The Hard Truths Behind Innovation in the DoD with Brian Morrison

[00:00:00] Brian: When the Ukraine war was kicking off think any of those people on the flight line, because we were at Ramstein, do you think any of those people on the flight line care about your good idea, or do you think they care about getting their meal, and that it's warm, and that they have some clothes, and that they can make it to a new country?

[00:00:16] Brian: All the things involved in actually actioning the things they're trying to do. It's the same thing with the people on the battlefield. You can have all the great ideas in the world, you can show all the shows, you can do all the things, you can give all the awards, you can give all the money and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. If it doesn't materialize and operationalize in the battlefield, it does not matter. It flatly doesn't.

[00:00:36] 

[00:00:57] Bonnie: All right. Bonnie Evangelista here from the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office, joined by Mr. Brian Morrison, recently retired. Congratulations.

[00:01:08] Brian: Thanks so much. It's a wonderful feeling.

[00:01:10] Bonnie: How does that feel?

[00:01:12] Brian: It definitely feels different. I'll be honest. I still have, for no good reason at all, my uniform hanging up in the closet in the same hanger, in the same position it was before and one of these days I'm going to remove it. I don't know why it's still there, that's the natural progression of things.

[00:01:26] Bonnie: It's a familiar feeling maybe?

[00:01:28] Brian: Yeah.

[00:01:28] Brian: Yeah. It gives you some kind of comfort maybe. Before we lose the audience too much. So let's get into who are you, what's your background. And the I think we'll start to get in some maybe some spicy conversation about hashtag innovation.

[00:01:44] Brian: Sure, sounds good. So, Brian Morrison, formerly Chief Master Sergeant Brian Morrison of the United States Air Force Reserve. I originally did 15 years or a little over 15 years active duty. So I joined back in 2000 prior to the GWAT. So I'm one of the last people who can still say that, that was in the service and did, like I said, did 15 and a half years as an intelligence professional doing a whole number of things.

[00:02:06] Brian: Got a little over a thousand days across five, six deployments in six or seven countries in the Middle East. So lots of lots of activity basically promoted myself out of my Intel job once I'm hit master sergeant a little earlier than I thought I was going to I had a standing offer at the time because of a lot of

[00:02:23] Brian: creative software engineering work I had done to join an innovation outfit that was up at the Pentagon at the time. The only catch was you got to join the reserves. So I said, Hey, this is great. I wasn't going to end up doing my job anymore. So I went ahead and switched over to the reserves, did palace chase, switched over.

[00:02:38] Brian: And then as we like to say in the reserves, I did eight years to get five. So I did eight more years in service to take me just over 23 and then got my five years. And then recently, as you mentioned retired. So a little over 23 years total with 20 years, five months and a handful of days active.

[00:02:56] Brian: So I'm one of the rare people who actually retired from the air force reserve life as an active duty person. So I have one of my many weird credentials there.

[00:03:05] Bonnie: Did you get any kind of, I don't know, special status priviledge of those roles? Or

[00:03:09] Bonnie: privileges because you had both roles or something?

[00:03:13] Brian: I would say like the one special status I had is my favorite story about this was how to go to the, like anybody else, you go to the dentist and I go to the military dentist. And so I go there and, you're just chit chatting with the dentist. And I mentioned to him there, cause I'd see my patch and they see them in the reserves and they're like, Oh, you're reserves.

[00:03:27] Brian: So why are you here? We don't see a lot of reservists. And I explain everything. And They just be amazed, wait, so you're going to retire on active duty. As a result, how does that even possible? Cause everybody thinks you trade one retirement for the other. And that's just not how it works at all.

[00:03:41] Brian: But anyway, it's an interesting thing getting to work both sides of the fence. But when you're on orders as a reservist or a guard member, for that matter, you mean you're a full functioning active duty member relative to your job role and all that. So unless you happen to explicitly call yourself out of service, most people don't even, but yeah, it's very interesting way to live.

[00:03:58] Bonnie: Okay. So maybe some sort of bragging rights informally.

[00:04:04] Brian: It's definitely fun when you talk to other reservists or guard members and you tell them you actually qualify for the active duty retirement. Cause again, everybody knows this is a thing. It's not quite as rare as pigs flying, but it would be like seeing an actual black swan. They do exist and you have seen pictures.

