MG August M. Cianciolo
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MG August M. Cianciolo was born in Covington, Kentucky, on 11 March 1936. After completing the ROTC curriculum and the educational course of study at Xavier University, he was commissioned a second lieutenant and awarded a bachelor's degree in accounting. He later received a master's degree in aerospace operations management from the University of Southern California. His military schooling includes graduation from the U.S. Army Aviation School, the HAWK Officer Course, the Air Defense Artillery Officer Advanced Course, the U.S. Army Field Artillery School, the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, and the U.S. Army War College. General Cianciolo's early service career began at Ft. Sill where he served as a Platoon Leader for Battery C, 3rd Observation Battalion, 25th Artillery. After earning his Aviator's Wings, he was assigned as a Rotary Wing Aviator with the Reconnaissance Support Section, 101st Aviation Company, 101st Airborne Division, Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Early overseas tours of duty included an assignment as Executive Officer, Battery C, 7th Missile Battalion, 2d Artillery, Eighth United States Army, Korea; Section Leader, Battery B, 2d Battalion (Aerial Rocket), 20th Artillery, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile), United States Army Vietnam; Commander, Battery B, later S-3 (Operations), 2d Battalion, 20th Artillery, 1st Cavalry Air Division (Air Mobile), United States Army Vietnam. Prior to serving as the Commanding General of the U.S. Army Missile Command (MICOM), General Cianciolo held a wide variety of important command and staff positions. He served as Commander, 1st Battalion, 78th Field Artillery, 2d Armored Division, Fort Hood, Texas; Commander, 41st Field Artillery Brigade, V Corps Artillery, United States Army, Europe; Project Manager, Standoff Target Acquisition/Attack System, Army Electronics Research and Development Command, Fort Monmouth, New Jersey; Project Manager, Multiple Launch Rocket System, MICOM; and Deputy for Systems Management and Director of Weapons Systems, Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Research, Development and Acquisition, Department of the Army, Washington, D.C. General Cianciolo served as the MICOM Commander from 13 July 1988 to 6 October 1989. Awards and decorations earned by General Cianciolo included the Distinguished Service Medal, the Bronze Star Medal (with "V" Device and 2 Oak Leaf Clusters), the Meritorious Service Medal (with Oak Leaf Cluster), Air Medals (with "V" Device), the Army Commendation Medal (with 2 Oak Leaf Clusters), the Master Army Aviator Badge, and the Army General Staff Identification Badge. Interview DR. HUGHES: This is an end-of-tour interview held on 27 September 1989 with MG August M. Cianciolo, Commander of MICOM, by Mr. Michael E. Baker and Dr. Kaylene Hughes of the MICOM Historical Division. MR. BAKER: To begin with, we would like to know a little bit about your background. Are you from a military family and did you plan on making the Army a career?MG CIANCIOLO: Well, I am not from a military family; and no, I did not plan to make the Army a career. I planned to take over my father’s business. I would guess that was what he was grooming me for after I graduated from college. I came into the Army through the ROTC program.MR. BAKER: Before you became commander here we know you were the MLRS PM. Do you think that background or familiarity with Redstone helped you in the job as commander?MG CIANCIOLO: Well, obviously being here at Redstone and being associated with the various organizational elements of MICOM did help me. I think there were some other assignments I had that helped too. I was a commander…artillery commander...in Germany but also responsible for the community activities. So, I think that helped too because what comes with the job as the Missile Command Commander also is being the post commander...running the post… and the people issues; and the morale, welfare, and recreational aspects; and all that. So I think that helped too.MR. BAKER: Now that leads to the next question. When you came here as commander, how had the arsenal changed from the time you left as the MLRS PM?MG CIANCIOLO: Well, there were a lot of new additions when I came back here. I left in ‘83 and of course the town got larger; there was a significant change in the physical dimensions of the city when I came back in ‘88. The post itself had a lot of new additions: there was a new child care center; a new youth activities center; in fact, the youth activities center opened, I think, a month or two after I got here. I think we opened it in October. There were some other changes but none as apparent as those two additions. The characteristics of the post physically looked just as good as I remembered it when I left it. So, from that point of view it didn’t change much in physical appearance. There were a lot of plans to add and to do more things. Of course, those are starting to take shape now.MR. BAKER: How do you feel it’s changed during your tenure?MG CIANCIOLO: Well, I’ve only been here 14 months. There’s not very much physically that’s changed in terms that one could tell unless you were very observant to see it. The Research, Development, and Engineering (RD&E) Center, of course, has a lot of work going on with the new simulation facilities inside the building over there. Construction of the test tower on the southern part of the post, that’s all finished. The gradual reconfiguration of the offices where a lot of the offices are getting new office equipment and all that business. What I was really amazed at, that I didn’t notice when I was here before, was the tremendous use and proliferation of automatic data processing equipment. I was absolutely overwhelmed when I saw the level of commitment MICOM had to using ADP. It is