We look at US Census Segmentation Models, the number, sheer number, of young people that are actually available in areas, and we call that the Qualified Military Available, and we also look at propensity. Once we determine what they are interested in, we can market that aspect to the Army. Leadership, adventure, pay and benefits, wanna stay near home, and for us that's, of course, Reserves and National Guard to do part time. In the future, this type of marketing will provide the Army the ability to look for specific jobs for a specific type of individual by finding where they are and using marketing to fill their needs. Additionally, we have placed virtual recruiting stations in every one of our Battalions. Two to five young men and women spend their days virtually recruiting for our Army. We've also incorporated an Esports team, and we have a mobile gaming trailer that's on display here this week that you can see. You have to understand that our youth are on the Information Highway. Digital is a way of life for them, and we've tapped that with Esports. Recruiting teaches you to adapt quickly, because the environment that we are operating in is constantly changing. We have to be as fast as the next communication phenomenon. So with gaming, we're talking about Twitch, with communication, we're talking about any form of social media, whether that is Tik-Tok or Instagram. In our history, people used to walk in the recruiting stations, and our recruiters simply had to process them. Then we migrated to where we had to leave our desk and find the youth in the community at the malls, football games, and schools. Well today, our youth are hanging out on social media, and they're spending their time building their trust, and skills, on Twitch. We've moved from the Industrial Age into the Information Digital Age by modernizing our tactics. Every recruiter in USARC is empowered to use social media to recruit. The Army continues our work to envision the future of recruiting. We also have other initiatives to get after this. The Session Information Environment has been designed to provide advanced analytics to support the identification of qualified applicants, quality applicants. The most appropriate times to prospect, and the proper message to engage in with recruiters can optimize in their area. So what works in Florida is not working in Seattle. What works in New York City will not work in Dallas. We've also, with the assistance of Dr. Wardynski's team, become part of a team that looks at Career Options Optimizer, where we can actually choose people based on their qualities and reward them for that. So someone that scores higher on the ASVAB, should they get the same bonus as someone that doesn't score as high? And this program will help us and allow us to look at this. We will be able to customize individual contracts in a more precise manner. And as I said earlier, we have Esports, Egaming, our gaming initiative, to contact youth. And so, what does this do for us? So I've heard several derogatory terms to describe gamers. And for the most part, none of it's true. You think about what these young people are doing when they spend their time gaming. So warfare is going to be at machine speed and will require soldiers that are capable of quick decision making, adaptable, possess problem solving skills, spatial reasoning, strategy development, logical planning, multi-tasking, dexterity, communication, and teamwork, all by using artificial information. And these, ladies and gentlemen, are skills that today's gamers use. In addition to this, we've also taken a look at how we select young men and women to be recruiters. We're looking at the Non-Commissioned Officer Selection Battery, selecting the right person for recruiting based on an assessment of their personality and skills. We know that successful recruiters have similar attributes, we can analyze successful recruiters to create a personal assessment of a successful recruiter and then select those young men and women to serve in that capacity. We can measure potential recruiters against a standard to more fully assess an individual's potential, and more accurately predict their performance, behaviors, and attitude. Ladies and gentlemen, while technical advancements allow for more efficiencies and greater performance, advancements in technology will never replace skilled people. So we call, when we talk to young men and women, and they agree to join the Army, we call that engendering a commitment. In order to engender a commitment, you have to develop trust with that person. That young man and woman has to trust their recruiter, and that recruiter looks them in the eye and they engender a commitment. So they're not selling a product, they're sharing a way of life and a future that knows no bounds. Our recruiters provide that connection every day in over 1,400 recruiting stations in our country and all over the world. It's Army Senior Leaders, Officers, Senior NCO, Junior NCOs, and our fellow soldiers and civilians, that are by our side. When we engender that commitment, you ensure that that commitment is true every single day. You fortify that commitment. And again, recruiting is not just USARC's mission, it's the Army's mission. And ladies and gentlemen, without recruiting, there is no, there is no readiness. USARC builds the Army of tomorrow, today, and the Army's People Strategy will ensure the Army we build has the right people with the right job and at the right time, because ultimately, winning matters. Thank you. (audience applauding) - Well that's a great kick-off to the round of questionings and while your filling out your questions and as they're working their way up here, I wanna thank the panel for those great introductory remarks. As you can see, General Funk has laid out the why, the why we're focused on the People's Strategy, what's the history behind it. Dr. Wardynski has laid out the strategy, the key elements to the strategy, and how we're gonna execute there. Miss Lord has given us a perspective of why, from a civilian aspect, it's important for not just the Army, but also DOD, for our civilian members of our team to be brought forward. And then a great summary of the importance of USARC and how acquiring the talent is absolutely key. And so I'd just like to start off with a general question for the panel, if we could, and we'll just start with General Funk and sort of just move down the line. Just, if you could describe what you see as the number one challenge to you, in your area of responsibility, of the successful execution of the Army People Strategy. - There's a, we have a strategic problem in our country, and it's called fatness. (audience chuckles) To be blunt, 30, you know, only 29% of today's youth can actually serve, and we're competing against all the services, against all the universities, against everyone. The tech schools now, we talked about welding and all the things where the shortages are, you'll see the Credentialing Programs coming up, we're competing against those to get that 29%. We have a strategic problem in that we have, we have, to tell you the truth, eaten ourselves out of being able to serve. We've gotta bring that back. We gotta get back into programs that account for fitness, and about hearty people that can do things, hard work. War is not easy. And so we've gotta be able to attack that problem. - [Bromberg] Okay, Casey. - I would think at least up until Friday, our biggest challenge was success. The British Navy had a saying that their biggest challenge was being lured of Trafalgar. That meant they were down wind from a big victory against Napoleon. And when you have big victories, it's tough to rationalize why you need to change. Our Navy says their biggest challenge, I think, is being down wind from Midway. The Army's, it's an Army without peer today. But we can see the clouds gathering. The Senior Leaders in the Army have looked at the challenges before us, and the resources to bring to bear against those, and they believe we need to change. So while we have been successful to date, to remain successful in the future, change is