Navigating Leadership & Contracting Success with Maj. Gen. Alice Treviño

[00:00:00] General Alice Treviño: Some people might be irritated. Oh, and I got to have a meeting. I got to go figure this out. And I'm like, well, that's about leadership. Leadership is about meeting with your people and hearing them. And it's an art, it's not a science and you do not want to stifle creativity because there will always be someone who's smarter than you. I want them in the room with me.

[00:00:40] Ryan Connell: Hello. This is Ryan Connell with chief digital artificial intelligence office joined today with general Trevino general. How are you doing? 

[00:00:47] General Alice Treviño: I'm doing great, Ryan. Thanks for having me on the podcast. 

[00:00:50] Ryan Connell: Yeah. Excited to dive in. Uh, you wanted to start, give a quick overview of who you are and what you do. 

[00:00:56] General Alice Treviño: Sure, uh, Major General Allie Trevino.

I am the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Contracting in the Department of the Air Force. I'm also the Senior Procurement Executive Designee on behalf of my boss, Honorable Hunter, who is the Senior Acquisition Executive. And then I have the SAF AQC role, so I'm the head of the contracting activity as well.

So, triple hatted, but all things contracting and acquisition. And stationed at the Pentagon, and have about 32 years in the Air Force. And I think we first met when we were a defense contract management agency together and kind of crossed paths there. So it's great to be with you in this forum as well, Ryan.

[00:01:42] Ryan Connell: Yeah. Yes, ma'am. Appreciate that. So, I mean, 32 years, it's incredible. Appreciate your service. Help the listeners understand, like, how did you get here? Like, what was that path like? 

[00:01:51] General Alice Treviño: So the path has been a lot of branches and sequels. And I grew up in Evansville, Indiana. I applied to go to the Air Force Academy and got accepted.

And this is around 1989. I was a management degree major. And after I graduated in 1993, I got my assignment in contracting. Funny story. As a management major, they make you fill out a wishlist and I put down anything that had the word management in it. So I put program management, contract management, financial management.

Operations management, information management. And I ended up getting contracting management. I didn't really know what it was. A lot of people have a difficult time explaining what contracting is But I have learned to understand that we all do contracting in one way shape or another We buy things every day.

We could do lowest price at Amazon, or we could do more technical things where we're buying, you know, higher, more expensive items like computers or houses or cars, and so I just really love the field of procurement and learning more about acquisition. After I graduated from the Air Force Academy, my first assignment was in systems, which is a little bit rare.

They usually put second lieutenants in operational acquisition, operational contracting. So you're at the installation level, learning more things that you buy to outfit offices and organizations and services and commodities. But I went into services or I went into systems and my first. Assignment, and I learned about, it was the, uh, used to have telephone switches, and so instead of now, today, you know, you get signals and satellites everywhere, back then you had a telephone switch on the base.

And we would buy the base digital switches. So each base, you had to buy a BDS system to be able to have the operator on the base, give you a signal at your desk. If your desk had a computer or it had a telephone at the time. So that was my first foray into systems and understanding, you know, um, we actually transitioned from individual bases to regional base construct, you know, and that was.

Novel at the time buying base communications and telecommunications access to more than one installation at a time, which is kind of funny now, as you think about it, but 

[00:04:34] Ryan Connell: yeah, for sure. 

[00:04:35] General Alice Treviño: Had a couple of assignments. Yeah, I know. Right. But I was like, they even had a, uh, museum, you know, they had the telephone operators, the BDS, which is, and I was like, this is what we've very rare, but I've had about 17 assignments since then.

And so how did I get here? Again, I'm gonna say it's branches and sequels and luck, serendipity, and just trying to do my best and performing the best that I could. And I've always loved in the Air Force. At that time, of course, the Space Force didn't exist, but the Air and Space Force exists now. Even when I was a second lieutenant, just being a part of a team, working on a mission together, being able to accomplish that.

And then, of course, at the end of the road, after you would either have a successful contract, or a successful award, or a successful you fill in the blank, getting more responsibility on top of that, having a bigger team, and I learned about systems, and operational, and enterprise contracting over the last, over 31 years.

