Combat Analytics - Anyone seen/heard/used it?

[wm]

I seem to remember that Army Materiel Cmd went through a major Balanced Scorecard nutroll a few years back--don't know whether it is still a front burner project for the current CG. In some areas it made sense because of the logistics business they did. In others the metrics were pretty inane, IMHO. I also seem to remember that it was being used across the upper echelons of DA as something like an OER support form to measure how well senior leadership and their commands were performing. The AF, along with their AF Smart Ops for the 21st Century (AFSO21), is using BSC too. My experience has been that folks spend (waste?) agonizingly long hours trying to hone the BSC metrics to make sure they don't slit their own throats when it comes evaluation time.

Selil is right about its similarity to TQM. It also has a lot of similarities to something that ought to make Ken and others who can harken back to the immediate post Viet Nam era quake in their boots with terror --MBO or Management by Objectives.

[Ken White]

the world programs bought from civilian industry ranging from McNamara's supply system adapted from FoMoCo parts operations (which failed the combat test miserably and with which we still live in part) through Zero Defects to Organizational Development and on to Organizational Excellence -- I kept waiting for OF, organizational failure.

We can say my experience with all these buy ins has not been good and color me very skeptical. As MarcT and I agreed once upon a time, the Army developed a lot of this stuff in WW II and is now buying it back from the civilian side. Makes no sense...

That's my understatement for the week -- and it's only Monday.

[Surferbeetle]

All,

A vodka & cranberry and a metrics discussion at the end of long day, things are definitely looking up.

Can't speak to this guy other than that I was one of the lucky recipients of one of his emails...made me think about how he was able to assemble his targeted email list.

MBA school hits metrics pretty hard (tvm, risk & return, valuation, cost of capital, balanced scorecard, vrine, swot, etc) and it has pushed me to cast around at the IMF and World Bank websites for particulars on which water and wastewater metrics to apply to the CMO fight:

http://www.imf.org/external/data.htm

http://econ.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXT...469372,00.html

In a 'macro' way of looking at things it's pretty strong stuff, however as Ken often reminds us, when things get decided on the ground the metrics that apply may not be the same as these...

Cheers,

Steve