necessary, and change is never easy. Particularly if you think the model we have is the model for success in the future. So therefore, I think success has been our biggest challenge. This project has been in the works here, I know General McConville shared with me, about nine years in his space, but we are getting after it. And I think a good number of our young adults can see the benefits already when they work through the Talent Management System, and the Interactive Module, and things like that. I think our Senior Leaders can see it in the young folks' eyes and when they talk to them, and I think they can also see it when they look into the capabilities that we're getting ready to unleash. And therefore, I'm quite confident that that challenge is not going to keep us from doing what we need to do, to implement the changes we need to make to ensure our Army is ready to dominate any challenge coming its way. - [Bromberg] Thank you. Ma'am? - My biggest challenge is getting the Workforce to quantify risk, cost, and schedule risk. We're here in the era of great power competition. We know that China and Russia are putting an enormous amount of their state money into war fighting capability, while we were in Iraq and Afghanistan countering violent extremist organizations, they were building the next submarines, the next aircraft, the next air-to-air missiles, the next ICBM's, and now we're at the highest funding levels that we will see from Congress in quite some time, and we have to understand how to best use that money from our tax payers. And one of our challenges is to really look at what the requirements are that the Joint Staff lays out, what our budget is that's available, look at programs how they are laid out, and quantify the risk in different courses of action. Quantifying risk means really monetizing it a lot of the time, what is the monetary risk for schedule slips, for delivery misses, in terms of quality. So it's, again, getting that critical thinking, teaching people the critical thinking, learning from the mistakes that others have made, because frankly, we like to talk about our successes, but we don't like to talk about our mistakes. And we learn more about others' mistakes usually than their successes. So it's really going back and getting that critical thinking to quantify risk so we spend our acquisition and sustainment dollars the best way. - Hands down, lack of propensity, and that's caused by a lack of awareness. So as I stated earlier, 50% of our youth are just simply unaware of the programs and what the Army has to offer, so without a doubt, it's that lack. And then we're working on it, but that's what keeps us up at night. - [Bromberg] 'Kay, thank you. So we're getting great questions so keep having your questions coming up, and I'm gonna start off with one for both General Funk and for Miss Lord, if I could. And the question is, "Put me in coach. "I'm an Army retiree, "and I wanna help with the recruiting effort. "What can I do?" - Go 'head. - I'll just jump in from the point of view that I think most Americans don't realize how many civilian jobs there are in the Department of Defense. Kids coming out of college think they either go into uniform or they don't work for the Department of Defense. And what I would say is get out to all kinds of colleges, trade schools, universities, and talk about our mission, and how they can contribute in every different aspect of what we do. - First of all, I'd say the strategic imperative is maintaining the all-volunteer Force. And I also think that all recruiting is local. So the influencers are the people for the retiree population, while you'll not be able to talk the young men and women in there, you can get into the schools and talk to the influencers. You can talk about the ability to be part of something bigger than yourself, what it meant for you to serve in uniform, to wear the cloth of your nation. That is incredibly powerful to our young men and women out there today. They wanna be part of something bigger than themselves. But I would tell you, for all the retirees, as soldiers for life, get out and meet your local recruiters. They need your help. It is like Sergeant Major said, "This is our Army." It's not just, you know, Funk's Army, or Wardynski's Army, it's our Army. And it's gotta be the best in the world all the time. We have to be able to out-fight, out-number, and win. - [Bromberg] 'Kay, thank you. Okay, I think, lemme ask this question. I think this will come to Dr. Wardynski, or maybe General Funk. "Are there any initiatives to increase talent assessment "to include adjusting the evaluation form, "evaluation pathways, OER, NCOER, "to meet more than just performance and potential?" - Sure. Many of them are already underway. If you look at the commissioning sources at West Point and ROTC they're already using a Talent Assessment Battery which I think has about 26 elements in it. That's the foundation for where we're headed. That's certainly not the limit. And it's to help Officers be more self aware on their way into the Army so they make better choices about where they could best leverage their skills and their passions in the Officer Corps. Those will grow over time as they enter their Captain's Course, I think, whatever we call that today, I can't keep up with all the acronyms. But when I go off to-- - Captain's Career Course. - Captain's Career Course, okay. When they go off to that, there'll be an assessment again to help them at that point better judge skills, attributes, behaviors, passions. You'll see, as you may learn in more detail on Wednesday in the Contemporary Military Forum Eight, we have a program assessment and evaluation for entering into Battalion Command that'll be fully underfoot this coming year, and that is about a three or four day enterprise where Officers will be asked to demonstrate across the spectrum of physical, mental, emotional, and behavioral attributes, their capacity to lead in the Battalion level. So, many, many things on the horizon. This is a new field for the Army, one that the Civilian Sector is a little bit ahead of us on, so we'll be catching up to them. But with the ultimate goal of helping our Officers be more self aware, and helping the Army, actually, understand better what it needs. We used to be in a requirements sorta based format, where we'd look inside the bureaucracy and ask ourselves, "What do we need?" And by the time the bureaucracy came up with a good answer it might be we need something that looks like, you know, whoever's asking the question. (laughs) Right? Which might not be the case. During the War, I think we were still generating almost as many Russian fails as we had before the War, and it was difficult to build in a wedge for Middle Eastern studies and so forth. But if you looked at the Academy and colleges, they quickly saw a surge of people into Middle Eastern studies and languages, and they reacted to the need. We need a system that helps the Army much more quickly react to the true needs. And by understanding the Army's requirements for skills, knowledges, behaviors, as well as those of our people, and we oughta do a better job of more quickly identifying requirements, seeing which have gaps, where are those gaps coming from. That would inform our training base, General Funk's equities, to quickly fill those through training, or it could be our sessions sources to fill those through whatever means we're using to bring people in, either recruiting, or ROTC, or West Point, or OCS, and make our Army far more agile. - [Bromberg] Thank you. - Yeah. (panel laughing) - [Bromberg] 'Kay, for Command Sergeant Major Gavia, "With the emphasis on cross-culture," let me rephrase that. I apologize if I get some of your questions a little bit different here, I'm trying to smooth them out a little bit here so everybody understands. "So with the emphasis on cross-culture, "and we have Active, Reserve, National Guard, "could a partnership strategy be developed to identify "different roles and capabilities of those components "to recruit and retain talent across the components?" - Currently we actually have