82 TRW Strategic Planning Underway

  • Published
  • By Brig. Gen. Richard Devereaux
  • 82nd Training Wing commander
First off, I need to tell you all that we had a very quiet, safe Memorial Day weekend--everybody made it back safe and sound. Thanks Team Sheppard for heeding the message and getting our 101 Critical Days of Summer Campaign off to a great start!

Second, I wanted to give you an update on our 82 TRW strategic planning effort called the "Balanced Scorecard." The Balanced Scorecard is a technique for describing our organization's mission and objectives and then measuring how well we are achieving our goals. The bottom line is it's a tool for communicating to you what we are about as a wing and how we are doing.

A few weeks ago, our entire 82 TRW senior leadership team conducted an offsite, facilitated by AETC and Susie Jarrett from our own wing XP staff, to revamp our mission statement and key mission impact areas. Here's what we came up with:

Wing Motto: Combat Capability Starts Here
Wing Mission: Deliver technically superior, highly motivated, warrior Airmen.

Note how our new mission statement captures the two components of our training mission--to deliver Airman who have both technical skills and are motivated warriors. The point is we aren't just a tech school but a military training operation designed to develop warrior Airmen.

We determined that this broad mission is underwritten by two main mission impact areas, each with its own set of underlying objectives or "operational drivers."

Our first mission driver is to Produce Warriors with Operationally Relevant Technical Skills (i.e., Train the Force). The sub-objectives of this area are:
· Increase operationally relevant, realistic training (based on what our customers need)
· Optimize student pipeline management (ensure we have an efficient operation)
· Infuse technology into the training environment (to improve the quality and efficiency of our training)

Our second mission driver is to Instill Air Force Culture and Values (i.e., Develop Airmen). It's sub-objectives are:
· Promote a culture of responsible choices (incident-free Airmen)
· Permeate training with Air Force culture awareness and values (learn about our culture and heritage)

During our offsite, we developed measures for determining how well we are meeting each of the above sets of objectives.
To enhance our ability to meet these mission objectives, we also developed the following cross-cutting objectives. These support our overarching goals of training and developing our Airmen:

· Improve responsiveness to gaining commanders' needs (quick course changes)
· Strive for superior support for Team Sheppard (ensure our trainees and the 80 FTW get world-class base support)
· Champion training innovation (keep looking for innovative training approaches)

I realize that if you're still reading at this point your eyes may be starting to glaze over. The whole point of this exercise is to dissect our training mission into understandable, explainable components. We can in turn measure our level of success and make improvements and adjustments to ensure we are supporting our customers--the operational commanders who receive our graduates.

Each of the objectives and sub-objectives above will have a "Champion," normally a Group Commander or my Command Chief, who will be responsible for tracking and measuring the objective and recommending ways to improve our performance in that area.

This "Balanced Scorecard" approach is synchronized with similar efforts currently taking place at both 2 AF and HQ AETC, designed to ensure our command is on the same sheet of music with respect to our AF training and education mission.

Of course, you can't get the mission done without taking care of the people who execute the mission--the permanent party assigned to the 82 TRW. Next week, I'll cover seven additional objectives developed at our offsite which focus on developing and supporting our people.

Thanks for reading this and taking the first step to understanding our strategic planning construct for the 82 TRW!