Innovation in the Department
When I started with the Air Force, I was told to push for change where it was needed-to move faster and enable the organization to move faster. The Air Force is a massive bureaucracy designed, in part, to slow change. It was frustrating to push my leadership and senior members to change things, get their pushback, and then be told by those same people to keep pushing.
Slowly, I found that we could change many things. Some changed simply because of leadership turnover, which feels less like a triumph and more like a cheat.
Eventually I found myself in leadership positions with the ability to directly make some of the changes I’d wanted throughout my career.
But I also found that my change was no longer what the organization needed. To fight for my change would be like fighting the last war-something the military regularly does by accident. I risked becoming that leader pushing back against change instead of enabling it.
Recently, I’ve been teaching Agile software development across the military. I think many of my students feel like this comic depicts: senior leaders clearly telling them to change, move faster, adopt Agile and DevSecOps. The engineers want to move faster. But the management in the middle is pushing back.
Fighting that battle against the middle feels ridiculous and risky for your career. “Why should we have to fight it? Why aren’t we getting support from the top down?” you might ask. More of that support is certainly merited. But it’s also important to keep fighting and pushing steadily. Eventually you’ll find the organization has changed-not because leadership finally aligned, but simply because you’ve grown up and new people have moved in.
Note: The comic depicts age, but age is irrelevant. People at any stage can obstruct or enable change.