a pilot with the National Guard and, I wanna say it's seven states, to look at exactly that. And so the data's not all in right now, it's looking as that each service, I mean, each component is about where they were when the started, when we started with the pilot, but we're definitely open minded and moving forward to incorporating the National Guard in our tactics of recruiting. - [Bromberg] 'Kay, thank you. Okay, General, I think this question is anyone on the panel, "So how do we change the Army culture to recognize "that there are differences, and we are different, "identify those differences, "and then take advantage of those differences "within the Army? "How do we look at cultures, difference in cultures?" - Our, you know, our diversity is our strength. That's always been the case. The Army has always been a change agent in our country. You go back as far as you want to, the Army has always been the leader in change, especially in the people, the People's Strategies, and the People Activities. And so one of the things we have to constantly remind ourselves is our greatest strength is our people, the greatest strength of those people is our diversity, and the greatest ability we have to fight and win wherever is our national treasure which is our men and women. The young men and women we bring in every day. So I would not throw out much to change the culture more than I would change the awareness and celebrate the diversity of our great Army. - I think the Army culture is one of its great strengths. I've had the opportunity to serve elsewhere in the Civil Sector since retiring in 2010. I served in public education, a K12 school system. I served in the Corporate Sector, and now I'm back with the Army in a civilian role. And I think the Army's culture is terrific and very strong. It's quick to adopt change. These vendors out here in the big halls have plenty of change in store for us, and the Army'll embrace those pieces and see which ones work. And when it comes to doctrine, General Funk and his team, General Lundy out at CAC, are building new concepts about how we will fight. But one piece has been missing, maybe. And that's the piece about the people. We went to a draft Army, which was a key step forward. It caused us to put greater value on that greatest gift America sends us, our people, and somebody's child, somebody's husband, somebody's wife, somebody's mom and dad. The next step is really this people piece of the strategy. It's to bring a little bit more home with regard to, and they're not free. Turns out the G1 is the only person in the Army that really pays the People Bill. If our units go through people quickly, they will get more. And this strategy really comes from a place of saying everyone's important, every one of 'em oughta be developed. We need to work with each one of these individuals that come to us. America, send 'em to us. And we need to work with them. And that piece of the culture, I think, we're strengthening just a little bit here, and it was because of some signals that were missing about how important people are, and how hard they are to replace. We know it individually, but when we command, sometimes, because people come through the replacements systems, we didn't have to develop them, we didn't have to get them, we didn't have to retain them, we may not do everything we ought. And I think with the People Strategy that one little piece, I think, will come into focus, and that part of the culture will strengthen too. - I think our most effective leaders are those who understand that a diversity of thought around the complex problems we deal with is absolutely essential. And if you bring a bunch of sorta "mini me's" onto your team, you're not getting a whole lot of diversity there. So whether it be gender, whether it be ethnicity, whether it be geographical background, absolutely critical when we are in this near peer competition with very, very, adept adversaries that we get a range of thoughts around the table to look at every problem we have to solve through lots of different lenses. I think strong leaders understand that, and I think we need to continue to demonstrate to all of our teams the strength of that. - So I'd like to bring everyone's attention to, it's 11th row back, kind of halfway in, we have to listen to our young people, and there's a group of them sitting there together. Staff Sergeants, Sergeants, I think I see a JROTC Cadet. We have to listen to our young people. Our young people are the way of the future. So when we embrace that as Senior Leaders, then that's how we really make the changes with the culture. We know diversity is our strength, but sometimes where we fall down a little bit with that is when we don't listen to the young people coming up in the ranks. Just because they've only been with us for a year, or two or three years, doesn't mean that their idea is not absolutely fantastic. And so that's what I implore my leaders every day. We have to listen to what our young people are telling us. - [Bromberg] Thank you. So Miss Lord, so next question for you, ma'am. "Can you talk about your initiative to educate "the Acquisition Workforce to employ more creative ways, "what are some more creative ways that you've thought "about to acquire talent, "including when you have difficulties "within the hiring aspect where you can't do things, "or maybe the legal aspect, "or the regulations say, "This is not the way we do." "How are you looking at those problems?" - So, first of all, it's, you've got to keep going, because a lot of people will tell you you can't do this, you can't do that, you have to keep pushing, particularly the attorneys, on what statute really means, what it doesn't, go back to the Hill, get interpretations, but we're doing a number of things. First of all, we need to be more contemporary in terms of how we are delivering information to the Acquisition Workforce. So we're doing a lot more with podcasts, we're doing a lot more with videos, we are trying to engage more of the Workforce on the instruction side. One of the things the team just did recently, which was a huge success, was they got a license from TEDTalks, and we had TEDEx DAU, and we had 10 individuals stand up and give lectures on a variety of things, which was fantastic. We're also trying to go to different units to deliver information. We are just looking at all the ways adult education is done out in the commercial space and adapting that. But we're also breaking down, "We have to do this a certain way, "because that's the way it's always been done." We have a bit of an issue, I think, particularly on the civilian side, on the military side, people are rotated through different positions every two, three, four years. I think leadership has done a disservice, frankly, to the Civilian Workforce to a large degree because people are not moved around. And if you're only in one environment, traditionally, they haven't been, unless they have a lot of their own initiative, and when you're in one environment, you have one perspective. And it's very sad when you have someone who says to you, "Oh, I have 30 years here, "I know exactly how this should be done." The reality is often those people that have basically been in the same seat for that many years have about three years experience 10 times over, and have totally lost their perspective. So one of the things we're doing is moving people around so that you bring the perspective from different roles in. It's great to do a stint in Human Capital if you're an engineer, because, again, talent is what differentiates us, again, from our adversaries. We in the US allow people to be creative, to speak out, to do different things, and we need to capitalize that. So we have many, many, different initiatives, looking particularly at what the Workforce needs now versus what we thought they needed 30, 40 years ago. And a lot of that is intellectual property clauses to put in contracts. As we said before, how do you write a contract if you're doing Agile and DevOps in terms of software development versus the old Waterfall? We've gotta catch up. So what we're