[00:04:19] Brian: But it's like when you actually get to meet and see one, it is wow, so it is real, it can be done.

[00:04:24] Bonnie: It is real. I like that. So your time active duty, we were just chatting off mic. You did a lot of innovation stuff and I feel like innovation is almost a dirty word now. So you're going to have to unpack that for me and explain what does innovation, what the heck does that mean? And for you and what kinds of things were you doing or what were you expected to do maybe in your hashtag innovation roles?

[00:04:53] Brian: Yeah. So I divide both for myself and everyone at large, I divide Innovation to pre AFWERX and post AFWERX, at least for the Air Force anyway it just an interesting way to think about it in terms of what innovation roles look like. So AFWERX stands up and really blows up around 2016.

[00:05:12] Brian: Prior to that, there were a lot of people doing what we would call innovative things. even AFSO 21 for those old enough to remember that was around and you could actually earn a money if you had a say an innovation, but some kind of thing you found that could save the air force money.

[00:05:27] Brian: You can actually submit that and get 10 percent of that savings back in a check. I remember sitting, when I was a senior airman in a commander's call, and somebody got like a $10,000 cheque because they, discovered this way to save all this money on some maintenance thing. So there's always been innovative processes and, opportunities around but they weren't formalized in where, you could do them as a full time gig whether that was as a TDY or whether it was like a deployment or some kind of longer term, full time position.

[00:05:56] Brian: It's really when AFWERX stands up post 2016 that you have any number of things that kind of crop up. Of course, AFWERX itself stands up as an organization, so it has Spots it needs to fill both temporarily and full time. You have a whole range of other organizations that stand up.

[00:06:12] Brian: obviously DIU was established prior to that. But you have the explosion of innovation with AFWERX mostly driven by, they're a wrangling of the silver program, if you will, and all the money that's tied to that. And so because of all of the things that spill out of all that you have a lot more opportunity for kind of full time work in innovation roles.

[00:06:33] Brian: And those kind of spring up and then cause others to spring up and so on and so forth. So once I moved over, as I mentioned from active duty to reserve, I moved up at the time to one of the rare innovation organizations that did exist prior to 2016. So I went to half A2I at the time, which was Air Force Innovation or the Air Force Intelligence Innovation Office.

[00:06:52] Brian: And so we worked a range of different innovative programs under half A2. And so then after that, again, just as a weird quirk of fate for some of the, based off some of the stuff we were working, I went from that office down to SOCOM, working for them during the standup and really big expansion of Softworks.

[00:07:10] Brian: So, I was one of the military liaisons who worked at, worked out of Tampa and worked there out of the Softworks office. I still remember when they were in the small office building, prior to their big place they're in now and setting all that up. So that was a really exciting opportunity to get to work that then went and worked.

[00:07:23] Brian: So as an example, so when I was at, halfway to my big project was working a joint intelligence community. So we had multiple three letter partners that were working on high performance computing project with FMV. That's about as much as I can talk about it because it's very classified.

[00:07:36] Brian: So that was exciting. Then going down to Softworks, the big thing I worked on there was their big ThunderDrone experiment, which you can find all over news articles from the time in 2017. And it helped run that whole thing with a lot of really good folks out of PEO FixWing. That was all based around small UASs.

[00:07:51] Brian: That work then took me to an adjacent software development lab tied to SOCOM and we were doing, working with DIU as part of small drone control. So DIU did the exploitation on DGI and then we were doing some of the command and control. So trying to do with the little birds, what we were doing with.

[00:08:05] Brian: Big stuff like Preds and Reapers. then from there went over to AFSOC headquarters and worked special projects, which is not to be confused with special access projects. We used to joke all the time. what's special projects? And so, Oh, it's anything my boss says is special. So any of these like weird random tasks that no one had ever done before.

[00:08:22] Brian: It's ah, Brian gets to do those. And so I got to work a whole range of very weird and wild stuff that was going on at the Air Force Special Operations headquarters at the time. Again, most of which I can't talk about, but a lot of it was either communications based tactical networks or small UAS, that kind of related stuff.

[00:08:38] Brian: From there, went over and worked initially as part of the team of innovation professionals for you safety of Africa headquarters, and then through a bunch of personnel mix ups and changes that happened about a month and a half after I got there I ended up being in charge. So the joke when I was doing my go and away ceremony with my boss was it was my job as an E9 to prove that I was better than 204s, just to do the math there.