And I've done some joint assignments. So I've been at transportation command. I've worked for the deputy secretary of defense. I was a principal military assistant in that job. And I had multiple overseas deployments, including a year in Afghanistan as the senior contracting official. So, you know, everything in the Air Force and comes full circle, everything, you know, as we do comes full circle.

So when I was a senior contracting official in Afghanistan. Now I'm an HCME and I have 26, 27 senior contracting officials that get their acquisition authority for me. And I remember when I was a SCO in 2013, at the beginning, I was like, what does a SCO do? You know, reading my authorities letter that the HCA gave me.

And now, you know, it's like you earn or you reap what you sow. So if you made it confusing for your scores, now you have to make it less confusing because now you're the person. That sends out the authority. 

[00:06:49] Ryan Connell: Yeah. And running through all of the things that are delegated. And is that delegated or not? And it can get a little complex right there.

[00:06:55] General Alice Treviño: Yes. We have a matrix now. And that's the, one of the complexities of being in contracting. Do I, do I have the authority to do this or not? Does this have to go to a higher level? I can't tell you how many times we've been asked by both the secretary of the air force, secretary Kendall. My boss, honorable Hunter, like, well, why can't that be delegated?

And making sure that we trace the regulation and the statute all the way up to make sure whether or not, did someone read this wrong? Can we delegate? Or is it non delegatable? 

[00:07:30] Ryan Connell: Do you have a thought there? Like, like do you have a, a position on your delegations in terms of like it's normal that you delegate things or you like to retain things?

I'm just curious. 

[00:07:40] General Alice Treviño: So, it's normal that we delegate, and then the only time we usually take back a delegation is usually when it's a high visibility program. And so, so I've had, you know, even in the last year I would say, I've had to bring up some authorities to my level just so that I had the insight, because The program itself was so highly visible, you know, even in terms of sometimes it's all the way up to doctrinal plant in OSD, um, acquisition and sustainment.

And so if you didn't pull it up to have the awareness, so it wasn't necessarily that we didn't trust the team and that's why we do. Have our delegations is we trust the team there. They're educated. They're trained. They're proficient. They can take that on. This was more about having the awareness and visibility so I could provide the team top cover.

And make sure that I was the face to the decision maker that was at a higher authority versus going straight down and then we would bring in the procuring contracting officer to make sure that they, the PCO was still the one who is signing, you know, the award documentation or executing a certain modification, but that I had the awareness and then would give them clearance to do.

What they would normally do, or I would normally delegate to a more junior or senior contracting official. Um, so it's about awareness and transparency and visibility and making sure that we're taking care of our senior leaders on some of these very high visibility programs. And it doesn't even have to do with money, right?

Sometimes it's again, it's that visibility that's needed on some of these special programs. 

[00:09:27] Ryan Connell: Yeah, that's interesting. It's funny because like, I feel like the default is that matrix or like that? Those delegations are dollar based. But to your point, um, there are things that are just high visibility for whatever reason.

If they're not high dollars, just it's just a good point. Interesting. 

[00:09:41] General Alice Treviño: Yeah, it's a funny story. When I was in Afghanistan as a SCO, we actually it was New Year's Eve. And we had a contract and it was for our protective service agents, you know, and personal security detachment, that detail. So the personal security detachment had up armored vehicles, and those vehicles were used to transport the four starring theater.

And it was Gerald Dunford at the time, and that contract expired on the 31st of December. And what had happened was They had a transportation monitor in theater who had gone home on R& R and then the acting didn't know that they should have pulled the vehicles back to rotate them out so that they had the new vehicles that were ready to start on 1 January without any, you know, delays or turnover issues.

And they forgot the four stars vehicles. And so on the 31st of December, we were knocking on the HCA's hooch. On his door to say, sir, you need to allow this, you know, to go through. We, we needed your concurrence. And I remember at the time thinking, this is so silly. You know, it was a 20, 000, it was like a hundred and 20, 000 contract, but if he didn't know, you know, why, and he was granting that approval to be expediently.

We ended up going back to the original contractor and having. The authority that they, they agreed to the terms and conditions that we could then have the vehicles for an extra week while we did a responsible turnover of those new vehicles. We got all the numbers down and everything. You know, they agreed to it.

