First Word

- The Strategy of Ideas

GPCAPT Andrew Clark

By GPCAPT Andrew Clark, (Assistant Chief of Air Force Strategy Management)

If you’d been at Ohakea on 5 September 1948, you would have joined a number of other curious Base personnel to watch as a Royal New Zealand Air Force Avenger made a low pass and dropped a ton of superphosphate across the airfield. It was the first Air Force top dressing trial in support of government initiatives—a piece of iconic New Zealand nation-building, a venture that quickly went commercial and soon spread globally.

Exploring new ideas is a key part of what we do—what we’ve always done. The recent B-757 Antarctic trial is the latest in a long line of them. It’s part of a built-in drive to improve what we do—provide a better capability, improve the output.

The original architect of the RNZAF, the Hon Ralph Cochrane, put it a slightly different way in 1936. He made the point that a New Zealand Air Force would provide the best value for money to the country by doing the most it could with the small number of aircraft it would be able to afford—support land, sea, and government, and provide utility and flexibility everywhere.

Cochrane wrote this as New Zealand was emerging from the Great Depression. Value for money was vital. Today, it is still vital. But just getting value for money from our aircraft is not enough. They aren’t the only things that cost money. Our built-in ethos keeps us looking for value (utility, flexibility) everywhere, so it should be no surprise that we have a bag full of initiatives we’re looking at throughout the Air Force that we’re keen to explore. Not all of them will fly, but we need to keep looking and trialling. How do we get better use from our bases, buildings and equipment? And where can we improve how we do things?

This is where I get to plug the RNZAF’s OSM—the Office of Strategy Management. We’re a small team, but it’s our job to pull together all of these initiatives—these ideas, these plans—within a single coherent strategy, stick it in a Strategic Plan and coordinate the Air Force’s big picture. That includes the RNZAF Innovation Scheme—the OSM is Innovation Central. The two fit well together because it’s strategy that gives innovation a purpose and a direction, which brings us back to constant improvement.

Strategic Plans, big pictures, and value for money all depend on one crucial factor—ideas. Nothing happens without ideas. The government’s idea for aerial top dressing first came from a farmer in Hunterville, at a time when dropping anything at all from an aircraft was illegal. The Air Force trialled it. It went global.

So, what’s your idea?

Image Gallery - Issue 112