A632.9.3.RB_MilliganSteven

A little over six years ago I began to think about asking my girlfriend to marry me.  While I was confident that she would say yes if I asked her, my example is more in my confidence that I was asking the right person.  I had, had several relationships before her.  Some were good, some were ok and others were terrible.  None of them was I ever confident that if I were to marry that person that everything would turn out the way I wanted it to.  At that time I had no idea where life would take us and the trials we would have to experience.  I knew that whomever I was going to marry would have to love me with all of my flaws and would also have to be independent and determined.  I had just started looking into the military and knew if I decided to join that life would be difficult for both of us.  We would move every few years with the possibility of living overseas far away from family and at some point I would deploy leaving my wife to take care of the children by herself.  I have minimal confidence in my own ability to take care of the kids by myself for more than a few hours much less six months at a time.  However, when I asked my wife to marry me I had all the confidence in the world that I was going to marry someone that would make my life significantly better and be an incredible mom.  I never once second guessed that decision and six years later feel the exact same way as I did then, only now I know for a fact that she is as great as I originally believed her to be.  At the time of asking her to marry me I was nervous about her reaction and nervous about our future but I was confident that I was making the right decision.

My second experience is my actual decision to join the Reserve Officer Training Corp program.  At the time I had been going to school for a while and still hadn't found what I really wanted to do for a living.  I had switched degrees several times.  I realized I enjoyed marketing and public relations and decided to major in this subject.  At this point my Dad had been pushing me to go and check out the ROTC program with the Air Force.  I told him I had no desire to join the military.  Being a military brat myself I knew the hardships that it has on families and children.  Eventually he convinced me to just go and see and talk to the detachment commander.  I decided to start going to the morning physical training sessions and just take one ROTC class to see if I liked it.  I quickly found that there were a lot of things I enjoyed and quite a few things I hated about it.  It took up a lot of extracurricular time, I was often up at 5:00 a.m. for PT and tried to juggle the rest of school and work also.  There were several times that I contemplated quitting.  I wasn't sure the military was for me.  I didn't want to be a pilot and didn't really know what else the Air Force could offer me.  After attending  the summer field training where I was yelled at for a month straight I decided to continue with the program and see what it held for me.  In the end, I still wasn't sure I wanted to join the military but it held a good job and good insurance.  I knew I wanted to start a family soon and this was the best way to ensure we would be taken care of for a while.  Over the years I have done things and been a part of something far greater than the paycheck and traveling the world.  I have taken care of my airmen and help fight to free those that are being oppressed.  Five years after joining I can say that I am now confident that my decision to join was the right one, however, at the time I first joined I was extremely nervous and unsure at my decision.  There have even been times in my career that I have second guessed my decision, however, in the end I am still grateful I joined and for the greater good I am a part of. 

In the first scenario I felt confident when we first got married and still feel confident.  This is not to say that marriage is always easy.  It is sometimes difficult, frustrating and exhausting.  I am still confident that we made the right decision and am grateful she is in my life.  In the second scenario I was first unsure about joining, especially when I was told I was going to be a logistics officer.  At the time I didn't really know what that meant.  Over the years I have come to enjoy my job and am happy I made the decision.  However, I am still unsure about the future and how long I want to stay in the military.  At some point I may have to put my family first if the Air Force asks too much of us.  This last year has been especially difficult on both my wife and the kids, I am not sure how often the Air Force will ask me to leave them for months at a time but there will come a time where I will have to decide if enough is enough and may have to look into changing my career.  For now, I am confident that the decision we made was the right one and will continue to do so for at least the next several years.

A632.8.4.RB_MilliganSteven

The Cynefin Framework is a method of thinking and categorizing problems that allows us to work in certain realms of thought.  By living in these realms we can react to problems in ways that allow us to understand them and work towards solutions.  The Cynefin Framework has four domains talked about in the video.  These are Simple, Complicated, Complex, and Chaotic.  Each of these domains have three ways in which we respond to situations or problems that arise. 

