Surely the answer is, in these financially chastened times, to have one, tri-service college delivering a 6 months core IOT, with a 3 month service specific add on?

STANDTO,

I think that's been tried before. I seem to remember that the RN said "that's fine by us, but it needs to be by the coast some we can do some boat type stuff", and the RAF said "that's fine by us, but it needs to have a 6,000ft runway", I'm not sure what the Army said, probably something along the lines of being able to fire guns....

However, this is all from memory, rumour, as usual someone out there will correct me shortly!!

Tri-Service IOT??
I think the Services have too many differences in the qualities required from their junior officers for this to work.

Nevermind a Naval Officer's comment to me that
"The Air Force doesn't have traditions, it has habits - and bad ones at that!".

I think he had a point.

The academic element of IOT was brilliant, especially the office simulator. I haven't met an MBA who knows the faintest about filing, and without exception (in my experience) they are hated by their admin assistants as a result. Add 4 months as an OC GD, 4 months Ops Officer and 4 months as an ADC (my experience) and you have an excellent idea about how admin should work.

Quite possibly. I went through IOT on the back of completing a post-grad Masters, only to get to Sleaford Tech to find they were pushing some sort of knock-off qualification in Leadership Studies sponsored by Exeter. It was apparently based on accreditation of prior learning, but having put a year's solid graft in, I was less than impressed to hear that a Masters was on offer for 6 months traipsing round the North Airfield with a pine-pole and a couple of extra essays. If you didn't want to do the essays, you could fork out £80 for a certificate, which to my mind was blatant profiteering - how much for a piece of decent paper, the ink to print them and the envelope and stamp? Coupled with the hard sell from the DIOT staff at the time, it made me even more wary in my thinking that there was some dodgy deal going on. For some reason, I'm having a sense of deja vue now.

Well I am sure Steliios, Willy, Michael and Richard will be very impressed with those bits of paper when the time comes........................................

Your'e not geting with the program guys; here's the answer:

At the end of the day, the bottom line is that we need a level playing field where the goalposts don’t move, to enable us think outside the box in a blue sky way while running it up the flagpole to see who salutes, having woken up to smell the coffee. So you can see that the key to imagineering is based on optioneering the overarching interoperability requirements to provide a synergistic approach, thus avoiding a paradigm shift, resulting in a plus for all stakeholders; and that’s how to bring a lot of value to the table going forward…:cool:

Mister B

Excellent, Mr B.

Portsmouth University have been training MoD staff for many years. But not very well.

Last time I was there, in 1996, they produced a Lt Col to give a one hour talk on "practical project management".

He lasted 2 minutes. Turned out his only experience was "managing" a £250k project (in his current post), for which he was given an entire project team. There were people there who managed Cat A (£400M+) programmes on their own. After years of doing such training, PU regarded him as an expert, which tells you what they knew about MoD.

Mr B,

Did you socialise your words before posting?

;)

P.S. Loved the coherency of your holistic approach to reach the desired effect!!

Thanks PA

It feels good te be a valued member of a team; and remember, "there is no 'I' in team".

To answer your question:

Not really, it was more a value-added proposition to maximize customer satisfaction and coming up with a win-win situation where we under-promise and over-deliver.:p


Mister B

I prefer to move the hymnsheets so we can all sing from the same goalposts

No, but there is a 'ME'.

And as for your "value-added proposition to maximize customer satisfaction", I challenge you Sir, to cease and desist trying to add value and instead concentrate on getting the basics right first! ;)

Melchie old bean

There is a tame mate in team:ok:

Good of you to touch base to keep the deliverables focussed on the outcome in order to leverage resources; but you’re right, we need to reboot and tear down the silos, contemporise the portfolio and rediscover the core competencies.

Must try harder, especially as I forgot about that damn Hymn sheet:{.


Mister B

But how much granularity do we have on all this? ;)

Just need to mention rustication, in the round and outputs and I think that's a full house.

For anyone who left the RAF before 2000, you may think some of the above comments are off the wall. Sadly, bullsh1t bingo is the reality of the day and it seems a pre requisite for promotion.

:*

PA

Don't forget across the piece, these phrases are use widely by commercial and public bodies as well the military; my previous employer was particularly fond of adding such meaningless technical jargon to various "toolkits/toolboxes".

Mister B

In the case of Stafford, the offering of accreditation for military courses can be attributed to an ex-RAF Training Officer who went to work for the university and set up the links. It is a thinly-veiled money-making exercise, with the ex Trg Off and hence the uni knowing full well that there are pots of SLC and ELC cash out there to be garnered with promises of MBAs, MAs etc, and lots of service personnel keen to get something concrete to show for their experience.

What no-one ever seems to mention when these schemes are plugged at Shrivenham, Cranwell etc is that the qualifications are worth sh*t. It's all about the letters, though, for many - especially since in the last 15 years or so the RAF has seemingly preferred non-graduate officer entrants, seeing how they give more years of enthusiastic productive service before getting distracted by wives, kids etc. Some of this lesser-educated crowd find their way to Sqn Ldr or Wg Cdr rank (somehow :E) and then develop an unseemly post-nominal envy, figuring that they need a degree to compete with their graduate rivals for upper-echelon places. Then they rush to get an MBA, MA, or even more uselessly an MDA, whilst those with proper degrees look on bemused as to how JOCC could possibly count towards anything!

Exceptions to this include the ACSC MA, which is a fair reward for a very intensive course (importantly, from a decent university in KCL), and the various Fellowship schemes, which are actually proper academic courses at proper universities. Stafford, Portsmouth, Cranfield etc - I wouldn't touch with a bargepole.

For pithy comebacks, you can always point out that whilst the above might be true there is a U in C*nt.

Post Nominal Letters


(posted by a man with more letters after his name than in his name. Sorry, not my fault. An old boss insisted my joining as many Institutes as possible was a good idea.)

EasyStreet,

It is re-assuring to know that I'm not on my own in thinking that academic excellence and elitism isn't necessarily a bad thing.

I had that very thought myself. I had a look at the Stafford MBA having had it rammed down our throat at ICSC and frankly was horrified by the scheme they were peddling. If I were an employer looking to take some one on with an MBA, I would expect them to have concrete experience backed up with a reputable qualification.

Frankly, my operational experience well qualifies me in hostile takeovers, but not an awful lot else. But when I looked at just how many modules I could skip through my prior experience, I actually thought I would be getting a MBA under false pretences. I had took do some research to find out what some of the modules were actually about, let alone be able to put what they teach in to practice without having done them. Surely that can't be right? I can see the day coming when someone gains a job on the back of one of these qualifications, gets found to be lacking very quickly and the employer takes serious umbrage.

As you rightly say, a thinly disguised money-making exercise pandering to those who see only a bottom line and target people who joined up straight from school.