Taking bets - When Will NHQ Make Pipelining Mandatory?

Started by Майор Хаткевич, February 19, 2015, 06:05:11 PM

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Capt Thompson

Quote from: Tim Day on February 20, 2015, 01:20:03 PM
We divide the Great Start curriculum into about 8 weeks, assign instructors, and run it in a continuous loop. If a cadet doesn't earn Curry within 8 weeks, they just roll into the next loop. It's a good, grade-appropriate training experience for our pre-Earhart cadet officers. If I had a small unit with no Earhart cadets, I would prefer to have a Great Start Flight Commander over having a Cadet Commander.

That's a good way to handle the trickle in cadets until the unit can fully implement a pipelining plan.
Capt Matt Thompson
Deputy Commander for Cadets, Historian, Public Affairs Officer

Mitchell - 31 OCT 98 (#44670) Earhart - 1 OCT 00 (#11401)

Storm Chaser


Quote from: S/M Thompson on February 20, 2015, 05:46:41 AM
Quote from: MIKE on February 20, 2015, 04:55:30 AM
You can't have prospective cadets hanging around for months in some kind of "trial program non-member limbo."

True, just trying to come up with a compromise before it gets presented at a meeting. Do you normally have cadets participate in their first 3 weeks, or sit and watch? If so, do you have them sit and watch for 3, give them the paperwork, then have them report on a certain day to their great start flight? That's kind of what I was getting at....either way they are a member when they actually start their training.

The current regulation doesn't allow for cadets to participate in meetings without joining beyond 30 days.

Quote from: CAPR 39-2, Para. 2-2hProspective cadets may not explore CAP without joining for longer than 30 days.

Any prospective cadet can participate, within the limitations set in CAPR 39-2, in cadet activities during their 3 visits trial period. If you plan to do pipelining, having prospective cadets sit around for a month just observing is not the way to go.

Pipelining has its advantages, but as many have pointed out, it's not without its challenges. Most small units don't have the necessary manpower to pull it off. And if your unit is small, you really can't afford to turn prospective members away.

Tim Day

Quote from: S/M Thompson on February 20, 2015, 01:22:57 PM
Quote from: Tim Day on February 20, 2015, 01:20:03 PM
We divide the Great Start curriculum into about 8 weeks, assign instructors, and run it in a continuous loop. If a cadet doesn't earn Curry within 8 weeks, they just roll into the next loop. It's a good, grade-appropriate training experience for our pre-Earhart cadet officers. If I had a small unit with no Earhart cadets, I would prefer to have a Great Start Flight Commander over having a Cadet Commander.

That's a good way to handle the trickle in cadets until the unit can fully implement a pipelining plan.

We're at 80+ cadets, with regular attendance over 70%. Two years ago, prior to implementing this system, we were hanging out at 50 cadets, with a well-under 50% attendance rate. We have no plans to implement a pipelining system where we tell prospective cadets to wait 3 months to join.
Tim Day
Lt Col CAP
Prince William Composite Squadron Commander

Capt Thompson

Quote from: Storm Chaser on February 20, 2015, 02:46:25 PM

Quote from: S/M Thompson on February 20, 2015, 05:46:41 AM
Quote from: MIKE on February 20, 2015, 04:55:30 AM
You can't have prospective cadets hanging around for months in some kind of "trial program non-member limbo."

True, just trying to come up with a compromise before it gets presented at a meeting. Do you normally have cadets participate in their first 3 weeks, or sit and watch? If so, do you have them sit and watch for 3, give them the paperwork, then have them report on a certain day to their great start flight? That's kind of what I was getting at....either way they are a member when they actually start their training.



The current regulation doesn't allow for cadets to participate in meetings without joining beyond 30 days.

Quote from: CAPR 39-2, Para. 2-2hProspective cadets may not explore CAP without joining for longer than 30 days.

Any prospective cadet can participate, within the limitations set in CAPR 39-2, in cadet activities during their 3 visits trial period. If you plan to do pipelining, having prospective cadets sit around for a month just observing is not the way to go.