We weren't doing it unilaterally, so it was bilateral modification. If he didn't have awareness, I can imagine, like, he comes in the next day, you know, happy new year, goes to his staff meeting, and the two star, you know, the DCS general says, hey, you know, the four star doesn't have vehicles. And, and. None, you know, none the wiser.

So sometimes those things are there to give us that visibility and protect ourselves, but it's really. You know, it's that information flow. And just so again, that you have that top cover and awareness, and it's not about, you know, not trusting somebody to negotiate for rental vehicles. It's understanding the strategic consequences of.

And the mission that may be a simple commodity or a simple item really, you know, how important it really is to the overarching performance of a unit. 

[00:12:27] Ryan Connell: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I'm curious, you know, I've kind of matured in my career. I have my experiences of. Of what my day to day looks like, but I have no level of understanding of what someone in your capacity, deputy assistant secretary for contracting, like what your day to day actually looks like, is it just every minute counted for meetings, uh, dealing with administration, dealing with contracts.

I'd love to just hear from your perspective, uh, day to day. 

[00:12:52] General Alice Treviño: Yeah. I don't even know if there's a normal day, Ryan. I really don't know. I mean, every, every day we look at the calendar a couple of times. Oh, you know a week and I have a calendar sync with my deputy. Mr. Scott callisti and our executive staff and I I actually open my calendar up to my division chiefs because it changes so much and It's you know So we have what we want to do and which are the meetings that we control And then you have the meetings, you know that your boss controls and so You They sometimes don't have the ability to deconflict, so You know, so you're, if you look at the calendar at 1600 hours, 1700 hours, the night before, on average, I would say you can expect a couple pop ups.

So my executive officer, Lieutenant Carl Laurie Romero, she laughs a lot. She'll say, we had it perfect and it just blew up. And so it's kind of like calendar roulette every day. And, you know, but a typical, I would say like a typical month what I try to do, and I learned this from when I worked for the Deputy Secretary of Defense at the time, Secretary Shanahan.

He had color coding, and so I color code my, I learned that from him and his executive office. I color code my meetings by who, Who's the principal at the meeting? Is it a DOD OSD level meeting or, you know, outside agency? Is it a internal Secretary of the Air Force meeting or under Secretary of the Air Force meeting?

Is it my boss's meeting? So it's a staff AQ meeting. And then my own internal meetings. And then trying to decide, you know, is it a follow up meeting? Is it you know admin time like you said and I really I try to be deliberate I don't always succeed but I try to be deliberate about making sure That we can end five minutes early and we really try because then we give people back a five minute brain break So my meetings I try to give back five minutes.

I'm not always successful, but that's the goal So that we can connect on a personal level or that people have time in between meetings just to decompress and mentally change to the next meeting. But it is, you feel very value added because the calendar is full and, you know, you have to be intentional about getting those brain breaks in for yourself and for your staff.

And because then they can bounce back and then, you know, allowing some grace and sensitivity for the pop ups. Because they will happen. And then I would say the two most important things that I look for on a month is that I give time for mentoring. And so I want to always have space on my calendar for mentoring officers, enlisted civilians that come to me and ask for, you know, it could be a one time, or it could be an informal mentoring or could just be, you know, one, one-on-one, and we never have a follow up.

I always want to leave space for our industry counterparts And I work those very closely with our action officers to make sure you know, because if somebody from industry reaches out to me, I will Make sure that members of my staff are in the action officers and they can reach out to them and say okay What questions are we going to go over?

You know, we want to make very good use of your time And I have learned in this position as the deputy assistant secretary for contracting If someone asks you for a meeting, you know, you do your homework beforehand, but if you say yes to one, you have to say yes to all. And so that is my, you know, I've learned that, you know, you want to make sure that you are available and you're fair to all parties.

So we just be very mindful of that. And then the other thing that I like to do throughout the day, so I say kind of like big picture month, I want to make sure I have a lot of time for mentoring and then our industry counterpart engagements. But daily I try to put some reflection time on there. So, if the, if I can, you know, it's not just like going through a, an email or reading your email, but trying to do some big picture thinking, reflective time on what I call and learn from a, another former boss when I was at Transportation Command, Rear Admiral Harnacek, who retired as a Vice Admiral, but he taught me about big rocks, and so kind of really understanding what your big rocks are for the day.

