Now it is a pleasure to present today's speaker General John M. Lo commander of the air combat command United States Air Force with headquarters at Langley Air Force Base, Virginia. General lows command comprises more than 3,400 aircraft and more than a hundred and seventy four thousand active and civilian Personnel at 45 major installations in the United States and Panama several weeks ago when vice president Al Gore introduced the national performance review. He indicated that one of the most efficient parts of the entire federal government is the air combat command headed by General low vice president Gore said when Walmart entered the pharmacy business, they went to the air combat command to find out how to be the best in the business because they were setting the standard. At our company tenant, we are very much interested in quality efficiency and benchmarking, but I can honestly say that it would not have occurred to me to turn to a government organization for advice on how to become more competitive. But apparently General low is here today to convince me. Otherwise, I am now pleased and honored to present General John Mike Lowell. Thank you very much Roger and thank you for having me to this Minnesota meeting. I think vice president Gore was also surprised with what he found out about our Command. It is a pleasure to meet with so many important members of the community here at Minneapolis at one time this afternoon, and I thank you for the opportunity to speak even though I've been in the Air Force for more than 30 years. I do feel a certain kinship with all of you between cheering Virginia's Commission on defense conversion this past year and cheering Ohio's Commission on strategic economic planning in 1989 when I was stationed in Ohio, I can empathize with the tough situation most of you faced in your businesses over this period I've seen the same Trends emerge in my business that you have seen emerge in yours. It doesn't matter whether you're in business education government or public service the globalization of our economy and interests and the stress of the recession have strained your organization. It may surprise you to know how deeply the military is affected by these same pressures. I too am dealing with dramatic changes in my market base a radical restructuring and the need to reduce costs and Personnel at a time when modernizing is absolutely essential to our future success. Our businesses are different, but our challenges are remarkably the same our success in remaking ourselves under these trying circumstances put us in the National Spotlight last month as Roger hail just mentioned. I know it may have surprised a lot of people when vice president Gore used my command air combat command and the Saturn plant in Tennessee as examples of excellence in the National performance review. We were the only public sector organisation so spotlighted. Our products and our circumstances are very different from Saturn's but we are both completely customer-oriented identifying Saturn's customers. It's pretty easy defining ours is a little more complicated in one sense. It's pretty simple though one could say our customers. Are you the American people the Congress and the president are commander-in-chief. We defend your interests around the world, but that approach is much too simplistic as you will recognize it gets much more complicated when you try to Define exactly what constitutes defense and the complex relationships between the forces that provide the service for our nation suffice it to say my part in that is to lead the command that organizes and trains and equips. And puts together 75% of the Air Force's fighter and Attack Force a hundred percent of its bombers and our reconnaissance capability in 90% 90% of its short-range intro theater airlift. My direct macro customers are the seven Global combatant commanders people like Norman Schwarzkopf in the Gulf War who use this air power that I command to fight our nation's battles in the last three years their needs have changed dramatically after nearly 40 Years of preparing to counter the USSR and the Warsaw Pact and a major land war in Europe. They must turn their attention now to fighting Regional conflicts like the Gulf War and assisting in peacekeeping and humanitarian efforts. They must do this without a large support structure or large numbers of troops or Plains station close to the action because now we are pretty much a home base Force. To do this better a little more than a year after the Gulf War ended the Air Force introduced a new organizational structure one that put all our Stateside Firepower into one organization the air combat command that took care of our major organizational barrier to efficiency. The problem we face now is adapting to support our customers in a new security environment with for fewer people and planes than we had in the past. We are also a superpower and we want to be a superpower that is based at home. This brings a whole new set of market dynamics into play in my organization instead of relying on the physical presence of our people in weapons near the most likely area of conflict as we have done in the past in the Cold War. We rely on the demonstrated ability of our forces to respond quickly to conflict when it arises. This is a new market situation make no mistake about it. It requires us to show our Ocean sea and earn our friends and allies confidence on a very different playing field than what than the one we Master during the Cold War with all of the reorganization that's going on. It's hard to make a one-to-one comparison in Personnel, but consider that in 1988 the Air Force had about eight hundred and thirty active duty and full-time civilian workers more than a hundred and ninety thousand of these almost 200,000 of them were stationed overseas in Europe or the Pacific according to our 1994 budget just being debated now in the Congress Air Force will have about 600,000 people and only a