Liam Fox has today announced a series of reforms at the MoD. Of course all reforms at the MoD, at least those in the last several decades, have been prefixed with the word ‘radical’ but these do seem to be pretty far reaching.
Only time will tell if they manage to make the MoD a more efficient organisation
A roundup of the news sources
http://www.defencemanagement.com/news_story.asp?id=16711
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-13923042
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/jun/27/liam-fox-approves-plan-cut-armed-forces-top-ranks
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jun/27/uk-armed-forces-cuts-fox
http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/7054848/whitehalls-monolith-faces-reform.thtml
http://kingsofwar.org.uk/2011/06/defence-reform-defence-revolution
May I be the first to point out that although the Service Chiefs are losing their seats on the Defence Board, the seats will continue to be paid for as part of the Main Building PFI.
Here’s the report TD;
http://www.mod.uk/NR/rdonlyres/B4BA14C0-0F2E-4B92-BCC7-8ABFCFE7E000/0/defence_reform_report_struct_mgt_mod_27june2011.pdf
Nice one, from the report:
” We note that projects in the past have been accepted into the Department’s equipment
and financial plan, without adequate consideration of their requirement, affordability and
sequencing. This is what Bernard Gray referred to in his review as ‘entryism’. By passing
responsibility for proposing new equipment to the Commands, the incentive on their
capability planners to bid low is much reduced: the budget holder would have to find
resources for any subsequent growth within their agreed delegation.”
- get it in there (past the Main Gate), watch it grow, and crowd the other services/ projects out… was the name of the game
So far the first 12 pages have been nothing but bloody waffle.
It fails to point out that the final say is always with the MPs not the COS. They make the decisions for political reasons and that is why so many go wrong!
Overall it fails to do anything except shuffle a few people about. I see they’ve identified some of the more significant faults in the system, but the solutions look very half hearted to me.
Half hearted solutions? You didn’t expect the politicians to actually do anything properly did you?! There is an acute need for reform, especially at the top and so this announcement can only be described as a step in the right direction.
They have to change the smoozing with business culture at the top, learn how to fix the requirements and then actually lead people forward. All they do is bicker and procrestinate which is why every employee survey done at the MOD for the last 10 years has slated the top leadership!
I’m with DJ here. I don’t see how this new set up will resolve the imbalance between ends, ways and means. Ends and ways are to some extend the sum of NSS, SDSR & future force 2020. But the means (£) to not add up to this and I don’t see how a slimmed down Defence Board and ‘empowered’ front line commands will increase the appetite for unpopular decisions to be taken. Then again this could be the perfect political solution; they’ve set the strategy, now if it isn’t delivered they can blame MOD inefficiency, dysfunctional chiefs and anyone else but themselves.
One thing that I seem a little unclear on is if we make the service chiefs accountable for ‘their’ projects does this not encourage stove piped service centric thinking when we should be thinking cross cutting jointery.
Where does, for example, an ISTAR project fit if it is to be used by al three services
What about a common logistics system and many more examples where the lead service has to make sure the project works across the whole of defence?
@TD
Confused by that one myself. One of the assorted arguments on the remerging of the DLO & DPA was that it was a devil of a job getting unused/underused support money back; which made it difficult to reallocate funds to procure new replacement kit in anticipation of overall lower lifecycle costs (aka Spend to Save).
If we need an example of how individual services could do the same instead of returning money to meet unanticipated needs elsewhere, then we need only look at the US:
I’m in two protracted wars against fierce opposition where the priority is to enable the, primarily army, ground forces to: survive, operate and engage with the population. Of course my urgent need is to reserve spare cash to redesign and reissue the USN and USAF uniforms! – Admittingly small change (relative) but one absurd example of non-critical service priorities over joint planning.
