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Recommendation 14: Incubate and Execute New Ideas from the FieldProblem statementDoD does not have an innovation problem; it has an innovation adoption problem. New ideas are regularly stifled simply because they are different, and the rigid personnel system doesn’t allow DoD to harness the talent it already has, creating an underutilized workforce and a culture that ignores the best ideas. When DoD’s most talented people feel ignored or undervalued, they leave. The main exceptions are when DoD’s most senior leaders personally intervene to save someone’s career. While these leaders correctly recognize the value of these innovative service members, the need for leaders’ intervention in the first place underscores the failure of the larger personnel system to identify and elevate the best people and ideas. An act (outside) of CongressThe military’s “up or out” personnel system is Congressionally-mandated, so changing the entire system is not fully in DoD’s hands. However, rather than blame Congress for inaction, DoD can establish a new approach to empowering its most talented people. This proposal suggests something akin to an incubator, allowing the military’s most intrapreneurial people to work on their ideas to get them elevated past the usual roadblocks in the system. This requires removing these individuals from the “up or out” system – an entirely new way to approach the problem. “Up or out” assumes that every person in DoD is interchangeable, so the military moves its service members around every one or two years with little to no regard for their expertise or professional passion. The designated military occupational specialties may seem to demonstrate that the military doesn’t view everyone as a cog, but this categorization system is outdated and can pigeonhole service members in professional fields that don’t necessarily match their interests and talents. While this arrangement works for many members of the military, it fails those who join the military for the same patriotic reasons as their colleagues but are more naturally inclined to think outside the established orthodoxy. These are the people who are best-suited to address the increasingly complex security environment in which DoD finds itself, given the flexibility and adaptability needed to tackle new threats. In the most innovative companies and organizations around the world, top talent comes and goes in consistent fashion. The best employees usually leave when they find better opportunities to pursue their passions, and the military is no different. If many of DoD’s top people are going to leave anyway, a new approach to keep them longer – even for just a few years – can have an outsized impact on DoD’s ability to solve problems. This incubator will be a special program for personnel to devote a significant portion of their careers to work on specific problems they’re passionate about. Structure of new systemService members will have to apply to be removed from the “up or out” system, as not every idea is worth pursuing. DoD will have to establish who decides which service members are exempt, but once they are, they will be expected to do the following:Secure support from high-level champions and sponsors within DoD to shepherd and accelerate their ideas, provide some oversight and feedback, and protect them from the DoD antibodies looking to kill new ideasEstablish a cadre of advisors (at any rank) to provide expertise in acquisition, policy and legal regulations, funding mechanisms, technical knowledge, etc. that will help innovators understand what is required to implement their ideaDoD must ensure that the newfound flexibility for some service members is used seriously and judiciously. Some ideas will not be seen to fruition, will have to pivot based on an evolving understanding of the problem it’s trying to solve, or will have to be killed outright. Service members will follow their idea until it is done, either because it was killed or because it was adopted or integrated. If adopted, the adopting organization should be encouraged to hire the participant as a special implementation advisor for an agreed-upon period of time to facilitate integrating the project into the larger organization. Many participants will leave the military afterward. However they could convert to a civilian DoD position, join the Reserves, or follow other models to stay involved in DoD and continue to apply their expertise. They could also return to their Service in the “up or out” system and try their luck, using their time outside the system as a type of sabbatical. Though they may be seen by some as pariahs, choosing to return should be encouraged, as it allows participants to teach what they have learned to others, even if they are able to do so for only a year or two before they leave the military on their own or via the promotion board declining to advance them. Before service members have to make these decisions, they will be guided by the staff of the incubator, which should be administered by a new but small office with modest funding. With an initial staff of only one or two people, the office should report directly to the Secretary or Deputy Secretary of Defense to maintain autonomy and agility while also becoming a tangible organization for the DoD bureaucracy to recognize and engage appropriately. As a cautionary tale, a bottom-up initiative to create an Air Force accelerator, led by several midlevel Air Force officers, was nearly terminated this past summer by the bureaucracy before it officially launched. Although the idea was supported by Service leaders, the fact that no official Air Force office administered it resulted in uncertainty around its implementation and skepticism from some quarters of the