hundred thousand will be stationed overseas. The annual defense budget has dropped 34% in real terms from it's 1985 Peak and by 1998. It will have fallen by 41% a significant decrease during the same period the Air Force budget dropped from about 95 billion to 75 billion and the president's budget that is being debated today in Congress. When you adjust for inflation, you'll see that we've taken a 61 billion dollar or 40% drop in our own budget already. Naturally without a potential World War looming on the horizon. We can make some very sizable cuts and we should the difficulty is that our customers are more busy now than they were even during the Cold War as we meet here today ACC as we call ourselves air combat command ACC forces are guarding and actually implementing the to no-fly zones in Southwest Asia one in the South and one in the north taking part in counter. Products operations in the Caribbean and Central and South America and supporting the UN effort in both Bosnia and Somali our people are there even though our active-duty c-130s bear the brunt of the airlift in Bosnia today Crews from the 133rd airlift Wing General John Bromans Wing here in Minneapolis have been flying into Bosnia for nearly three months now right from here in Minneapolis and your local reserve unit. The 934 airlift group has had aircraft and Crews flying in that operation since this summer and they will return there just after Christmas bombers from our bases in Michigan and Kansas and fighters from one of our guard units in Maryland are in the Mediterranean today flying in a NATO exercise some of our attack aircraft and communication Specialists are teamed up with the Army's 1st Cavalry in a joint exercise in California. Today despite the stresses of all of these commitments and despite dealing with a major reduction two major reorganization and a major mission reorientation. I believe our people are thriving they have sliced burdensome procedures and waste from our operations. They've cut our operating cost and they've increased their effectiveness and our efficiency simultaneously. I've seen their pride and motivation sore despite these drastic draw Downs the difference between a cc and less successful less efficient. Organizations is not the challenges we face it is the way in which we went about facing them. We are a big organ organization make no mistake about it. We have more than 260,000 people in every state and 22 foreign countries. They operate 33 different types of aircraft and provide the communications engineering security and other vital support. We need to prosecute a full-blown era War air campaign our installations occupy. Roughly the same amount of acreage. Is the state of Vermont not quite the state of Minnesota state of Vermont. We're big but we operate we operate as though we were small we decentralized Authority and a big way. We do this by putting responsibility Authority and accountability together at the production level at the operating level. We can do this with confidence because we pick smart people to lead these organizations and we give them all of the resources. They need to do their job budget equipment resources and train people. They operate freely as autonomous units in a culture where they continually measure their squadrons results their output and compete against the standard in essence. We reverse the traditional organizational orientation where the boss is at the top of the pyramid and everyone else is below and it works in air combat command. We put the squadrons are units of production. We have five hundred and sixty two of them at the top. Rest of us work to help them become more efficient and more effective. This reversal of roles meant we had to make some changes one of the most important. Was learning to tolerate some mistakes when you diffuse decision-making Authority the probability of somewhere of someone somewhere making a mistake and perhaps a pretty big one increases greatly but mistakes are a natural part of our learning curve. The problem comes from knee-jerk response the natural almost natural tendency to re centralized when the first mistake occurs and that's typically what government does. That's the wrong approach. We found that it is far more profitable to look at the reason for the mistake. Most of the time the culprit is a lack of training when I see a problem that manifest themselves and workers making mistakes. I don't blame the workers. I blame the managers the worker was ignorant, but the manager was negligent he or she didn't ensure the workers were prepared for their tasks. We don't spend a lot of time punishing people are assigning blame instead. We train people we prepare them to assume responsibility in the Air Force. We do a great job of training people who have what I call life or death responsibilities are skills. For example, our Pilots are the best in the world and that's largely because we spend two years training a fighter pilot or a C-130 pilot before he or she is allowed to fly in an operational squadrons. But the other skills just as important to the outcome of our mission have not required as much training because in the past we didn't consider them as important. That's a big mistake and a quality outfit will not stand for it at ACC. We have a three-prong program. I call it bright flag so we can focus a lot of attention on it to ensure all of our people know what kind of training they need to do their job and how to get it this encompasses job skills training quality improvement training and off-duty education that civilian universities offer on and near our bases at racc quality Schoolhouse. We on ourselves on our own out of our hide. I might add designed our own courses to teach people to use tools and techniques like preto charts and histograms and flow charts. We teach them how to be analytical very simple but analytical then we encourage them to use these skills to improve the processes that lead to their products. This is where