trying to do is deliver skills at the time you need it so that you come back every year and get a little bit more contemporary training. - [Bromberg] Thank you very much. Next question, I think, could probably for both Command Sergeant Major and General Funk. "What are your thoughts about Junior ROTC "and Senior ROTC Programs, "and how can they help in this talent strategy?" - You want me to go first? - Absolutely, sir. (panel laughing) - You sure? - Yes. - I think Junior ROTC is one of the most important programs we have in our country. Bottom line. I think it teaches citizenship, values, it teaches responsibility for one another, it starts the work on the Army values, but more importantly on the values of "do what's right when nobody's lookin'." And I think the Senior ROTC Program generates all of our Officer Force, or not all of it, but vast majority of our Officer Force. So consequently, those programs have to be invested in, have to be updated, have to be driven to excellence. And fortunately, we have a great many retired young, or men and women, that will lead those programs. If you think that's... You know, I got this fundamental that says, "Every time you think you're somebody important, "try ordering around somebody's else's dog." Well if you think about that for a minute, what it really is, (panel laughing) is how in the world do you go into a program in a school where perhaps, you know, the military isn't recognized, become a leader in that university, and then deliver young men and women who are going to take, take the next step into an Army profession, and lead America's treasures? And you do it for not a lot of, not a lot of pay, but you do it because you love what you do, and you love the people you do it with every day. That's pretty remarkable in our nation. So I think they're pretty important. Sergeant Major probably has a different opinion. (panel laughing) - Oh, no, I don't have a different opinion, but I will add that both programs teach a level of teamwork and discipline that you can find nowhere else. And more importantly, I believe the most important aspect of JROTC and ROTC that it shares with them what it is to have the honor to serve. At the end of the day, the honor to serve. - I might add a word to that, 'cause I could not agree to more. Having worked in K12, and having Army, Navy, Air Force, Junior ROTC, I think it's vital. Sergeant Gavia has talked at length about young folks may be unaware, and we've talked about the challenges we face with regard to the population that could enter the military, and I would say the Junior ROTC is great at shaping both in these areas. If we talk to folks at age 17, it's too late, about get in shape, or stay in school, or keep outta trouble. But if we talk to them, you know, eighth and ninth grade about those kinda things, they have time to do what we're preaching about. Graduate from high school, do well, pick the right courses if you wanna be in Cyber, pick the right courses if you wanna fly right outta high school. You know, all these sorts of things we can shape that battle early with JROTC, and help the awareness problem. Which is many are unaware of the things that we have to offer. Those of us who have served, and do serve, many of our kids are in the military. When people ask me about marketing, and talking to kids about the military, and, you know, are we telling them the whole story? And I'm like, well, my kids lived the story. And many of your kids lived the story, and many of them serve. Who would know us better than our kids? And they serve at very high rates. Well the next bunch that oughta know us pretty well is JROTC and their buddies. And that'll help with this issue of awareness, I think. - [Bromberg] Super, thank you very much. So I'll come back to Dr. Wardynski. "Can you expand on the subject of talent assessments? "How will the Army institutionalize these assessments, "and how will the results be used?" - Sure, many ways. One way is institutionally. So we have a fine outfit called our ARI, Army Research Institute, they look at the whole thing sort of human behavioral. Not human factors, but, you know, how do you get to the human spirit, how do you inspire, how do you find talent, how do you uncover it, how do you put it to work? That's a great group. So having a strategy over the long term will allow us now to direct resources and make sure they have the resources they need to help us with assessment. Two assessments that are coming online this year, they're gonna operate directly in the world of recruiting, to open the aperture a little bit. One is Arms 2.0, and it gets at the issue of grit. Do kids with maybe a little bit more grit do well in the Army, and can we identify them on their way in, and substitute some grit for something else we used to measure? And that gets in the world of fitness. So that's the ability to maintain our fitness standards. Another one, TAPAS, gets at that same question a little differently, and stick-to-it-tiveness. Typically we've looked at things like high school graduate as measure of stick-to-it-tiveness. Will they complete training, will they complete an enlistment? With TAPAS, we think we can get at the same thing with assessment. ARI helped in these domains, and we look for their help elsewhere. The Battalion Commander Assessment Program, lot of help coming in that direction. That program will go full-up this year, led first by the Talent Management team and then General Funk's team to institutionalize it. And I think what the People Strategy will do for us, sort of at large, is institutionalize the idea of assessment. That it's not just something we did at the front door, but it's something we do consistently to help people become self aware, give the best information they can on where they can contribute, where they have the best capability of succeeding, and help the Army also understand what talents are on board, where its gaps are, and help us to fill those. - [Bromberg] 'Kay, super, thank you. Let's see here. So, here we go, excuse me. So, I think this is, probably could be... There's actually hooks in here that anybody can answer, but I think this probably'll start with Dr. Wardynski again. (panel laughing) "Aim 2.0 will provide a means to enact individual choice, "which is awesome, by the way. "There's still a need to cross-level talent "of high performers to cross the force. "Are there other means that we can implement "to incentivize high performers to stay "if they feel as though they don't have as much "choice as others, or may not have as much choice?" And I think you could apply that across the Civilian Work Personnel Force as well, and even down into Recruiting. - Yep, definitely, I'm very interested in incentives as all Army leaders tend to be. We like people to go where their gifts take them, and provide incentives for them to do the hard things in maybe places that would not have been their first choice. So you'll see those coming online this year as well. General McGee and his team in Talent Management have worked with the Senior Leaders and allocated a thing called a "Reverent Promotion". I think we're doing 225 this year. We can do up to 770. This'll be the first time the Army will have gone down this road in quite some time. And so leaders like General Funk, and General Martin, General Evans, General Muth, have identified in Tradoc key jobs where when an Officer enters those positions, they will be able to be in a spot promotion. And then if that promotion is validated subsequently by a promotion board, they keep that rank and advance accordingly. Whole new approach to rapidly advancing talent. Other things for people who may want to pursue degrees that'll take them outta the main stream of the Army for a little while, a chance to slow down. Sorta the opposite of the question, but a chance to slow down, and yet stay on track. So if you're an Armor Officer and you're a little worried about going to graduate school, and you're worried it might take you off track for command, you can ask to opt out of promotion two times to accommodate grad school, and then also have the current seat in your