And so if you know what your top two or three big rocks are for the day, you have to spend some time on it and reflect on it. You can't just, you know, those are the strategic things. They're not just the day to day tactical tasks. And so I try to put, um, time on my calendar for that and really guard it because if you don't have reflection time, you can't do the big things, right?

You'll just be overcome by events and your calendar will take over your life. 

[00:17:57] Ryan Connell: Yeah, I know that feeling all too well. I have, uh, uh, it's not as elegant as how you put it, but I have a two hour window, uh, I think once a month and how often I give that up for something that I regret giving it up is far too often.

So I got to be more diligent there. Yeah. 

[00:18:13] General Alice Treviño: It is hard, but it's so hard. Yeah, that discipline and it's because you know that whoever's asking for you when you give it up That's important too 

[00:18:21] Ryan Connell: Yeah 

[00:18:22] General Alice Treviño: yeah, it's really kind of started two years ago when I came into the role was about alignment prioritization and simplification And that middle piece of prioritization that helps a lot, you know, are you working on your urgent priorities?

Are you working on your important, you know, they're important, but maybe they're not urgent and really understanding the difference between those 

[00:18:45] Ryan Connell: I wanted to dive into the flight plan, but I guess before I even ask the question, the flight plan is still a thing, right? I'm not an air force employee, so I don't even know.

[00:18:53] General Alice Treviño: Yes, it's still a thing. We, February of 24, we released our 2024. Okay. And so 

[00:18:59] Ryan Connell: we're, 

[00:19:00] General Alice Treviño: we're getting ready to go in. We came out of our board of directors meeting in August. And notionally talked about our flight plan, and then we will, we'll snap the chop line in December, and then we'll release our new flight plan in February 25.

[00:19:18] Ryan Connell: Got it. Is tools not rules still an element? 

[00:19:22] General Alice Treviño: Tools, not rules is still in there. Our contracting, there's buyers, they need tools. 

[00:19:28] Ryan Connell: Yeah. So, so, you know, obviously, uh, me being with CDAO and, you know, specifically, um, trying to build tools and vehicles for the acquisition workforce. Curious, you know, your perspective, what you've been doing in that area, if there are tools, uh, for the, the contracting community, all of those things.

[00:19:46] General Alice Treviño: Yes, we still, yeah. So this year actually. It started leading up in 2023, and then 2024, we more, uh, codified it and got a little bit more formality. And in 23, you know, I, you've probably heard this analogy, if not, I'll share it, it's kind of like the difference, you know, if you want to disseminate tools at scale, how do you do that, right?

How do you know that make everybody have awareness? Do they have the visibility of it? You know, do they understand how to use it? And so what we realized, and what I kind of realized is this, you know, to scale, there's only two ways to scale and it's the chef or the recipe. And so I think for far too long, the easy button is the chef.

We all want to be that premier chef or we know celebrity chefs and they don't often write down their recipes and to scale across the department of the air force contracting enterprise, we need some of the recipes written down because It's much nicer to follow a recipe, to know what your ingredients are.

And then of course, you know, I talk about chocolate chip cookies. Everybody has a recipe for chocolate chip cookies and they all, you could tailor them. And so what we had found in 23 was there was a lot of pockets of chefs out there that were moving really fast and in tools and demanding, you know, not just artificial intelligence tools, but, and then we had robotic process automation with our bots and then people wanting to dive into machine learning and then won't go too far down that, but like, which GPT models do you use and, you know, what's available out there and, you know, Everybody was kind of going off in a different direction.

One of my former bosses, General Bunch, when he was the Air Force Materiel Command, Commander, he called us the Wild Wild West. And I would say this is the wild wild west and so what we did was to try to make sure that it wasn't the You know innovation and we still want creativity and we love and need tailorability because we're so unique We need to push boundaries and we need to like try things different But we needed to have one stop place where people could find these tools.

And so In 24, we created our digital acquisition tools environment date and that date tool or date environment, which falls on, you know, off of Air Force Contracting Central will then lead you to 45 tools today that any of our contracting officers, buyers, price analysts, data analysts, and any of our policy gurus that they can go to and look for those tools.