In the Simple domain you sense, categorize and respond.  In this case we start off by seeing what is happening.  If a problem arises we see what it is and categorize it based on previous experiences and then decide what to do based on those previous experiences.  We try to keep it simple in order to react quickly and effectively.  This is best used by simple problems and have a best practice that is easy to decide on.  An example of this framework comes directly from my toddler.  Several weeks ago I realized that my 3 year old hadn't seen many of the old Disney movies.  I decided we should sit down and watch Aladdin since it is a classic.  Three quarters of the way through the movie he began to cry and became terrified when seeing Jafar turn into a large scary snake, then scary wizard, followed by a terrifying genie.  I tried to calm him down and let him know that it would all be ok in the end.  By the end of the movie he wasn't able to sleep because he was so scared of Jafar.  Based on my experiences I hadn't thought of Aladdin being a scary movie.  Several weeks later he saw that the The Lion King was on tv and really wanted to watch it.  Remembering back to our experiences and what had happened when watching Aladdin we decided it would be better if he were to watch something else.  As an adult I would never think of The Lion King not being a kid friendly movie, however, in this case my son is fairly sensitive to evil characters and there are few more evil than Scar and the hyenas.  In order to avoid a freak out moment with him we took him outside to play in order to distract him from the movie he thought he wanted to watch and then brought him in later to watch The Angry Birds movie. 

The next domain is the Complicated domain.  In this case when you see a problem coming you sense, analyze and then respond.  There are not always best practices, but several good practices.  By applying expertise to this domain you can find several good solutions and pick the one you may think is best.  I often run into this problem at work.  Because of our weekly inspections we often have discrepancies that we need to work through in order to make ourselves better.  There are times however that we don't always have a great way to avoid making the same mistake again in the future.  One such mistake happened just a week ago.  We had a young airmen drop a large piece of cargo off a forklift.  In this situation our leadership wanted to know what we were going to do in order to keep this from happening again.  The answer truly was complicated.  To start with, we were not able to promise that it would not happen again.  Due to human error mistakes will always happen.  Several of the simple solutions we started with we to apply straps to every piece of cargo that we move.  While this may help to keep items from falling in the future it creates other risks.  If the straps come lose and fall they could get caught in the wheel and damage the cargo and the forklift.  Doing this would also add a significant amount of time to the cargo moving process.  In the end we chose to increase training and teach the team to watch out for each other.  We would also assign supervisors to work more closely with the newer airmen and to train them on irregular cargo that has a higher likelihood of falling.  While this will not ensure that cargo will not fall in the future it applies the team concept and help the more experienced people to watch out for the newer and less experienced airmen.  From several options, this is a good option. 

The next domain is the Complex domain.  In this domain you probe, sense and then respond.  When you have a complicated problem you need to pull together your experts and begin to experiment with ways in which you can solve a problem.  Through trial and error you will begin find a good solution that works for everyone.  One way in which we have experienced this at work is our entire inspection program.  We have seen it change shape several times over a period of months.  Over time it has become a program in which we have inspections every week.  If we have any discrepancies we gather the team and discuss solutions that can be applied.  We take those solution to the commander every other week for approval.  If he approves we continue with the applied solution and if he disapproves we discuss other ways of fixing the recorded discrepancy until he is satisfied with the solution.  Through discussions and suggestions that meeting has changed significantly into what it is today.  As the program continues to adjust from a higher headquarters level we will continue to adjust our meeting along with it. 