field when it comes time for promotion. So many, many, of these authorities are coming online. We will ask for additional as we see fit, and then Congress has been very generous in approving them. And they are designed to provide the arbitization, the agility to advance those who are capable of moving very, very, quickly to accommodate those who would like to take, perhaps, a detour and come back onto the main highway, and allow them to pursue their dream for a while, and deepen their skill set. So these things are just beginning. This year you'll see them rolling out, and many, I probably can't even envision, will be coming online as we go down this road. - [Bromberg] Thank you. Anybody else wanna add to on this comment? - Just make a comment that I think within DOD, whether civilian or military, we are governed from a Human Resources point of view by an enormous amount of statute which turns Human Resource professionals into Personnel Paper Filler-Outers (panel laughing) because it's all compliance. Complying to so many different rules and regulations that that has driven the Workforce to not have, perhaps, as much individual attention in terms of, "What do you wanna do, and how do we a find a path there?", because there aren't that many people that have the time to do that because of all of this compliance work that has to be done. So I think that there's an opportunity here to go back to Congress and, you know, really do the search on how many different clauses are we all complying to, and what could we do by maybe clean-sheeting it, simplifying it, and really look at the fact that we have some great human beings that get worn down by the system that really would like to stay in if they could tweak their path a little bit to take care of family needs, or individual interests, geographic constraints, different things. So it's a huge, huge, lift to do that, but I think if we could, it would make an enormous difference in terms of retention and output. - [Bromberg] Super, thank you. Okay, this one we'll start with Command Sergeant Major Gavia and then we'll ask General Funk. We'll reverse the order this time, Sergeant Major, all right? "So recruiting is critical, "but getting recruits through Basic Training "and successfully to be in units, is very important. "What will the Army People Strategy, "will the Army People Strategy help recruiting soldiers "that don't wash out, "and could Tradoc have more and better ways and means "to train and retain soldiers to the first unit?" So you could talk about that pipeline, how we improve that pipeline. - So, absolutely. So one of the things that was a bit different this year with the folks that we recruited was our quality marks. So we've already started, we've already started that shift under the leadership of Tradoc and the Senior Leader in the Army last year. So the number of folks that we put in that did not have high school diplomas was considerably less, the number of people that needed waivers was considerably less, so we've already started moving towards that. So we know that individuals with certain background and quality, so to speak, do better in Basic Training, and AIT, and to their first duty station. But we're not, we're not quite where we need to be where we can put a check mark on the success of it, that we've successfully tackled this. So actually, Dr. Wardynski had a group of folks at West Point, OEMA, take a look at this for us to see if there's any correlation with when a recruiter brings someone in to them making it through their first duty station. So we're not there yet, but we're definitely working on it. - And then, you know, we're also going to have to change the culture of fitness in our Army. That's why you see the Army Combat Fitness Test that Dr. Wardynski talked about as part of our goals because we have to drive this into our system. That competing matters, winning matters, having the ability to do hard things, and develop the skills necessary to overcome adversity. I think the number one most important trait for any leader in our organization is tenacity. The fixed resolve not to quit. And so we have to drive that into this generation. They have an incredible propensity to serve. And especially once we get them into our organizations. If you look at what the great G1 team, Tom Seemans is sitting over there, the great G1 team has done in retention this year, once we get 'em in, we keep 'em. And we kept over 100% this year and we did that across all the components. So everybody wants to be on a winning team, and we have to continue to mold them through hard things that they over come and adapt. I had the opportunity just about three weeks ago to go to Fort Jackson. It was about six o'clock in the morning, and the mist was rising up from the ground there, it was a little hot, and you got the little dew comin' up, and you could hear somethin' comin'. And it was 12,000, or 1,200 young men and women. At dawn. Who got to swear in and be soldiers in our great Army. And their Drill Sergeants put their US Army patch on their left sleeve. And they wept. That's what it means to be part of this organization. That's the kind of thing we need to show 'em, that's what we gotta tell 'em, and that's what they gotta see. And they, a lot of kids haven't done these hard things. So when they achieve 'em it is amazing. So we gotta capture that, bottle it, and get it in there so we can cut down on the attrition, so that we keep them longer. And they have this great Talent Management System that allows them to choose their path, and a Credentialing Program that gets 'em skills along the way, and then another thing, Promotion System, that allows them to see success in their life. And then when they get ready to go, we would put a badge on 'em, tell 'em they're soldiers for life, and then we take care of them. Because we've, along the way, we've shown 'em the credentials they need for a job outside. We've cared enough about 'em to make sure they understand what their aptitudes are, and that we've developed them enough to be great citizens in our great nation. That's what it means to be a soldier in our Army. - [Bromberg] Super, thank you. Super. And we got one here. So, I think this would be probably for Miss Lord and Dr. Wardynski if this applies to both. "We understand that OSD has launched a review "of the fourth estate, "and given that the challenges and skill recruitments "we've talked about here today, "is there any kind of changes that you see "on changes in the Acquisition Workforce "or size or cutting the direction questions "we see cuts in the Acquisition Workforce?" It's probably too early to tell. - Yeah, so Army Night Court has come to OSD. (panel laughing) We call it the Defense-Wide Review. We do it on Saturdays, we do it on Fridays, we do it kind of all the time now. And frankly, from the Acquisition Workforce, a few of our agencies have been up so far, so Defense Threat Reduction Agency was first up. We got the number one slot on a Saturday morning. And what we've seen there is more perhaps a pushing back of certain functions to either services or to intel. And where I've seen a question of actually cutting the Workforce is non-true DOD missions. As we've gone through a lot of the different areas, if it isn't war fighting, if it's something that one of the other agencies or one of the other departments across government has asked us to do, or if it's something that should be a function of another department because it's not really about lethality, it will get cut. However, I don't see a large amount, at all, of the Acquisition Workforce being cut. What we have talked about is perhaps cutting some of the benefits, if you will, of being an Ac-Demo. For instance to some of the areas like Facility Engineering where they didn't use DAU too much to begin with. But at this point, it's really, I think, more about cutting out funding for things that are non-essential. It hasn't been about cutting people because, frankly, we have a lot of open billets right now for the right types of skill set. Our biggest challenge, my biggest challenge, is people not having the right skill