Pipelining has its advantages, but as many have pointed out, it's not without its challenges. Most small units don't have the necessary manpower to pull it off. And if your unit is small, you really can't afford to turn prospective members away.

Thanks for the input. At this point nothing has been discussed at the Squadron, other than that we need to implement the GS program. Our new R&R officer was trying to come up with a 2 year recruiting plan to present at an upcoming meeting, and was trying to get input and come up with a few different possible scenarios to present.

His 2 year draft was quite impressive, but required very tight scheduling for CP, as well as ES training, both internal and external AE, as well as with our PAO and Historian efforts. With a plan involving such tight scheduling, a pipelining plan would work out best, but I agree about not turning away prospects. I think the idea of an 8 week rotation might work best in this instance.
Capt Matt Thompson
Deputy Commander for Cadets, Historian, Public Affairs Officer

Mitchell - 31 OCT 98 (#44670) Earhart - 1 OCT 00 (#11401)

Storm Chaser

Every unit should have a long term recruiting plan, which should be developed in coordination with all affected staff functions. Your Recruiting Officer is on the right track.

NIN

Quote from: NIN on February 20, 2015, 11:33:00 AM
Frankly,  the largest barrier to implementing pipelining is personnel. And I don't mean number of personnel, or even qualifications. I mean the attitude of your personnel.

If implementing pipelining is such an obstacle and is met with resistance ("Why do we have to do this?" or "We don't have enough people to do this!") it will likely not gain traction over the traditional way of doing things and will fail quickly.  You will literally have people who cannot "get with the program," and part of running a unit with a solid pipelining method is that everybody understands the method and the situation, and even if they don't agree with it, will at least support it.   It takes 12 months to do pipelining correctly and get it integrated into the unit. 

<snip>

A major paradigm shift (moving from a trickle-in model to a pipeline model qualifies) takes a lot of buy in and agreement from everybody, and you have to really go for it when you do it. You can't just do one tiny aspect of it and then give up immediately when you don't see the result or benefit.

I am not a big fan of quoting myself, but I will here to expand on a theme.

Let me reiterate: embracing pipeline recruiting methods is a HUGE paradigm shift for units. HUGE. 

Civil Air Patrol has essentially been doing trickle-in recruiting since.. well, probably "forever" (yes, someone said "CAP did pipelining in the 1940s!" but "forever" in this context, for  everybody who is currently a member, means pretty much "since you joined CAP." For the majority of our membership that means "not very long, really.")  So pretty much 99.5% of the membership in CAP has never had exposure to pipelining.

By way of some back story: My unit was doing trickle-in when I took over in November of 1999.  12 cadets active, 3 seniors.  (more on the books, but that was who was showing up).  Immediately we took to building a solid, repeatable schedule and recruiting people. 

We continued to trickle-in thru the end of 1999 and all thru 2000 with some "open house" recruiting events.  I had done these at my unit in MI Wing back in the late 1990s and they worked great.   So we started doing "dog & pony" shows as a way to increase interest and get a little awareness going.

I think we had an open house in August that netted us a new cadet.  Then we had a couple more join in September, a couple in October and a couple in November.  We had a cadet officer and a cadet NCO doing introductory training, and they were having a heck of a time keeping track of these cadets at all different levels of training.  We were still pretty light on leadership bodies, so things were falling thru the cracks.  My DCC wasn't exactly Johnny on the Spot about this.

I realized we had a problem when along about the middle of December, I'm promoting 1 or 2 of the cadets who had come in during October or November and had already taken and passed their Curry tests, and the cadet from August comes to me in tears because he's "still in basic training," for some reason hasn't taken his Curry or been promoted (see the aforementioned "falling thru the cracks"), and cadets who came in after him were all getting promoted.

We were having a difficult time with these cadets all being "at a different point" in their training versus one another depending on when they'd joined, how many meetings they'd been to, how they grasped the material, how much attention the NCO or cadet officers were paying to them, etc.  Some were a little older, didn't need spoon feeding, grasped the material quickly and took their Curry 4-5 weeks after their join date. Others were not so adept, but really, we should have caught that sooner.

