CAWG CC 'Departing' ?

[Grumpy]

A friend of mine, who was the Base Comdr at George AFB before he retired from active duty, was a Group/CC in CAWG and resigned because he couldn't take the politics here.

He flew a fast plane too.   

[lordmonar]

I'll point out another aspect of having AD officers in command......they may not be best suited for leading a volunteer force.

An AD officer is used to having authority backed by law and a network of officers and NCO's all with legal authority and years of experience.

In CAP we just don't have that.

Heck even our National Command Structure is a bloody democracy.  The US military is an autocracy.  The commander is only bound by the wishes of his superiors and the regulations and law.  Not so in CAP.  The National Commander and his staff must lead by the consent of the National Board.  At lower levels a commander must balance his actions with the possibility of a mass exodus of dissatisfied members.

An AD officer has a lot of experience leading and managing large units....but does not normally have to worry about his squadron just picking up and moving to another unit or just quiting if they don't like the way things are going.

Also...the AD commander would have to learn how to live in a very political world.  That is what needs to change to eliminate the politics in CAP.

[PHall]

I'll point out another aspect of having AD officers in command......they may not be best suited for leading a volunteer force.

An AD officer is used to having authority backed by law and a network of officers and NCO's all with legal authority and years of experience.

In CAP we just don't have that.

Heck even our National Command Structure is a bloody democracy.  The US military is an autocracy.  The commander is only bound by the wishes of his superiors and the regulations and law.  Not so in CAP.  The National Commander and his staff must lead by the consent of the National Board.  At lower levels a commander must balance his actions with the possibility of a mass exodus of dissatisfied members.

An AD officer has a lot of experience leading and managing large units....but does not normally have to worry about his squadron just picking up and moving to another unit or just quiting if they don't like the way things are going.

Also...the AD commander would have to learn how to live in a very political world.  That is what needs to change to eliminate the politics in CAP.

A National Guard officer would probably be best prepared to handle the politics since the politics does exist in the Guard.
Most State's National Guards tend to be closed communities, much like CAP is. And closed communities tend to have politics.
It's the small town syndrone.
It's just that in the Guard the breaking the rules, and getting caught, carries a much bigger penalty then it does in CAP.

[ZigZag911]

Has anyone noticed that it is the large to mid size wings (CA, PA, NY among the large ones....I'll only mention my own, NJ, among the mediums) that seem to suffer most from internal CAP politics?

Could it be as much a 'span of control' problem as anything else?  Perhaps coupled with lack of unit cohesion?

It's hard controlling or even guiding multiple subordinate commanders.

It is also difficult o get people, who have little else in common, to feel a sense of loyalty to an institution that is too big.

Smaller wings seem to get along better.

Maybe we need to divide wings into units no larger than 500-600 members...maybe even less...for administrative command & control.
In other words, standardize the concept of smaller "wings".

Of course this won't help the National politics....though if we did this, changed NB members to state representatives, open only to former wing CCs, and chosen at the state level....and simultaneously found another way to select our national officers....might make the politicking a lot harder to try to rig, if nothing else.

[jb512]

Has anyone noticed that it is the large to mid size wings (CA, PA, NY among the large ones....I'll only mention my own, NJ, among the mediums) that seem to suffer most from internal CAP politics?

Could it be as much a 'span of control' problem as anything else?  Perhaps coupled with lack of unit cohesion?

It's hard controlling or even guiding multiple subordinate commanders.

It is also difficult o get people, who have little else in common, to feel a sense of loyalty to an institution that is too big.

Smaller wings seem to get along better.

Maybe we need to divide wings into units no larger than 500-600 members...maybe even less...for administrative command & control.
In other words, standardize the concept of smaller "wings".

Of course this won't help the National politics....though if we did this, changed NB members to state representatives, open only to former wing CCs, and chosen at the state level....and simultaneously found another way to select our national officers....might make the politicking a lot harder to try to rig, if nothing else.

We have Groups here in Texas.  That seems to help shrink things down to a managable level between the Squadron and Wing.

[Grumpy]

In California we have 7 groups, mine hase seven squadrons in it.

[SarDragon]

In California we have 7 groups, mine hase seven squadrons in it.

Grump, you're way behind the power curve - we have ten units in our group! By number - 40, 47, 56, 57, 68, 87, 144, 150, 153, 201.

[Grumpy]

Oops. 

