Salami Slices, Cheese Spread and Kool-Aid: A Recipe for Anorexic Organizations

As the specter of serve budget reductions become reality, leaders at all levels will face tough choices; what to keep, what must go, what to cut back--what will and will not get done.  Many leaders will meet the challenge head-on; others will equivocate and ultimately decide to not decide.  This article is dedicated to the later group of leaders, to those military members in positions of authority who will hide behind a facade of equality and fairness, in order to keep from truly making a choice.  When a leader makes a choice, when they commit, they might be proven wrong or criticized.  Fiscal decisions are particularly difficult because emotions can run high when careers are on the line.  So what might we expect?  You might see some of the following meals being served.

Salami Slices

The “salami slice” is favorite technique of leaders who want to “spread the pain” evenly.  This approach avoids the hard work of prioritizing what is critical (committing) and what is not.  It also sidesteps personal culpability by taking the fairest course of action given the circumstances.  The salami slice might be fair, but it is also indiscriminate in its effects. By cutting all organizations a determined amount (5 %), all are degraded the same degree; critical functions and non-critical functions are treated the same, albeit fairly. Once the “slicing” begins, it is hard to stop.  As Daniel Goure, an analyst for the Lexington Institute, suggested in a recent Washington Times article,  “If you do what you did the last time—which is essentially salami slice, take bits and pieces from everything and everybody—then you are essentially going back to where you were after Vietnam and at the end of the Cold War drawdown.  Too many missions.  Too many deployments.  Not enough stuff.  Not enough people.”[i]  In turn, higher level commanders will slice all below them and then lower level commanders will tend to pass on the slice reductions to their own organizations.

There is an appropriate time for the Salami Slice approach. If there is excess fat in all areas of the organizational carcass, then it is an absolutely appropriate technique to trim the fat—salami slices will not sustain and organization in the long term.  Once the organization has become lean, then it is time to set priorities and makes some hard decisions.       

Cheese Spread

If predictions hold true, fiscal cuts will be severe. Budget reductions will begin small and increase over the next decade.  As moral starts to wane, leaders will espouse slogans in order to rally the troops around the fiscal realities. As a young Captain in the 1980’s, I was told that we would “fight outnumbered and win” and “we will do more with less.”  We all knew we would do less with less, but leaders seemed to feel better when they had a slogan to espouse. Those of us who did not have to make the hard decisions (but had to live by them) called this rhetoric “spreading the cheese.” It really did not help, but it was interesting to watch. My guess is that leaders, at some point, will resort to spreading cheese once again. I am sure the cheese will be of higher quality, maybe something in the vein of “we will become more efficient” or “we will leverage technology.”  While I’m sure there is waste and I know we can be more efficient; part of being efficient is determining what is important and what is not.  Even the best of cheese spreads will not compensate for massive budget cuts and poor fiscal decisions.

Kool-Aid

Organizations, military organizations included, cannot survive exclusively on salami slices and cheese spread. In fact, over time, any organization will become anorexic on such a diet.  Organizations, like people, require sound nourishment to prosper; consequently, do not drink the Kool-Aid!  If a leader cannot adequately feed (fund) an entire organization, then cuts-- real cuts-- are required.  If leaders are worth their salt, then they will make the difficult decisions, trimming away what is not required in order to feed and nourish the parts of the organizations that are critical to the core mission—unpleasant business, but absolutely essential.

 A Healthy Diet

A fiscally constrained, but healthy diet begins with a generous portion of resolve.  Leaders must resolute to establish priorities, make hard decisions, and then follow through.  Add to this organizationally healthy menu a side dish of critical thinking.  As Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta recently stated in his two-page, October 17 memo to Ashton Carter, his newly appointed Deputy Defense Secretary, “In this unprecedented fiscal and budgetary environment, we must focus on maintaining the best military in the world and avoid hollowing out our all-volunteer force, while also meeting our obligations to help get our nation’s economic house in order.”[ii]  Before priorities can be established, a critical analysis and assessment of organizational mission, activity, and resources is vital.  If activities do not directly support the organization’s mission, then they are “hollow calories” and should be placed on the table for consumption.

A dessert of “vision” tops off this culinary adventure.  People get nervous once reductions begin. It is the role of the leader to provide a vision that sends the message, just as Robert D. Cabana, Director of the John F. Kennedy Space Center (KSC) did in his Director’s Planning Guidance, “We have some uncertainty; nevertheless, we are moving forward on what we can control.  Drawing on our rich heritage, we are making groundbreaking decisions that are defining the next era of spaceflight.  Everything KSC has accomplished has prepared us for there we are going…So let’s accept the challenge and take the opportunity to lead, to make a difference, to achieve great things.”[iii]  Cuts, reorganization and reductions, without a vision, are a recipe for organizational indigestion.  Indigestion is this case meaning that one day you will come to work to discover an essential function is no longer viable.

The Meat of the Issue

The meat of the fiscal issue is that cheese spreads have no nutritional value; “units do not do more with less.” In fact, the ugly truth is people and organizations do less with less.  It is the role of the leader to cull the wheat from the chaff and determine what the “less” actually is. Good leaders will rise to the challenge and do more than cut.  They will become creative and find new ways to accomplish the mission; they will in effect teach their organizations to eat properly.  In lean times leaders become nutritionists; they eat their peas, avoiding salami slices, cheese spread and Kool-Aid diets.