We had a unit open house scheduled for the end of January, which was only about a month away. I told my DCC "Look, anybody comes in now, lets just give them the nickel tour and send them on their way with a flyer for the open house."

"But, but... you can't do that!" he said.

"What do you mean? Its a month out.  I'm just saying we don't need anybody else joining right now.  If they come in, we say 'Hey, thanks for visiting, here's what we do, etc, etc, and oh, hey, by the way we're having a big recruiting thing in three weeks, come join us then for punch & cookies and the Powerpoint Presentation From Hell and you can join then!"

"yeah, but what if they don't come back!?"

"If they don't come back in three weeks, do you really think they were that interested in joining CAP?"

"yeah, but.. but.. you know, we can't exactly afford to turn people away!"

"I'm not turning people away, I'm telling them to come visit us in three weeks when we start training new people again, or something."

"This is going to fail miserably!" he predicted.

I don't precisely remember how many cadets we recruited out of that one open house, but we got 8 or 10, I seem to think.

But then we discovered that since we didn't really "pipeline" yet, we were still getting cadets "trickling in" for weeks afterwards.  So yeah, we got 8 or 10 new cadets, but over a period of a month or more. Which meant that nearly every week the personnel officer was doing new member applications, the membership board was meeting with new people, the commander (me!) was having to process these CAPF 15s, and the BCT cadets were having to do their "introductory training" several times over the course of 4 or 5 weeks.  So, really, we didn't fix our previous problem of having multiple cadets on different training levels, because again they'd all joined at different times and none had really all been there the same amount of time.

Right back to square one on that part.   Whoops.

We spent the next year or so refining the process and didn't actually land on our whole current pipelining process (Open House -> Inprocessing Night -> cohort-based BCT) until 2001 or so.

Darin Ninness, Col, CAP
I have no responsibilities whatsoever
I like to have Difficult Adult Conversations™
The contents of this post are Copyright © 2007-2024 by NIN. All rights are reserved. Specific permission is given to quote this post here on CAP-Talk only.

NIN

Quote from: Tim Day on February 20, 2015, 01:20:03 PM
We divide the Great Start curriculum into about 8 weeks, assign instructors, and run it in a continuous loop. If a cadet doesn't earn Curry within 8 weeks, they just roll into the next loop. It's a good, grade-appropriate training experience for our pre-Earhart cadet officers. If I had a small unit with no Earhart cadets, I would prefer to have a Great Start Flight Commander over having a Cadet Commander.

I really want to get my people to embrace Great Start, but thats a paradigm shift I'm not easy (like I mentioned in my prior post). Even I'm not 100% sold on Great Start, but I'd love to see how you do this program, cuz I think it might be a good "hybrid" between our 8-10 week BCT cycle and Great Start. :)
Darin Ninness, Col, CAP
I have no responsibilities whatsoever
I like to have Difficult Adult Conversations™
The contents of this post are Copyright © 2007-2024 by NIN. All rights are reserved. Specific permission is given to quote this post here on CAP-Talk only.

Майор Хаткевич

Quote from: NIN on February 20, 2015, 08:47:11 PM
Quote from: Tim Day on February 20, 2015, 01:20:03 PM
We divide the Great Start curriculum into about 8 weeks, assign instructors, and run it in a continuous loop. If a cadet doesn't earn Curry within 8 weeks, they just roll into the next loop. It's a good, grade-appropriate training experience for our pre-Earhart cadet officers. If I had a small unit with no Earhart cadets, I would prefer to have a Great Start Flight Commander over having a Cadet Commander.

I really want to get my people to embrace Great Start, but thats a paradigm shift I'm not easy (like I mentioned in my prior post). Even I'm not 100% sold on Great Start, but I'd love to see how you do this program, cuz I think it might be a good "hybrid" between our 8-10 week BCT cycle and Great Start. :)


Sold or not, it's a requirement for Senior rating in CP. :)

NIN

Quote from: Capt Hatkevich on February 20, 2015, 09:01:56 PM
Sold or not, it's a requirement for Senior rating in CP. :)

Son, I got my master rating in CP before you were born

</get off my lawn>

BTW, having tried the Group BCT thing circa 1990, I will tell you that you're going to experience problems.