we see all of our quality improvement training pay off. When we empower the workforce the people throughout the command who do all of these things that go into making us a combat Force. They showed us by the droves smarter faster and cheaper ways to do hundreds of things at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. For example, a senior NCO invented a tool to help our maintainers get the rivets the secure an F15. He's canopy on the aircraft this tool saves us $20,000. Every time we have to take the canopy off of this e model and we do that rather frequently it cut our average time for this kind of repair from 12 days to two hours. That should save us about four million dollars on repairs per year to the E model f-15s alone. Just this one change and one of our bomber bases are maintainer found a way to fix a supposedly unfixable $6,200 part on the be one for about $50 at another Basin in Co found a way to fix a port on the F-111 for $200 that we used to have to send to a Depo to fix for $49,000. In many cases our people have found ways to use PCS and inexpensive Electronics to improve on systems and processes developed long before these Technologies were so inexpensive readily available at one base in avionics technician discovered. We could fix a 410 dollar computer assembly that we would have thrown away by installing a 38 cents, which the assembly was similar to the trackball you see on some of the nicer desktop computers are Sergeant took the thing apart and with a little research found you can install a cheap mass-produced switch that had come on the market recently and it worked just fine that same unit had been told to scrap too expensive monitors these display monitors used on our a wax aircraft our surveillance aircraft because they're outside casings have been cracked during the Persian Gulf War. The monitors are listed as costing a hundred and thirty two thousand dollars each. They study the problem and learn they could well them back together, which they did saved us $260,000. One unit one unit is putting barcodes like those you see on groceries at the supermarket on their tools and we're doing that now throughout the command this takes away a lot of time and hassle on keeping track of all of our millions of tools that we use another unit formed a special team a quality improvement team of Supply technician a flight line mechanic and a maintenance shop technician to go through all of the parts. They were planning to throw out and determine what they could Salvage since they form this team in April. They saved $156,000 by fixing and reusing old Parts. These efforts aren't confined strictly to equipment. At our own headquarters. They reduce the number of days. It takes to process Publications like a regulations by two-thirds get rid of all that paper and that layering and all that even more impressive. Our people were able to reduce the number of pages of Publications 62% from 42,000 to 16,000 and I still insist on going lower and the number of Publications required from 2000 to 780 another 62 percent reduction just in the past year now closing a base is the administrative nightmare of all time. I'm closing 13 big bases in air combat command 7 have closed already. We just closed two more last week cars while at Fort Worth and Bergstrom at Austin, Texas. But the people of Georgia Air Force Base in California the first base we close slew this dragon with Quality Air Quality approach to the closure process taught them so much that they published a guide for base closures that we have used and updated at our other 12 bases that are slated for closure and it's a standard throughout the command now and now throughout the Department of Defense. It's been adopted throat DOD. Now these people weren't motivated by anything mystical they simply wanted to do their jobs. Well and with less hassle, and they had the authority they had the authority and the responsibility together to do them almost on their own. For example, one of our maintainers figured out we could use the nose wheel tires that were to beaten to stand to stay on our f-16s, but we could use them on a hundreds of ground equipment course that we have at each base. It made sense. The tires couldn't be used for continuing to take the impact of a 20,000 pound fighter 250 miles an hour, but they were perfectly fine for an equipment cart driving around the flight line. I met the sergeant thanked him for his idea. He wasn't losing any sleep over the defense budget. He was just tired of changing tires. Another example at one of our bases a young security specialist as a supervisor why they spent 25 minutes at the beginning of every shift checking each individual's equipment gear didn't make sense. We trusted these people to guard nuclear weapons, but we didn't trust them to have batteries and their flashlights. Sergeant in the Squadron thought through this and took a brave new Step. They quit making the inspections. Well, they have occasional spot checks. Now, it's been more than a year since they made this great decision and they've had a hundred percent perfect record on the spot checks. They make naturally our people don't do these things in a vacuum. We have a system command wide measurement system called quality performance measures Q PM's ask anybody in my command but he qpm in is you get about a 15 minute lecture. I assure you these Q PM's allow our people to compare themselves to everyone else in their business and against the command standard. We have a hundred and sixty six of these quality performance measures that are squadrons track across the command. They are output and outcome oriented measures the run the gamut from the in commission rate for our aircraft every day to the number of patients seen by our doctors and to response time for our police force. Some of the quality gurus will tell you that internal competition is not a very good idea. They think It divides people into winners and losers. I don't see it that