Process over Product

When I left the Pentagon for this assignment, I thought I left behind the myriad of process tools, measures and controls used to manage this behemoth of a business.  There are folks out there who specialize in process mapping, planning, task tracking and metrics and make a good living at it.  They no doubt go home at night exhausted from turning the process crank, regardless of whether any product comes out. 

But I was mistaken, today we had an hour and a half lecture on the Functionally-Based Security Force Assistance effort (really important and well thought out) along with a conference call with the troll over in Afghanistan tasked with nurturing their version of the ultimate planning, processing and tracking tool supporting it called the PoAM.  Essentially, process trolls thought of actions to get done and milestones that needed to be met (get a plan developed, and get it approved by…..) in a number of functional areas; procurement, logistics, education, law enforcement, etc. (No doubt without Afghan input).   Some General approved it and now the NATO/US forces are busy turning the crank (as the Afghans eagerly watch). 

The theory of course is that once all this stuff is done, per the metrics, on the schedule we laid out and within resources, then Afghanistan becomes an official Happy Place.  The fallacy of course is that for any work, you can be either schedule driven or event driven but rarely both…….except in Afghanistan with our POAM. 

There are many milestone marker “Taco Chips” on the tracking charts, but strangely the chips are all equally spaced about 4-6 months apart, and by some miracle they all line up at the end 18 months from now when we are scheduled to leave.  Clearly, the process trolls never told the General that the Afghan’s don’t work that way. 

I guess my job will be to ensure progress continues in my lane so that my taco chip doesn’t shift to the right from its preordained place which will violate the “Happy Afghanistan” objective.  As in the Pentagon, my job will be to prioritize the work left to do, cut non-value added actions off the list, meet the milestones, so everyone can put pretty bows around all this as we wave goodbye. 

Afghanistan and the Pentagon may be seven thousand miles apart, but process over product is universal.