As a continuous improvement advocate, I am always searching for new ways to improve how we do business. One of my key initiatives for this fiscal year is to improve our organization's communication with our internal and external stakeholders.

As part of these efforts to better communicate with our workforce, Warfighters, and the taxpayers who fund the incredible work we do for our Soldiers, I decided that it was time to initiate a monthly blog. In this space I will be discussing new initiatives, exciting accomplishments, answering your questions, and addressing other topics that I feel are important to our stakeholders.

I want this to be a collaborative forum. Effective communication is built on the foundation of two-way communication; a process that is both proactive and reactive to stakeholder communication needs. If you have an idea or topic that you'd like me to write about, please let me know. And if you have comments or questions about the topics covered, please use this forum to voice them.

For my introductory blog, I wanted to take a moment and discuss our revised mission and vision statements.

MISSION: Execute lifecycle management of the world's best ground combat systems in a continuous learning environment by developing, acquiring and supporting modernized and affordable systems with common integrated capabilities, always focused on the needs of the Joint Warfighter.

VISION: A highly collaborative organization of Acquisition professionals, working with critical partners to deliver the most adaptable, affordable and integrated ground combat formations and systems to the Joint Warfighter.

The underlined and italics indicate the new or adjusted sections. While the changes are subtle they are extremely important to us as an organization.

So, what does the mission and vision really mean to you and our organization?

PEO GCS prides itself on being a highly collaborative organization, but we have more work we can do. I feel that we do very well at working cross-functionally within individual PMs, but not a day goes by where I don't see one of our PMs doing something remarkable that could be applied by another PM. We have organized some professional development sessions, as well as some Red Team reviews to facilitate cross-PM knowledge sharing, but I would encourage each of you to reach out to your counterparts in other PMs to pick their brains for good ideas.

As a PEO, we have reached out to share some of our analysis tools with other PEOs. We have also begun strategic cross-PEO summits to ensure that equipment slated for integration in our vehicles is not only synchronized in time, but is compliant with our required vehicle interfaces and environments. Our team is comprised of trained and seasoned individuals whose acquisition knowledge, competency, and experience ensure comprehensive total lifecycle management of the Army's ground combat systems. We must emphasize our integration requirements with other subsystem PMs, but we also must begin to migrate toward a common set of combat vehicle integration standards, much like we see in commercial devices, to allow other PMs to acquire their systems with integration in mind at the outset.

As we move forward in this fiscally constrained environment and as the Army's defense strategy evolves, it is extremely important that as an organization, we know exactly who we are and what we do. There is no room for ambiguity.

I really appreciate you taking the time to read my first attempt in the blogging sphere. Be sure to keep your eyes open around the first of each month for new postings on our external website: http://www.peogcs.army.mil/. The blog will also be linked to our Facebook page, the PEO GCS Portal, and MilWire for our military community.

For those who haven't heard of PEO GCS or are unsure of exactly what our portfolio entails I invite you to visit our website: http://www.peogcs.army.mil/ as well as follow us on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/peogcs) and Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/peogcs). These are the best resources for learning everything there is to know about PEO GCS and what we do.


Regards,

Scott Davis
Program Executive Officer
Ground Combat Systems

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