Air Force Service Day.

It's good to be here with all of you this morning at my inaugural PDI. I want to extend thanks to each and every one of you for being here. The reason I say that is because one of the tenets that I've come to espouse is that presence counts. Showing up matters, especially for you in supervisory, managerial, or leadership capacities. And not just in your professional lives, but you certainly know this in your personal lives.

What I'd like to do for the next couple of minutes is basically key off on some of the comments the [USD] Comptroller [Dr. Dov Zakheim] made this morning. Many of you have heard me echo some of the very same themes, particularly the notion that we have to make financial management an enterprise-wide priority. I'm very pleased he pointed that out. Perhaps in yesteryear, financial management and, by extension, financial managers have been seen by the institution as corporate overhead.

Incorporate industry, the same perception probably existed that the financial management function, the CFO function, was considered to be corporate overhead. Some of it stemmed from the fact that financial managers concentrated on three general areas. Those three areas are generalized under the buckets of transaction processing--the vouchers, the pay, the accounts payable, the vendor pay, etc.; governance or control in risk management; and third, decision support.

Financial managers in the private sector have concentrated on the first two areas--transaction processing and control in risk management. Over the last decade CFOs have changed the mind-set, have made strides in changing that paradigm. They've recognized the power of the microchip, and they've leveraged technology so that those particular functions that are very heavily manual-intensive can be more efficient and more effective and, in the process, be able to move resources and effort that were, up to that point, predominantly in transactions and governance into decision support. It's not to say that those activities were diminished or that they were ignored or that they were eliminated. Financial managers still have to do those things.

Today, CFO functions are seen in a different light. CFOs are at the table. There isn't a CEO or a COO that would think of making any major decision without the CFO being there. CFOs are helping to shape strategy. Business unit managers and leaders are embracing financial managers because they see the value added that financial managers can bring to their respective operations. Today the perception of being corporate overhead is virtually gone. Now; that's an example that Dr. Zakheim is talking about.

We need to infuse the same kind of thinking here in the Department of Defense, in the Air Force. There are very good reasons why we're where we are in the Air Force and in DoD, because the issue of budgets and the issues of transactions have seemed to take the forefront more often than not; and in many cases we've been defined by just that. We've only been seen as those individuals that are able to fix execution-year problems.

I don't want to minimize the fact that it rakes tremendous skill. We're in a drill right now to try and do that because we're facing some serious shortfalls and deficits. We have to continue to do that and continue to do it well. What I want you to take away is that we can do those kinds of things: pay our people better and provide better services, more effectively, more efficiently. We have to. In the process, by upskilling ourselves, we upgrade our analytical capability.

Ten years ago we were coming out of the Gulf War, heads high, chests out, proud of what we were able to accomplish for our country. How many conversations would you think there were at that time about UAVs or B-52s in close air support? How many people in this audience would be having serious conversations about that? What do you think the conversations are going to be like ten years from now? Five years from now? What are they going to be talking about?

You understand the time value of money. A dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow. But the only way you can make tomorrow's dollar at least as good as today's, or better, is to invest it. You have to do something to make sure it grows. If you leave that dollar alone, it will be worth less tomorrow. It might even be worthless at some point.

We have to take action today--now--to be sure that our abilities, our capabilities are that much better tomorrow. Folks, this is about making sure that 5, 10, 15, 20 years from now our troops have all the training, all the support, all the equipment they need to achieve decisive victory. That means our financial capabilities have to be--must be--as sophisticated as the weapons systems we're supporting, as the warfighting concepts that haven't yet been employed or executed, but will be.

So we have to be the decision makers, the commander's strategic partner. We have to be the ultimate choice for reliable, accurate, and timely financial information. We must be the world-class team that delivers decision support and first-class financial services. How do we go about doing that?

That's a tall task.

The Comptroller this morning told you, very vividly, we have a dilemma. We spend so much labor because our systems are disconnected, and we don't have end-to-end flow-through. We are going to address that. DoD is applying resources and dollars to the issue of IT. But IT is something that, because it's so massive and so time-intensive, is probably best managed at the central points so that we make the best use of very limited IT dollars. The areas I'd like you to concentrate on, that you can make a difference in, are processes and people.

Recently I read a book by two professors from my alma mater at Harvard Business School called Breaking Through that I encourage you to read. It talks about how organizations promote minority executives into the corporate or executive suite. The book's findings and recommendations apply to everybody, regardless of background. The authors say a couple of things I'll share with you.

The first of which is that success, in general, depends on two things being present. The first is opportunity. Opportunity in this case means assignments that place individuals in a position to perform and advance further.

