Westover sets in motion two-year strategic plan Published April 3, 2017 By by Capt. Andre Bowser and 1st Lt. Steven Marchegiani 439th Airlift Wing Westover sets in motion two-year strategic plan -- As aircraft take off from the Patriot Wing, they physically represent America’s global reach. But running an Air Force base requires a strategic plan with longer vision than can be seen from a flight deck. In January, 439th Airlift Wing leadership developed a two-year strategic plan intended to improve the wing through gap analysis of data, drawing data-driven decisions from 4th Air Force metrics, as well as through analyzing our own processes. “Just as our aircraft train for missions and leave to points around the globe, our Airmen and civilians support the mission on the ground,” said Brig. Gen. Jay Jensen, 439th AW commander. “Planning for eventualities that might challenge our strategic airlift mission and support capabilities on the ground is the job of leadership.” Jensen said as part of his commitment to the mission of the wing, he commissioned the two-year strategic plan, which focuses on January 2017 through January 2019. “Global reach is not just determined by how far our aircraft can fly, but all the resources and support infrastructure we bring to the fight,” he said. As a result of the Strategic Alignment in January, the Wing has three strategic priorities through 2019. Strategic Priorities “Optimize mission-ready forces.” This is the first priority in the strategic plan, and it calls for improving the wing’s training efficiency to 85 percent fully qualified by 2019. This goal will be met by maximizing Air Force Specialty Code training time, and minimizing time spent on non-specialty code training, or training that does not relate to the member’s job duties, according to the strategic plan. “Our mission is to ‘provide global reach capabilities with mission-ready Citizen Airmen,’” Jensen said. “Our Airmen must be fully trained and skilled in their career fields to accomplish this mission.” The second priority identified in the two-year strategic plan is to “develop a culture of Continuous Process Improvement to achieve higher performance on 4th Air Force and 439th Airlift Wing metrics.” Working with senior leaders on the base, Jensen said he is determined to make headway on each of the strategic priorities, including a robust continuous process improvement program. To that end, he hired a process manager and analyst for the program - a position that was vacant for almost two years. “With a new continuous process improvement manager in place, leadership can now develop the program and identify ways to make the work we do more effective, efficient, and impactful,” Jensen said, adding that a strong presence of Green Belt trained Airmen would be required in each squadron. Westover has more than 4,700 military and civilian members, and in spring of 2017 with the arrival of the latest C-5M model, not only will the base’s relevance in strategic airlift be solidified for decades, but the way we do our work will be front and center. The third priority of the strategic plan is “identify and close communication gaps from leadership to Airmen by improving timely situational awareness responses.” The commander said “it is important keeping a 4,700-plus team informed through strong communication as it directly impacts mission success.” A recent internal study identified communication between Airmen and leaders as a weakness. “Before we can make changes in this area, we must conduct additional research to identify specific gaps and effectively measure improvement in top-down and bottom-up communications,” he said. One initial step would be to get everyone on the same page, and that was deemed all the more necessary when at a recent meeting of senior base leadership members had difficulty accurately reciting the base vision and mission. “This led to the question if our Airmen knew the wing mission and vision statement,” Jensen said. “If Westover is to succeed into the future -- we need to all be reading from the same page.” Senior leaders on base have been assigned key roles in implementing a way forward to meet the strategic priorities, and group commanders and squadron commanders respectively will be tasked in setting their parts of the strategic plan into motion. EDITOR’S NOTE: Marchegiani is the process improvement manager and analyst at the 439th AW.