Leadership Lessons for
Overwhelming Bureaucratic Inertia
by John Piazza and Leland A. Russell

How do you enable a new vision or strategy to rapidly realize its full potential?  What if you’re a part of an entrenched, hierarchical bureaucracy that’s changed little in decades but which confronts a rapidly changing competitive landscape?  You know that the old rules are about to change, and you envision a time when opponents become allies, old threats dissipate, new ones emerge, and opportunities abound.  If you are not the “top of the house” leader, how do you help your organization get there from here? What does it take to overwhelm the enormous bureaucratic inertia and move rapidly towards the new vision or strategy?      

This Leadership In FastTime® article describes the approach and the three  leadership lessons learned when a small group of mid­level officers introduced a new vision that fundamentally transformed the organizational structure of the U.S. Air Force.

Months before the fall of Berlin Wall in November 1989, a handful of mid-level Air Force officers in charge of long-range planning saw the writing on the wall.  Before anyone else, including the CIA, they correctly predicted that the cold war would end shortly and that the defense budget would decline as fewer planes, people, and overseas bases would be needed.  No longer facing a single, familiar adversary, the entire military would have to regroup.

While the specifics of post-cold war missions were not yet fully understood, this much was clear:  the future Air Force would need to be expeditionary, deploying primarily from U.S. soil; support—logistical, maintenance, intelligence, communications, and all it takes to keep air units up and operating—would have to be on call for short-notice air operations;  and units who would have to fight together would need to train together. All of this would require a fundamental restructuring of the Air Force organizational structure and realignment of its air power resources.

For 40 years, a “wing” had been comprised typically of a single type of aircraft, and members of the unit either flew and maintained that aircraft type or supported it in other ways.  When other kinds of planes were needed for missions, they would typically deploy from different, geographically-separated wings of fighters, bombers, airlifters, tankers, reconnaissance, and others, with each having prepared for a slice of a mission, but not necessarily having trained as an integrated team.

Diverse airplanes did train together during exercises.  In fact, the Air Force’s Red Flag exercises were born of the necessity to improve the Air Force’s ability to fight as a team, with different aircraft types interacting.  Red Flag highlighted a paradox.  On one hand, Air Force units were required to be combat-ready to fight together at a moment’s notice;  on the other, the average pilot attended one Red Flag exercise every three years, and his new-found capability dwindled after returning to the unit.

Logistically, the combined Red Flag logistics structure had the highest fighter operational ready rate in the Air Force, despite the fact that it supported numerous types of aircraft and capabilities.  Assuming it were logistically possible, wouldn’t it be better to organize large mixed-force units under a single commander on a permanent basis?

Logistics had always been cited as a primary problem in merging different types of aircraft at one location.  Conventional wisdom held that supporting a composite wing was more complex than supporting a wing of similar planes.  In fact, the existing wing structure had been perpetuated over the years to optimize warfighting more from a logistics standpoint than anything else.  Red Flag disproved this logic by showing that it was possible to support a composite-aircraft organization that trained as it would fight.  The fact that contemporary aircraft had increasing component commonality, reliability, and ease of maintenance beefed up the case for change. 

A New Organizational Approach: Air Legions

The planning team envisioned a new organizational approach called “Air Legions.” An Air Legion would combine fighters, bombers, tankers, defense-suppression aircraft, reconnaissance and electronic warfare planes and related equipment stationed at a single location.  They foresaw one Legion based in Europe or the Eastern U.S. with a European focus and another in the Pacific or the Western U.S. with a Pacific focus.  They proposed that one could be based at Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho, where it could swing to either a Pacific or Atlantic commitment.  Air Legions would train together year round under a single commander. Most capabilities needed for any air expedition would be inherent to the Legion. 

The Air Legion would also help the Air Force retain its airpower punch in the defense drawdown—imperative, since the nature of war was about to change.  New technology and theories about the use of airpower were transforming the Air Force’s mission from support for the Army—a relationship termed “Air and Battle” back in 1989—to the role of primary instrument for enforcing U.S. security interests at the strategic level.  Technology like stealth, standoff weaponry and precision targeting, and high-speed, long-range aircraft, combined with advanced communications and intelligence, could deter or paralyze an enemy while risking few lives.  The Air Force was about to assume an ascending role because of its global reach and power.

