Space Acquisition - Air Force Space Command

• Constantly strive to be the best we can be.
• Have unconditional passion.
The world is changing faster than ever. To manage change
in lean years and become high performance team players, we
must continue to learn to:
• Apply the tools, ideas, and inspiration to be success-oriented
in the midst of continually changing environments.
• Emphasize education and training to overcome barriers
to career and personal success while going beyond personal
and organizational limits.
• Be active leaders in lean management processes.
• Foster a collaborative environment.
• Recruit, retain, educate, and produce a highly-motivated
and accountable workforce.
• Develop effective communicators and high-performance
team players in managing change.
• Cultivate and encourage future leaders.
We Can Do Better; We Must Do Better
So what about you, the reader Does the joy of service ignite
a flame within you Do you have that passion If so, enjoy
it. Enjoy it because you are a vital leader in the world’s best
acquisition force. Not only will you be a valuable asset to the
PMAG and the Air Force acquisitions community, but it will
also benefit your personal life. Live your personal passions,
develop your acumen as a spouse, as a father or mother, as a
neighbor, a civic member—your passion of excellence will be
absolutely contagious to everyone around you throughout your
life.
For the acquisitions community to be a part of the world’s
most respected Air and Space Force, we must innovatively and
collaboratively develop ourselves to be valuable and knowledgeable
workers. Learn the PMAG methodology, and live
it! We simply have to invest in our future generation through
relentless mentoring and coaching with a content-based, and
not just process-based, focus. We can not merely say the right
things, but we need to do the right things, and understand why
it is that we are doing them.
Words are nice; they tell good stories and paint vivid pictures.
But they are worthless if they do not connect somehow
with their audience or inspire them to action or make a change
in some small way. The PMAG brings substance through disciplined
execution and focuses on content while de-emphasizing
automatic delegation. A fundamental aspect of the PMAG is
the integrated team’s approach to producing compounded products
and services. We must do the innovative work necessary to
make Air Force acquisitions better.
If you take nothing else with you from this article, take this:
We CAN do better; we MUST do better. If we all pick ourselves
up, reinvigorate ourselves and remember what it is that
truly inspires us—about service, about development acquisitions,
about our country—we can reinvigorate this acquisitions
community! You say you are already a true leader, a team player,
you do everything right and you know everything I tell you
now that even I am not so perfect; even I continue to improve
after 29 years of service. We can all do better. We all must
do better! Complacency and passivity cannot permeate our
culture. Competency, collaboration, and content-based performance—these
are the tools, these are the keys to our success.
Feel the buzz and the change in the world around you. Stand
up, commit, execute! We absolutely need every one of us to put
in that extra contribution toward improving, toward acquisition
excellence. All of us can improve, all of us can be more passionate,
and all of us can do better. This is a commitment all
of us—in every organization and under every command—can
make right now. This is a commitment all of us NEED to execute
right now.
We will all have to step up to this; real leadership has to
come from within every one of us. Be a high-performance
team player, live the PMAG model, and be a team leader. Be
the best in everything you do, and push yourself to be even better
than that. We can do better; we must do better. We shall be
the ultimate program managers in the world’s premier acquisition
work force!
Notes:
1
Aerotech News and Review 2, no. 17 (14 November 2008).
Col Mun H. Kwon (BS,
Chemistry, University of
Maryland; MS, Systems Management,
USC; MS, Strategic
Studies, Air War College; PhD,
Business Administration, US
International University) is
deputy for program management
and system integration
directorate, Space and Missile
Systems Center (SMC), Los
Angeles AFB, California. He
leads the center’s Program Execution
and Analysis Group,
Acquisition Center of Excellence
Group, and Program
Management Assistance Group to Support the SMC’s mission
Colonel Kwon entered the Air Force as a ROTC graduate from
University Maryland, College Park in 1980. His career has spanned
a wide variety of acquisition program management, education, air
staff, and materiel leader assignments including Solid Rocket Motors
budget analyst, launch vehicles acquisition manager, Titan 34D
Solid Rocket Motors Production and Launch Services project manager,
Space Shuttle Payload Integrator, Precision Lightweight GPS
Receivers program manager, Advanced Space Technology (XR)
program manager, AF/XP chief scientist, professor of systems and
acquisition management, National Missile Defense program control
chief, dean of education and technology, National Defense
University, ACAT I national space systems program manager, and
commander of materiel acquisition group.
Among his many awards, Colonel Kwon has been awarded the
Defense Meritorious Service Medal with two oak leaf cluster, Air
Force Meritorious Service Medal with two oak leaf cluster, Joint
Service Commendation Medal with one oak leaf cluster, Air Force
Commendation Medal with one oak leaf cluster, Joint Service
Achievement Medal, Air Force Achievement Medal, National Defense
Service Medal, and Global War on Terrorism Service Medal.
21 High Frontier