[00:09:02] Brian: And so, I took over cause we couldn't get those guys replaced. I took over and ran the whole shop. So got to completely change up in the overhaul, the entire innovation program, soup to nuts for the entire command across all of our multiple sites on two continents. It was very complex. It was very busy.

[00:09:17] Brian: Cause that all also coincided with the entire withdrawal from Afghanistan, the standup of the, and the expansion of the Ukraine war. All that was going on simultaneous to us overhauling and doing a lot of really great things with innovation there. So I think of that as the height of my innovation career.

[00:09:31] Brian: And then the kind of what I thought was going to be the quiet twilight was moving over to AETC and initially doing their innovation liaison work with Army Futures Command down at Austin and a range of different DIU engagements on again, getting back to just the broader innovation, liaison type work that I'd done before.

[00:09:47] Brian: And then because of, again, more personnel change ups and realignments within the command I got moved over from a eight to a nine and then started working AI stuff cause that's, they needed a body that was free to do it and I was a free body to do it and I was willing to do weird things. So I said, Hey let's do that.

[00:10:03] Brian: Ended up running the First generative AI study for the entire air force. And then later found out it was the only one in the DOD at the time. So that got me my, that got me begged as to do my last job, which was had the DOD CDAO and then the department of the air force CDAO fighting for me for my last five months before I retired cause I already submitted by then. 

[00:10:22] Brian: And I ended up being the first full time generative AI lead for the deaf CDAO, and that was my last job on order. So it's been One weird opportunity after another, you do good stuff, then people ask you to do more good stuff and it just keeps getting weirder along the way.

[00:10:36] Bonnie: So I would describe that as you're the, you must've had a reputation for getting things done.

[00:10:43] Brian: I would, yeah,

[00:10:45] Bonnie: I was going to say there's someone in the army, I think he's in USASOC. And he rightly said, I was, I heard him on a panel during South by Southwest this year, back in March. And he said, we call this stuff innovation now for me before it was just work.

[00:11:01] Bonnie: Like we just did work. I don't think that's changed.

[00:11:05] Brian: No, not at all. Yeah. I was just going to say that, there are two reputations I have. If you know anybody who's been around me for any amount of time. One is figuring things out. So I always end up getting Hey, this is a weird, hard thing, no one else knows how to do, give it to Brian, he'll figure it out. 

[00:11:18] Brian: And the other one is I tend to be pretty brutally honest. That was, I've had multiple people who have asked around before they've hired me and they're like, Oh, Brian, we'll get it done. You just may not like what he'll tell you cause he's not going to pull punches. But Brian, we'll get it done.

[00:11:30] Brian: And I would argue like that. I have purposely turned down certain opportunities and certain headquarters assignments, specifically because of that, because I really don't want to be in the position where I have to be overly sensitive and political about what I say, who I say it in front of and those kinds of things, not that I'm running around trying to hurt people's feelings or anything, but again, if you spend enough time doing engineering and I am an engineer, that's what I do.

[00:11:50] Brian: You're focused on the problem first and you're focused on fixing the problem. As I'm sure you well know, a lot of times in government, it comes down to what is the most politically appropriate solution, not the most, let's just call it the best optimal even that's questionable at

[00:12:07] Bonnie: See how I polished that for you.

[00:12:09] Brian: Yeah, see, there you go.

[00:12:10] Brian: See better than I am. I was going to say, something that works, but a lot of times a nonworking solution that is palatable is better than a working solution that's not, unfortunately, but it is what it is.

[00:12:19] Bonnie: Okay. So just listening to your background and you're right someone might sit, you even self describe I did all this weird stuff and sometimes when you have access to the weird stuff, you have a different perspective. on life and on how things get done and how things work.

[00:12:39] Bonnie: I'm really curious with how looking at in hindsight, or maybe even as you were growing in this career I always think about big rocks and little rocks. what were a couple big rocks where you would put in that, this does not work category.