significant, really significant. And, I think it’s forward-looking. I think MICOM probably leads the way right now in automation in AMC, which is good. If we are successful in getting Congressional support for the beginning of the construction of the Sparkman Center in the FY 90 budget (which I think we will be), that will be a significant change here at the arsenal and bring a consolidation of all the widely geographically spread organizational elements. It should help us become more efficient. So, that’ll be great. That’ll happen over the next 2 years.DR. HUGHES: Now, rather than following along with our list of questions as we have them here, we had one question farther down about your contact with the civilian community. Since we’ve been talking about Redstone Arsenal and your position as influencing the community here, do you think that the presence of such a large number of civilians has special kinds of problems or concerns that you have to handle because there are so many civilians here?MG CIANCIOLO: You’re talking about in the workforce?DR. HUGHES: Right.MG CIANCIOLO: Yes, I think that’s a significant departure from... it goes back to the earlier question you asked me about commanding this place. When a workforce is predominantly civilian, which is what the U.S. Army Missile Command is, then I think the commander has to consider that. One of the first things that struck me as I went around when I first got here and tried to meet all the people was the large number of women in the workforce. And, I started asking some questions of the women as I went around: if they had children and how did they take care of their children; did they have day care facilities and that kind of business. I thought that there was a need there that we weren’t addressing. So, I asked that a survey be done.We have expanded the use of the child care center to include the civilian employees. I think that need--although right now there are only a small number of civilian employees taking advantage of that--I think that’s going to increase over time. I really do. The other piece of it has to do with the morale , welfare, recreation business. The military provides morale, welfare, recreation funds that are directed toward military. But we have such a small military population here, that I want to include the civilians too because they increase our customer base. The Congress has decreed that we have to support morale, welfare, and recreation on a profit basis. So, it seemed to me to be a natural extension of that is to say, "Well let’s go increase our customer base by including the civilians here and then increase our morale, welfare, and recreation revenues.’ We have, I think, every opportunity in the world to make the morale, welfare, and recreational facilities here A #1. They’re good now, but we can make them even better, if we get the support of the civilian workforce. DR. HUGHES: Well, given those two considerations--the size of the civilian workforce and the economic realities——do you think other aspects of the Redstone Arsenal facilities will be opened up to the civilians at some point in time?MG CIANCIOLO: I think that, yes, I think so. There are some things that may be prohibited by law, I don’t know what those are. I think there are a lot of myths about what can and can’t be made available. On the other hand, though, you have to recognize that the city of Huntsville is a pretty modern city and certainly becoming more modern all the time. So, there are a lot of things available in the city for the citizens of the city that their needs are satisfied that way, and they don’t need the arsenal. So, there’s going to be some give and take as to how we do things. But I think--the commander here working with the mayor of the city——we can come to some mutual agreement on what and how we can work together to provide that kind of additional support not only to the civilians who work on the arsenal but maybe even to share arsenal morale, welfare, and recreation facilities with the citizens of the city, too. But that’s in the future, I don’t know how that would all work out.My exposure with the mayor of the city, Mayor Steve Hettinger, has been very good. We have a very active Army Community Relations Council who are very supportive of the post here. By nature of my position here I’m invited to join the Rotary Club and consequently there are civilian contacts that are made that way. We do a lot of work with the Chamber of Commerce and expand our relationships that way. In conjunction with the Chamber of Commerce we co—sponsor an Armed Forces Week every year. So, I think that Redstone Arsenal and Huntsville are blessed with a very positive community relation atmosphere that I haven’t seen in any other place. It’s unique, I think, to Huntsville. At least that’s my experience. I’m sure there are other posts that have very good relationships , but this one is unique, because there’s such a high preponderance of citizens who have worked on the arsenal and worked in the missile or space business. So, it’s very gratifying to work here, and I hate to leave it, to tell the truth. DR. HUGHES: Is this post kind of unique in that sense among Army posts to have such a large civilian workforce or are there others?MG CIANCIOLO: Well, I’m not familiar with other posts that have a large civilian workforce. My experience has been on Army posts that have been primarily military populated and this post is certainly unique from that situation. I was at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, too, and Fort Monmouth had a high number of civilian employees. It was a good post too… a good relationship... but I still think this one is better. Mainly because Fort Moninouth was not the largest employer of the civilian population there like we are here. So, I think this is unique.DR. HUGHES: That’s pretty interesting. At the beginning of your tour here as MICOM Commander, were you charged with