(Editor's Note: This article is the fourth in a series detailing the work of various Army Materiel Command staff sections through the Shape the Fight and Ready Army Civilian Initiatives.)
REDSTONE ARSENAL, Ala. -- Rebalancing the workforce within Army Materiel Command means one thing for the G-3 (Operations) -- a sharper focus on supporting worldwide missions for logistics and supply availability in support of the warfighter.
The G-3's Shape the Fight reorganization transferred a few mission sets -- cyber security, force protection and training, among others -- to other staff sections to better focus the G-3 Operations mission as it relates to delivering materiel readiness solutions to ensure and sustain a dominant land force.
"The G-3 facilitates mission command for the commanding general," said Nathan Godwin, principal deputy for AMC G-3. "The G-3 synchronizes materiel and logistics capabilities, guiding the delivery of materiel and equipment to achieve Army readiness to meet combatant commander requirements. We synchronize readiness-related sustainment operations across the AMC enterprise."
With that mission in mind, G-3 personnel are the heartbeat of AMC, providing the commanding general with the data he needs to make decisions, obtain resources and interact with the commanders of other Army commands, subordinate commanders, the Department of the Army and combatant commanders.
The G-3's reach is worldwide with responsibility for the management of the Logistics Modernization Program, Army Prepositioned Stocks, Organic Industrial Base operations and facilities, and the Army's energy and environmental programs, as well as materiel readiness for the joint fighting forces. As the Army's Lead Materiel Integrator, the G-3 provides the communication, coordination and integration for logistics and sustainment, providing guidance to AMC's life cycle management commanders, and overseeing the Logistics Support Activity (which will become the Logistics Data Analytics Center in February) and the Army Petroleum Center. The staff section also assists in the development of policies and procedures to improve procurement and sustainment operations across the enterprise.
"Simply put, we integrate, coordinate, synchronize and provide the supplies and equipment required by the Army," Godwin said. "This is a very complex mission because of time constraints, resource availability and multiple organizations involved in executing our mission."
One of the major changes of Shape the Fight was the separation of the G-4 from G-3.
"Through Shape the Fight, we divested ourselves of missions not solely focused on logistics, sustainment and supply availability. Now, we are much more focused on operations readiness. This was a crucial reorganization for us because the top priority is to enable the constant sustainment of readiness globally," Godwin said.
As the G-3 builds its management, logistics and sustainment capabilities through Shape the Fight, its 380-employee workforce is also honing their focus and capabilities through the Ready Army Civilian initiative.
"What I see Ready Army Civilian doing for our employees is focusing their efforts to be the best Army civilian possible," Godwin said. "They are already focused on being fully competent in their job; now they are able to expand their horizons with respect to both their job and their career."
Godwin said Ready Army Civilian dovetails neatly with the Department of Defense Performance Management and Appraisal Program.
"DPMAP involves our leaders in the development of performance standards as they work to improve, broaden and expand on employee capabilities," Godwin said. "It's a performance appraisal system that opens up a two-way discussion between supervisors and employees who are seeking to better ready themselves for future challenges."
Our Ready Army Civilians, working for the G-3, are high-caliber, educated and trained employees who can respond to complex and strategic situations, and who possess the job-related skills and experiences to manage and lead in a multi-faceted, readiness-based atmosphere.
"They are fully competent in their job, and they're capable of performing their mission," Godwin said. "Ready Army Civilian is an employee who is ready to do their job. For our leaders, it means being able to identify weaknesses in employees, and being able to turn those weaknesses into strengths while simultaneously building strength -- and doing all in a manner that increases capability and performance output."
While employees were quick to embrace the concept of Shape the Fight through their understanding of the importance of logistics and supply availability, Godwin said it will take time for leaders and the workforce to realize the benefits of the Ready Army Civilian initiative.
"Employees were able to directly connect Shape the Fight with sustaining readiness," Godwin said. "But that connection is not so clear when we are talking about the expectations of Ready Army Civilian."
Those expectations -- including novel and adaptive thinking, cross-cultural competency, cognitive load management and virtual collaboration -- "can take longer to adapt to the workforce and to apply to sustaining readiness in a work environment that often requires rapid decision making and that has limited resources. When you are rushing to meet a requirement and get things done, novel and adaptive thinking may be a casualty," he said.
Both initiatives address the commanding general's goal of having 100 percent of employees doing 100 percent of the right work.
"It's important that as an organization we do not get stale and become rote in how we think and how we do our mission," Godwin said. "By understanding initiatives like Shape the Fight and Ready Army Civilian, we're able to step outside the forest and see what we really look like and identify changes we should undertake to make ourselves better as an organization.
"The military, the Department of Defense, the Army -- they all change. Nothing ever stays the same. As an organization, if we want to continue to be viable and successful, we need to look and adapt in time with DOD, with the government as a whole and with situations globally. We, the Army, must be able to adapt rapidly in order to defend our way of life because our enemy changes constantly."
Godwin expects AMC and the Army to benefit from the tenets of the Shape the Fight and Ready Army Civilian initiatives for years to come.
"We have a phenomenal workforce. They have improved readiness and sustainment, and they have changed the landscape for the better," Godwin said. "We have high quality employees. Everyone has an opportunity to grow and get better at what they do. Ready Army Civilian enables us to grow a highly diverse, agile workforce oriented on not only what they produce on a daily basis but also focused on improving themselves and their efforts every day."
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