@TD
This is about learning to walk before you try to run
The service chiefs have proven through the Defence Board and in more detail in front of the Defence select committee that they are profoundly, woefully ignorant of and disinterested in the financial consequences of their decisions. In fact their attitude has amounted to a disdain for the” grubby” business of considering costs. They are happy to attend parliament with a staggering lack of preparation (or a general lack of understanding of their brief) especially when it concerns new equipment.
Putting them on the spot for their stove pipe budget is frankly going to be more than I think they can cope with, there is little respect shown in military circles for qualifications such as Cranfield’s MDA, so they are poorly prepared to manage according to cost as a key criteria.
If the service chiefs can prove they are able to make budgetary decisions in what should be areas of their expertise then maybe they can aspire to more joined up cost initiatives, personally I think those types of decision are already catered for in the new joint command that will address issues like cyber and will I expect handle the budgets for ISTAR when it is a joint use or design.
I suggested in past posts that the era of Gates type management was coming to the MOD and the service chiefs have only themselves to blame. There’s only so long you can ignore parliament and provide financially illiterate answers (to frankly simple and obvious requests from MPs) before you move from being seen as just incompetent to being seen as deliberately flouting parliaments authority.
Who do we have more sympathy for? The defence chiefs being dragged into the real world or our fellow tax payers, we have all forked out more than enough for the MOD if it had been spent in even a roughly competent way.
I hope that the changes can have an impact in line with 2020 but my fear is that it will only be with a new generation of senior officers that joint will become a reality, not ideal but what we’re stuck with.
TD/RW, Just to add that ISTAR is specifically mentioned as belonging to the new joint force commander, and the recommendation is to review all joint capabilities to see where they should fit. Clearly Levene et al have been reading here about “orphan” capabilities being neglected so they’ve decided to set up a Barnados command to look after them a bit better!
My only comment on the overall concept is whether it will truly lead to better trade-off decisions between service capabilities. And will that be at the Defence Board, or will Bernard Gray use his power to reject poorly thought out proposals.
Finally, I liked the comment about evidence-based policy and the line about advocacy having too great a place in current decisions.
@NickC
I saw the whole JFC as a total admission of failure. We can’t get the service chiefs to play nice so here’s a new 4-star peer who can go around and remind them to ‘think Joint’.
I wonder how lean the new command will be as Liam kept mentioning how top-heavy we are. JFC commander will also have his own budget,- including gucci elements like PJHQ(*) and SF,- so implemented unsuccessfully it may just become yet another competing stakeholder to argue with come funding time.
(*) – Given that a lot of theatre-specific UOR kit is used by more than one service in country, it will be interesting to see where ownership of this money goes.
Making chiefs accountable for the projects they support *requires* the levels above to be prepared to hold chiefs to account. That is what has been lacking.
It hasn’t been the chiefs failing – making your mark, empire building, picking pet projects and trying to make them happen is natural – it is that the politicians have shirked the responsibility to push back when mistakes have been made. They have treated it like a quango for political expediency. If the consequences for waste and cockups within the MoD is a promotion or a comfortable pension then the problems will never cease.
In an ideal world if chiefs were actually to be held to account for projects they would pick them more carefully or aim for major jointery to share the potential accountability around. They would be less keen to over spec the projects or risk being late and over budget. It may even encourage more frequent but less cutting edge procurement – staying current rather than being ahead of the field for a few years and then not getting a replacement for several decades.
If the chiefs don’t pick projects the CDS will have to present a range of options to the board/Government/Parliament.(Or maybe nothing! Perhaps some day they will have enough kit to not be angling for more…) If the chiefs do pick projects they will be common ones where all three services will want them to work otherwise they are all wasting money.
That would be the idea anyway but it *demands* that the politicians do a job they have neglected for ages.