sets that we need, and, frankly, it being very, very, difficult to move people on in the government if they no longer are a good fit. That's about a three-year process on a good day. - [Bromberg] Thank you. - Yeah, I think in terms of Defense-Wide Review, the areas we're looking at are lineage runs up to the Under Secretary for personal readiness, things like DoDEA schools, hospitals, and military entrance processing command. Some of those have already been looked at. Obviously, Defense Health Agency's under a very significant revision, and the Military Treatment Facilities, many of those will be transitioning to Defense Departments Health Agency, so that one's kind of on its own. When you look at DoDEA schools, we have an interest in DoDEA, worrying about all the kids, frankly, not just ones in DoDEA schools, that our DoDEA superintendent be a superintendent for all military children as they move around. We're concerned about quality of life, that they look after the needs of kids as they approach graduation requirements and things like this, help us keep the pressure on state superintendents to make sure our students in the military do well and have the resources they need. And then in the world of MEPCOM, I can envision a discussion that could take place about a service perhaps having an idea could do that mission quite well. And exploring if that might not be the way ahead for the Department of Defense and the services. - [Bromberg] Super, thank you very much. So, Command Sergeant Major, and maybe General Funk, we'll see. 'Kay, so the question, I'm gonna modify this question just slightly, is, "Can you talk about programs or creating programs "for those youth that are overweight "or maybe have lesser educations "to help bring them to the standard "where they can serve?" - Actually, well yes. So as you know, we implemented the OPAT a few years ago, and so what Dr. Wardynski has actually allowed us to do this year is if we have a soldier that's two, well, potential soldier, that's 2% over their body fat, if they can score black in the OPAT and select a job that requires black for OPAT, that's the most difficult one for those of you who're not used to that term, then we can have up to 3% of a force that actually enlist that are over their body fat. We're confident that after 22 weeks at Fort Benning, Georgia, they'll be where they need to be. (panel and audience laughing) So on the education side, we have a program. It's called March to Success. Where, and it's, you can use it to get better at the ASVAB, but you can also use it to get better at the ACT, SAT, if you're studying, if you want to get into, you know, for your master's, you can also study for that. So those are the programs that we have in place. Now in addition to that, we have these amazing Battalion level leadership teams that partner with school districts all over the country to assist in helping youth in sports and also in academics. So what comes to mind immediately for me is our Mid-Atlantic Battalion. We have recruiters embedded in their school board, and they have a state-wide competition. It's basically the young folks come up with an idea, it can be technical or it can be mechanical, and they compete for the top prize, and they get to come together at the end of the year and show case it just like a science fair. And they have all these Army recruiters there in place to assist them. And you can find similarities throughout the United States with our Battalion Command Teams. - [Bromberg] Thank you. - And I just have her. (panel laughing) But I will tell you that I think there's, if you go back to what I said, there is a problem in our country. And so as I look and it is obesity, and we gotta attack this. And I think if we looked at our MWR programs a little bit further on, and this is just a wild idea, so I'll probably get in trouble for this, but I think we should be partnering with our professional leagues. They all have developed youth programs. And we as the military, DOD, and the Army, at least, should be partnering with the MWR programs for the NFL's PLAY 60, and the NBA's youth program, and all those programs, that First Tee program in golf, for example, which is a valued space to organization. And when you take those programs and develop young men and women that have to meet some sort of requirement to help them lead up, and we get 'em out and moving, and start building the bone density and the physical strength we're gonna need for the future, I think we could do this in partnership where then we would raise the awareness through those programs of just what it means to serve. And it'd be celebrated, and probably, I bet those leagues probably have a way to help us maybe even pay for it a little bit. And that wouldn't be all bad either. So I think we're all invested in this, like I said. It all goes back to the all-volunteer force. We're going to have to do something to make sure that we can maintain that force in the future. - [Bromberg] Super, thank you. So Dr. Wardynski, the comment, or the question is that, "Positive feedback on the Battalion Commander Assessment "Program: when will it be applied to future "Brigade and Division Commanders?" - Good question. - General Funk might actually have better information than I do on that one. I know this year is Battalion. - Right. - And then thereafter I think they're Army Senior Leaders, and General Funk might be tuned in on that one. - Yeah, we're actually gonna look at what happens with the Battalion Commander Assessment Program, and then make the tweaks and develop it. But if you think about it, our Battalion Commanders are going to be our Brigade and Division Commanders. So if we start there, we're gonna get an assessment anyway, so we're already beginning the process. And then it just becomes the nature of the beast to look at it in different aspects. - [Bromberg] 'Kay, super, thanks. So next one is, and I'll offer this both to Dr. Wardynski and also Miss Lord, although the question is phrased toward the Army. "Will the Army..." Excuse me. "Will the Army move more towards a system like the Air Force "identifying key civilian positions, "say at the GS15 and 14 level, "and begin to identify potential future civilians "even below that and groom them for more senior levels "building towards SES?" So I think the question, I might have screwed that question up a little bit. "Building the civilian talent at a more junior level "to identify key potential to move on up the 14, 15, "and SES level?" So apologize to the person-- - Yeah, I'll just make a quick comment here that everybody's always looking for talent, and I will tell you there's a bit of that going on all the time amongst OSD and all the three, four services, whichever way you want to count it. So people are being pulled back and forth to get into jobs that position them better for an SES position, I would say. I see that every day. - Building on that, I think where we're headed is very much in that vein, is also looking through our internship programs, ACRES, and kind of the beauty of the People Strategy, not to beat that too hard, but it has a civilian implementing plan that'll talk to those types of programs and the way we resource them. So as you know, I mentioned earlier, General Seemans, our very fine G1, he pretty much pays the People Bill for the active Army if they're in uniform. And so units don't see that bill, but it's large. But what you do see is the bill for civilians. So it's in your OMA money, and your various other sorts of money for operating. And within there is also probably money for things like internships, and money for development, and money for other things. I think we're gonna be heading in the direction where we take a very wholistic approach to our Civilian Workforce, and if when we have civilians, we're gonna make sure the resources are there for them over the long term to be developed, to work through internships, to have career ladders, that makes sense for them and for the Army. For example, our very senior Civilian Personnel Policy people don't really have a laddering system to get to that job, so we reached outside