The Air Legion began as a set of six hand-written slides when Colonel John Warden was the Deputy Director for Warfighting in the Air Force Office of Plans. His divisions included long-range planners, strategists, doctrine experts, and analysts of comparative warfighting capabilities.  Their job was to look ahead, define the future, and prepare the Air Force accordingly.  

After the formulation of the Air Legion concept loomed the task of solidifying details and building a broad base of support throughout the Air Force.  The idea could have been killed at any level by a decision-maker who might not like or understand it.  The planners needed a strong case and willing advocates.

The System Change Campaign:  Three Steps

Step One of the system change campaign was to build a lower-level working group comprised of action officers from across the Air Staff—experts from offices like Logistics, Operations, Manpower, Studies and Analysis, Programs, and Plans.  Briefing them, soliciting their sanity checks, and including their ideas took thousands of hours, but spread ownership of the idea and created a pyramid base of support.  Warden updated his immediate boss weekly on the evolution of the Legion, and acted on the boss’s suggestion that the briefings be expanded to include numerous retired generals, think tanks, aerospace companies, RAND Corporation analysts, and researchers from the Air Force’s Air University.   

Step Two, 60 days into the project, called for setting up a working group comprised of two-star generals from each key area on the Air Staff.  Their staff officers already shared ownership of the idea.  A spirit of teamwork prevailed as everyone realized they were developing an organizational structure that would posture the Air Force for geopolitical, fiscal, and operational probabilities.

Step Three began after the working group had refined the Air Legion concept: briefings to three-star generals and the four-star generals who were the commanders of large commands in the U.S., Europe, and the Pacific, as well as the Air Force Chief of Staff and the Secretary of the Air Force.

Dealing with Divergent Perspectives
Below are the key constituencies in the U.S. Air Force that the planners targeted. As you will see, they were dealing with quite divergent perspectives.  Each group or person who was exposed to the Air Legion concept had a unique perspective determined by politics, economics, egos, bureaucratic entrenchment, or vision.

• Tactical Air Command was long considered an elite organization of U.S.-based fighter bases, fighter jets, and fighter pilots. This organization and its commander wielded serious clout in Air Force decisions.  

• The action officer working group and the two-star working group were the most avid proponents.  The young majors and lieutenant colonels in the group had never served in combat but had studied many of the organizational problems associated with airpower application throughout history.  Many of the two-star generals had been young captains during Vietnam and had later served as squadron and wing commanders.  Vietnam had shown them the pitfalls of airmen failing to train as they would fight.  Serving as commanders had had shown them the way the Air Force organized wings restricted the ability to properly employ airpower. 

• The three and four star generals had a different perspective.  They had been in middle management or command roles in Vietnam and they had spent the better part of their careers perpetuating the very organizational structure the planners were trying to change.  However, most realized that Air Legions could enhance their effectiveness.

• Retired generals were open-minded as a group.  Free from parochial interests and the internal Air Force bureaucracy, they supported the idea, and some had been thinking of similar reorganization options for years.

• After defense industry executives were brought into the picture, some initiated analytical models, war games and simulations, particularly in the command, control, and intelligence areas.  Being on the leading edge of the concept would provide a business advantage if Air Legions happened.  RAND and Air University researchers focused on logistics analysis that would reinforce the idea. 

• In the meantime, the new Secretary of the Air Force came on board in May of 1989.  As a keen intellect and incisive manager with years of analytical and leadership experience, he immediately searched for dynamic new ideas that would posture the Air Force for the new world order. The planners felt he would support the Legion if the concept could reach his level.

• The highest active duty Air Force officer, the Chief of Staff, was a brilliant man with an open mind.  He foresaw an ascending role for the Air Force in the national security framework despite its projected smaller size.

On its way to the top, the Legion concept would depend on the opinions of each of these key constituencies.  There were three distinct turning points in its progress of the system change: 

• Encountering A Big Bureaucratic Barrier 

• Sorry, This Idea Has A Life Of Its Own

• Preparation Meets Opportunity

Encountering A Big Bureaucratic Barrier 

Since the Air Legion structure would redistribute air forces, the planners expected some resistance, but did not anticipate the degree of resistance by two key players—the commander of Tactical Air Command and his protégé on the Air Staff at the Pentagon, the Deputy Chief of Staff for Air Force Operations and Plans. 

