Military Review English Edition July-August 2016 | Page 17

LEADING AND MANAGING

as the affected members of Congress, to get to “yes.”
Despite these difficulties, MEDCOM persevered,
and today, because of its efforts, the command is well
on the road to a complete reorganization with all its
expected benefits.19

In contrast, because Army investments do not
produce bottom-line profits, and with so many of the
intended benefits intangibles that cannot be calculated in dollar and cents, determining specific cost effectiveness is a more challenging endeavor. If, like private

(Photo by Kristen Schabert, U.S. Army)

The Bavaria Health Command holds an activation ceremony 25 September 2015 in Vilseck, Germany. The activation was an element
of the larger U.S. Army Medical Command (MEDCOM) reorganization to achieve a balanced, agile, and integrated organization better
aligned to enhance health readiness for the Army Force 2025 and beyond.

Track costs and make resource- and risk-informed decisions. Army organizations usually track
their expenditures closely so they do not overspend
but are typically challenged in tracking the full-burdened costs of their activities or processes, especially
when they span multiple commands. A focus on execution concentrates on what is left in the checkbook,
while a focus on cost can help measure and understand
the outcomes or results obtained for the money spent.
Because businesses closely track their costs, they
operate with somewhat of an advantage because they
can easily assess whether a given expense or investment
makes sense based on their base-line profit margin.
One example of this is Apple’s choice whether to build
an iPhone case out of either plastic or aluminum, which
in part was based on extensive cost-benefit analysis.
MILITARY REVIEW  July-August 2016

business, Army organizations similarly knew the fully
burdened cost of many of our internal processes, like
maintenance contracts, leave form processing, or IT
expenses, it is likely changes or different decisions
would be made.
Encouragingly, to address capturing such costs to
increase managerial efficiency and cut down on needless expenditures, many areas of the Army have begun
to appreciate the need for better tracking of costs.
Headlining this push is the Army’s effort to
more accurately capture the cost of training. During
the period of sequestration in 2013, Army leaders
realized the models for training costs (e.g., collective
training events such as a company live fire) were
imprecise, and that underlying estimates did not
represent actual costs. Since then, Army leaders have
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