And then we open it up and people can grade them like access and like this is a you know I'd rate this a five or this is we have a bunch of underrated tools And so we have five tools that are gold then we have you know Some medium about 11 that are in the silver and then we have some bronze And then we have some that have never been rated then people just go on and they use them But they haven't rated them and so that date environment was a way where we could help scale up But it was also a way to show our almost 9, 000 mission focused business leaders that there were tools already out there and they didn't have to create them.

And the onset of realizing that was we had three different locations that were working on a requirement generation. And they were at various levels and stages of. Advancement. Two of them were homegrown using the organic sources that resources that the air force already had. And then one was using a zipper funding, and then it was seeking follow on funds to try to become, you know, a program of record.

And we wanted to make sure that we could vet all the tools, that we could make sure that any tool that was being created had the authority to operate the ATO on the network, which I'm sure in your line of work, you know, is one of the hardest things as well. Like there's all these great ideas, but if it's not secure, if it doesn't have the cyber mech, you know, if it doesn't have the safety out there, then we could become vulnerable.

And people, you know, sometimes don't understand that, but I even say like, where's the data coming from? You know, if some say chat GPT, you pick your GPT model. If you're putting data in, we in the air force and anybody in DOD would need to make sure. First, that if you're using your office computer, that you have the authority to operate, and then if you were ingesting data into that, you know, you make sure that you're not putting GUI data in there, so, you know, you just need to be aware of what's going in and what's coming out.

And so, just really making sure that we were working with our SAF CN folks, the cyber network folks, and that we were following the processes that were coming down from DOD, CIO. So, all that was happening in 23 and 24. So we've come a long way, and we still have far to go, but we're getting those policies, we're helping people with the guidance, we're getting some recipes written down, and now we have, like, this one stop location where folks want to go in, they can know what tools already exist, and they're not expending unnecessary time on creating something that has already been created, and just helping them along the process, keeping them excited.

[00:25:26] Ryan Connell: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Um, I love the idea of the grading of each is the intent then to like use the feedback effectively to either, you know, continue funding one versus another and or trying different things for the ones that are lower rated. 

[00:25:40] General Alice Treviño: Yes. And sometimes it's not even about funding.

Right. Because if it's a homegrown tool, the monetary investment is really the person's time. And that means if they're investing their time in this, they're not working on something else. And so, just knowing that, and then the ones, and we also share with our, you know, our sister servicing. So, we use, you know, you guys have probably heard the Dorabot, the termination of responsibility, and the Army created that.

So they, We have the script for that, and then we use GSA for Section 889, and then we're working with the Navy right now, they have a pricing tool that they told us about when we were at the OSD, DPC, now DPCAP, when we were at their pricing symposium, and the procure to pay symposium, they had, the Navy had a tool, and the Army was working with them, and then the Army shared it with us, and now we're working with the Navy, and And if, why again, go back to my earlier story, right?

Why recreate the wheel if somebody already has it? So let's share the tools that we can, and you know, that just makes us, that makes us better investors of our time and also managing the taxpayer's resources more wisely. 

[00:27:02] Ryan Connell: Yeah, I love it. Uh, I'm going to transition a little bit to maybe some advice. Um, but I'm thinking, you know, kind of journeymen contracting acquisition that made feel like they have a lot of good ideas in this area.

Like, oh my gosh, my tool is the best or my way of doing contracting is the best. You know, my boss won't listen to me. My boss ignores me. Uh, what kind of advice do you have for, uh, that type of individual? 

[00:27:26] General Alice Treviño: So, that description, the question itself goes after why it's so important to be a change agent, what does that mean?

And, you know, I have a lot of things that help me kind of talk to others about what does it mean to embrace change agency. And the two letter, two P's, two C's that I use is being positive, being patient, being courageous, and being curious. And so, junior members that are getting frustrated, I remind them, we all want the same outcomes, right?

We want all these tools. We have to be patient. And so you have to understand, you know, you have to be able to tell your elevator speech, right? So, and you have to be able to talk to your supervisor. And be curious about, well, why do we do it that way? And, you know, if I'm beating my head up against the wall, how can I make it better?