[00:12:57] Brian: I'll just pick like the ugliest one I can think of off the top of my head, because that's kind of stuff you want to hear probably stuff most of the people want to hear too. So number 1, at a very high strategic level I would argue pretty vociferously that innovation as a function within the D. O. D. is mostly, most of the time, a really good, worthwhile show worth putting on. Occasionally, there are things that will come out of it, as they should, and that's good but most of it, and I'm not saying this derogatorily, I'm saying this just as a matter of factly, most of it, is a show.

[00:13:37] Brian: Now, that's not to mean the show is not worthwhile. That is not to mean that the show does not produce things. That is not to mean that the show is not inspiring. That is not to mean that the show cannot evolve and does not evolve. But you, can just do math. Look at how many different types of activities are done.

[00:13:54] Brian: Look at how many things ultimately, like when I was running our innovation program at you see if you have Africa, I used to tell my guys one simple rule. We are judged by one metric and one metric alone. How many things make it to a fielded operational status? 

[00:14:10] Brian: I do not care how much money we spend. I do not care how many projects we have.

[00:14:14] Brian: I do not care how many servers we got. I do not care about any, insert metric here. I do not care. I do not care at all. I care about how many things make it to the field. Because, and especially at the time, because remember that was when the Afghanistan evacuation happened, that's when the Ukraine war was kicking off. Do you think any of those people on the flight line, because we were at Ramstein, do you think any of those people on the flight line care about your good idea, or do you think they care about getting their meal, and that it's warm, and that they have some clothes, and that they can make it to a new country?

[00:14:44] Brian: All the things involved in actually actioning the things they're trying to do. It's the same thing with the people on the battlefield. You can have all the great ideas in the world. You can show all the shows, you can do all the things, you can give all the awards, you can give all the money and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. If it doesn't materialize and operationalize in the battlefield, it does not matter. It flatly doesn't. And you can make all the noises you want about that. It just doesn't. And again, if you're around long enough, you will see what does work and does not work. Now, it's not to say that it's not worth trying, but it is what it is.

[00:15:18] Brian: And so. I think, innovation is great, but like to draw a clear line to solutions, if you want to just jump into the deep end with the removal of OCO money. And I'm not saying OCO is the solution, but with the removal of OCO money, there is no big pot. Cause for the entire GWAT, that was the big pot of money that funded all the cool toys that went all down range.

[00:15:39] Brian: And so, Both from firsthand experience and many, storage from many compatriots, like that was a way, if you had a good, you could call it an innovation. We didn't call it that then. But if you had a good tool to do good things, that was a way to get it funded. There's any number of preexisting contract options, if you are creative and knowledgeable enough to execute on those things and field it downrange in some kind of way.

[00:16:04] Brian: Now you can make arguments about whether or not that's a good sustainment strategy or whether or not it was coordinated with a PEO or yada yada, but what you cannot argue with is what actually hit the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan. And so that's the whole thing now is if you look at innovation in terms of the bureaucracy of it, there is not, and never has been a clear path from

[00:16:26] Brian: I start here with an idea and I end here with a fielded sustained solution. There are multiple ways in between that, but there is no clear linkage. Therefore, by definition, because you do not have a clear linkage, it is totally incumbent on somebody or multiple somebodies and multiple processes to figure out a way across. 

[00:16:45] Brian: You can call it the Valley of Death, you can call it whatever you want, but fundamentally what that does is make innovation a show. Because it relies on somebody taking something they saw at the show and actually doing something with it. Because there is no clear path for me to be.

[00:16:59] Brian: Now, again, I think a million great things, probably way more, have come out of what I've affinitively called the show up to this point. And I think there will continue to be even more. And that's not to say that any of those organizations are bad far from it. I think they've done phenomenal things.

[00:17:15] Brian: I know plenty of great people who work in all those organizations, but ultimately they're fighting an uphill battle. Unless you have dedicated money or reorganized not just contracting, but more acquisition policies to allow you to use your moneys, in more creative ways, like again, you're going to find interesting ways for very few select things to break through.

[00:17:38] Brian: And they do, but in terms of a better path for more and great stuff, it's just not there. What I like to tell everybody is, war changes all this. Get one good big conflict, just like we saw with GWAT. And then again, you can go back to Vietnam. You can keep recycling it back to every major war.

