Thursday, December 6, 2007

TOP STORY >>Grading wing is mission of balanced scorecard

By Maj. George Buch
314th Airlift Wing Exercise and Plans
Commander’s Senior Staff coordinator

This article follows Air Education and Training Command’s article on balanced scorecard for the command published in The Drop Zone recently. Here we will continue to explain what balanced scorecard represents and is used for, for our wing at Little Rock Air Force Base. As Gen. William R. Looney III, AETC commander stated, “the balanced scorecard process – is a management tool for our near-term strategy of recruiting, training and educating.”

The balanced scorecard starts with our strategy map which indicates what is important to our wing mission and senior leadership. Our strategy focuses on the next two to three years for our wing. Brig. Gen. Wayne Schatz, 314th Airlift Wing commander, has stated our mission is to train and deploy the world’s best C-130 and C-21 combat airlifters. This is what we do and why we are here. The strategy map is broken down into three parts: mission impact, operational drivers, and develop and support our people.

Starting from the bottom up, developing and supporting our people is the foundation for our wing to complete our mission. Many of these objectives are aligned with AETC and 19th Air Force. These objectives concern everything from professional development for our Airmen to taking care of our families with the right support and resources. The second part of the map deals with operational drivers which are much more specific to our wing and Little Rock AFB. These operational drivers are broken up into three sets of objectives: training, teamwork and readiness. Each area is specific to the 314th AW whether it is simulator training for C-130s, working with our community partners or preparing our support Airmen to deploy and fight against terrorism.

The last and top section is why our wing exists, and that is our mission impact. Our main objectives here are to deliver the best, on-time C-130/C-21 aircrew possible and to deliver mission-ready combat airlifters. Everything underneath the mission impact supports these three objectives. In order to make sure the wing is meeting its mission, a strategy review is conducted with the senior leadership, headed by General Schatz. Every two months the wing leadership will have a strategy review to observe and analyze these objectives. Measures were developed for each objective area to help senior leaders determine the progress in each area. This program is very fluid, so if a specific measure is not meeting the needs of the objective then it can be changed to better reflect the wing’s progress in that area. As our strategy reviews become more developed we will incorporate Air Force Smart Operations 21 into our process. We wll try to use AFSO21 events when wing leadership identifies areas where we need focus and fix issues.

The whole idea of balanced scorecard is to make the wing better and more efficient at accomplishing combat airlift missions.

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