way at all. We do not compete our squadrons head-to-head. We compete all of them against the standard the air combat command standard for each of these hundred and sixty-six output measures a little competition and little peer pressure are healthy, especially in the business. We're in our people want to excel when they are below the standard they know which of their counterparts out there to consult with to learn to do things better. And when everyone meets the standard everyone wins, we're adamant about the ladder. We don't keep raising the chinning bar. We set reasonable goals and when people meet them they are rewarded now, I can't give each of them a big fat bonus for meeting the goal, but I can give them time off every Squadron that meets its monthly flying goal, which is our primary Mission gets a day off extra day off and we give them a second day off each quarter for those who meet 80% of those 66 quality performance measures. So our people have the potential for getting 16 more work days off each year. That doesn't mean we don't strive to improve once our units meet their goals consistently. They turn their attention to honing process has reducing the work in time that goes into these processes. This is where another form of measurement pays off we train our people to develop and use process-oriented measures. This helps them analyze the processes that lead to their individual products and eliminate duplication of waste and many of the ideas that I used as examples where a result of these team efforts, for example, After the Gulf War would take 45 minutes to do a combat turn around for an F-16 as our version of an indie Pit Stop some of our enlisted maintainers out at Hill Air Force Base in Utah took that on as a personal quality initiative with measurement they drop the time to 36 minutes. And then with a lot of process Improvement. They have it down now to 28 minutes a significant reduction. That's that's nearly a 50% reduction in the time. It takes during a surge to produce a combat critical product a sortie ready to fly. But by far the most important aspect of this change in our organizational culture is its emphasis on leadership leadership at every level leadership unites all of the threads the emphasis on training decentralized decision making empowered people into what I call a holistic approach without committed leaders guiding all of these efforts. None of this would have taken hold this operating style incidentally is diametrically opposed to the traditional autocratic authoritarian style that people Typically associate with the military. This was a leap into the unknown for many of our people. You can't manage people to take that kind of risk. They must be led and it must start from the top. This is the most exciting and fulfilling aspect of command once people are trained and empowered and focused on the right goals. There is no limit to what they can do earlier. I mentioned that we are now a Stateside force that fulfills worldwide commitments because of this type of leadership. Our people are helping to find what that means last spring our bomb wing and Kansas devised a new type of training Mission. We hadn't done this before and I didn't think about it. They sent to be ones to the Mediterranean where they joined up with the aircraft carrier Teddy Roosevelt for operations over Corsica, and then they flew home without Landing this 21. Our mission is indicative of what we would call on them to do in a real world crisis now each of our nine bomber wings. Flies one of these Global power missions every quarter every three months. They will go to the Pacific Europe and Asia. They will provide mass in joint and Allied packages lay mines and do countless other things. This is a very inexpensive way to bring our bombers into contact with more joint and Allied operations while preparing them to perform the kind of missions. We will test them for in war time. We didn't think of it at the headquarters. It came from our people that does the most impressive measure of our success our people own their emissions. We call it ownership by the membership. We have more than a hundred seventy five thousand expert shaping this organization and they have created the best combat Air Force in the world. It would have been easier for them to maintain the status quo. We went into the Gulf War with the naysayers comparisons of Vietnam ringing in our ears. We came back to a roar of approval remember revisionist pundits aside, there were no serious quarrels about our performance, but in my business like you First resting on your laurels is fatal error Market changed dramatically, but as the thousands of men and women of ACC who are deployed around the world can attest. It's still a very big Market. We don't have much money available to help us deal with the current threat. What we do have is a team made up of the best and brightest young men and women in this country. They have dedicated their energy and talents to serving their country. And we their teachers and leaders are helping them make the most of their ambition and creativity creating a working environment that inspires trust and teamwork and continuous Improvement that has helped us enormously and I know it can also help America become more globally competitive the things that stood in the way of efficiency and air combat command bureaucratic layers inadequate training an unwillingness to take risk for fear of failure or criticism, lethargy and helplessness stand. Way of many organizations. They are a national problem based on what I have seen at our combat command. I know a quality Revolution can break down these barriers and Propel our nation to new levels of excellence in many many fields because of the defense drawdown thousands of the people who participated in this revolution are now leaving air combat command. Regrettably. I hate to see them go but I know that they will help spread the leadership style which will help our nation grow