;)

Darin Ninness, Col, CAP
I have no responsibilities whatsoever
I like to have Difficult Adult Conversations™
The contents of this post are Copyright © 2007-2024 by NIN. All rights are reserved. Specific permission is given to quote this post here on CAP-Talk only.

Майор Хаткевич

Quote from: NIN on February 20, 2015, 09:08:03 PM
Quote from: Capt Hatkevich on February 20, 2015, 09:01:56 PM
Sold or not, it's a requirement for Senior rating in CP. :)

Son, I got my master rating in CP before you were born

</get off my lawn>

BTW, having tried the Group BCT thing circa 1990, I will tell you that you're going to experience problems.

;)


Yea, I'm sure (you're THAT old? Sheesh  >:D ). But the current reality is that you need GS for Senior.


As to the Group pipeline, I'm sure we will, if we get to that stage.

Tim Day

Quote from: NIN on February 20, 2015, 08:47:11 PM
Quote from: Tim Day on February 20, 2015, 01:20:03 PM
We divide the Great Start curriculum into about 8 weeks, assign instructors, and run it in a continuous loop. If a cadet doesn't earn Curry within 8 weeks, they just roll into the next loop. It's a good, grade-appropriate training experience for our pre-Earhart cadet officers. If I had a small unit with no Earhart cadets, I would prefer to have a Great Start Flight Commander over having a Cadet Commander.

I really want to get my people to embrace Great Start, but thats a paradigm shift I'm not easy (like I mentioned in my prior post). Even I'm not 100% sold on Great Start, but I'd love to see how you do this program, cuz I think it might be a good "hybrid" between our 8-10 week BCT cycle and Great Start. :)

We just assign all new cadets to a "Great Start" Flight. The flight commander and flight sergeant are responsible for conducting the training (or arranging for instructors) in the Great Start pamphlet, as well as mentoring the new cadets and ensuring requirements get properly recorded. We've actually assigned a couple of additional NCOs as element leaders who are considered part of Great Start cadre.

It doesn't hurt to measure the "dwell" time of new cadets from first visit to Curry award.

I can see pipelining working well for some units and not so well for others. This hybrid model works for us.
Tim Day
Lt Col CAP
Prince William Composite Squadron Commander

Майор Хаткевич

Quote from: Tim Day on February 23, 2015, 08:39:54 PM
Quote from: NIN on February 20, 2015, 08:47:11 PM
Quote from: Tim Day on February 20, 2015, 01:20:03 PM
We divide the Great Start curriculum into about 8 weeks, assign instructors, and run it in a continuous loop. If a cadet doesn't earn Curry within 8 weeks, they just roll into the next loop. It's a good, grade-appropriate training experience for our pre-Earhart cadet officers. If I had a small unit with no Earhart cadets, I would prefer to have a Great Start Flight Commander over having a Cadet Commander.

I really want to get my people to embrace Great Start, but thats a paradigm shift I'm not easy (like I mentioned in my prior post). Even I'm not 100% sold on Great Start, but I'd love to see how you do this program, cuz I think it might be a good "hybrid" between our 8-10 week BCT cycle and Great Start. :)

We just assign all new cadets to a "Great Start" Flight. The flight commander and flight sergeant are responsible for conducting the training (or arranging for instructors) in the Great Start pamphlet, as well as mentoring the new cadets and ensuring requirements get properly recorded. We've actually assigned a couple of additional NCOs as element leaders who are considered part of Great Start cadre.

It doesn't hurt to measure the "dwell" time of new cadets from first visit to Curry award.

I can see pipelining working well for some units and not so well for others. This hybrid model works for us.


The "Dwell" time is minimal. NHQ wants cadets in an airplane and a C/Amn within 2 months.