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Course certifies five as AFSO21 experts

  • Published
  • By John Turner
  • 341st Missile Wing Public Affairs
MALMSTROM AIR FORCE BASE, Mont --  Five members of the 341st Missile Wing earned their Air Force Smart Operations for the 21st Century 'green belts' earlier this month after demonstrating mastery over skills learned during four days of academic training here. As certified facilitators, the five are now qualified to shepherd wing organizations through AFSO21's process improvement methodology.

AFSO21 is an aggregate of management tools and principles that enable Airmen to change day-to-day operations by integrating continuous improvement into the full spectrum of Air Force operations. It focuses on producing tangible results while expending the least amount of resources possible, said Randy Glick, 341st FSS management analyst and the wing's AFSO21 program manager.

The new green belts are 1st Lt. William Borowski, 341st Logistics Readiness Squadron; 2nd Lt. Bryant Johanson, 341st Medical Support Squadron; Master Sgt. David Tagliaferro, 341st Security Forces Group; Tech. Sgt. Scott Weimer, 341st Missile Maintenance Squadron; and Kelly Helms, 341st Force Support Squadron.

The certification began with four days of academic instruction Oct. 28-31 at the base education center, taught by Elizabeth Jones from Air Force Global Strike Command headquarters, Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana. Jones is a black belt in AFSO21, the highest level of proficiency. In all, 17 people attended the course.

To continue to the green belt level, candidates have to demonstrate their ability to facilitate actual AFSO21 teams on their own. Normally, this takes months to complete. The process was expedited for Borowski, Johanson, Taliaferro, Weimer and Helms by arranging events for Jones to observe Nov. 3-7, with one day set aside for each candidate. The scenarios were typical of real-life projects for the wing, and were planned in advance so the candidates could coordinate their process improvement teams.

"The whole second week was us actually applying that training," Borowski said. "We were facilitating real events, not just going through stuff for the heck of it. We were trying to really solve problems and have real impact here at the mission, applying that training a week later."

Facilitators guide action teams that are chartered to solve specific issues. In this role, facilitators do not have to be subject matter experts on the problem or process that is being examined. Instead, they oversee a team's progress towards finding results.

"We're not there to solve the problem," Weimer said. "We're there to facilitate solving the problem. We're not the ones who are supposed to interject solutions. Our whole job is to keep people focused on tasks and get them to determine what the actual root problem is."

Although Weimer is from the 341st Maintenance Group, he can now easily facilitate for any of the groups on base, he explained. He doesn't have to be an expert on the process being evaluated, only on the AFSO21 methodology.

"Once we have a green belt, we're a wing resource," Weimer said.

Borowski said that an unbiased perspective can be beneficial to the process.

"A lot of times the facilitator is from outside the organization," Borowski said. "I think it actually works better that way if you have an outside observer.  Otherwise you get too drawn into the problem. You can't take that step back."

More graduates from the course will be certified when Jones is able to revisit Malmstrom, Glick said.

"We're looking at the possibility of setting up events in a couple or three locations so we can have three events going on at the same time with three facilitators in training," Glick said. "These guys can help as green belts as the black belt rotates around."

Until then, the academic training is still useful to the other participants of the course who are not yet green belts.

"I think it was a great course," said Keri Adorisio, 341st FSS management analyst. "You don't have to facilitate an event. You can take the tools that we learned in class and actually use them if you have a problem in your office."

Weimer agrees that AFSO21 is a powerful tool when it is used correctly.

"We all got to see that the process does work," he said. "It actually can fix problems that we have. It proves that we can fix things at the lowest level."