The TAC commander was nearing retirement. A change in organizational structure could be construed as a criticism of the way he had run things.  Also, building Air Legions in Europe, Alaska, and the Pacific would dilute TAC’s influence.  To stop this from happening, he enlisted the support of the Air Force’s Director of Plans and Operations at the Pentagon, called the “XO”, who was at the top of the chain of command above the Air Legion’s planners.  He directed the XO to kill the Air Legion concept.  Since the support of the TAC commander was key to his career success, the XO complied. 

In late June, 1989, the XO decreed that no one in his organization could present any briefings outside the organization without his approval.  This muzzle was a highly unusual step for an organization whose charter was planning the future of the Air Force and presenting scores of briefings each month. 

It was too little, too late.  Because the planners had anticipated such high-level opposition, they had started early to form a broad base of support BEFORE elevating the idea.  As a result of the countless briefings that they had given, the Air Legion concept was already snowballing inside and outside the Pentagon. 

By the time the XO issued his muzzle decree, the base of support for change had become a critical mass. It included action officers on the Air Staff, key two-star generals, aerospace industry executives, retired generals, the RAND Corporation and other think tanks, and academics at Air University.  Per their orders for the XO, the planners stopped the briefings, but the concept had already gained “tipping point” momentum throughout the aerospace world.  Interest remained high and informal discussions continued.  One such discussion, with Air University officers, led to an interesting opportunity to indirectly circumvent the “no more briefings” order. 

Air University at Maxwell AFB, Alabama, was preparing to host an annual airpower symposium. The XO was to attend, along with other generals and leaders from industry.  The action officers organizing the event, in the spirit of academic freedom, decided to add the topic of “composite wings” to the agenda and assigned the composite wing seminar to the XO.  Seminar attendees were enthusiastic military and business executives of all ranks.

The TAC commander was not happy when the XO returned to Washington.  He had heard of the XO’s role in seminar and “dressed him down” for allowing the Air Legion to be a featured topic at the symposium.

On the Monday following the symposium, the XO called to his office the three planners who had been most instrumental drivers of the Air Legion concept.  He vented his anger for about ten minutes about the fact that that the concept was taking root within the Air Force. That did not mean that he and the TAC commander had to accept it.  Then he issued the following order:  I want you three to ‘drive a stake in the heart’ of this idea.  Turn it off.  You started it, now go out and tell people you were wrong.  Kill this idea.

Sorry, This Idea Has A Life Of Its Own

A month before the “drive a stake through the heart of this idea” meeting, one of the planners had been reassigned to the office of the Secretary of the Air Force.  While he had supported the XO when assigned to his organization, he no longer had that obligation.  Now his allegiance was to the Secretary of the Air Force, a civilian.

The Secretary had directed his officers to come up with new ideas to help plan the future of the Air Force and held regular brainstorming sessions for that purpose.  The Air Legion came up at as an option at these sessions. 

Soon the Secretary met with a key member of the two-star working group and the Air Force Chief of Staff  to discuss how a lack of forward basing in the future would require the Air Force to become more expert in deploying.  They concluded that a study team should come up with broad new thinking that included looking at Air Force organization.  The study team was to report directly to the Secretary and the Chief.  The team was to be led by the long-range planners who had come up with the Air Legion idea. 

The Air Force Secretary may or may not have known of the roadblocks within the internal Air Force bureaucracy.  But by directing the special study, he elevated the Air Legion concept and gave it new life. The XO was bypassed, though no official channel had been circumvented. 

The team worked around the clock for the next six weeks on a comprehensive study of how to make the Air Force leaner, nimbler, and better able to project airpower.  It became clear that deployment savings came from two sources:  first, from changing the planning assumptions that determined the items taken on a deployment, and second, by changing the type of organization that was deploying.  The Legion offered efficiencies in manpower, logistics, weapons, and even the numbers of airframes needed for a contingency. 