And that's where the courage comes in. And so I think everybody has a story to tell, and there's probably a time in almost all of our lives where. That kind of mindset would have helped us get through that and to actually then resonate with our idea. So we have, you know, we have idea programs, but anybody can come straight to me, anybody, and they have, and then we've been able to, you know, talk to.

Folks in the middle areas or supervisory level or senior contracting officials to get them involved. And it's never about somebody went, you know, VFR direct, we want that. If there's a way to be creative within the bureaucracy, we encourage that. And then we direct them back to, well, here's the steps that you missed.

So in the case of date, we repeatedly, so you have to be again, persistent and patient. That's that patience is so important because sometimes when you, um, it doesn't matter at the senior level or the junior level, If someone isn't hearing you, it could be that you're not talking to the right person. In this case, where we would hear pockets of, you know, we have 90 installations, about 87, so I just round up to 90, 87 installations, Air and Space Force, and the Air Force.

If somebody at each of those installations had the same idea, but they weren't sharing it with their supervisor, and they weren't sharing it with their senior contracting officials, we don't know what they're doing inside their unit unless they share it. So that's where that awareness comes out. But even if they had a great idea and they came VFR direct to me.

I understand what the process and how it could be better and how to help them. I don't want them to be frustrated. I want them to share their idea. That's where the senior contracting officials come out and that's where it's really helpful because. Then I don't have to be involved. I love to be involved, right?

But I don't need to be involved, right? We talked about the calendar earlier. You need to prioritize your time I occasionally get down into the month and you know that's where at the point where you need to realize like I need to get out of the way because If I say something that can actually stifle creativity, you know, because somebody would think, Oh, major, Gerald Trevino said this must be the way that it is.

I don't have all the best ideas. We want that free flow of information. We don't get people to be guarding. Um, we want them to use all their ideas, brainstorm as best they can throw out the ones that don't work, but to truly brainstorm, you can't be grading yourself. You can't be judging others. You have to just let it flow.

And so when people come be a far direct to me, which I highly encourage, I then get with the senior contracting officials and say, Hey, can you get with this team? And can you connect them with this other team? And, oh, by the way, they didn't know that ASMCPKN, who created the date that we worked with Mr.

Bob Bohenik, that he's been educating people on the process because of the vetting and the authorities to operate and the process that we have and we want to write their recipe down and, oh, by the way, did you know this existed and you could be using this instead. That's kind of where that validation and verification and the vetting process occurs.

And so it still doesn't stifle. Creativity, what it allows it to get into a more structured, so we're not the wild, wild west again. And that's just what we have to do. We have to be relentless about it, and you have to be positive, and you can't, you know, if somebody goes outside of the boundary that you think exists, you can't, you know, have nefarious intent that they thought you, like, they just didn't know.

But the point is, now we know, and now we can work on it. So let's share that information and let's move out. It's like, forget that other stuff. It's, you know, allowing people to speak. And we've had junior members who we've now put together and we've been able to like tap into that inspiration and they don't feel stifled anymore.

We had a member who was at Hanscom air force base and he had a couple ideas and we put him on the team. So he's on the key result team. And so we just encourage that, you know, now some people might be irritated. Oh, I got to have a meeting. I got to go figure this out. And I'm like, well, that's about leadership.

Leadership is about meeting with your people and hearing them and. You know, it's an art, it's not a science and you know, you do not want to stifle creativity because there will always be someone who's smarter than you. I want them in the room with me. 

[00:32:55] Ryan Connell: Absolutely. I love that. Uh, one of my main takeaways I've dotted down was just the relentless positivity.

I think that's so important. Well, Hey, I, uh, we're coming up against it here. Uh, I'm going to take a note from your book and give you five minutes back of our meeting. I wanted to say thank you so much for being here today. Uh, it was an amazing conversation. So just thank you for being here. 

[00:33:13] General Alice Treviño: Thank you, Ryan.

Thank you for the opportunity. Thank you for everything that you do for CDAO. You guys are changing the world and giving us those tools. And I just love the way that we communicate, share across the enterprise. It's all about integration and collaboration and partnering. So thank you for your leadership.

[00:33:31] Ryan Connell: Yeah, thank you.