Punk Program Managers

[ZachS]

Printed in the October 2005 issue of "Harper's" magazine.
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'SHEENA IS A PROGRAM MANAGER'


From "Everything We need to Know about Program Management, We Learned from Punk Rock," by U.S. Air Force Majors Dan Ward and Chris Quaid, from the July-August issue of Defense Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics. Ward works at the Air Force Research Laboratory in Rome, New York; Quaid works at the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency in Bethesda, Maryland.
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Punk rock is loud and in-your-face, unapologetic and fearless. We need more of that attitude around here. Punks may not be pretty, and their lyrics may not be coherent to the casual listener, but they have integrity and a deep understanding of what the Air Force calls "service before self." Punk's ideological stand against the pursuit of illicit personal gain is virtually identical to the Air Force's second Core Value. It is the mission that matters, whether that mission is music or missiles. It's about service, not about your own interests. So close your eyes, forget yourself, and feel the beat move you along.

The Ramones were pioneers of what came to be known as punk rock. Had they become Program Managers for the Department of Defense, they would never have tolerated the No-Value-Added nonsense that often springs up in bureaucratic organizations. They undoubtedly would have pursued simplicity and maintained a laser-like focus on achieving their real objectives. And that makes them pretty good examples for the rest of us to consider.

As Jack Black explained in 'School of Rock,' rock and roll is about "Stickin' it to the Man." That goes double for punk. In any large enterprise, one occasionally encounters the Man (or the Woman) who genuinely needs to have "it" stuck to them, for their own good and for that of the organization. We can pretend taht courage and creativity don't matter in a program office, research lab, or logistics depot--as if fighter pilots and infantrymen had a monopoly on these virtues--but listening to The Clash shows that this clearly isn't the case.

Punk is angry music, but it can also be playful and funny without ceasing to be punk. However, we contend that a certain degree of "raging against the machine" is justified, appropriate, productive, and healthy. The important thing to recognize is that anger is not the goal. Reality, honesty, authenticity, and independence are what matter. One danger of being a punk Program Manager is that you might slide into the role of rebel without a cause. Punk Program Managers ought not to develop a new weapons system just to develop a system, nor challenge the old system just for the challenge.

Not everyone can be a punk Program Manager, and not everyone should. The mainstream doesn't have to like, respect, or even tolerate the punks in their midst. Punk loses some of its edge when it goes mainstream, and even though neither side may readily acknowledge it, the antagonism between punk and pop is valuable to both sides. So a certain amount of dynamic tension between punk Program Managers and pop Program Managers is probably healthy. A punks under-the-radar, outsider status gives him (or her) credibility with certain outsider customers and users. (SpecOps, anyone?) Inevitably, a few punks will cross over into the pop world, giving up their status as underdogs but injecting new perspectives and contagious energy into an arena that might otherwise be mired in copycat mediocrity. When that happens, everybody wins. Rock on!
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maybe they're "stickin' it to the Man" from the inside?!?