The final domain is the Chaotic domain.  In a chaotic domain you Act, sense and respond.  I saw this happen on occasion during my deployment.  There came a point when the Iraqi military was looking to invade the city of Mosul before they were ready.  They had just had several successful campaigns where they were able to take back several other Iraqi cities from the Islamic State terrorist group.  They wanted to move quickly to take back Mosul before ISIS had a chance to regroup.  At this point our commander believed they were going to move in too early and lose the final battle.  He wanted a number of experts to get from Kuwait to Baghdad in a two day period to be part of the planning process and convince them to slow down their invasion in order to plan better.  We were able to convince them to slow down and take more time to plan the invasion.  In this situation our commander reacted to a chaotic situation that was possibly going to get a lot of people killed and may cause the Iraqi military to be set back a great deal in their fight against the terrorists.  By sending our experts to Baghdad in order to be part of the planning process we were able to lend our expertise and put out some of the chaos that was beginning to ensue. 

One of the most difficult things we do is understanding how to live in different domains.  We all have preferences that can lead us to want to work in certain ways.  If we live in the simple domain and a problem arises that is complicated it can put us into the chaotic domain if we don't know how to respond to it.  By understanding the different domains of the Cynefin process we can analyze each situation as it arises and respond appropriately.

A632.8.3.RB_MilliganSteven

The Cynefin Framework gives us the ability to react to different problems in different ways.  By understanding the framework we can quickly react to these situations and act accordingly.  If you don't understand the differences between the quadrants in the Cynefin Framework you may find yourself constantly living in only one quadrant.  Doing this can force us into the Chaotic quadrant if we're not careful.  Here we act first before we sense.  This is meant to handle the initial problem at hand.  Much like covering an immediate wound.  This does not work for every situation and should only be saved for truly chaotic instances where immediate action is necessary.

On occasion we can make decisions in multiple contexts.  This is especially the case when one situation changes and becomes another.  Sometimes a complicated situation can become a complex or chaotic situation and we need to adjust as needed. 

When I was at my first duty station we were tasked with improving the deployment process.  The scenario would be that we needed to be ready to deploy a minimum of three hundred people within a seventy-two hour window.  This meant that the units needed to have all their training done and have their people ready in that time.  As the Installation Deployment Officer I was the person heading up the plan for the Wing.  When we received a new Wing Commander he expected us to be able to start deploying the first group of people in only sixteen hours and the rest to follow.  He wanted the final F-16 off the ground by the seventy-two hour mark.  This was a complete change in how we did things and would force every unit on the base to change their method of preparing for deployment.  In this case we went from a complicated task to a complex task.  As the beginning we had used a best practice that had been employed for a while and worked very well for the requirements we had been given.  However, when the shift in timeline took place we needed to quickly gather the experts each unit on the base and put together a plan to be able to accomplish what had been asked of us.  In the article from the Harvard Business Review it states, "Most situations and decisions in organizations are complex because some major change—a bad quarter, a shift in management, a merger or acquisition—introduces unpredictability and flux" (A Leader's Framework for Decision Making, 2007).  In this case the major change was the Wing Commander taking on a new focus on the deployment process. 

Once we came together as a working group we developed several plans that would help to speed up the process.  We also had to trim down excess things we had been doing in order to speed up the people processing lines and the cargo processing timelines.  By doing this we would be accepting a greater amount of risk, but we would also be able to make the seventy-two hour window required by the Wing Commander.  The article also states that, "Another potential obstacle is “analysis paralysis,” where a group of experts hits a stalemate, unable to agree on any answers because of each individual’s entrained thinking—or ego" (A Leader's Framework for Decision Making, 2007).  During the first part of the working group we experienced this a great deal regarding the personnel deployment processing line.  We need to be able to process everyone according to what the regulations required but we needed to do it faster than we were able.  Part way through the week a person that had been on vacation returned.  When she arrived she joined the group with insights and expertise we had not previously thought of and we were able to cut down the time it took to process everyone significantly. 