accomplishing any specific objectives?MG CIANCIOLO: Well, obviously, the major one was to continue to have MICOM--the U.S. Army Missile Command--support the soldier in the field with the missile systems that were out there and to continue working hard for the development of the new ones. No, there wasn’t any specific mission. If there was a central thrust, at least a point of immediacy that had to take place was finishing the transition of the PEO concept and the Matrix Management concept——the Army acquisition executive side of the house and the Army materiel side of the house. Which we did when I first got here. That was one of the, I guess, first tasks that I really picked up, other than trying to get around and meet everybody, and also understanding the Missile Command itself. Because when I was a PM here before, quite frankly, I didn’t have to concentrate on what did the Missile Command do. I had very myopic vision. It was MLRS and everybody else could take care of their own. I was worried about MLRS, and anybody who could help me in the Missile Command, I actively solicited their support. So, when I came back this time as the commander, obviously, you have all the things that go with it, not only MILRS, but everything else here too.DR. HUGHES: Well, did you set any special goals for yourself?MG CIANCIOLO: Yes. The other thing I wanted to do was try to make the Missile Command, which is very good, even better. And in that regard, I had become exposed to this thing called Total Quality Management (TQM)--this concept--in the Pentagon. So, I started to read a little about it. It made a lot of sense to me. It’s rather a simple philosophy that says there’s always room for improvement--to do things better--which was in keeping with what I wanted to do anyway. So, I worked hard to get the concept of Total Quality Management across to the MICOM organizational elements, and we’re working hard at it. We still have a long way to go, but I think we’re making pretty good progress. At least from what I hear from our higher headquarters and others, the Missile Command is moving out. And although that makes you feel kind of good, we still have to implement it. I have to say, we’re doing things pretty good right now, but we can still do them better. No one argues that. When you tell someone, ‘Gee, you know, we’re doing pretty good but we can do it better, I think," everyone says, "Yes, I believe that."DR. HUGHES: Yes, they seem to have a pretty positive attitude about it. It’s not just lip service.MG CIANCIOLO: Yes, and we’re not running around searching for guilty people or lazy people--I mean that’s not the purpose. The purpose really says it’s not the people who are the problem anyway, it’s the management--the leadership who don’t have their act together. So we’re trying to sort all that Out. We are, in fact, changing some of the policies and for the better. And we’re going to keep doing that. It’s really been accepted great so far by the functional heads. The directors and all the other senior folks here seem to be pretty enthusiastic about it. So, I’m going to try to carry that with me when I go up to my new position.MR. BAKER: Speaking of TQM, what is your own personal philosophy of leadership, command, and management?MG CIANCIOLO: There are some people who can articulate what they do rather easily. I, for whatever reason——I don’t know why—-I seem to be able to relate well with people and to cause them to do things that are viewed as being the right things to do and effective. I think, first of all, I accept that the people who work with me want to do a good job. I don’t think anybody comes to the table determined to do a bad job. That’s not human nature. You don’t… we don’t... do things like that. So, the first thing I have to say, then, we’ve got some superb people here and we just have to, from my point of view, you just have to ensure that they know that they’re doing the right thing; what they’re doing is useful and purposeful; and they’re doing good here. Where they’re not going to do good, let them know they’re not doing good so we can fix that to do better. I don’t know how else to say it, except you have to lead people. People are the ones who do things and you work with them. I work with people, people don’t work for me. We work together to do what we think is right for our mission. Our mission here is a simple one. We develop, produce, field, and maintain the missile systems of the U.S. Army in support of the U.S. soldier, and we’re the best there is in that business. Actually we’re the only one there is in that business. I think our readiness rates right now show we’re doing better than we’ve ever done before. Leadership is exercised through people. Allow people to use their talents, you’d be surprised at some of the things they can do. There are a lot of interesting people around here, and they do interesting things——things you never dreamed of until you start to talk to them and they tell you a little about themselves. It’s amazing, it really is amazing! Sometimes you’re kind of in awe that they do all these things.MR. BAKER: Recently, two Harvard professors published a book entitled Thinking in Time: The Uses of History by Decision Makers. It describes how history can be used to prevent bad decision-making by leaders. A good example they use is back in July of ‘79, under the Carter administration, some things came to light about the Soviet presence in Cuba. The newspapers picked up on it and created a big furor at the time. But, after they began to use the facts that were available and looked at what was there, the Soviet troops--the Soviet Brigade that they were talking about——had been there since 1962 in some way, shape, or form. Obviously the administration got a black eye. Shortly thereafter, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan occurred. Anyway, if the administration had done its homework, they could have eliminated a