A Great Step Backwards
I am at the end of my career... Not a bad career considering... But the end is not a happy one, it is an end that makes me sad for the aerospace community in general and the company in specific. Sour grapes, nope! Never wanted more than I had but I had the opportunity to work for the greats and to see what we have today in leadership is sad, very sad.
What happened? I do not know but here are some thoughts and observations!
Acquisition Reform By Butt - This great idea is another disaster. The government abdicated their responsibility to manage the contractors by saying "use your best practices" and we will sit back and watch! ... Yeah, right! Read More....
Integrated Product Teams - IPT's are great ideas for putting hubcaps on cars or some other repetitive tasks but for operating on complex multi-faceted program... Hog Wash! Read more....
No Specs No Hard Work - MIL Specifications were developed over years to provide some standardization to the way business works... The specs went away and the easiest path to appeasement of a milestone prevails.!
Buzzwords and More Buzzwords - - We have Lean, we have SEI and CMMI and ISO and Malcolm Baldridge and Best Practices and ....... Each great initiative has its own group of wheels in the company trying to impose a new way of doing things... Nuts! Back to basics including Mil-Specs!
Computers, bah! - Sometimes the computer (including email) is not and aid... it is a curtain from behind which people hide and become the mushrooms of our business. Design by PowerPoint, whoopee!
Leaders Are Gone, Long Live The Leaders - Billion dollar program cannot be run from 8-5, period! They are run by self-sacrificing individuals who must live and breath the activity as close to 24x7 as possible... Sorry, that is just simply fact!
Ethics, We Have Ethics - Sure... few posters on the wall and four hours of training and voila, "We Be Ethical".
Don't Forget Human Remains - We have so many damned rules to protect the lazy work shirking nitwits that get hired we ought be ashamed of ourselves!