[00:17:54] Brian: It always happens. It's not particularly new. Sadly enough, you get enough people who either on our side die on their side are threatened or any number of significant enough threat, then we suddenly realize okay, we will change things and either people will be fired to do it and new people be brought in or old people will be, so to speak, will feel enough pressure that they just acquiesce and it changes. And so a lot of it's a waiting game in terms of waiting for things to evolve. It's just the unfortunate part is you generally have to wait for something pretty bad to happen first before something really significant, changes, as an example, with the Afghanistan withdrawal, you hear a lot of kind of consternation about immigration policy and this, that, and the other from any side, left or right.

[00:18:37] Brian: It's amazing how quickly no one brought up any immigration issues when we brought, 40, 000 people into the country in a matter of days. The point there being when the need is high enough, rules don't matter. They flatly don't. We will wipe them all to the side in the sake of just getting it done.

[00:18:56] Brian: And it's just, you have to get that threshold high enough. It just doesn't happen that often. But anyway, that's my unpopular opinion.

[00:19:02] Bonnie: Oh, you were definitely, I'm getting a flavor of what you were talking about when your colleagues would say, Oh, you may not like the way Brian tells you the way it is. I think you're describing the innovation theater criticisms out there, In the department of defense.

[00:19:19] Bonnie: I think it's interesting you brought up the rules don't apply. There's always an exception to the rule and there's always someone waiving the rules when the tolerance is high enough to do so. And. I'm sitting here and just wondering and hoping that we don't have to wait for a catastrophe for that to happen.

[00:19:37] Bonnie: I'm like, why can't we do it now? Let's go. And, to your point we'll see if we get there, but I have a sliver of hope that we don't have to wait for something bad to happen for us to think differently about solutioning. And so speaking of that, when you talked about deploying things into the hands of soldiers, warfighters is the metric.

[00:20:02] Bonnie: So what were some things that you did to solve to that. So you knew you were operating in this environment with that was like, there's nothing linear about it right there. It's a big squiggly line between, like you said, idea and deploying to the field. So what were some things you did to try and navigate that space in your roles?

[00:20:21] Brian: So from a acquisition and contract perspective, There is a very old trick and I am not the first person to figure it out, let alone employ it. I was taught it as a way of doing business many years ago. And we, hell, we even did it when we were, we employed it in a small way, very small way.

[00:20:38] Brian: During the Afghan evacuation, just as a quick way to get things done. It's one of the easiest ways, it's not necessarily well known. That's a better way to say it. In terms of acquisition methodologies for acquiring and deploying things to the field quickly is use your existing contracts.

[00:20:54] Brian: And so case in point, most all contracts have a prime. And so ultimately, especially if I have a prime, I just go to my big idea IQs. I've already got money on the contract to do something and I've usually got a few of those. If you go high enough up in the command chain.

[00:21:11] Brian: And so if I really need to do something and I've got the money, that's the real trick. Do you have the money? The straw into gold method is I have no money. Okay. We'll step way over there to the side. We're working magic tricks next, but for right now, let's assume you have the money. And so assuming you have the money solves all problems.

[00:21:28] Brian: There's a million contractual ways to do anything, arguably the fastest, and that's what I'm referring to here. The fastest way is you go to your existing IDA queues. You find a clin within or you find a cell that first meets, the broader definition of what you're trying to do, then you go to that prime and you say, look, I got this really important thing.

[00:21:45] Brian: This is what I need to do. Don't be a insert expletive here. We need to get this done. And they go, yes, sir. I don't want to lose that business, sir. What do I do for you, sir? And then, okay, what do you need to do? Do you need to get a person? Do you need to buy a thing? You need to do whatever, find the associated claim within that contract and then either have them buy it directly from, commercial company X or whatever it is.

[00:22:06] Brian: Or they can bring a sub on contract or whatever. It just, depending on what you're trying to do, working through a preexisting contract is easily the fastest thing to do, because regardless of, using OTAs to sole source a thing and this, that, and the other, the whole point is if I've got a prime in place, I don't have to teach anybody how, about a new technology business or from a new technology business, how to work with the D. O. D. I've already got a partner there and I can let them do the B to figure out all the various things that they need to do to ultimately work out the business relationship. But what will happen in very rapid succession is the money's already there. They can spend the money and get me the widget.

[00:22:46] Brian: Now there's fees to that. There's all kinds of things that, but like I couched this whole thing is assuming you have the money speed is easy, like speed is affordable if you have the money. And that was always the trick. It was, I remember back in the days you had OCO. So the trick was you just let the need risk, however you want to phrase it, combination thereof, rise high enough that then justified your money.