potential public relations disaster. Your own interest in history, which is near and dear to our hearts, has been shown through your interest in the Regimental Room. In your viewpoint as commander, has history played any role at all in your decision-making process?MG CIANCIOLO: I guess it has. Obviously, it has. Particularly, in the weapons acquisition business, and I guess I have to say, when I was a commander of troops in the artillery business, because most of the things that you’re taught have to do with history. In the field artillery, we always referred back to the French because the French were the first to introduce the ability to use massed fires. So, our whole basis of gunnery and all of that were based on gunnery as taught by the French. In the materiel acquisition business, of course, I studied a lot of previous weapon system development programs. The age-old historical fact comes up: there’s a requirements creep even after we say this is what our requirement is. It never stays firm. Someone is always adding to it, which then, in turn, adds more money, adds more time, adds more complexity. Even though we know all that’s going to happen, sometimes we have a hard time remembering what lessons history has taught us. Unfortunately, good judgment comes from bad judgment, and that’s the way we learn. So using history usually, as always, we learn it after the fact. We go and make these problems for ourselves.The business of the Regimental Room came from the belief that a soldier--an officer——had to have lineage. There were people who came before, who brought the unit or organization to what it is today. It is a useful thing for them to know from whence they came. To know that there is a proud lineage, one where those who preceded them did magnificent things for their country. It’s not just a place at the Officers Club, not just a place to come and have a social evening. I mean, if that’s what one wanted to do, one could go to any restaurant in the city and do that. It’s a more special place than that. I thought that there was a great tradition here at Redstone, one that would help unite, not only th~e active duty military but the folks who work at NASA, the civilian employees for the U.S. Army Missile Command, and even the retirees——military retirees and civilian retirees. There was a common bond. Why were we here? Why did everybody come to Huntsville, Alabama, to live and work? It wasn’t just because they liked the climate or something. There was another reason to be here, and that’s why I wanted the Regimental Room here. The Officers Club didn’t have that. If you go in there and look, there was a Twickenham Room. But there was something missing ... the heart was missing. See, I wanted to put a heart in it, and that’s why we looked at that. I think that’s going to catch on, I think everyone I’ve taken up there to show the room has liked it. After talking with Jack Lee, the current Director of Marshall Space Flight Center, I think we’ll probably see NASA having some interest there. MR. BAKER: They called me a week or so ago and I gave them a tour of the thing. They want to set up a similar display there. MG CIANCIOLO: They like it don’t they? Don’t they like it?MR. BAKER: They love it!MG CIANCIOLO: See, I think that that thing is going to grow. That’s just the beginning. I have no idea where it’s going to end up. One of the other things that caused me to think about that, is before I came down here, I served in the Pentagon but I was the U.S. representative to the joint steering committee on MLRS. We traveled (you know, there were five countries involved in that) and in this one case, we went to Woolwich, England, where we had the meeting. And the British had us stay at an Army Barracks there--the 17th Artillery Brigade Regiment--and they had the oldest mess in the British Army there... 207 years old. The Queen of England was there at one time. And they have trophy rooms there. When you walked through that place, you knew a lot of other people who were in your profession had walked through there and left a mark in history. So, I think that was another thing that said to me, "Gee you ought to do something like that." Now, the thing I don’t like about the Regimental Room right now is it’s up on the second floor——it’s out of the way. Somehow I want to figure out how to bring that down into the rest of the club, but I’ll leave that for those who come after me. But I think that you and the NASA folks, as time goes on, will cause that to happen. All I put up there was some seed. You all build from that, OK?MR. BAKER: The pictures themselves… the response that we’ve gotten since the wall was put up with the pictures on it… people have called me--"Where did you get those pictures? Oh, I have some pictures, would you like some more?"MG CIANCIOLO: Oh, wow! See?DR. HUGHES: It’s really generated a lot of good stuff for us.MR. BAKER: You know, when we initially sent the call out, we didn’t get a very good response. But since the pictures were put up there, we have received requests to do additional displays.MG CIANCIOLO: See, I think it’s one of those things where in the military you tend to want immediate action. You send out the order and expect, "boom," immediately to be called. I think this is just like TQM. This is one of those things that is growing. You got to put a little water on it and it’ll grow. I think you’ll find in the years to come that there’ll be more and more interest in it. I really do. You’ll get more and more out of it.MR. BAKER: We are already, I can tell you that. And there have been more requests for our short history about Redstone Arsenal since the pictures were put up. People have called: "I saw those pictures. Can you tell me a little bit more about the history, the ‘1941 to ‘49 time period?"MG CIANCIOLO: Is there a society of historians around here?MR. BAKER: There is in Huntsville.MG CIANCIOLO: See, you ought to sponsor one