This same type of issue can arise from simple domains that turn quickly into chaotic domains.  One such case happened to me while I was deployed.  I was asked to take over a weekly meeting regarding the future sustainment of the United Stated military in Iraq.  This was a weekly meeting that would be led by a two star general where he would be connecting with nine different bases around the middle east and would also have a room full of people.  In this meeting there was usually no less than seven generals officers.  I was unfamiliar with most of the communication devices we used and pretty much how everything worked and was extremely nervous about making sure everything went perfectly.  Luckily I had a friend that was very experienced and would be around for several weeks to help me get up to speed as much as he could before he returned home.  In my mind this was a simple task that required a right way of doing things.  Regarding this the article states, "Simple contexts, properly assessed, require straightforward management and monitoring. Here, leaders sense, categorize, and respond. That is, they assess the facts of the situation, categorize them, and then base their response on established practice" (A Leader's Framework for Decision Making, 2007).  When I was being trained I understood there was a right way of handling the meeting.  As long as I followed the steps everything should work out well.  Over the course of several weeks, with help from my friend, the meeting went well and all the communication devices hooked up with no problems.

The first week that I was expected to run the meeting by myself we happened to lose all communications about five minutes before the meeting was to start.  In the military world no one wants to hear that something can't be done.  They only want to heart what your second and third courses of action are.  In this case I didn't have any.  I immediately went into chaos mode.  My only goal was to act and establish order in some way.  I needed to figure out a way to connect everyone so that the meeting was able to continue although we didn't have any way to communicate via the internet.  I quickly found the commanders communications team and tasked them with finding the phone numbers of all the people that would have been connected through video teleconference and to find out if there was a place that each person could go where they could connect with classified telephone lines.  I then asked the team to connect all the members in the outlying stations as quickly as possible.  Normally we would also show the PowerPoint slides on the television screens but part of the problem with the network going down was that the connected network went down also.  Due to this we weren't able to broadcast the slides.  Luckily I still had a copy on my hard drive and tasked four people to print five copies each.  This would cover everyone in the room so they would each have a copy.  All in all, this took us fifteen minutes to accomplish and only put us ten minutes behind schedule rather than having to cancel the meeting all together.  Thankfully, because of this I established new courses of action based on this situation that would us to mitigate these problems in the future if something similar were to happen again. 

As leaders we often have certain personality traits or training that cause us to want to stay within certain domains.  We may be straightforward thinkers that always want to live in the simple domain.  We may thrive in chaos and like to simply act before we sense or respond.  We may want to gather experts and let them do all the work for us.  The Cynefin Framework provides us with tools that enable us to be able to work in different domains depending on the problem at hand.  It enables us to decide which framework we need to work from.  By understanding which framework to work from it can help us to quickly form the teams needed to solve the problem at hand.  Doing this saves time, money and stress.  It can also help us get to the right solution or solutions faster and more efficiently. 

Our understanding of these frameworks can also breed creativity.  By using games and scenarios to address different problems and situations we can practice what it may be like to actually experience these situations and therefore learn to work within these different frameworks and understand which ones are best to use in different situations.  Finally, the article states this regarding the world we live in, "A deep understanding of context, the ability to embrace complexity and paradox, and a willingness to flexibly change leadership style will be required for leaders who want to make things happen in a time of increasing uncertainty" (A Leader's Framework for Decision Making, 2007).  In a fast paced and constantly changing world we need to be proficient in different leadership styles and ways of addressing different problems that arise.  By understanding and using the Cynefin Framework and knowing what context to work from we can be better leaders that can truly affect change. 

References

A Leader's Framework for Decision Making. (2007). Harvard Business Review, Snowden, David J.; Boone, Mary E.

A632.7.3.RB_MilliganSteven

Recently I had a situation in which we had several accidents at work close together.  Those I work with move pallets and large items with forklifts every day.  In this case they had dropped several items within a short period of time.  Because of these accidents being close together it caused some questions to be raised at the higher levels of leadership.  I was tasked with finding out why we were beginning to see more accidents like these taking place and figuring out a way to make sure they don't continue to happen.  In my case, I am not an expert in driving forklifts.  In fact, I am not even trained to do it.  Most of the people I work with are though and can provide a great deal of insight to help me with the problem.  One of the biggest hurdles I have to figuring out a better way of moving things is that many of the experts have been doing it for so long that they are stuck in their ways.  