[calguy]

The issue of span of control is what Col. Muniz identified and was trying to deal with.  As a manager of a very large Federal organization in real life, he knew CAWG could not be well run from one location in Southern California.  He added two deputy commanders in addition to his vice commander . The first thing Col. Myrick did was eliminate the two deputy commanders, fire the vice commander and replace him with one of the previous deputy commanders when he took back the Wing.  Talk about two different styles!  I think what Col. Myrick knew and Col. Muniz had not found out yet was that the vice commander was not supportive of his bosses.  This is one of the guys that torpedoed the SAREVAL to make the CC look bad.
I understand he is now not putting his name in for the CC position.

[Grumpy]

I'm being good and keeping my mouth shut.  Right Bosshawk?   

[bosshawk]

Grumpy: you are doing well.  Hang in there until we get our new Wing King(or Queen) and life in CAWG will go on: probably as before.

I wish that I had some insight into why the dramatic changes at the VC level, but I don't.  I am one of the Norcal pukes who is seldom involved in what happens at Wing, except in the CD program.  300 miles sometimes is a blessing(that is about how far I am from the Wing Hq).

[Dragoon]

I think you're dead-on about span of control.  CAP units are verryyy disbursed.  And while the internet has helped a bit, if a commander and his staff can't do regular face-to-face with subordinate leaders at all levels, things are gonna get wonky.

And when you add to that the fact that many of our subordinate leaders aren't exactly fully trained, but just were a bit slow when everyone else took a giant step backwards.....

Without a heck of a big travel budget, and oodles of "I'm retired" spare time, I doubt the staff in a wing like CA can really oversee what's going on.

Using Groups to decrease the span of control is a great idea...but finding good group commanders is hard.  Mainly because

1.  There's no real reward except a little star on a command ribbon.
2.  If you do the job poorly, you probably still keep the job.  Because there's no one ready to replace you (see #1).


I think one radical way to fix this would be to reserve CAP Lt Col for Group CCs (and a few key Wing jobs) in the same way we reserve CAP Colonel for Wing CCs.  That would increase the pool of viable candidates big time.

Wing CCs work hard to earn and keep their eagles.  I'd love to see that same kind of energy in CAP's group commanders.

[calguy]

Seems like one must be a group commander first, hard to find good seed these days to grow a wing commander.

[Eagle400]

Seems like one must be a group commander first, hard to find good seed these days to grow a wing commander.

Then what about those wings that don't have groups? 

[calguy]

Consider them lucky!

[ZigZag911]

Seems like one must be a group commander first, hard to find good seed these days to grow a wing commander.

Then what about those wings that don't have groups? 

These would generally be the smaller wings (in terms of number of members and/or squadrons)....in effect, a group, but not in name!

Of course there are a few large wings (I've heard through the grapevine, not sure which ones) that don't use groups.....I guess there are 'control' issues there rather than 'span of control' concerns!

[SARPilotNY]

I think some of the reasons not to have groups is the commander's fear of losing control.  They seem always to be the micro-manager types.  CAWG, FLWG, TXWG are so large I could not understand how a commander could effectively run their wing.  Interesting that the new CAWG CC fired all of the Wing's deputy commanders.  I wonder what the new FLWG CC will do?

[PHall]

I think some of the reasons not to have groups is the commander's fear of losing control.  They seem always to be the micro-manager types.  CAWG, FLWG, TXWG are so large I could not understand how a commander could effectively run their wing.  Interesting that the new CAWG CC fired all of the Wing's deputy commanders.  I wonder what the new FLWG CC will do?

Ah, but he didn't fire ALL of the Deputy (actually Vice) Commanders. He just went back to the old system of one Vice Commander.

CAWG has operated very nicely for years with only one Vice Commander. There really wasn't much of a reason to go with two.

[a2capt]

CAWG has operated very nicely for years with only one Vice Commander. There really wasn't much of a reason to go with two.

I could think of one, logistical reason under an assumed scenario,

A largely unpopular leader placed at the top that would like to stack the deck in their favor. Create a few more positions and give them to people.. Regardless of actual need.

I do agree however, two were not needed.

[Cecil DP]

At one point in CAP's history we also had "Sectors" in the larger wings. (FL, CA, TX, and maybe one or two more). These were commanded by LtCol's.  and each consisted of several groups. Maybe it's time to consider using them again to reestablish span of control.