of their meetings and have it here. Jim Record, the local historian, gave me (do you know him?) a book about Huntsville itself. It has more facts in that thing about the city of Huntsville. Anyway, that’s the reason for the Regimental Room. And we get the young officers to feel a sense of camaraderie to that. That’s what I wanted to do.DR. HUGHES: Well, this is really going to switch gears here. This is one question that we kind of get from higher headquarters that we’re supposed to ask. We know that given all the last minute changes, and things that can go wrong, matters that crop up all of a sudden, obviously, you can’t have a typical day as the MICOM Commander, but is there any kind of general routine that when you’re here that you try to follow?MG CIANCIOLO: Well, I guess I get captured by two things. One is the calendar, which I like to believe I’m in charge of but I’m not. And the other, of course, because I’m the head of a procuring activity--contracting activity--there’s a lot of administrative paperwork that I have to deal with that requires my signature; no one else can sign on it. So usually my day starts off, I get in here earlier than my aide would like me to come in the morning. I normally always start out with the message traffic that is pertinent; I read the messages over. Then, I get the newspaper; the Public Affairs Office brings up the Huntsville paper and the Birmingham paper, and I look at those. Any paperwork that was brought in here late in the afternoon, I normally don’t deal with it late in the afternoon. I then deal with that. I usually get two stacks: one requires signature, and others that are just things to be reviewed. And I go through all of that. Then at 8 o’clock in the morning, normally I have staff call. Either in here… I have a staff call with my own staff and the two PEOs come in… or I have on Wednesday, the staff call in the morning at 8 o’clock when we have all the organizational elements here. So every morning at 8 o’clock normally there’s a staff call that lasts for an hour. Sometimes they only go a few minutes, but it’s just an opportunity to see what’s going on.Then after that, I’m either captured by my calendar, because people need to come in to see me, or I can get out. When I first got here, I said, "I do not want to become a prisoner of this office." I tried to get out and stay out of the office. During the day it’s just normal activities: either the calendar here, or I go to another organizational element for a briefing, or I travel and go out of town. Tuesdays--every Tuesday while I was here--I tried to make the Rotary Club luncheon. I’d get down there about noon and I’d be back here by 1:30 PM. Then I’d leave here about 5:30 in the evening. That would be my workday here. Normally, very seldom do I have any crisis actions. The command’s been pretty good about anticipating requirements, and so I don’t normally have someone coming in and saying, "My goodness, this is… the Titanic has just occurred." I don’t recall anything like that. The shortest fused actions that I’m aware of usually are in contracting actions where a program manager or one of the organizational elements needs to get a contracting document signed so they can execute a contract. I don’t get a lot of those. Most of the ones, I’d say, there are just a handful compared to the normal contractual actions that take place every day in the Procurement Directorate. The other one is being notified that the Russians are coming for an inspection. But that’s been rehearsed to a fare-thee-well. The people involved know what they have to do and that’s pretty well orchestrated. We just have to sound the alarm and everybody knows where to go. DR. HUGHES: So that’s become more of a routine now?MG CIANCIOLO: It’s not a routine. It is a special team that does that. They each know what they have to do. We rehearse because you change people, too. Just in the normal process people rotate and get different jobs, get promoted, and whatever, so you want to keep everybody current on what to do. We obviously want to put our best foot forward. We don’t want anything to go wrong when they’re here. So far we’ve done magnificently, I think, because people are well trained. They know what to do; they know what their responsibilities are; they know how to conduct themselves; and so they’re comfortable in what they do and they’re good at it. But if we didn’t practice, they wouldn’t be.DR. HUGHES: Then it’s really a well-orchestrated exercise?MG CIANCIOLO: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It has to be. It has to be. If it’s going to be done right… perfect… it’s got to do that.DR. HUGHES: Practice, practice, practice.MG CIANCIOLO: Uh huh.DR. HUGHES: We’ve touched on a number of challenges since we’ve started. But what do you think the greatest challenge is that you’ve faced as MICOM Commander?MG CIANCIOLO: That I’ve faced as the MICOM Commander?DR. HUGHES: Yes.MG CIANCIOLO: I think just making everyone aware, although I think they’re getting there, that tougher times are coming. The dollars are not going to be forthcoming like they were before. And as a result of that, we’re going to have to change the way we do business. People don’t like to change. Change is uncomfortable; it makes people uneasy; it makes them nervous; sometimes it even makes them uncertain about their future. The toughest challenge that I’ve found was to try… and I think it’s working… was try to convince everyone here not to be afraid of the change; that we can control the change; and that there’s a place for everybody here in accommodating that change, but we just can’t continue to do business the way we were doing. It may mean that some people are going to have to take a step to learn a new skill or to develop their skill better; they may not work in this building, they may have to go to another building to work; they may work on the same kind of thing, they may have to work on