the Army this year to bring in a brand new leader for that team. He came from Air Force A1, he was the Deputy A1, and then at Justice. So we'll look to build laddering systems so we can develop people in our career programs, we'll have the internship programs, and we will have thought through the resourcing piece. The resources will be there over time if the people there. And it won't be a matter of we got people but no money to educate them, develop them, and employ them. So a different approach, but very focused on the long haul for building our Civilian Workforce. - And so I'm also very hopeful that the Army will embrace the Acquisition Civilian Exchange Program that we have, and I think perhaps the people at this table could do that. But what we want to do is move people around into different positions to widen, basically, their experience, which does then position them well to move up. - [Bromberg] Super, thank you. Okay, I think this is both for General Funk and for Command Sergeant Major Gavia again. Okay, so, "What structural changes do you foresee at Tradoc "with the new Army People Strategy "and the Chief's focus on people?" And then Sergeant Major if you wanna add on to that then from the USARC perspective. - I don't... - [Bromberg] Thanks. - I really don't know the answer to that question. Because as we're working through the Implementation Program now so as we see that, what I do think we will do, is bring more permanent recruiters into our force. So that will be one structural change. We've been operating for years on Directed Military Overstrength, and what we're trying to work our way through is getting those right people, putting them in the right places, and then reducing some of the stress on the Operational Force. My great friend Mike Garrett and his team, who, those units are turning at a level that is unsustainable, and so as we work our way through this piece, we're gonna have to develop a better strategy for that directly. - And that's why it's important that we follow through with identifying the right folks to be recruiters. So we recognize that we should be able to do this mission with considerably less people, probably about 2,000 less people than we have right now. And on the out years, we have a goal to get there, so that we can give our, you know, the DMO's back to the Army. And then reclassify enough 79 Romeo's to lead the Recruiting Force. But we're not there yet, because we haven't, we have not, we're in the infant stage of developing how we're going to select the right folks to be recruiters. Because not everyone's cut out for it. And, you know, it's challenging. You think about it. So you're a young man or woman and you're going to talk to complete strangers for the next three years, and your job is to convince them to become part of this great team. You have to get 72,000 people, we have to talk to 21 million people. So with General Funk's and Dr. Wardynski's assistance, we're gonna figure out how, you know, the plan we have for NCO Assessment on how to get the right folks so we can recruit with less. One additionally is that leveraging social media. So leveraging social media is gonna help us take us over that edge. And also understanding, this is again, listening to our young people. You do not need four walls to recruit. - That's right. - You don't need four walls to recruit. - And we gotta remember that we're all recruiters. Because it can't just be great Recruiting Command. We all have to be this. How do we do that? Some of it's just living the Army values, and how we project, and how we tell our story. How we get out and actually interact. Our posts, camps, and stations are incredibly well protected. They're also almost incredibly impossible to get on. (panel laughing) And so we've lost touch with the American people. So we gotta get back out there. We, us. We gotta get out there and tell our story. Because we live in our communities. We are the coaches, and the pastors, and all the various volunteers around our communities, but we've gotta tell the Army story too as we're doing these things. - [Bromberg] Thank you, super. Okay, so Dr. Wardynski again. "In reference to challenges," and maybe Miss Lord might be able to add to this, "in reference to our challenges with American youth "and for its health, fitness, propensity to serve, "can you speak to and interdepartmental, "such as Department of Education, "Department of Health and Human Services, "or more like a greater government approach "outside the Army or the DOD, "are there any programs that we're linked to in other "parts of the government?" - There are, and I would put most of my chips on, not to beat it too hard, Junior ROTC, frankly. And Defense Department supporting programs like STARBASE. I was in the Department of Education world and I'm reminded of during the Falklands there was an admiral commanding the fleet and somebody asked him about the general's problem on the ground, and he said, "Those are his problems, I've got mine." (panel laughing) Department of Education has their problems. And when you're a school superintendent you're rated on math, English, and graduation rates, and that's kind of it, and college and career readiness. Fitness today is a class where you're likely sitting on your behind hearing about fitness. It's a class, in a perfect world, kids would opt out of, and take Junior ROTC and get credit for. And just knowing that world, I'm not optimistic we're gonna get a lot of help over there. Governors oughta be our best friend. I was in a governor's conference about six months ago, and we're asking if General Murray's in the room, how come they didn't get future's command? And it was, I think it was Minnesota. And the Army kinda gave a waffly answer and my thought was, you know, Workforce readiness. That's how you get future's command. And Workforce readiness is right here. It's call the United States Army. We will build your ready Workforce for you, you send them our way, they will have a work ethic, they will get up, they will do the right thing most of the days, they'll show up on time, they'll earn their keep, they will come with a thing called the GI bill, which is probably worth about a quarter of a million to $300,000. They can earn VA home loans, which means they'll homestead in your community, and they'll have the wherewithal to build a home and a lifestyle, and if you got a decent state, they'll stay there. And that's called Workforce readiness, and the Army helped you get there. And your Adjutant General can help you get a little further down the road and we can do Cyber for you. So your school systems don't lose control of their data, your cities don't lose control their data, and the Army can help you there. And I could go on and on, but I think governors oughta be our natural ally, and we just need to help them see it. So when our senior leaders go out and visit, and they can talk to them about the great things the Army does for young folks, and then how that turns into their Workforce readiness and how we get 'em fit, and their number two bill is Medicare, and their number one bill is education. We help 'em in both domains. I think they're our natural partners, we just have to learn how to talk to them, and make their problem, we are their solution. And so the general does care about the admiral at the end of the day. (panel laughing) - You know, I'm not aware of any specific programs, but I will say leadership in this area matters, and what all leaders say matters, and if this is part of a communications plan, people will hear it. I was thinking back to early on when I joined the Department and Secretary Mattis was Secretary of Defense, and he called out senior leaders during one of our two weekly staff meetings and said, you know, "I don't like what I'm seeing with people in uniform "around this building and when I'm out and about, "we do have standards for weight and for being neat "and so forth." And he called people out and said he had an expectation that everyone would step up and improve that situation. The voice of the leader there is very, very, strong, and the shadow of the leader