Some great points here. Apart from the quite stpendous amount of trendy management jargon the thing that most concerns me is the assumption that moving the chairs and drawing different lines of responsibility will change human and political behaviours which have been at the root cause of most of the problems. If you read any of the defence transformation documents from the last couple of decades you see the same themes over and over which each successive generation thinking that they can change the organisation by studiously avoiding behaviours and concentrating on systems of control and/or management
I hope these can make a difference but you have to be cynical
It does have to be asked “what were the Chiefs doing when the budget was spiralling beyond its means?” There is no point trying to make the politicians accountable as there are barely even there for two years so they won’t care if a 10 project goes over time and money as long as it makes them look good during the two years they were the Minister etc.
Having a unified command structure where it is everyone’s interests for all the projects and budgets to be delivered has to be a good thing. But as TD accurately points out, this is about mentality and culture as much as management processes. The reforms are yet another thing that gets implemented now, but we cannot expect to see meaningful results for several years yet.
The service chiefs become much more responsible for their budgets. But I don’t think this will increase parochial thinking, for, it will be Head Office and the Defence Board that decides what they want each service to achieve. Although the service chiefs can decide much more how they achieve this, what they must not be allowed to do, and the report recognises this as a problem, is to flout the direction it is given by Head Office. And creating Joint Forces Command is a common sense approach since it forces cultural change and also, it tidies up some messy administration where certain functions sat in the Central TLB because nobody could think of where else to put them.
The report makes sense to me. Yes it contains some management jargon but what it is trying to do is have a strong central direction and then devolve a lot of decision making and budget control to the services (or rather the 4 TLBs, land, sea, air and joint). Structural changes are being made to imbed this new way of doing things.
Its how a lot of other organisations work. You get your brief from your superior and then YOU work out how to achieve that brief and your superior then agrees this. I think in jargon its called an outcomes based approach, which I’m sure the management guru’s think they invented but seems to have a lot in common with the German way of issuing orders a long time ago!
Overall, this report is trying to make a cultural change in a unique Department that is frankly failing – if it were a dog we’d have shot it.
I think this is the difference
This time it’s not just the changes it’s the accountability, the old guard will most probably fail to adapt but this time they will also pay with their careers.
The real drive of these changes is accountability and the willingness to sacrifice seniors if they can’t do the job, many will either avoid the trial or get behind juniors who have the needed abilities. Either way the end result is a change in culture that is more valuable than any change in structures.
The SOS will be giving a lesson in accountability to both service chiefs, civil servants and businesses, what he’s relying on is the willingness and ability of some to rise to the occasion.
I was very impressed by a US three star who was both a marine officer and an investment banker; he was more open to ideas and competent than many on this side of the pond.
It’s that kind of joint capability that will not join re/join up at present but could find a future in a new model of the forces, how many privates now have PhDs? And how valuable are the person skills and dispute resolution learned on the ground to industry.
Long term the benefit of military service to the economy is not obviously, from the self serving revolving door it’s from an ability to deliver in different cultures which leads to the ability to trade in new markets.
The leverage of Foreign Service into foreign economic relations should make perfect sense but at the moment we surrender these hard won insights to prop up a “decrepit” centre where old values are more important than current national need.
To be blunt, the old ways don’t work, they are irrelevant in the context of the competition for power underway, we need to identify which competitors to match ourselves with and they include the UAE , Brazil, Singapore and Turkey to avoid the other obvious but now (militarily) “out ranking us” powers.
The big fallacy is that budgets are equivalent, if India spends 50% of our budget but has local costs that are 10% of ours they will rapidly overtake us, as they are doing, this is why messing up the costs is so important- it allows others to make massive gains based on their lower cost base.
I don’t want to be too negative because I think the raw material of innovation and commitment are ours in spades, but we must stop treating our defence budget as “large”, I think we need to stop thinking of paying for our future on a level playing field and realise that we are in need of development and manufacturing partners just as much as alliance partners.
@RW has got it right.
The Service Chiefs do not know how to run an organisation effectively. Staff training for senior officers focuses on operational expertise but is lamentable at equipping them with the managerial skills to run large complex organisations. Furthermore service culture (within the army at least) is relatively hostile to management; officers are expected to lead and not manage… But senior officers spend most of their time managing and relatively little leading. Most appointments are also not directly related to operations. While we do not want our Service Chiefs to end up like the senior management of the Police Service, I feel that we have got the balance wrong.
