Commentary

One thing that helps minimize stress in people’s lives is balance. Just as having both feet planted firmly on the ground helps a person from falling over, balance in an individual’s life (at home and at work) can prevent getting overwhelmed. One type of balance, as described by Dr. Stephen Covey in his book ‘‘The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” is the balance of production with production capability, or the ‘‘P⁄PC” balance. This P⁄PC balance is essentially the right amount of

(a) getting ready to do something (that is, working on your ability to produce) with

(b) actually doing it (that is, actually producing something).

The story that Covey tells to illustrate this point is Aesop’s fable of the goose that laid the golden eggs. A man had the good fortune to possess a goose that laid a golden egg every day. Lucky though the man was, he soon began to think he was not getting rich fast enough, and, imagining the bird must be made of gold inside, he decided to kill it to secure the entire store of precious metal at once. But when he cut it open he found it was just like any other goose. Thus, he neither got rich all at once, as he had hoped, nor enjoyed any longer the daily addition to his wealth.

The point Covey makes with this story is that we must take care of the production capability, or ‘‘PC” (in this case, the goose), to get the product, or the ‘‘P” (that is, the golden eggs). Just as the man in the fable didn’t take care of his goose, we need to be careful not to ignore our health, family, relaxation and religious activities by spending too much time and activity on work. For example, running a machine (such as a car) without the proper routine maintenance (such as changing the oil) will eventually cause the machine to fail. Conversely, we want to make sure we don’t ignore work by spending too much time on non-work activities. In the machine example, we don’t want to spend most or all of the time taking care of the machine to the point where it produces too little or is seldom available.

There are many other illustrations of the P⁄PC balance. One is balancing process improvement with actually producing the product. As we integrate the practice of process improvement into our culture with things such as AIRSpeed and the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) for Systems, Software, and Acquisition, we need to make sure we take enough time away from product development to do a good job improving our processes. However, we also need to make sure we save enough time and resources to deploy products to the fleet in a timely manner. While we want products that are high quality at a lower cost, we also want products to get to the warfighter when they need them.

Another area that requires balancing is employee development (education and training) and actually performing the work. We certainly want to keep our work force trained in the latest methods, technology and business rules. But we also need to make sure that this training doesn’t consume so much time that it interferes with getting our products out to the fleet. We need to keep in mind that training is a means to an end, and not an end in itself.

A third area needing balance is the proportion of time an employee works for his⁄her Integrated Product Team (IPT) versus how much time the employee supports the competency. The cost of an employee (salary and benefits) is usually paid entirely by the IPT, but the competency has needs for the employee’s time as well. These competency needs include such ‘‘housekeeping” tasks as completing timesheets, taking mandatory training (such as for DAWIA, POSH, ethics, Information Assurance, and privacy act to name a few), helping and mentoring others in the competency, and serving as a subject matter expert for audits and independent review teams. The IPT should allow some of the employee’s time to the competency, but also the competency should minimize its impact on the IPT’s work.

This quest for balance becomes difficult because people are getting busier and busier as most of the slack has been driven out of our organization. I hope we can keep the P⁄PC balance principle in mind, and use our employees’ time and energy wisely and we strive to improve the product, the process and the employees as we downsize and try to save money as well.