Jr Lieutenant Colonel Usaf Dav Bird

Quality Air Force in an Emergency: Leadership Principles and Concepts for Emergency Response Forces: Maxwell Paper No. 2 Jr Lieutenant Colonel Usaf Dav Bird

Publisher Marketing: The Air Force has challenged leaders to integrate and use quality principles as a way to improve operations throughout the service. In this study Lt Col David F. Bird, USAF, reminds us that these quality principles apply to emergency response forces----both before and during a crisis. He proposes that senior leaders view quality concepts and principles as a way of creating an environment to spark the highest performance by their subordinates and not as giving up authority or control. At wing level, the disaster control group forms in response to a crisis incident ranging from an aircraft accident to natural disasters. Quality concepts and tools apply to this emergency response organization's plans, priorities, and the way it inter acts with the many different agencies involved in a major complex crisis. Therefore, Bird expounds, senior leaders or potential on-scene commanders should see quality as a strategic, integrated system with a leadership style that involves everyone in the organization in controlling and continuously improving ways to stabilize the incident. Colonel Bird believes that quality concepts such as organizational vision, strategic planning, management by fact, customer focus, and continuous improvement can turn an emergency response force into a world-class organization. The USAF has recognized the benefits of quality management principles and has incorporated them into restructuring the service. The new objective wing embodies sound quality concepts and should permeate all functional areas in the Air Force. Hence, Bird concludes, there is a need for a new type of emergency response force that strengthens the chain of command, decentralizes power, consolidates resources under a single commander, streamlines the structure, and clarifies functional responsibilities between squadrons. He describes such an emergency response force structure within the chapters of this study. Contributor Bio:  Air University Press Walter Gary Sharp Sr. serves as a senior associate deputy general counsel for intelligence at the US Department of Defense, where he advises on legal issues related to intelligence, covert action, intelligence and counterintelligence policy, intelligence oversight, information security, information sharing, security classification policy, information operations, and computer network operations. Prior to his appointment, Dr. Sharp served as an associate deputy general counsel for international affairs at the Department of Defense; the director of legal research for international, comparative, and foreign law at the Law Library of Congress; the director of global and functional affairs within the Bureau of Legislative Affairs at the State Department; and a principal information security engineer at The MITRE Corporation. A veteran with 25 years of service, Dr. Sharp retired as a decorated US Marine Corps lieutenant colonel with prior enlisted service. His military assignments include commanding officer of a field artillery battery, senior prosecutor, deputy legal counsel to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and international law adviser for the commanding general of the Unified Task Force in Somalia during Operation Restore Hope. Dr. Sharp's military decorations include the Defense Superior Service Medal, and his many awards for writing excellence and academic achievement include the Judge Advocate General's School Alumni Association Annual Professional Writing Award and an American Bar Association Award for Professional Merit. Dr. Sharp is the author of numerous articles and three books: UN Peace Operations (1995), CyberSpace and the Use of Force (1999), and Jus Paciarii (1999). He serves as an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center where he currently teaches a counterterrorism course, The Law of 24. He has also taught graduate-level seminars on United Nations peace operations and international peace and security. He lectures internationally in universities and other diverse public forums on wide-ranging topics of international law and national security law, such as international peace and security, conflict management, and peacekeeping operations.