economically. They have the skills the experience and most importantly the motivation to instigate the kind of change. We need these young people are the personification of the dynamic Innovative American Spirit that we all admire me admire like their counterparts at 3M Dayton Hudson tenant Control Data and all of the Leading Edge companies represented here. They have the ideas and the energy that we can build our future on our people did a tremendous job of reshaping Air Force to meet the demands of a very different. Environment have they done enough to offset all the cuts. Well ask me back sometime next year and I'll give you another status report. What is certain is that we can make big improvements in how we operate by helping all of our people do their best every day. So what lessons do we or can we derive from this experience and quality in the military sector there are several the features and environment which create quality improvement in the private sector can and must be applied in the military and in the federal sector a passion for customer satisfaction and Obsession for product quality a commitment to continuous measurable Improvement, but more importantly leaders of all large organizations much must approach the subject of quality from an integrated holistic approach defining it teaching it making it a human centered mind-altering cultural entity and to be effective this commitment must Embrace an Snow Forum featuring decentralisation forcing responsibility Authority and accountability down to the basic unit of production. It must embrace the powerful concepts of empowerment and ownership by the membership creating a working climate where trust and teamwork are the Norms. It must Embrace a strong system of measurement focusing on outputs and outcomes, not inputs and featuring large doses of competition both internal and external it must Embrace a commitment to Perpetual training of the workforce and this training must include more than just job skills. It must include training and quality improvement tools and techniques and it should provide the opportunity for continuing lifelong formal education. So all workers white and blue collar officers and enlisted can reach for and fulfill their personal as well as their professional aspirations and most importantly it must Embrace feature and recognize the leadership dimension of All T the key role of leaders at every level locking the way they talk practicing what they preach putting their money where their mouth is creating that working environment everyday wear trust teamwork empowerment and continuous Improvement can flourish. The leaders role is often neglected side of equality movement, but it is the most important side without it your journey will fail. So these Concepts which have proven to be successful in making your companies globally competitive are exactly the same Concepts which can work to make a combat outfit air combat command stay on top the best in the business globally competitive in our business as it down sizes, right sizes and restructures in response to vastly changing market conditions for the future the conditions may appear different but the recipe for success is the same a commitment to the right principles of quality leadership. That is what our combat command has done and that is what I think makes us stand out from the rest and that I think is why vice president Gore used us as an example of real quality in action in the federal sector. Thank you very much. I'd be happy to answer any questions. Thank you General low for our radio audience. You're listening to General Mike Low commander of the Year combat command speaking to the Minnesota meeting on the station's of Minnesota Public Radio as Roger heel mentioned. The Minnesota meeting is pleased to be presenting today's program in cooperation with business Executives for National Security or been on your table. There is a pamphlet do pick it up and take a look at it. We're also very pleased to have the chairman and founder of band Stanley Weiss here in Minnesota today like you to ask the first question Ben's has for more than a decade been bringing its special skills to making the military more businesslike must say after listening to you. You may have to go to you now for the advice. So the question that among many that I would have in mind is that we have long been advocated a real reforms on the service roles and missions one particular redundancy that we find. Interval is the fact that the Marine Corps insist on its own Air Force if the Army doesn't need its own fighter Force. Why do the Marines need 10 squadrons of f-18s couldn't the Navy or the Air Force provide enough support witness a the Navy considerable money first. Mr. Weiss. I appreciate all the bends is doing to help with a more efficient government. The roles and missions question is one that has been debated over the past year and a report was submitted that essentially made a few changes and those roles and missions but not very many. I must say wearing an Air Force blue suit. We are the air power experts in our nation and everyone generally recognizes that our product is are power and for some reason everybody wants a little bit of air power. I think that you will see less duplication in the future as we continue to downsize because we can't afford duplicate of missions. There are a few you mentioned one having the Marine Corps and long-range Aviation that aspect is being reviewed quite frankly. I believe we in the Air Force have a strong commitment to long range Aviation. It must operate from land-based forces the Marines and the Navy do have one clear advantage and that is they can operate some aircraft off of carriers where we can't so they tend to be complementary in that nature. So I Don't want to rule out Naval or Marine Aviation having some role in that mission. But clearly the dominant role as Air Force and I'll keep working to make sure we avoid that duplication. Thank you very much