In order to better facilitate the decision-making process and to come to a better understanding on the cargo moving process I decided to analyze the three most recent accidents.  What was the case in each situation and what, if any commonalities existed that may have caused the accidents to happen?  I started with bringing our flight leadership together along with those that were involved in the accidents in order to discuss what had happened.  After this we discussed any external factors that may have caused the accidents to happen.  We then discussed the training plans that the squadron does for individuals that are new along with the ongoing training plans.  We assessed if there are any deficiencies in these plans and what could be done to make them better.  By including the stakeholders and experts in the information gathering and assessment process I was assuring that the process was thorough and the information was complete.  I would be able to get the detailed information from those that were there and be able to come to a better understanding of each of the incidences that took place.  

Involving stakeholders in the brainstorming and solution creation process would ensure that we would be coming up with a plan that would work within their capabilities.  If I was to come up with a plan myself and execute it without their buy-in I would most likely spend the next year and a half trying to make sure they continued to follow the plan.  If they have a say in creation process they would be more likely to continue to execute the plan without my having to constantly remind them.  In this case the stakeholders were the ones moving and driving the forklifts.  Whatever decisions made through this process would affect their day to day work.  If a poor decision was made it could affect their ability to do the job and could cause a ripple effect of slow work, unhappy customers and long days for the military members.  By gathering the stakeholders in the room to discuss the accidents they became part of the solution rather than just receivers of whatever decision was made. 

After discussing what had happened, why it happened and the details of the training programs in the squadron we then moved on to discussing what could be done in order to help to make sure that things like this don't happen again.  We discussed a variety of options that ranged from applying tiedown straps to all cargo, lengthening the training process for new airmen and making sure a young airmen was shadowing a more experienced person in order to learn more from them over a longer period of time.  During this process we also came up with a number of limiting factors that would possibly make it difficult to execute these solutions.  Tied down straps often come loose.  Becoming an expert on a forklift and each piece of cargo comes over a long period of time.  Lengthening the training process does not guarantee cargo will not be damaged or dropped.  Limited manning means everyone needs to be actively working on something rather than shadowing someone else.  By having the stakeholders present and having an open and honest discussion we were able to understand better what some of the limiting factors may be.

In the end we decided it would be best to hold training on how to have the more experienced airmen continue to train the younger airmen even after they are certified.  We would also list dimensions and types of cargo that would need to be strapped down in order to help ensure that cargo that is more likely to fall would not fall in the future.  Finally, because we have so many young and inexperienced airmen in the flight, those with less than three years of experience would be required to strap down any cargo over four feet in height and over two hundred pounds.  This would help to ensure they are less likely to drop cargo while they are becoming more proficient at moving it.  By implementing these changes we are ensuring that each member of the team is involved and that it is not putting blanket changes to everyone that those with more experience may not need. 

Finally, by allowing the stakeholders to be involved in the process and trusting their opinions and input I am letting them know that they can come to me when something goes wrong.  If I make a decision in another situation that may not be the best for the flight they know that they can come to me with their concerns. 

It would have been an added value to discuss the process with members of the other flight in the squadron.  Although they are not involved in the cargo moving process as they are an aircraft maintenance flight, their insight in problem solving as a team is invaluable.  They have a plethora of experienced people in their flight and because of this they tend to make less mistakes then we do.  When they do make mistakes they quickly come together as a team and go through the problem solving process.  By sharing these processes and decisions with them it makes us more cohesive and helps us to work better as a team.   

This experience taught me to quickly pull the team together after accidents happen.  The longer you wait the less people think about it and the less seriously they take it.  When you gather the team and begin to problem solve they feel more cohesive and realize that you hold their opinions in high regard.  It also taught me that while I am in a leadership position I will rarely be an expert in the fields of the people I am leading.  Their insight and expertise is invaluable.  It also taught me that people often watch how I react to situations and expect me to make the decisions for them.  This means that I need to make sure that I am listening to all their concerns and input so when I approve the final decision I am making the best choice I can for everyone. 

