Army Reserve Restructuring

[daftandbarmy]

It can work, if resourced properly and if the supported units get their heads out of their asses and ensure their part of the work is done properly.

But the Army always wants support on the cheap, then is astounded when it fails, then blames those delivering support with insufficient resources.

.... and different processes.

It's always interesting to watch the result when, with the best will in the world, leadership (with no experience in leading mergers) merges two (or more) different organizations allegedly responsible for similar tasks expecting a time and resource savings to occur only to discover that - largely as a result of different processes, cultures, policies and tools - they've unleashed organizational hell.

Usually, it takes a few years for them to admit defeat because 'ego' and go back to a version of the old way but, in the meantime, the frontline staff and their clients usually take the brunt of it.

 

[Brad Sallows]

In many instances, still officially on unit establishments, but unfilled, or tactically grouped at BDE to manage scarcity.

A slight silver lining: that means fewer stupid taskings taking them away from their actual work.

Must be quite a savings or some other kind of redirection away from units to others.

Not much of a silver lining. A couple of decades ago it was conventionally difficult to find any excuse whatsoever to take them away from their actual work, and very few even tried.

 

[dapaterson]

Optimizing workflows and processes will have a net organizational benefit... But making those changes is hard.

I recall when the CAF first implemented electronic health records, fifteen or so years ago, the change management became huge as they discovered that while notionally all clinics used the same paper forms in the same way, in practice the workflows were radically different. So a distinct change management approach was required in each location to create a single, common, national workflow.

That was not in the original timeline; they delivered a few years late because of it.

 

[FJAG]

the change management became huge as they discovered that while notionally all clinics used the same paper forms in the same way, in practice the workflows were radically different.

Theoretically that should have been discovered in the business analysis done early on in the project.

I've got to admit that the biggest challenge we had with JAG CIMP was trying to convince leadership how difficult the business transformation process would be and to provide the proper amount and form of training for it. For some reason folks in the upper stratosphere seem to think their staffs will all just absorb it through osmosis.

 

[dapaterson]

Theoretically that should have been discovered in the business analysis done early on in the project.

I've got to admit that the biggest challenge we had with JAG CIMP was trying to convince leadership how difficult the business transformation process would be and to provide the proper amount and form of training for it. For some reason folks in the upper stratosphere seem to think their staffs will all just absorb it through osmosis.

Surg Gen: "If you had told.me two years ago that we have business processes I wouldn't have believed you"

Health Services was not a committed sponsor. Sending the PD on SLT, leaving the implementor to define the majority of requirements...

 

[FJAG]

Sending the PD on SLT, leaving the implementor to define the majority of requirements...

The reason I went to become the PD on CIMP was the JAG wanted to fire the PD who had been on the job for about a year without a true grasp of the business side. It took me about two months of digging into the project to realize that neither did the business analyst. No SORs had even been started yet. After I let him go and hired a new and much better one and did a two month cross country trip to all the AJAG and LA offices that things started to come together.

I didn't really blame the first PD. He was relatively new to the branch (LegOs come in as captains and get automatically promoted to major in around three years - it may be even shorter now) and had only worked in one directorate in Ottawa before that. I've only had a limited view of the system in respect of the PD/PM process, but my general impression from those three years in Ottawa is that CAF doesn't put enough horsepower into DLR nor the PD side of projects.

 

[dapaterson]

Leg Os have a collection of "stations of the cross" to complete before promotion to Make, including a court martial in the #2 chair with either defence or prosecution.

 

[FJAG]

Leg Os have a collection of "stations of the cross" to complete before promotion to Make, including a court martial in the #2 chair with either defence or prosecution.

I remember sitting at the table when we talked about that.

My $0.02 was - do we do enough court martials to do that? I was frowned at.

I was also frowned at when ZI suggested we move half the prosecutors and defence lawyers into jobs where they'd be useful.

 

[markppcli]

Didn't have them, the HRA / FSA split means bith are chronically understaffed and unit ORs can only keep up by posting injured memebers to be "combat clerks." The days of sub units having a MCpl clerks to handle their admin are long long gone.

Oh I wanted to hit this up again. You know what would make doing paperwork on weekends and Thursday nights more appealing? If after a couple years we gave them the equivalent of a 2 year diploma in administration. Go good admin jobs for a few minutes and you'll quickly find that the expectation now is that you've taken a couple years of school to learn how to be a secretary ( that's a separate rant). We can't hire enough HRA / FSAs, we have a Defence College and partnerships with post secondary, this seems like an easy win.

 

[dapaterson]

Oh I wanted to hit this up again. You know what would make doing paperwork on weekends and Thursday nights more appealing? If after a couple years we gave them the equivalent of a 2 year diploma in administration. Go good admin jobs for a few minutes and you'll quickly find that the expectation now is that you've taken a couple years of school to learn how to be a secretary ( that's a separate rant). We can't hire enough HRA / FSAs, we have a Defence College and partnerships with post secondary, this seems like an easy win.

Possible - there are already some equivalencies in place. The challenge is that education is a provincial responsibility, so it would involve ten provincial authorities should we want to accredit it.

 

[FJAG]

Possible - there are already some equivalencies in place. The challenge is that education is a provincial responsibility, so it would involve ten provincial authorities should we want to accredit it.

So the option then is to:

1) say its too difficult and forget about it; or

2) jump in with both feet and say "challenge accepted."