General. Oh, we have a question now from Conrad Schmidt. Thank you very much. My question is what strategies are you using to reduce the cost of Health Care? Well in the military we have a interesting situation the primary role of the medical services in the military or to support our combat operations. So in peacetime, we tend to have a slightly larger medical Force then we need because we're a healthy Force. I mean we are not a Sikh population. So we use that additional capability to provide health care for our dependence and for retirement community, but the first priority is for military members what I have done in our combat command to reduce the cost of Health Care is to do away with emergency rooms. For example, we can we work a deal with a Downtown Clinic that operates an around-the-clock emergency room and that frees up our medical people to do other things and takes away a lot of a lot of dollars out of our budget. We no longer give over-the-counter prescriptions you get you get a cold you could walk into the to the pharmacy and You could ask for a bottle of aspirin and you'd get it without a prescription. We no longer we no longer do that. If you have a legitimate reason for medicine, you have to get a prescription for it. We've done away with a lot of exotic drugs in the pharmacy. I've been a I've been vicious it cutting down our Pharmacy course our Pharmacy costs are 40% of our medical costs in the hospital you mentioned in the introduction Walmart. I deliver 1980 the standard is 80% of our prescriptions have to be delivered within 10 minutes of the time the customer puts the prescription on the desk within 10 minutes. And we we produce 47,000 prescriptions a day in air combat command. We're in the medical business big time and the word Walmart does it it was MacDill Air Force Base large retirement community. We're pumping out 2400 prescriptions a day. And there we were we were delivering 93% in under 10 minutes. That's why but what I have done is in because the pharmacy costs so much. What we were doing was allowing any prescription to be to be fulfilled. If a doctor downtown a civilian doctor prescribed a certain prescription a certain drug, we would we would go out and get it and provide it even though a suitable alternative would cost 1/4 or 1/5 as much as that drug. So we've eliminated all of those high cost drugs where we have a pretty much generic alternative that has lowered our medical costs significantly in the pharmacy. Just that one step and I've taken a number of other steps. Mostly it's being a lot more efficient in our own operation. I tried to go to our own managed health care where we would give our commanders of hospitals all the resources. They need to to sign up health providers in the community at rates below. The champ has rate the Government rate and we were very successful in doing that at several locations. We had to stop that because now it's and centralized in the Pentagon and it's part of the National Health Care thing. And so I had to stop saving money. But those are some of the things that you can do at my level without asking anybody's permission. Thank you General. Well, we have a question here from get any title. We have Ben's members here in Minnesota meeting members here. And here is one whose both. Well, this is kind of a mundane question, but I'm really intrigued by the the reward for those who reach their level of standard of days off. Yes. And what I'm wondering is when someone receives a day off what happens to the work that they leave behind while they're off. Well, what was it but when we give them a day off we give the entire unit the entire base that day off and at the end of the month, we'll combine it with a weekend. So they get three days off at the same time and we just essentially shut down. And now with an additional day per quarter, we will take four days a Friday and a Monday or Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday and just shut down except for essential Services where we maintain that open and then give those people compensatory time off. But you know, this is this is another idea. That's a totally alien to a government culture. You're going to give them time off. Yeah, you bet. We will it's great and they love it. And guess what all the numbers are going up because they like to go fishing. Thank you General low a question over here now for Mitch pearlstein who runs a conservative think tank in town. Yes General if I might let me draw a comparison to education for the last 15 years. We've had a pretty clear idea what makes a good Elementary or secondary school, the effective schools research is very clear. You need a strong principled strong sense of mission holding kids to high standards. None of these things cost any money, but the fact is we don't do it all that frequently. Only some schools are run this way in the military. You've made it very clear what it takes to do what you're doing question. Why aren't other portions of the military doing it second question. Are you really confident that other portions can well, I think some other portions of the military I know in the Air Force are trying to do some of the things that that that we are doing clearly you can and you must I think it just takes a commitment again the basic structure of chain of command and a business and in the The military is the military model. It starts at the top and it's very hierarchical and autocratic and and people are not rewarded in our outfit for taking undue risks because when they do inevitable invariably they get their wrist slap for it and they say, okay, that's the end of that. I'm just not going to take any more risks and and they don't feel a sense of ownership in all aspects of our military operation. Now, if you're in a Fighter Squadron or a C-130 Squad and you feel a lot of Pride and sense of mission, but still this business of finding ways to save dollars and time requires you to change the mindset. It requires you to