A632.6.3.RB_MilliganSteven

A few years ago I was working as the Installation Deployment Officer in Germany.  This position is fairly unique in the way it is set up.  I fall within a flight but also work directly for the Wing Commander.  Due to the complicated nature of this position and the missions we often work on it can be easy to leave out the Deployment and Distribution Flight Commander.   About 6 months after entering this position we hired a much more experienced civilian to come in and do the job while I would stay and become the Assistant Installation Deployment Officer.  A job much for suitable for a young Lieutenant.  I was grateful and relieved as I was not anywhere near qualified to be doing this.  We were so busy and I had become knowledgeable enough in the job that we were able to split the work.  We worked well together and often worked with the Squadron Commander and the Wing Commander. 

Around this time we had a new Flight Commander take lead of the flight.  He was difficult to work with and often tried to take charge of situations that he didn't know anything about.  He would often talk poorly about other sections in the flight and even complain about a Chief he worked with to the rest of us.  Because of this we all stopped talking to the flight commander and avoided him when possible.  This conflict made it very difficult for the flight to function effectively and efficiently as a team.  One of the ten principles of thinking that Stewart Levine talks about in his book Getting to Resolution: Turning Conflict Into Collaboration is secrecy.  Because of our dislike towards our new flight commander we would often avoid keying him in on situations that could have benefited him.  Because of this somewhat unintentional secrecy we didn't disclose information and feelings that could have potentially resolved a lot of the conflict that was taking place between our section and the flight commander.  In the book Levine states, "Information is king.  Whoever has it can hoard, use, and manipulate it" (Levine, 2009).  While we never refused to give the flight commander information we definitely did not offer it up freely.  Levine also states, "This game of nondisclosure dilutes the ability to get to the resolution" (Levine, 2009).  At the time we assumed the flight commander was so bad at his job that offering up information would only make things worse.  Rather than acting in this way it would have been better to provide information and training and openly discuss a way ahead rather than shutting him out like we did. 

This conflict also meant that we were wasting possibly valuable resources.  We were often overwhelmed with the amount of work coming our way and could have used help.  By disclosing information and forming a relationship we could have created a partnership that would have benefited all of us.  Levine also states in his book, "People who are working together often waste resources because they do not have a clearly articulated vision of where they are going and how they will get there" (Levine, 2009).  In this case our flight commander was a resource that we could have used to help us accomplish the mission in a more effective way while possibly taking some of the work off our shoulders.  By harboring anger and not giving up information we wasted a great deal of time and a possibly valuable resource.  Had we openly discussed our issues and worked on creating a mutually beneficial collaboration we could have gotten a lot more work done in less time and done a better job at accomplishing the missions we had been assigned to.  Rather than working to collaborate we further fostered conflict.  This was detrimental to us all as it slowed down our processes and our ability to get information where it needed to be.  The flight commander would sometimes even pass on bad information because we had not given up new and updated information.  This meant that we had to deconflict the bad information with the new, good information that we should have given to the flight commander in the first place.   

If I had the ability to do it over again I would approach the flight commander in a different way and work with my team to be a bridge if possible.  I would work to educate the flight commander on what we did and the complicated matter of the things we were working.  I would also inform him when the decisions he was making and his actions were hurting our ability to get the job done.  I would work to share information appropriately and create a collaborative relationship that would allow us all to work together efficiently and creatively.  Much of our job was problem solving and required a great deal of creativity.  Had we collaborated more openly with the flight commander we may have done a better job at solving these problems. 

Since that time, as I have come in contact with people that I have not gotten along with I have been more willing to openly work with them.  I have tried to build sustainable relationships that are based on trust, sharing of feelings and information.  Forming these relationships, even with people that are difficult to work with has always been a much more effective way of getting the job done.     

Bibliography

Levine, S. (2009). Getting to Resolution: Turning Conflict Into Collaboration. San Fransisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.