Obstacles in Implementing Requisite Organization

Speaker A Resistance with this?

Speaker B Were there any other barriers or roadblocks that you really had to work with or move around in this three year project? Where was their most resistance or most difficulty or most challenge? And how did you have to readjust or rejig?

Speaker A Well, the whole thing, the amazing thing is that it got done because the resistances were profound, profound resistances. And setting it up the way we did in terms of bringing a team together that was representative of the Army Medical Department, mapping out all the stakeholders, getting people involved up front, having the endorsement of a Surgeon General, senior leader who said it's going to get done, and then proceeding in the systematic way we did, was quite a feat. Now, think of the fear and worry of almost everybody in the army medical department in the early 90s facing budget cuts because of new political administration, no longer the threat that we've had. Everybody was saying, is it going to be my job that's going to be cut? And everybody was holding on for dear life to any preserver that was out there. And no one was going to allow anybody's job to be cut at superimpose.

Speaker C The guilds because you had the Medical Corps, you had the Nursing Corps, you had the Dental Corps, the Veterinary Corps, the Army Medical Specials Corps, all of which represented their own career fields and their own track. And my gosh, we were asking them to work together as a team and to be, heaven forbid, braided by someone who was not one of them, one of their own. And that was very difficult to overcome those kinds of things because they all managed themselves by their cores in terms.

Speaker A Of and come from the 1980s when it was a much bigger army and they could all manage themselves. So people were paranoid, very suspicious of anything that we did and put innumerable obstacles and resistances to the kind of change that we wanted to make.

Speaker C We talked to anybody anytime, anywhere they wanted to. We had open communication. We went to all the professional meetings. We gave talks. Every time there was any kind of professional seminar, we were there presenting what we were doing, our findings. And so we really had a very strong and open communication plan that was required to overcome that. And we involved a lot of people in the process. We didn't go to a single location that didn't have local people involved in the interview process. They took ownership. When we went to the schoolhouse, we had schoolhouse people. We went to the R and D command. We had those. We went overseas. We brought in people from those.

Speaker A We had major challenges on setting up regions. I mean, we had senators involved and had us sent all across the continental and non continental United States to visit places because their hospitals needed to be a separate region. It essentially meant we were not going to make any changes but so that everyone felt the threat and that impending. And this was before we had the huge base realignment enclosure of 90 95. But people knew that it was on horizon. So it's big worry about what might be closed and who may lose military installations. So we faced great challenges that way. Stranger pulled by.