[00:23:11] Brian: The money was there because it was OCO. And now, great. I've got any number of contracts that I can, cross utilize for that. And that was the way a lot of things were done for a long time. And then it was only when you got to the, like the sustainment piece of that as, okay, now we're going to be using this from company X, for long enough, okay, let's look at either doing a sole source to them, or maybe you might go down a similar route or things like that, but 

[00:23:34] Brian: it wasn't the world we live in today where it's like almost OTA or silver first on everything. And then it's okay, let's figure out how to tie it into acquisition there. If anything, it was really more of the reverse. It was like, okay, we'll just do everything through existing contracts or the majority of it.

[00:23:48] Brian: And then when, and if we need to sustain something, then we'll figure out, what that kind of path looks like. But we already have a way to buy stuff. I want to say directly, but buy stuff quickly at least. It's only currently that paradigm has really started to change. And I think for the good, I think it'd be very useful to have that direct path from

[00:24:07] Brian: I have like my few options, Sibbers, OTAs, any number of other options. of getting companies initially on contract as the primary source, whether it's sole source or otherwise, and then having a relatively expedited path to getting to operationalization. I think making that formalizing and making that cleaner would be better.

[00:24:28] Brian: But there have always been ways to get around that for a long time. But anyway, so we used to do that in terms of tangible examples. We did that with any number of small UAS capabilities back in the day. So when we were doing the initial exploitation on DGI drones, you had to get DGI drones and you needed to get them at scale.

[00:24:43] Brian: So there are any number of companies I can think of three or four off the top of my head that we utilize both to do the work in terms of the drone hacking. And then of course, just the raw resourcing of the drones themselves. That was always an option. Then of course, depending on what you were doing beyond that point.

[00:24:58] Brian: There's, individual suppliers of components that you work with as well. Again, it breaks down when you're looking at weapon systems from that perspective. And then same difference when we had the, as mentioned before, when we did the Afghan evacuation, there was a piece of land surveying equipment or a software, sorry, land survey software that

[00:25:14] Brian: Our geospatial guys wanted to utilize to scan the airfield so we could figure out where we're going to put the tents for all the personnel because we had the initial deployment that we knew it was going to rapidly expand and the software they were trained to use, they just didn't have. And the only way to quickly buy it was off the Internet.

[00:25:29] Brian: I'll say off the Internet, but from the direct commercial listing. And so the comm guys were giving us grief about doing a direct impact card purchase and this, that, and the other. And so I just went to my contract lead over at a eight and I was like, Hey, do you have a contract that has money?

[00:25:45] Brian: Yes. Do they have the ability to buy software? Yes. Okay. So what's the problem? Buy it. Oh yeah, we could do that. Yes, you could go get it done, please. And we had it that afternoon. not typical, just because it's not typical, doesn't make it illegal. It just makes it not normal. You can do all kinds of not normal things. You can string together a whole arc of not normal things and build a whole program that way. It's just not normal. So people didn't write it in the book to teach it as a way to do things, but any number of things are possible.

[00:26:12] Bonnie: What's your advice to an eager innovator out there who wants to get things done.

[00:26:19] Brian: Yeah. I wrote a whole blog post on this and this is I could go on for hours about this, cause this is like my one thing I love to pound the drum on. I would say the two biggest things you need to do. And this is again, Brian's personal opinion. So take that for what it's worth.

[00:26:33] Brian: Number one, you need to be the absolute best at your job. And I don't mean innovation. Innovation is not your job. Your job is whatever, AFSC or MOS or, whatever your job skill is, it's whatever that is. If you suck at your job, if you're mediocre at your job, don't go do innovation. I know that's a hot take, but I don't care.

[00:26:52] Brian: Don't go do it. I have the last thing I have any interest in. And again, I'm speaking as a retired chief master sergeant and I worked my way up from staff sergeant All the way to chief doing innovation stuff. It can be done, but you don't do it sucking at your job. You do it being the best guy, the most knowledgeable girl, the person who can do anything.