is very, very, strong. So I would say the more people put that into their talking points, the more significant progress you'll see. - [Bromberg] Super, super, thank you. So, I think this, I would say General Funk, this might be a good question for you and maybe for the Command Sergeant Major again, "As we look through the Information Age, "many of our threats come from the information "or digital domain." And so, I'm gonna modify the question, so I apologize to the person who wrote this a little bit. But, so, "When we look at physical fitness and talents, "how does that blend with getting the talented minds "to fight in the information domain?" And I've heard this before, and I'll add a commentary. So you have somebody who doesn't meet the physical fitness standards but they're this exceptionally talented person in this digital or information age. How do you balance that with recruiting talent and bringing someone in to the Army? - Well I think that goes to what Dr. Wardynski talked about and it's different ways to bring people in. And so I think we're going to have to do that, but at the end of the day, you can't... I mean, the standard is the standard. So what we'll do is then have to develop programs that do both. That allow people to come in and then we have to be able to get them to adapt to our standards. Which once they see it, once they deal with it, once they've been challenged with it, I believe they'll step up and come to us. - So I described our program earlier that Dr. Wardynski has approved for us to use until '21, and that is, you know, those folks that do not meet the Army body fat standards, that if they can pass the most difficult challenge, or the most hardest part of the OPAT, then we can bring them in. But ladies and gentlemen, we're soldiers. And so I wanna stress that. So, because I get asked this quite often, you know, that this person is brilliant and he can't become, he or she can't become a soldier because they can't pass the OPAT or they're overweight, or obese and fat. Well, we need to safe guard America's youth, 'cause we're only setting them up for perhaps injury or suffering if we bring them in to be soldiers when they're not physically capable of doing that. And I would like to stress that. To be a soldier you have to be physically capable of being a soldier. You have to carry your weapon with your kit to do the job that you're brilliant at, and if you're not, if you can't meet, and we're talking a bare minimum standards to come into the Army, and then we get you to where you're super fit soldier, then you can't be a soldier. Not everybody can be a soldier. - But you still can serve, and that's what matters. It is about shared service. - [Bromberg] Super, thank you. So what we're gonna do now is we're gonna ask Dr. Wardynski to talk about the Army's Marketing Concept. And before I do that, or before he does that, I just wanna say we still have many questions left up here, we're still not gonna be able to get to every single question, but I want to say thank you for your participation. So we'll go to the Army Marketing Strategy and then we'll close out the panel if any panel members have any final comments. So, sir, over to you. - So, Sergeant Major very ably spoke to one of the key problems we have which is unaware. People are unaware of opportunities that the Army offers, how they might navigate entering the Army, how they might have a career, and where it might lead. And so part of that is due to back to the Army's communication. And you also spoke ably about talking to young adults where they are. And so we intend to do that. We have a new look headed your way. You will learn more in the coming weeks, but the Army is taking the next step. So we're going from its warrior campaign to employ Talent Management to ask the next logical question which is, "What would your warrior be?" Which is a question about where you would fit in the Army, and to know that, you have to know a little bit more about the Army and all its richness, all its different opportunities it possesses and can provide to young adults. And so these five folks up here, you'll get to know them a little bit better in the coming days. But the goal is a new campaign led by General Fink here in the front row who has ably joined us. He's part of our Talent Management effort as well. We reached into the Army Reserves and found an expert in marketing to lead our marketing team in Chicago with our new marketing firm DDB with the idea that we wanted to talk to young adults about their role in the United States Army, whether it's in medicine, or flight, or any number of other occupations. And so over the months, we'll roll out a campaign that talks about all the things that can be done in the major groups of the Army, and do it in a way that's highly engaging, surprising. So you can see from the color scheme it's different. And it's different for a reason. Because all the military looked the same before. Grays, blues, greens, very tough to tell 'em apart. And we've got a unique story to tell, and we're gonna use a unique approach to do it, and it should be dynamic, and it will be coming to you very quickly. If you'd like to learn more, I invite you to go up to the booth where this is available and talk to them about it. And it's right next to Army Esports which is something you oughta know about as well. As Sergeant Gavia pointed out gamers are actually pretty handy to have around. They're very bright folks, and so you could just wander right next door and learn about that as well. Thank you very much. - [Bromberg] Well, thank you very much, and I'd like, at this time, as we're closing up on our time here, so I'll start down with Command Sergeant. Any closing comments that you'd like to add? Anything at all that you would've liked to come out. I'll give you a moment for everybody to come down. - So, absolutely, so I want you to picture this for our Army. If every single soldier in the Army today provided one lead a year, imagine what recruiting would be like. So that's my challenge to you. And that's for civilians and our soldiers. One lead a year. And then there was, there was a question earlier that General Funk answered about what can retirees do. Well, let's put it, let's make it, let's make it concrete. We have a program it's called the Partnership Outreach Program. You can link to it from the Army website. Sign up for it, and it will link you to a local Battalion. So we can actually put in action what you're gonna do to help Army recruiting. Thank you. - [Bromberg] Thank you, Sergeant Major. Ma'am? - I'd just like to simply say that the breadth and depth of business experiences that are available within the Army and the Department of Defense are absolutely unparalleled in industry. And I think people coming out of high school, community colleges, universities, need to understand that, because just incredible opportunities. - For those who would like to learn more about the People Strategy, I invite you to visit https://people.army.mil. These little brochures are available, I think, throughout the room, and they've got that web address. If you have a CAT card it's enabled for you today. If you don't, I think it'll be up for you on Wednesday or Thursday. And the key enabling technology IPPSA, I invite you to go see that. It's down by the Army's Warrior Corner on the lower level. And you can see what our young officers are looking at today in terms of being able to pick career assignments in the Army and what units can see when they're looking at the Officer Corps. Thank you very much. - Thanks for your attention today, it really does matter. The Army's all about people. Thanks very much. - How 'bout a round of applause for our great panel today, huh? (audience applauding) So thank you for your questions, thank you for your attention, and thank you participation today. Thank you very much.

Channel: U.S. Army Professional Forum

Views: 676

Rating: 4.7894735 out of 5

Keywords: CMF, Contemporary Military Forum, u.s. army, soldiers

Id: fuLenB82DuQ

Length: 105min 22sec (6322 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 17 2019