something else; but in the long run, it’s all for the benefit of the organization and themselves. Not challenges to communicate in a way that says don’t be afraid about your future. That’s hard to do sometimes because it’s easy for me to say that here. But you see, I sit way the heck up here, and way the heck down there are the folks who may never see me. I mean, I’ve gone over into the McMorrow Lab (primary location of the RD&E Center) and there are places over there, I didn’t even know were there. There were people working over there, they may not even know where building 5250 is. I don’t know. Maybe that’s an exaggeration, but I don’t think so.DR. HUGHES: It’s not, it’s not.MG CIANCIOLO: So, I mean, you could give me some building numbers and I wouldn’t know where they are. We’ve got a bunch of them, you know, 1900 buildings; it’s hard to know where they all are. So I think that’s the major challenge that I had, but I think it’s going to be even more pronounced for General Chen. Because, you know, you now heard the Secretary of Defense has this Defense Management Review. He’s made a commitment to the President to save some $30 billion over 5 years. You hear the debate that’s going on in Congress. We also see what’s happening in the international business with the Russians and the United States that challenge. What’s the future of the U.S. Army Missile Command? What’s the future of the Army, not only just the U.S. Army Missile Command? Where’s the Army going to go? I think that all the indicators are it’s going to get smaller. I mean, I can’t tell you that for sure. But if you just look at what’s happening, it’s going to get smaller. How much smaller, I don’t know. It certainly has got enough things to do. The Congress and the President are finding more things for the Army to do now, without even looking at the Russian bear. Now we’re down to the drug business in Latin America. You know with all those kinds of things that obviously there’s a role for the Army. The Army’s not going to go away.Anyway, that’s the challenge. The challenge is dealing with fewer resources, continuing to improve, doing… and it’s getting tough to do...better, more work with fewer folks. It doesn’t mean literally that. I think it means using the technologies available to increase the productivity of the workforce. That’s going to be a tough challenge. I mean it really is. And maintaining a post, an arsenal that has 38,000 acres and all the facilities that go with it, within the OMA dollars that are provided--it’s going to be hard to do. So General Chen has got a real challenge. In fact, all the employees at the U.S. Army Missile Command have a real challenge. And I think the sooner they recognize that the way to deal with that is to accept change; to accept the fact they’re going to have to change; and then do it, will propel us there. I mean really propel MICOM to the forefront and just keep...well that’s where you are now... just stay there. Okay? And I think we’re seeing some of this coming, this TQM business. We are in fact... people are in fact... changing the way they’re doing things. In fact, I think it’s kind of neat. Because as they look at the process they’re working in, in some cases, "Why are we doing it? Why are we doing it to ourselves?" And when they do that, then it’s, "How can we make it better?" That’s change, they’re changing right there. They’ve said we don’t like the status quo; we don’t like the way we did it before; we want to do it this way. So, I think the management of change is the major challenge. ‘Cause that change is coming. MR. BAKER: Speaking of changes... and you touched on PEOs and Matrix Management... what we would like from your perspective both as the PM under the old system before PEOs and Matrix Management, comparing and contrasting how it was then and how it is now, is how well you think the new concepts are working and how can we improve? One thing you said is, "Accept the change and move on."MG CIANCIOLO: Well, you see, MICOM is blessed--AMC’s blessed because of MICOM——because this command has always embraced the concept of project management. And I say that with some experience. Because the first time I was a project manager was not in this command, it was in another command. And I will tell you the commitment to the project management concept in that other command was nothing compared to the concept or the support that came out of the Missile Command for its project managers. I was a project manager by myself. I didn’t have anybody. None, zero! I finally got to 13 people in this other command. That’s not the way MICOM addressed project managers. I remember, if the Army leadership decided that a major weapon system was to be managed at the U.S. Army Missile Command and assigned that responsibility here, it was almost immediate that the Commanding General would inform his staff, "We have this new mission for this project. Here are 50 to 60 spaces. Establish the project manager’s office." I mean, that happened in every case that I know of at the U.S. Army Missile Command. That is atypical of the Army Materiel Command. The Aviation Systems Command may be a little bit like that. But I will tell you, the command I was in at the time was not that way.How are we performing with the system of Matrix Management and project managers? Just like we did before. The only difference is that the Commanding General of the Missile Command is not in the reporting chain for the project managers. But I can tell you when I was a project manager here, even though the Commanding General was in my chain, there was this arrangement... this work ethic... that existed in MICOM that said, "Project manager you are responsible. I have every trust and confidence in you to do it. If you need my help, you will come and ask me for it. If you don’t need my help, I will assume--if you don’t come and ask me--I will assume that everything is fine." And he would let