What is a situation where saving just a small amount resulted in saving the mission, or some other activity or effort?

2022-09-17T23:30:33-04:00

In ROTC (and, I suspect, in the Acadamy and OTS) officer candidates are trained to "pay attention to the small details." We are taught that even small savings can be important, so we are encouraged to pursue even small savings (cost, effort, time, etc.). Many question this; "Only one percent? Why bother?" Do you have stories where this made a difference?

Response by Sgt Private RallyPoint Member made Sep 18 at 2022 12:21 AM

2022-09-18T00:21:18-04:00

Lt Col Timothy Cassidy-Curtis During my civilian career, I would hold brown bag lunches on money management. I would help participants with topics that included budgeting, saving, living beneath their means, investing, etc. I would show how saving enough to receive company matching would make a huge difference. Above all, I strived to show attendees that managing money was not difficult and the rewards were worth the effort.

Response by CSM Darieus ZaGara made Sep 18 at 2022 6:59 AM

2022-09-18T06:59:48-04:00

Not sure I am deciphering the question correctly but here goes. Attention to detail is effective in every aspect of the military. The easiest example for me is training and combat. We train gard and repetitively. NCOs and Officers ensure that we stope events to AAR ensuring that when the scenario is run again that it is done correctly, this goes on until combat. At this point the repetitive training coupled with Attention to Detail allows the organization to operate efficiently and safely with little oversight.

Response by COL Randall C. made Sep 18 at 2022 8:08 AM

2022-09-18T08:08:38-04:00

Lt Col Timothy Cassidy-Curtis, one of the easiest example of "a small change making a huge difference over time" would be looking at a financial investment. Assuming just a 2% rate of return, putting in only $50 a month will get you about $25,000 over 30 years.

Lesson to leaders? Small things add up.

In aviation, just a small discrepancy will make a large difference over time/distance. An example is a charter plane back in 1979 that was heading from New Zealand to Antarctica for a sightseeing tour. There was only a 2 degree error in the navigation but it ended up placing the aircraft over 28 miles away from where it was supposed to be. Tragically the flight crashed into Mount Erebus killing all aboard.

Lesson to leaders? A small change makes a huge difference over time.

In 1986 the space shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after taking off, killing all aboard. The cause was an O-ring that sealed one of the rocket boosters. It failed due to low temperature, but the estimates were that it only had a .001% chance of happening. Hindsight being 20/20, when they results were poured over again and again, it was actually determined that the chance of failure was much higher.

Lesson to leaders? While it might only seem small to you, the change may actually be much more significant than you realize.

Just three examples. There are many, many more you could probably come up with just by looking back at a situation with a view of "if I were able to change only one tiny thing that would affect the outcome, what could I do?".

Response by SGM Private RallyPoint Member made Sep 18 at 2022 9:40 AM

2022-09-18T09:40:23-04:00

At the tactical level, attention to the small details will save lives.
The ambush of the 507th Maintenance Company in 2003 has become a schoolhouse narrative for that.
Attention to details like the primary route, reading a map, using commo and GPS would have prevented the break in contact and erroneous turns that got them into the ambush, and attention to simple weapons maintenance would have prevented their rifles from jamming at the start of the firefight. Those 5 small details would have saved 11 lives and prevented the capture of 6 more.

At the operational level, here's two examples.
Rental cars for schools, at least in the reserve compos but the budget concept is similar to active: Every time you send a Soldier to school, and pay for a rental car that wasn't needed (billeting, dining and classroom all in walking distance), what's the big deal? A rental car is convenient, and it's just $300-$3000 per school?
Each one eats up the cost of flights for sending 1-5 more Soldiers to schools. Extrapolate that for just one large state Guard, that could mean the difference of a few hundred more schools per year, across just the Army Guard, a few thousand schools, because someone didn't want to walk a half-mile.
Training ammo, again, this is a reserve compo example, but active is similar.
Every time your forecast and request ammo for training, that ammo is shipped to the ASP you need it at. That cost of shipping is routinely more than the actual cost of procurement. If you cancel that training, that ammo often has to be shipped again to another ASP where it will get used. Which means we have now spent 2-4 times the original cost of procurement on that ammo, due to inability to plan and manage training.

At the strategic level, across the DoD, the "why bother" mindset is how we waste as much as $125 billion of our budget every year. And that waste every year further delays procurement of needed equipment and delays or cancels needed training.