One thing the reforms should do is give more accountability by aligning Chiefs with projects (although like many I remain cynical about how this will work better in practice then it does already where each project does have an ‘Owner’ and many projects are joint), but the increase in tour lengths so an individual sees through a larger chunk of a project should make a significant difference.
It would however have been nice to see these reforms dovetailed with the defence industrial policy; I fear that we will still see a great deal of political ‘bending’ of procurement rules.
I am a little bemused by Joint Force Command and need to read into the detail a little more, especially how it will dovetail (or integrate) PJHQ. The US has just closed down their JFCOM. The talk about making officers get ‘joint tickets’ is slightly confusing as well as the current situation is that it is exceptionally difficult to get to beyond one star without a ‘joint’ tick in the box.
Hi CL,
Exactly my thoughts “The US has just closed down their JFCOM”.
- if you look at the graphic (it is just boxes, with text in them), other than PJHQ the ingredients look much the same
Callum
Ref: ” officers are expected to lead and not manage… But senior officers spend most of their time managing and relatively little leading.”
So how come UK Armed Forces are one of the biggest customers of Open University Business School MBA program ? When I did my OUBS MBA every course included a long weekend residential component, and every course had multiple Majors on it (but strangely enough never met any Squadron Leaders or RN Commanders !). Just saying…….
@Jed
Where people doing courses for their military careers or for the times after service?
RW
Both – I met officers who were doing as resettlement using part of their funds, and part self funding; and others were doing as part of career development, including 1 Major who was on his way to a post in MOD procurement …..
@Jed: And I know may who have done the MBAs. Most are Majors who know they might make Lt Col but are unlikely to progress further. The main factor for them is to prepare for non-Service employment. Again, this is speaking generally, not specifically.Most officers on the fast track to general staff will not have the time nor the energy to attend such courses. The army allows for a distance learning qualification as part of its Intermediate Command and Staff Course (ICSC). I am not sure if the OUBS MBA is part of this package, but I do know that considering every Major attends ICSC take-up for the distance learning package has been disappointingly low.
Both RN and RAF focus more on management then the Army does. I have worked predominantly with the dark green, quite a lot with the light blue and comparatively little with the dark blue. I would not feel able to comment on the dark blue, but in terms of managerial efficiency I would say that the light blue appear streaks ahead of the dark green!
PS: Oxford is also conveniently situated for army officers to attend, less so for RAF and RN.
I was interested to read of the increased accountability which will apparently solve many problems. The single service chiefs must be excited to see it… in action so to speak.
The thought that people will be held to account is a strong theme of Lord Levene’s (of the £22 light bulb)report.
As far as accountability goes, does Dr Fox think the SDSR has passed his self set acid test and left UK Defence in a stronger position… or almost totally neutered.
Perhaps one of the service chiefs will be bold enough to ask about ministerial accountability for the dog’s dinner of SDSR?
(Don’t conflate the work of the DRUids with SDSR as I think they are separate errr strands)
Re the managerial expertise of senior officers (or not), I recall reading a thoughtful piece about how many of the best officers in WWII were those who would never have joined the army in a million years if they had not been called up. They had a different mindset that worked better in many situations. So I wonder whether it is at all feasible to make more use of reserve forces officers with experience of running civilian organisations as part of the transformation effort. I.e. headhunt them to come and do a fulltime job within the services.
On the other hand, is it not the case that the private sector screws up complicated procurement and strategy nearly as much as the public sector? RBS, Lloyds anyone? Perhaps the difference is that it is indeed much easier to trace the accountability in the private sector by following the money. Which might in turn suggest Levene et al have a point in focussing on that.
I think the general point about the difference between leading and managing is excellent, its something I have wondered on for a long time.
There is the business of managing defence and there is the business of fighting, they are very different.