you fly until you shot yourself. Even under General Moore, who was a tough commander here, that’s the way he operated. Although he’d give me guidance, he never meddled in my business. "We picked you to be a project manager, damn it, go manage a project." Now I’m not in the chain, but we are still functioning much like we did before. Probably, though, there’s more attention--I know there’s more attention--from me now because I don’t divert any of my energies on the project managers. Now all my energies are focused on the functional heads to make sure that they are properly supporting project managers, which is really not anything new for them because they had always done it before. They get more attention now, probably, from me than they did before. And we have more project managers here now. We have twice the number of project managers here now than we did when I was here in 1983. I think we had nine major programs here then. We have about 17, I think, here now. That’s a lot of project managers. Plus, I’ve got two more brigadier generals here to help out. You know, General Moore didn’t have that. So, in one respect, I’ve got more help now than he had. So, I think it’s working fine. The other thing you’ll find is that--and I think this is from everything that I’ve heard from my higher headquarters--we do it better here than anybody else. There’s more harmony amongst PMs and the PEOs in MICOM than there is in any other organization. Now we’ve had some knock-down—drag—outs and not everyone is entirely happy, but I have to tell you this, too, when I first came here I went up to NASA. I got my indoctrination with NASA, and I talked with J. R. Thompson (former director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center). J. R. was running through how NASA does business and they had the same management concept up there: Matrix Management. So, I asked him if he would help me out. So Jack Lee, his deputy, and Ernie Young (MICOM’s Deputy for Procurement and Readiness), and I spent a lot of time, Jack Lee and Ernie particularly, on talking about their management philosophy, the Matrix Management, project management, how did they do business, and how could that be translated into the way we did business here. I think that helped our discussions with the PMs and the PEOs because we just didn’t make this up here. We got a working model right up the street, and they do a pretty good job up there. So that helped. MR. BAKER: I think, speaking of being in touch with history, the roots of project management were here even when AMC established it in 1962, the REDSTONE program, all of those were project-managed in a sense even though they didn’t have that particular name. It made for a really unique situation. I guess maybe that’s why it’s been easier through the years, the roots were here.MG CIANCIOLO: What it says to me is, I think, the most successful management model——organizational management——is project management. It seems to work better than any other model we’ve come up with. So, I’ve got to figure out how to take the functional guys and have them act as though they’re project managers in some way because it seems that’s the way you get a thing done and get it done efficiently, effectively.MR. BAKER: What are you proudest of during your tenure here?MG CIANCIOLO: Oh, I’m just proud that the Chief of Staff of the Army said go down there to MICOM and be the commander. Just having had the opportunity to do that. I can’t think of any one thing. The command is so broad. I guess the opportunity to have had an occasion to be associated with professionals like there are here is one of the things I’ll remember. I’m proud that I measured up in terms of being selected to come down here to do this; to be put in charge; to lead it. I guess the other proudest moment doesn’t have anything to do with the command but it happened on the 3rd of March 1989, when I became a grandfather to that little guy right over there.DR. HUGHES: Congratulations!MG CIANCIOLO: Thanks!MR. BAKER: When you ended the staff call this morning, you seemed to have a great deal of pride about the people here, and you asked us to keep it up.MG CIANCIOLO: Oh yes, I think they will. That’s kind of a legacy you all pass on from one commander to the next as they come running in and out of here every 14 months or so. You just carry that. What I’d like to do is be able to take that spirit that’s down here up with me to AMC and kind of spread that joy over the rest of AMC. I don’t know the other commands that well. And I’m sure that there are commands out there who are just as proud. But they’ve got to do better. They’re not as good as this command.MR. BAKER: We get that a lot. There are a lot of people envious of us.MG CIANCIOLO: I’ve got to give you some competition when I go to my new job.MR. BAKER: Are there any areas that you didn’t feel you made the progress you’d hoped while you were here?MG CIANCIOLO: Well, yes. I think that I wanted to do things faster in the TQM business, although I think we’re doing pretty well. We’ve come a long way, but we still get a little impatient about that. I want to see us do better. On the civilian personnel side of the business, I think we’re fixing that. I really think there were many people who complained about the civilian personnel operation being too slow, too cumbersome, not responsive. But as we dug into it and they started to lay out what the facts were, there was more myth in that because there were an awful lot of people contributing to that constipation than just the Civilian Personnel Office. Lots of organizational elements were doing it to themselves. But we still can do better.The other piece that we can do better on is the procurement business. It still takes too long to do a procurement. I know they’re working very hard trying to bring that timeline down. Obviously, we can’t bring it down enough; it’s going to take some time. But we can still make it