change the approach to the way you do business when I when I started this here at air combat command. I also introduced another notion that's become very popular in that is no one in this organization. No one in ACC is more or less important than anyone else that's another concept is pretty early and you know, I have four stars and and we Having a rank filled the organization and that's not the point. We have different ranks because we have different levels of responsibility but not know one of us from the person that just walked in the door yesterday from Technical Training with one stripe on to anyone else including me as more or less important to the outcome of the mission of the organization. We all have a job to do a part of that mission and we have to feel like we're we own that and it's us and so that simple phrase no one in air combat command is more or less important than any one else and living that way in acting it out as been as much responsible for people coming up with their own ideas and feeling good about so it takes a mind change. It takes a cultural shift from the traditional military organization in order to do this and I think people in Industry have seen the same thing in order to gain back market share. You've got to adopt these very decentralized human-centered types of organizational stuff and put the motivation and leadership in to make it work. Thank you General though for a radio audience. You're listening to General Mike Low commander of the air combat command speaking to the Minnesota meeting on the station's of Minnesota Public Radio. We have a question now from Sandra Hale who is president of Enterprise Management International to question General low with your emphasis on training in the importance of training. You may have more flexibility than many government agencies. But so often training is the first thing cut from budgets and it's cut with often great disdain. How do you either in your case or how should others who have less felt flexibility deal with that? Well, I'm glad you asked that question Sandy incidentally Sandy and I participated in the quality Summit that vice president Gore sponsored in late June in Philadelphia, where a lot of leaders in the quality movement in the country got together and shared experiences. You must do training. I mean, I took it out of hide. I created what we call racc Quality Schoolhouse. It's at The and all of our people come we teach five courses there depending upon what your level of responsibility is in the organization, but I took it out of hide and I set up quality advisors at each of our bases a team of four or five people that come to our school house where we train the trainers and then they go out and train people at their bases on quality improvement tools and techniques and so forth. I took it out of hide it was expensive and but I scrimped on other things some of the savings that you saw examples of help me provide the training you're right. It's it's foolish to cut training ask any business leader here or anywhere what gets you good service what gets you product quality? It's the training and training and training of our people and not just basic job skills training and then leave the rest up to OJT. We do a lot of on the job training, but I trained the instructors of OJT have a definite lesson plan for them have a performance standard for every task and then have it signed off by somebody else outside so that they understand that the person Knows how to do it. So it's training to trust training to trust so that we train them and we can trust them without looking over their shoulder every hour every minute. I learned a lot of this from visiting a couple of plants around Dayton when I was a commander ASD one of them was Honda up in Marysville went through their training program extensively and and learned a lot from that but I just take it out of high don't even go forward to the Pentagon anymore and ask for training money for this sort of thing. I just do it. They won't approve it. Probably I mean because you don't see an immediate benefit but you do see over the Long Haul tremendous benefit. Thank you very much General all we have time for a few more questions. I think and the first being from Senator Dean Johnson a state senator from Willmar, Minnesota General realizing you work for the commander-in-chief as I do in a reserve capacity. What's your comment about whether we should stay in Somalia or get out? Well, that's a tough question at some time. We should get out at the right time the mission there has changed. As we all recognize to provide some stability now so that orderly government can proceed in that process some very nasty things have happened and I think that we have got to make a commitment that at some point we are going to declare Victory and leave because the primary mission for which we entered that has we have we have one we but we want to sustain it to sustain those gains for the humanitarian relief. And in order to do that. We need a stable orientation there and that's what we're trying to accomplish but that's a difficult one eye in that regard. It is more and more important to us as leaders that before we enter into an operation such as that that we Define very clearly at the beginning what our military objectives are. And what how we measure success just like our Cube you how we measure success and what is the criteria for leaving and we write it down in black and white before we go and when it's accomplished and we check it all off we leave that's very very important as we get involved in more and more of these operations. Thank you General. Oh, we have a question from Matt Wiesner. He's a retired Medical Services officer and former administrator at Methodist Hospital. My question is we have many closed bases that have outstanding medical facilities and also base housing. Is there any effort being made to retain these medical facilities for civilian use where they will be needed in case