Chief Master Sgt. Todd Simmons, Air University Command Chief, talks about organizational culture and how the actions modeled by leaders will reflect throughout the ranks.
Transcript
So, when I think about organizational culture I think about, how do we educate leaders? How do we educate leaders to define organizational culture in a way that you not only count mission accomplishment? That mission accomplishment is everyone showing up healthy. That mission accomplishment is onboarding the airmen that the Air Force gives you, and if they decide to serve four or six years, first term, or wherever, off boarding them as healthy as they can be. That’s the way I look at the way I deal people, saying I have, at this point, an 18-year-old and a 22-year-old, both who are military age. And I can only imagine, if I give you my daughter, because she wants to serve, and I say, here you go, here’s this vibrant young woman who I’m giving to you to go serve her country. As a parent, the expectation probably is that, hopefully, when you give her back to me, that she’s better, she’s happy, she’s vibrant, and that she’s taken care of. Yes, the business that we are in is sometimes ugly. Yes, we have to go fight for our country. Yes, those things happen. Yes, we have veterans suffering from wartime wounds. Those things absolutely are understandable. But no one should walk through the door of one of our squadrons, no one should ever walk into their dormitory, no one should ever walk or drive through the gates of a military institution, and become broken. At the end of the day, for me, it’s about taking care of the person. It’s not to say you need to go around, you’ve got a 250-person squadron, that you got to stand at the door like you in Elementary School and greet everybody, and go, how are you doing? That’s not what we’re saying. What we’re saying is that you have to be cognizant of the people that you lead. You have to model the behavior that you want others to follow. So, the behavior that you model, at all levels, no matter if you’re the janitor, don’t matter if you’re here to be the three-star General, the behavior that you model, will be the behavior of the organization. And that’s culture. ♪ Like a diamond in the rain ♪ ♪ Stay ♪