shorter and make it less frustrating to the people involved. I know we’re working on it, but we just haven’t gotten there yet. There are so many initiatives going on right now, I wish I could’ve stayed longer to see some of them come to fruition. The business of the Sparkman Center, I just want that to happen. We’re probably going to have the biggest traffic jam you ever saw in your life when you get 4300 people over here, but it ought to make us more efficient, and bring us up to date in terms of facilities, work environment, and that kind of business. Because we’ve got some people who were working in not very good environments. Although I have to say we’ve really made some improvements. We’ve painted some buildings and we’ve brought some new furniture in, but it’s made a difference. Just little things like that. I was talking to John Davis this morning at Product Assurance. I went into that building--it belongs to NASA--and we haven’t done very much to fix it up. But they painted it. Just painting it brightened up the hallways, and people said, "Holy Cowl" He said one person said, "You really can see all the way down this hall." And he (Davis) said, "Heck, you notice they only had half the lights on. If you turn the rest of the lights on, it would really brighten the place up." I think that helps make morale go up. Anyway, I hope that happens. The morale and welfare business--trying to get the golf course fixed up——that was a real exercise with the retirees. But I think we’re coming on that, and I think there’s a real opportunity there (General Chen’s going to have to pick that one up) to significantly improve that whole operation. We’ve got a marina project going on right now to see whether we can put one down on the southern part of the arsenal. Redstone Arsenal is a great place. I mean, this is a beautiful place——this area—-so I’d like to see all that happen. General Chen’s got to run with that. The other thing I want to see happen, and hopefully you all will see it soon, is I want the post cafeterias to look different. If anything didn’t change from 1982 when I came back here, it was the post cafeterias. They look exactly the same. That’s going to change, because we’re going to fix that up. They’ll probably get a lot more customers, too. The other thing I wanted to start... and we’re about ready to... is bringing a civilian employee wellness program here. We’re right at the beginning of that. They have it out at AVSCOM (U.S. Army Aviation Systems Command)--they were ahead of us--but my good friend, Dick Stevenson, out there told me about it. So I took Dr. Snyder--Carl Snyder from the hospital (Fox Army Hospital at Redstone Arsenal)——with me and we went out there and saw it. If we get that, that’s going to be great. Employees are going to like that. Three hours a week, all of which is official work time, for wellness, exercise, jazzercise, walking, weight lifting, whatever you want to do, running. But that’s at the embryonic stage, and General Chen will have that on his plate to deal with, too. DR. HUGHES: This would be a great facility for a program like that, too.MG CIANCIOLO: Well, part of the problem, though, is we’re so spread Out. At AVSCOM they’re all in one little area, so they have one facility that people can walk to. But here we’d have to have satellites all over the place, because it would take too long to drive from one place to the other. You’d like to have it where you could just walk. But I think we can do that. That’s not a big problem.MR. BAKER: I think what you touched on in civilian personnel .the problems... part of that is they’re way out there in the sticks. It’s easier to call them up on the phone. But you call them up on the phone and maybe 10 others decided to do the same thing. You can’t get through!MG CIANCIOLO: You can’t get through?MR. BAKER: It’s just the proximity and...MG CIANCIOLO: It’s the frustration factor, and then from the frustration factor comes remarks, from remarks then builds a reputation of the organizational element. Then pretty soon, you know, everybody’s down on them. Like procurement there for a long time felt like everybody was down on them. It’s really not a procurement problem and it’s not a CPO problem, it’s a command problem. The whole command is involved in it. Anyway, I don’t want to leave this place! To tell you the truth, riding up on the elevator yesterday from the lobby to the tenth floor on Eisenhower Avenue, I was saying to myself, "This is sure a long way from building 5250 and Redstone Arsenal." This is a great place here! What else do you have, sir?MR. BAKER: Well, that’s probably it. Are there any other things you would like to cover?MG CIANCIOLO: No, I think that the Missile Command, of course, is key to providing our soldiers the kind of equipment they need to survive on the battlefield when and if they get involved in a battle. The scientists and engineers are here to make sure that we stay the best. That the best this country can provide is provided to our soldiers. And we just have to make sure that we never forget why we’re here. As long as we do that, we just can’t go wrong. I look forward to having the opportunity to come back down here in my new capacities as Deputy Commanding General, and see all the good things that the U.S. Army Missile Command does, and the place in history that it has marked for us. And I hope, you know, PERSHING II got rid of a whole class of nuclear weapons, knock on wood, but the Follow—on to LANCE, I hope, some day does the same thing. Every weapon system we build down here, if it gets rid of a whole class, it would be money well spent.DR. HUGHES: That’s true.MG CIANCIOLO: It’ll take us further and further away from the threat of nuclear war or any kind of major conflict, which is great! It’s a great thing to have, right?DR. HUGHES AND MR. BAKER: It certainly is.MG CIANCIOLO: Okay, that’s all I have. Thank you all very much, I’ve enjoyed it. |