of a National Health Plan and to utilize the housing on based for those people who need housing in the areas of a number of the air bases. Yes. One of our quality initiative is to make sure that we we helped set up a regional entity that has the authority Ready to act for the state recognized by the state that the base is n and that we have a single point a single entity a single Economic Development agency that we work with and we transfer property and equipment to that entity and then they deal with the private sector and determining how the housing and equipment is going to be used in the case of hospitals. We have some tremendous hospitals that are closing. I mean, these are first-rate hospitals incredible. It's sad some of the equipment in those Hospitals now we've moved to other bases so that we don't have to buy new equipment. But but there's plenty of hospital equipment to stay that stays at these places and and we are encouraging this local there's local entity to use that for whatever purposes they can so that that's been set up. That's one of the quality initiatives. We establish that right at the outset give us someone to talk to that. We can transfer this property to that is recognized by the state and that can then broker with the private sector and Education and prisons and others on the use of that base and put it to a good use for the future and we're doing that and hospitals and housing are part of that at every one of our bases. Thank you. If you're interested in that you can contact the Air Force Base to space disposal agency. It's called and I'll help you. I'll help you do that and you can get in touch with these various bases that are being closed and and and there's a lot of good equipment there that can be used elsewhere. Thank you General. Well question here from dr. Chip Emery from Honeywell Jenna like to follow up on Stan Lee's opening question about some of the joint activity. Clearly. There's a broadening need for more interoperability among the three branches of our service you look at just what's happening with the submarines coming in from the cold now operating with the battle groups the rationalization of close air support roles of the army and Air Force and some of the some of your own activity and putting the tankers together with a fighters in your own command. You comment as a senior leader of our Defense Forces and perhaps with your Air Force hat off for a moment on the likelihood of more Branch consolidations, perhaps not as far as the Canadians have done but movement in that direction. Well, yes, I don't favor and I don't think anyone favors a consolidating the for services and 21404 a lot of reasons. We don't have time to get into here. But we took a major step just last Friday October 1st and creating a joint command in the states. It was the former u.s. Atlantic command is now called USA command that that will be responsible for the joint training the integrated training of Army Navy Air Force and Marine units that are based in the states and putting together these combat packages these Force packages that will then deploy to overseas locations, but they will train together and work up together jointly in the states so that they know each other they know how to work with each other and they can fight on a rival for They're a real contingency a real war or for an exercise overseas. We did this in the past service by service. I would train up our squadrons to deploy the Navy would train up their carrier battle groups to deploy in the first time that they met was when they got to the Persian Gulf that is changing with this new unified command called USA command that was activated just this past Friday by secretary Aspen down in Norfolk. It is stationed in Norfolk air combat. Command is the are part of that joint command. And so yes there that is a positive step in the right direction and I support it fully. Thank you General low we have time for one last question a question here from Lynn Thomas who is with Care International General. Oh, this is somewhat of a follow-up to the question on Somalia in this early post-cold War period could you comment on the distinction between military intervention and humanitarian intervention, especially as they concern the situation in Somalia? Yes, we support and it's part of our mission now support humanitarian operations that do not have a military component to them. This can take many different forms of Somalia. It was feeding the hungry and Florida. It was cleaning up after Hurricane Andrew and providing relief for those people for an earthquake it can deal with that situation. But we are also more and more getting involved in where humanitarian activities and potential Combat Action overlap. And that's what's occurring in Somali and that's likely to occur. In other regions. We try to understand the distinction there by signing up under the United Nations for those peacekeeping or peace and forcing activities like Somalian a land like Bosnia now, so we get an international sanction for that military action under the flag of the United Nations. We still want our US forces to operate under us command. And US procedures but we fly under the flag and the protection of the United Nations to sanction the peacekeeping activity. So there is a distinction there when we get into potential military action, we seek the approval of the United Nations and and depending upon the size of it the US Congress before we go. That's a very important distinction. Thank you very much General 0541 withdraw any skepticism. I might have had concerning benchmarking at ACC you have certainly convinced me and I suspect many many others here and in the radio audience on behalf of the Minnesota meeting. I would like to present to you the Minnesota meeting. Peace pipe created by Minnesota artist Robert Rose bear. The peace pipe is symbolic of the human bonds, which we must maintain in order to live peaceably. Thank you very much for joining us today.