How can we square that circle?
You square that circle by promoting the right people for the right job. Infantry officers tend to be a lot more cut and thrust and do not look forward to or enjoy the pen pushing staff jobs they have to get through on the way to another command. Yet, these are the types best suited to command on operations. There are other more managerial types in other arms and services with the right temperament for senior managerial posts. Its no different from any other organisation except on the whole it probably has a higher proportion of the cut and thrust, inspirational types. You square the circle by careful selection on merit and “robust” (christ I hate that word) training and development. Well rounded people should be taking up these senior positions. I imagine that on the whole well rounded individuals are taking up these positions but perhaps they need more support and a different culture of working. No more should people get moved up at that level simply based on time served – civilian or military.
The Levene-report calls for cultural change without showing a way to assure this change.
I think, the current systems major flaw is the general lack of transparency, which in MoD-context means a low capability to indentify and to solve internal conflicts. But, exactly this word is only found 5 times, at very pathetic points.
The different actors at the MoD are communicating with each other through requirements. In the past, poor requirements have lead to poor communication, a clear case of “BS in, BS out”. The DRU in its report not only failed to lay out quality standards for this communication or advise to lay some out, they additionally emphasize to retain the current top-down approach, which doesn’t require the old guard to adapt to anything, therefore not paying with their careers, as someone wrote.
In the the current (top-down-)system and in that drawn by the DRU, a low-quality requirement would be enforced to subordinate levels, the resulting conflicts being delegated down the hierarchy to DE&S, rests there a couple of years and finally crawls back the ladder in shape of cost overruns and budget gaps. Each superior level of delegation has no interest in hearing complaints from subordinate levels. All actors are keen to impose face-saving measures, something which is working quite well. Result: requirement and procurement chaos, money wents down the toilet.
I think we basically need the possibility and in fact the power for the different players to refuse requirements. This enforces quality communication from the bottom up. If requirements get refused, they are a clear and relevant sign to everyone, including the media, that something’s wrong. Superior levels would have to listen, they would have to adapt. And the most advantegeous point here is: no money would have been burned yet.
How does it work? A future DE&S chief will never take f.e. a RN requirement, if…
…it’s not detailed enough
…it contains various high risk parts (the latter not to be mixed with science contracts which are basically a risk in itself)
…it nukes the budget (as a whole of the services part)
…it mirrors a highly commonal requirement.
These point are his domain-specific quality-standards of requirements. If he accepts requirements not coming up to them, he gets accounted. Even if the standards are met, but his belly tells him to refuse, he should have the right to do so. As requirements are adapting, each of those iterations can and must be refusable.
Each actor clearly needs the capability to check against the standards, which will lead to independent expertise. Let’s only look at risk-assessment. Today, we have no or only highly optimistic numbers coming out of the services, with the real numbers showing up in later NAO-reports. This is to be done by DE&S. As well as budgeting the procurement items and make sure they are as affordable as possible. Here is even a crucial point to give incentives, if just by publicly naming the ‘most nit-picking aquisistion controller’.
If a requirement gets constantly refused, then an independent clearing and monitoring staff should be called, and the underlying problem will be fixed before damage is done. The same example can be re-iterated through the organizational hierarchy. This way, we get a self-regulating, culture-change-enforcing framework.
In fact, we would get control and transparency at the crucial point instead of micro-managing chaos.
You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. I don’t see how a report can actually physically bring about the change in culture. It says that a robust corporate framework is needed which is management bollocks speak for the managers and leaders to actually have a set of balls and make sure things change and grip the people that need gripping. You can’t make a fist reach out from a report and grab the mandarins and old fossils in Head Office by the neck.
In other words, the report is not the place to describe in details how to embed the change, that is up to the people who are supposed to show leadership and commitment and who are supposed to want the best for the department.
The overarching message to me from this report is strong central direction, devolved responsibility and a strong corporate framework. Its simple, the drive for change must come from within, nudged along by this re-org.