Department. While Air Force senior leader intervention ultimately saved the worthy initiative, the anecdote reinforces the dangerous notion that key innovation programs developed by the Department’s most creative innovators succeed only with senior leader intervention – an unsustainable environment for promoting innovation in DoD – and underscores the importance of working at times within the bureaucracy to achieve near-term administrative and logistical goals. Despite the cautionary tale, the Air Force offers a pathway toward the proposed alternative to “up or out” through its Tech Track and Career Intermission Program (CIP) initiatives. Personnel in the Service’s Tech Track specialize in innovation and related areas but are unlikely to reach the rank of full colonel, demonstrating the Air Force’s commitment to getting the most out of its people during their service and acknowledgement that not every service member is looking to become a general officer. In addition, the CIP allows airmen to take a break from their core Air Force Specialty Code (AFSC) duties that would otherwise bind them to work that is important but not necessarily in alignment with their strengths that would help the Air Force more effectively. Other Air Force initiatives such as AFwerX, Spark Offices, Spark Tanks, Airmen Powered by Innovation, and others are good models for elevating ideas past the usual bureaucratic roadblocks – a key element of this recommendation – even if they’re not alternatives to the “up or out” system. Similar initiatives from the Marines include the logistics and Commandant’s innovation challenges as well as the Marine Corps Innovation Tools OPT. Also of note is the Army’s Army Ideas for Innovation (AI2) Program, which is an Undersecretary of the Army program of record and serves as a platform for capturing the creativity and ingenuity of the force as well as developing innovative ideas into real solutions for Army-wide implementation. One example of an alternative to “up or out,” however, is the Navy’s Permanent Military Professor (PMP) program. This program allows career naval officers with doctoral degrees and significant operational experience to teach at a Navy educational institution until retirement or released from active duty, which could be a period of many years. While the officers are not subject to promotion boards the way their non-PMP peers are, their specialized expertise is being put to good use and they remain in the Navy longer than they might otherwise stay had this program been unavailable. Selecting, adopting, and terminating projectsSelecting the right people to remove from the “up or out” system and place into this new program is more important than any other factor. Fortunately, the right individuals already exist and are essentially already doing the work we are suggesting the incubator should facilitate. The difference now is that they remain in the “up or out” system, thereby undercutting their ability to work on their passion projects full-time and obtain support from leaders who will help them implement these projects. The head of the new incubator will act as the primary reviewer of all service member applications to the incubator. He/she should look not for the best warfighters or writers, or those who view the incubator purely as a prestigious fellowship-type program, but rather intrepreneurs who look at problems in non-traditional ways, are willing to take immense risks, and view pushback from the DoD bureaucracy as a sign that they are on the right track. These criteria comprise part of the rubric that was measured against applicants for the now-defunct Chief of Naval Operations Rapid Innovation Cell (CRIC), which was renowned for finding the right sailors to be in the program. Another way to select people for the incubator is to run innovation tournaments whose winners can join the incubator. This way, DoD is investing in the most promising ideas along with the most promising people. Within the national security and military community, the largest and best-coordinated bottom-up organization of defense innovators is the Defense Entrepreneurs Forum (DEF), many of whose members have worked or are currently working on projects suited for the incubator, and fit the archetype of incubator applicants described above. Tapping into existing communities like DEF, innovation cells in U.S. bases across the globe, accelerator-type organizations within the Services, and operational units with up-close views of urgent problems provides the incubator’s leader(s) access to a substantial initial pool of potential applicants. These communities are well-positioned to act as force multipliers and expand this pool.After one or two classes of participants have been placed into the incubator, it is worth exploring how they can play a role in interviewing and selecting applicants as well.Some ideas will require longer periods of time to come to fruition or be terminated, but there should be no specific time cap on the number of months or years innovators can work on their projects. However, the incubator must come up with tangible criteria to establish mileposts that can measure progress and ensure that incubator participants are spending their time appropriately and wisely. Whether a project lasts one year or five years, if the participant consistently meets the established criteria along the way, the project should be allowed to continue. A committee of five or seven individuals will help create and review these criteria every quarter to ensure that projects are moving forward – and terminate ones that aren’t. This group will be composed of a mix of experts – some appointed by the Office(s) of the Secretary and/or Deputy Secretary of Defense, some appointed by the cadre of innovators involved in the incubator, and