During a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last week, Sen. Angus King (I-ME) questioned Michael A. Obadal, nominee to be Under Secretary of the Army, about workforce reduction mandates.
00:03Thank you, Madam Chair, and I'm impressed by the upgrade in the chairmanship of this committee overnight.
00:12That's between you and me, and not Senator Wicker.
00:16Mr. Obidol, one of the most difficult things is to transform the culture and the organization of a 200-year-old organization with a lot of inertia, if you will.
00:26And talk to me about how you plan to tackle that.
00:31It's more than just changing boxes on an organizational chart.
00:34We're talking about embedded culture.
00:37How do you make a change of the level that's necessary in order to ready the Army for the next conflict?
00:45Well, Senator, thank you for the question, because it goes to the very root of the Army, which is culture.
00:50The Army is the service that is about human beings, and the machines are there to only ensure that our human beings are as effective as possible on the battlefield.
01:01When it comes to senior and executive-level leadership, I believe there's really two paths, or two tracks, that you have to put attention to simultaneously.
01:13One are the technical aspects of management, and that is setting the course and resource management decisions that have to be made,
01:21setting milestones and clear objectives, and the other side is leadership, and that is a bit more difficult to define on paper,
01:31and so it takes senior leaders and subordinate leaders down to the very squad and team level
01:39to ensure that we are fostering the cultural, the culture that the secretary and the chief set for our uniformed and civilian personnel.
01:52When it comes to changing that, as you, I acknowledge that, as you said, it is incredibly difficult.
01:59You want to change the culture but not destroy the positive aspects of the culture.
02:03Right. I think that you have to state what the values are of our Army.
02:09And those need to be not only reiterated so that soldiers understand them and civilians understand them,
02:16but leaders need to engage in their formations and have those discussions so there's something behind it.
02:23Let's move for a minute to numbers and staff.
02:28Everyone in this committee is in favor of efficiency and spending our tax dollars as efficiently as possible,
02:36avoiding unnecessary expenditures.
02:39What bothers me about the approach that's being taken in the Pentagon and, frankly, in some other agencies
02:44is that it starts with a number and then works backward.
02:47In other words, 8% reduction or 15% reduction.
02:52To me, that almost guarantees a result that won't be optimal.
02:56It should start with how are we doing and where are the positions that we can consolidate or eliminate
03:03not working toward an arbitrary number.
03:06Do you see what I'm saying?
03:07I hope that you will resist in the Army a mandate to say you've got to reduce by 8%.
03:13That's almost, by definition, not a rational way to approach the problem of increasing efficiency.
03:19You do that by analyzing the organization and the personnel and the jobs and the demands and the future demands.
03:27Talk to me about whether you're willing to simply say,
03:31okay, boss, if it's 8%, we're going to reduce it 8%, even though that may end up undermining the capability of the Army.
03:38So, Senator, I believe that reduction drills or recapitalization drills, regardless of the number,
03:47are actually a healthy thing for an organization on a regular basis.
03:51I don't disagree.
03:52It's the question of whether you start with an analysis of the organization
03:56or you start with an arbitrary number that will mandate changes that may not be optimal.
04:02I believe that when you look at restructuring or recapitalizing,
04:08the first thing that should happen is you look at what are the requirements from the combatant commands on the service.
04:15Can we meet those combatant command requirements and do so in a timely manner?
04:21And I believe that's the foundation of what the Army should do.
04:24I agree.
04:24I appreciate that answer.
04:26Mr. O'Keefe, I'm running out of time,
04:28but we had a tragedy in Maine several years ago with a shooting, 18 people killed.
04:36It turned out the fellow had been a trainer exposed to blast, blast overpressure.
04:43There was a lot of work done at the time.
04:45I hope that you will commit to maintaining that work
04:48and to be sure that what was learned in those various reports that were made
04:52gets down to the troop level so that it's not just a report on the shelf in the Pentagon,
05:00but it actually affects conduct.
05:02Because this is, as you know, one of the most serious problems coming out of the Mideast Wars
05:06is the effects of continuous exposure to blast overpressure.
05:13Yes, Senator, you absolutely have my commitment.
05:15As you know, we did quite a lot of work on this in last year's NDAA.
05:19A lot of that legislation will take effect over the next year or so.
05:23If confirmed, I look forward to implementing that legislation and working with this committee.
05:27We're learning more and more about this area every day, it seems,
05:30and it's affecting more people than perhaps we first thought.
05:34So absolutely, you have my commitment that this is a priority.
05:37Well, you used the magic word, implementation.
05:40One of my mottos of life is implementation can be as important as vision.
05:44We can have a good bill coming out of here.
05:46If it's not implemented adequately, it's not going to save lives.
05:50So I accept your commitment and look forward to working with you on that.
05:54Thank you, Ms. Chairman.
05:54Madam Chairman.
05:55Thank you, Senator King, and I appreciate your support.