The Secretary and the Chief received the final report, which advocated that the Air Force could deploy more efficiently with a powerful, light, agile force comprised of a mixture of different aircraft and capabilities commanded by a single officer.  The research was so compelling that it became an impetus for an overarching new strategy for the Air Force, Global Reach-Global Power.

Preparation Meets Opportunity

Throughout the Air Legion development process, RAND Corporation logistics and operations experts worked hard to analyze the concept.  Project Air Force, a $20 million per year open-ended research contract with RAND, was administered by John Warden’s planners.  RAND had a small liaison office on the Plans corridor in the Pentagon and were part of the bureaucracy by location, yet separate because RAND is a private corporation with its major offices in Washington, D.C. and California.  RAND analysts frequently met with Air Force commanders overseas to discuss research projects they were working for the Air Force. 

On a trip to the Pacific, RAND did something in its role as a private corporation that the planners had been forbidden by the XO to do:  presented a proposal to study the logistics implications of building a composite organization at Kadena Air Base, Japan.  Their audience was the commander of the Pacific Air Forces.  His staff had briefed him informally on the Legion some months earlier and he was interested, especially in light of looming base closures versus the continuing need for presence and power projection over long distances. 

The RAND proposal represented a step that could make the concept a reality in the Pacific region. The Pacific Air Forces commander sponsored the proposal to the Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force, the executive agent for RAND’s Project Air Force.  The XO was again bypassed, though no official channel had been circumvented. 

The Pacific Air Forces commander became the Air Force Chief of Staff in November, 1990.  On December 6, he pulled the stake out of the heart of the Legion idea and announced that the Air Force would form composite wings, with the first two at bases in Idaho and North Carolina.  It would be another nine years before the entire Air Force transitioned to 10 Aerospace Expeditionary Forces (AEFs) and two on-call Aerospace Expeditionary Wings in January, 2000.  By that time the Air Force had reduced permanent basing overseas; had shrunk by 40%;  and was four times as busy around the world as it was during the cold war. 

As composite wing concepts grew into Aerospace Expeditionary Forces, they expanded to align the Air National Guard and Reserve forces as well as active duty organizations.  Some are based together, some at different sites, but all operate a cross section of different aircraft—combat planes, strategic airlifters, aerial refuelers, and the maintenance, transportation, medical, communications, and other support elements necessary for continuous operations.  All are comprised of a cross-section of combat support people--10,000 to 15,000 in each AEF.  The people and planes coordinate and train together as “total force packages” to respond quickly to crises around the world.  On January 12, 2000, the four-star commander of the organization formerly known as TAC, Gen. Ralph E. Eberhart, said, “We train as a team, so we should fight as a team.” 

Summary: Three Leadership Lessons

This case study of large-scale system change contains three leadership lessons:

First, when large-scale system change is required spreading ownership of an idea is more than a platitude.  It’s an essential, proven system change principle. It works because, when people have a vested interest, they’ll partner to make things happen.  And the larger a team of proponents, the easier it is to perpetuate an idea.  In the case of the Air Legion, the excitement of visionary change sparked a chain reaction of new thinking.  It unleashed daunting brainpower and ingenuity.  Everyone wanted a piece of the pie.  Advocates were converted in military circles, the aerospace industry, and think tanks. 

For reasons ranging from commitment to the Air Force to prospective business opportunities, many of them espoused and promoted the concept. 

Second, communication and information flow are the lifeblood of large-scale system change.  A new vision or strategy has to be promoted broadly as it evolves, and its designers must be open with information and receptive to the responses and suggestions of others in the organization.  Welcoming ideas and offering progress reports at every stage builds momentum and shared ownership. 

Third, fast circulation of a winning idea can overwhelm bureaucratic inertia. So don’t be intimidated by high-level obstructionists who temporarily impede progress.  If it is an idea whose time has come, obstructionists can be overcome by engaging high-level sponsors or they can be circumvented. Bureaucratic inertia yields to an aggressive parallel approach— quick, precise and simultaneous action. The faster and more simultaneous the circulation of an idea, and the more precisely advocates target the key decision-makers, the less likely that an idea will be swallowed by bureaucratic inertia. 

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