How about less?
[DEPSECDEF] England, a former corporate executive and a former secretary of the Navy, signaled broad opposition to inserting a new layer of management officials, saying that “the department already has a lot of structure” and too many rules. As an example, he said Defense officials have found 219 legislative and regulatory sections dealing with flag officers.
“Whenever there is an issue, we add something to it,” England said. “After a while you just have a much larger bureaucracy that has to deal with all this.”
Where possible, England suggested, the Pentagon should avoid centralized control of operations. “I am of a mind when it comes to management that less is better. That is, have the authority and responsibility but move it down as far in the organization as you can to hold people accountable, and we provide the top level of direction and the oversight.”
The always-appealing political solution of throwing more people and more structure at the problem is one of the ways we got into the current management mess. More of the same won’t lead to anything different.
