Why does the organisation insist on attempting to release or push things through before truly ready? Is there something going on behind the scenes motivating or causing this?
PTS - rolled out without badges and half a syllabus
CFC - delayed again
Ditching the No8 early
PAM for the L144 copy/pasted (by an external person, I understand) and not proof read
There’s probably others in recent history, but those spring to mind. Some issues are perhaps the result of external forces, but we don’t seem to help ourselves and it affects morale and the credibility of those making these decisions.
It really doesn’t look good, especially when top dog is collecting a gong while the organisation appears in turmoil.
I’m not trying to point fingers as I know these are complex issues with a multitude of forces in play, but why do we insist on going off half-cocked? Why can it not be, “this will be happening for these reasons, wait out until it’s ready”?
To be fair however, the L144 isn’t really HQAC (that’s an MoD/SASC thing there) and we don’t really know how much control they have over the CFC thing.
The PTS syllabus is a fair point though - I can’t help but feel it would have worked best rolling out subjects one at a time to allow the materials to be sorted and badges to be available.
The problem we have had is that the ACMB always act like they are players, when they aren’t even in the room, they don’t even have their noses pressed against the window, they’re 2 or 3 rows back.
HOWEVER
LASER Review (Adult SNCO and cadet age lowering)
BADER
revamped classifications
Ultilearn
PTS more recently
are prime examples of things where HQAC held all the cards and made an unholy mess of the project management and implementation. Then when things didn’t / don’t go right in the real ATC (squadrons) it was our fault and the petulant children at HQAC chucked their teddies out with threats of blocks on activities if we didn’t comply. For all of the IT based things HQAC didn’t supply or even try to find / arrange discounted deals for us. Everything gets left to squadron committees to fund and we all go looking for the same deals and slices of the same pot.
You could include gliding in this as although they’re not directly involved they could have insisted on a non-RAF gliding being paid for and made available without loads of caveats and similarly with flying in the affected areas. But that would have needed to go too far and upset the RAF types hanging onto jobs.
The most worrying thing is they don’t learn from their mistakes (potentially a problem for the whole MoD) and just keep repeating them and when things don’t go right as I say it’s our fault. As has been said many times if businesses acted like the ACMB does, they’d have been closed, the site bulldozed and turned into luxury apartments by now.
When it comes to who we get imposed to run the Corps, you have to wonder what is the criteria and what is their real track record and experience? I bet their all fine in The Mess and talk a good story and thoroughly good eggs, but we need more. It’s a bit like the ‘keep high flying cadets mantra” that’s been pushed since 2003. We know the high flying cadets go and do other things and do the high flying types in the RAF go onto senior positions in the RAF and not the ATC.
Are we getting a Jose Mourinho or Fred Jones who’s only experience of running a football team is 6 months with the under 9s Sunday League and gets the Man U job because he’s part of the dodgy handshake mob and stands their round?
Have we reached a point where we need people with a credible background in project management in the real world and an ATC background to give the balance and common sense of being prepared to say no to implementing something as it wasn’t ready to go, not doing it anyway and getting snotty with part-time volunteers. As we drift further away from the RAF, do we need military people running us?
Ive come to the conclusion (long ago) that this organisation hasnt got a clue.The MOD has previous convictions over the years going back decades.I spent three years of my service working on trials for that piece of rubbish known as the AEW Nimrod.Everyone that mattered said it wouldnt work and it didnt as the Shackleton knocked spots off it on the trials.Did the MOD listen nope they wasted £700 million on it.Hqac are exactly the same Utilefail is my pet hate.Its basically not a bad idea in theory BUT no formal training has ever been given in its use.Cadets dont like it and I find it a rather stupid and overly complicated system for what it does.
LASER is another good example of wasted time as well and as for gliding arghh!.Every little thing is mired in paperwork staff recruitment process is Byzantine (and they wonder why people get fed up).How is it that when the cloud dwellers send me something im expected to turn it round in a matter of days or else.HQAC on the other hand and Wing Hqs can and do take weeks and months to do stuff and then lose it.
Then theres BADER as an example of how daft and annoying that is I received an e mail this very day stating its going down on Thursday for server maintenance.Theres the usual pathetic excuse of “we ve only just found out ourselves sorry for inconvenience blah blah” .This is the second time recently this has occurred so who the hell is deciding on outages and their timimg. They could do it during the day but of course that would upset the shineys. So why not do it on a Thursday evening between the hours a lot of sqns including mine parade.Wow what a wizard idea you can here them say.
You can sort of understand it in the old days when the Commandant only had 1 tour as, they had to get a shift on if they wanted to achieve anything. But when you have 8 years in post that excuse doesn’t really apply.
IRRC Gordon Moulds and Ian Stewart only did around 18 months each (less than a tour), because as I was told they upset some if not all of the RCs who had friends in dark corners and Barbara Cooper just went early due to the CWC mess that happened. Unfortunately it seems no matter of mess will curtail the current incumbent.
They may have moved, but it’s the manner in which they moved, we can all move, or, we can all move. Stewart was Moulds’ man as I recall and not something the sitting tenants of the ACMB liked, given Moulds wasn’t a fan of their’s. I could have seen Stewart moving at the first chance and probably did, given how these things work.
I do agree having adminers running the show has been a disaster, as the thinking seems to be is, the ATC is all about administrative processes, which forgets the most important element of the ATC … the cadets, who couldn’t care about admin, they want to do things. No cadets, no ATC, RAFAC, ACO, AC or whatever and no easy jobs to amass a few grand. If it dissolved I