The second thing is development or preparation. Development or preparation is the personal growth and expansion of human and social capital that individuals gain from those opportunities, and includes enhanced relationships as well as skills and knowledge. Opportunity must be accompanied by development in a purposeful way, not as an ad hoc kind of affair.

The book goes on to say that there is an individual and an organizational obligation in order to make sure we purposefully develop talent. Senior leaders have to create an enabling context. It's a leadership responsibility to create the conditions for success. Senior leaders have to be involved in doing this.

This gets back to a point the Comptroller made earlier. Deepen your competence because in the process of deepening your competence and gaining a reputation of someone who is really good at what you do, there's something else that follows: greater credibility. Guess what happens when you enhance your competence, in turn increase your credibility. Your self-confidence rises. This is a spiral that can feed itself very positively--more competence, more credibility, more self-confidence, so forth and so on, allows you to grow, allows you to advance.

So your responsibility--your obligation--in this effort is to develop people, to develop yourselves into this model of competence, credibility, and self-confidence. That's what you can do. Take every opportunity to upskill yourselves.

The contract we have today between employer and employee no longer is the quid pro quo of loyalty for job security, job security for loyalty. It's a free agency. You bring your skills to the table, you help us get to the next level, and I'll make sure by the time you leave, you'll have the requisite skills to succeed. That's a win-win situation.

Can you imagine if those individuals we're trying to recruit learned that in the Air Force, in the Department of Defense, they can grow, develop, and gain skills that are marketable? that at each point in their career they're going to be even better than they were before?

We're in a war for talent, folks. And we need to treat it as a war. If we're going to get our fair share of A individuals to follow you--because all of us have enlistments that are going to be up one of these days--do we want those people to be A or B or C talent? Do we have a value proposition here that's going to attract that kind of talent here, when they have all of these other choices?

So it's imperative that we put in place those kinds of initiatives, those kinds of investments that absolutely communicate loudly and clearly that in this house we provide opportunity, we make sure development takes place, and we develop folks purposefully into our senior grades. At each step along the way they are better, they are more skilled, they are more competent, they are more credible, and, in the process, they are much more confident about themselves.

A lot of great and wonderful accomplishments have been made by each and every one of you in this room and those you work with every single day. You should be very proud of those accomplishments. I can't think of any other organization on the planet that could withstand the kind of downsizing that has occurred over the last decade--and fight a couple of wars along the way--and still remain standing, still be as robust as we are. That's tremendous, absolutely tremendous. You and those you work with should feel very good about that. I'm very proud to be part of a team that has that sort of track record.

But all I wanted to do this morning is to once again engage with you and underscore the importance of where we need to move, where we need to go together--not individually, but together. I don't want to make it sound too overly melodramatic, but the American people are counting on us.

The American people have high expectations of us. We can meet those expectations, and we can exceed them. We've done it before. We need to do it again. But in order to do it again, we're going to have to be sure we set ourselves up for that kind of success.

Tomorrow's financial management capability has to be as sophisticated as the warfighting concepts, as [sophisticated as] the weapons systems we support. Ten years ago no one was talking about JDAMs; no one was talking about UAVs; no one was talking about B-52s and close air support. Ten years from now it's going to be a different conversation. The question we have before us is, Are we going to be helping move the ball forward or not? We need to be. We are in a very good position to do that.

The last thing I'll leave you with is a story about a carpenter--a carpenter who made a living in the homebuilding industry and had a reputation for being the best in his trade.

It came time for him to retire, and he wanted to move on with his life and his family. His employer asked him if he would mind building just one more house as a favor. The carpenter was a little reluctant because he really had made a decision to move on, but because he had such a great relationship with his employer, he agreed to do it. However, because his mind and heart weren't really in the building, he wasn't using the best materials he normally used, and his workmanship wasn't the caliber it had been. Nevertheless, he got it done, task completed. He called his employer and said, "It's ready; come and take a look at it."

The employer came down, took a quick look at the house, turned around, and handed the keys to the carpenter and said, "This is my gift for you." Had the carpenter only known that what he was doing was building his own house, perhaps he would have taken greater care, perhaps he would have built it more solidly, perhaps he would have used the best materials and the best workmanship, so not only would it have been something that would be functional in terms of a house, but that he would have been proud of.

In many ways life is like that. Each day we wake up, we come in, and we nail in a nail, we put up a board. But we do it so reflexively that we're unaware that we're building our own house, the house that ultimately we are probably going to be living in.

Folks, you have an extraordinary opportunity.

I encourage you to build well. I have extraordinary trust and faith in your abilities. This is not a one-person show. I can't put this house together alone. I need all of you, I need your help, and I hope you're willing to do that.

Thank you very much.

Editor's note: This speech may be viewed in its entirety at http://asmc.digiscript.com.