What do we mean by "transformation"? An exchange - defense policy, United States

Naval War College Review, Wntr, 2002 by Andrew L. Ross, Michele A. Flournoy, Cindy Williams, David Mosher

But there are still barriers to transformation, and that is the bad news. The Bush administration will have to address these barriers if it is serious about transformation. Perhaps the largest obstacle is complacency, the absence of the pervasive sense of urgency that has existed in the past when transformations

have occurred. "Of course we will transform," the services seem to say, "but at our own evolutionary pace and without making any hard trade-offs. This will naturally happen, over time; that is how we do business." Another barrier arises from the fact that, historically, periods of low operating tempo have been most conducive to urgent military innovation; today, we are trying to transform even as we are responding to major international challenges.

Not the least of the problems is a general underestimation of what it takes actually to change the status quo in a large organization like the Department of Defense. There is no department-wide strategy or road map laying out or translating the very broad Joint Vision 2020 into more concrete mission objectives and priorities. There are no clear metrics for measuring progress. There is no lens through which we can judge investment priorities and trade-offs, no Defense vision linking the transformation of the military to the transformation of the department and of its business practices more broadly. We have stated that the linkage exists, but we have not fleshed it out in specific terms. In any case, transformation has not been given "teeth," has not been made a priority by the department in the services' planning, programming, and budgeting processes.

While I would applaud many of our experimentation efforts, some of them have been too constrained, infected with a "zero defect" culture that promotes showcasing as opposed to true experimentation. There has been an inadequate emphasis in some cases on real discovery, which requires a tolerance of failure.

Sometimes the most productive experiment is one that fails; we have not seen much of that. Further, many of the models and measures of effectiveness by which we evaluate results do not adequately reflect how a transformed force would operate. Finally, joint experimentation has tended to focus too narrowly on the seams between the services rather than on new "concepts at large" for utilizing the joint force.

Relatedly, there is an inadequate process for translating the results of experimentation into real programs. Suppose the experimentation process discovers something promising. Do we have an adequate way of making sure that it gets into the defense program? The answer is yes, theoretically; but there are not many success stories yet. What we learn from experiments should lead us to reassess our priorities and resource allocations, with respect not only to materiel but to doctrine, concepts, and organizations.

A further barrier is the shortage of institutional advocates; there is as yet no full-time staff in the Pentagon dedicated exclusively to transformation. There are no adequate mechanisms for consistently focusing high-level attention on this issue. If we are going to get transformation, it will require impetus from the top. On the other hand, short tours of duty--that is, rapid rotation of key personnel--limit the impact of many military professionals who are at one time or another responsible for transformation activities. They stay only two or three years in the job, and that tends to limit their efficacy in those roles.