at least one viewed as an independent arbiter (perhaps from the private sector or academia). The committee should act like its counterparts at a venture capital firm: it will pursue 20-30 ideas at a time, with the expectation that only a few will come to fruition. Of the three types of experts above, the second group will be critical because research has shown that the best idea evaluators are not always partners in venture capital firms, as they tend to back ideas from founders with similar backgrounds or working on projects the partners already understand. It has been shown that other founders are often better-suited to “pick winners” because they can see through a flashy but substance-free sales pitch and understand what a concrete business plan entails. Therefore, some of the committee’s members should be the peers of incubator applicants from the Services. Options to avoid choosing only founders with similar backgrounds include transparent voting to ensure accountability, recusal from evaluating ideas of service members they already know well, regularly rotating slots on the evaluation committee, and other approaches. There The members of this committee will be removed from the day-to-day work of the incubator participants, but should possess a strong understanding of DoD’s processes and operations. These members must not come from the chain of command to which the participant belongs (or used to belong, before entering the incubator), must have no equities in the projects within the incubator, must not be in a position that would play a role in deciding how a project would proceed once adopted, and should not be Generals or Admirals unless they have demonstrated a robust commitment to promoting innovation and questioning the status quo. In addition, we believe that those who have spent their careers in DoD’s traditional procurement field or laboratory environment are less likely to add value to this group. Expected outcomesAs the most ardent cheerleaders of their projects, coordinating with various DoD organizations, service members in this new system will ensure that the baton isn’t dropped after the usual one or two-year period after which they rotate to a new position. While this approach means incubator participants won’t be promoted with their classes, our research reveals that DoD’s top innovators care far more about working on their passion projects than about getting promoted. Currently, people who feel this way wind up leaving the military when the rigid promotion system can’t square their activities with the “golden path” on which they are expected to stay, so these innovators leave the military. Exempting them from the system will be seen by most as a career risk, because it is indeed precisely that. But since DoD’s top innovators don’t prioritize staying on the “golden path,” and they’re planning to leave the military anyway, allowing them to work on critical projects and keeping them one or a few years longer is a low-cost way to harness their unique talents. This is not a failure, despite what many in DoD will think; rather, it’s a creative way to engage the DoD workforce and provide career opportunities that talented people across the enterprise would jump at – just as talented people in the private sector would jump at opportunities to solve challenging and interesting problems in their overall field. Our proposal is not designed to train people to be innovative, but rather empower the innovators that already exist throughout the military. With such a significant shift in personnel policy, knowledge of this new approach will spread in the defense community, which already organizes grassroots innovation efforts (described above) to connect likeminded people. This self-selecting group will form the nucleus of initial applicants and “test cases,” and we expect applications to grow in number in the future once the incubator becomes more widely-known. A few challenges are likely to arise and will require DoD to address them over time. Notable ones include:The need to reconcile the immediate necessity to test out innovators’ ideas – knowing that service members may not stay in the military for long – with the larger need to ensure some of these same individuals become senior leaders and hold sway over implementing change more broadly. This outcome is virtually impossible in the near term because our solution exempts talented people from the current system and puts them at odds with what promotion boards deem acceptable for advancement. The perception that this approach will create an elite class of innovators whose projects, even if successful, will still require senior leaders to intervene to replicate them in other important areas. DoD will have to find a way to integrate innovators’ approaches into the “frozen middle” of the institution and work toward the day when major personnel exemptions like the one we’re proposing aren’t necessary, while still allowing innovators enough autonomy to pursue critical projects. The difficulty in measuring how DoD changes as a result of this approach. Going beyond superficial metrics such as money spent or saved, number of service members who were engaged in project execution, and level of support from key stakeholders will be crucial to proving that DoD is benefitting from this approach, both qualitatively and quantitativelyUntil then, we expect that the launch of the incubator will require a few years to gain its footing. But DoD will benefit immensely from capitalizing on its existing talent, allowing its most entrepreneurial people to thrive, and prioritizing people over processes – an approach commonly adopted by the world’s most innovative organizations, helping them outpace their competition. ................
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