[00:27:14] Brian: That's how you make it up the innovation ladder. It is not impossible. It is not neuro atypical or whatever fun words they want to use on all of it. It becomes really simple. If you just do the hard work and you're really good at it. That's all you got to do. Do a lot of hard work that no one else wants to do and be really damn good at it.

[00:27:33] Brian: I can guarantee you absolute career success. If you do that, if you want to do that and do it in really rapid succession, be nice on top of it. if I could point to one thing that I didn't do really well, that would have made my career skyrocket even faster. It's just be nice in the process.

[00:27:50] Brian: I'm just, as you can tell, not, like I'm fun to talk to, but I'm not the guy you want to put on stage with four generals, especially now that he's retired. That would be like the key thing is if you can do all that and be nice, or as the weapon officers like to say, when I was working at the weapon school, be humble.

[00:28:06] Brian: That's all it is. Be humble and approachable. And again, hard work. Be the best at it. That's it. My favorite assignment I had my entire career was the two and a half years I worked with the instructors at the weapon school supporting them with intelligence work. That was the absolute pinnacle of my career.

[00:28:21] Brian: Why? Cause it was 30 plus people. And every single one of us were handpicked because we were the best at our jobs. No one sucked. Everyone was an expert. Everyone knew exactly what they were going to do. And we all worked damn hard at it. It was long hours and it was really rough work. And everyone had like at least four separate, ancillary jobs, but it's absolutely the best time you'll ever have in your career working with true professionals.

[00:28:45] Brian: And that's the key thing. don't you want to be that don't you want to be a true professional, like in the truest sense of those words. And don't you want to work with those people, do that and be that for other people and you will have success in anything, but especially innovation, but again, that's the unfortunate reality is

[00:29:02] Brian: either because it's a show or people want to weigh out of their career field or whatever. Innovation gets muddied with all kinds of folks who are either not that great at their job or not that interested in their job. And they come over here and try to make it a cool kids club of like just doing neat stuff. No one needs you to do neat stuff. Everybody wants to do neat stuff. Everybody wants a cool job. Everyone wants to play with shiny objects. that's not the job. The real job, what makes you successful is knowing all the AFIs backwards and forwards, because how else are you going to know the non standard ways to do it?

[00:29:36] Brian: And if you suggest a non standard way, you better be the one who knows how to do it. Cause no one else is. So that's the whole point is like, if you want to be successful at it, it comes with all the hard work. you can't separate those things. 

[00:29:48] Bonnie: I'm laughing because, I've been down this road a few times. You're not wrong. There's a couple of simple truths and you said them right out the gate. Hard work, be kind or tactful or humble. I've heard, kind of those words shared in the same space. and then where you started the conversation, like focusing on the problem, like problems first to get to solutions.

[00:30:12] Bonnie: That's, I think another ingredient under that maybe hard work category. 30 minutes is not enough to unpack what you just said. Oh my goodness. So how about this? Let's round it out like this. So you, you just gave your, honest opinions and criticisms on what's going on in innovation land and the department of defense.

[00:30:31] Bonnie: Where would you like to see in when people use the word innovation in the department of defense? What should that look like from your vantage point? Understanding this is your opinion. But like we got a really good sense or flavor of maybe what it's not doing, but if it were working at its best, what would it look like?

[00:30:52] Brian: So this may not, this analogy may not ring true with everybody or even correlate to a lot of people, but what I would love innovation to be ultimately, it's not there today, but it could definitely evolve to being this is I would love when people say innovation, I would love for that in some extremely tangible, very well developed way to mean Weapons School for Acquisition.

[00:31:18] Brian: Because really, that's what it needs to be. Because if you look at what Weapons School is, Weapons School fundamentally in the Air Force has two primary functions. It is to train people to be the absolute best at employment of that particular weapon system and to be able to train others. That's it.

[00:31:37] Brian: That's like the whole job of weapon school, teach people to be the absolute best and how to train others to be just as good, or at least as good as they can be. And ultimately, if you think about, if you take that and then move that over to acquisition, it's not really what we want innovation to be, to know all the various forms and functions, be able to employ it in the hardest, most difficult scenarios, and then train others to be as great at it as we are, as at least as good as they can be.

[00:32:03] Brian: That's what I would love to see innovation turn into. And ultimately I hope in some small way I've helped contribute to, in whatever way I have in my career.

[00:32:12] Bonnie: All right. Final question. It's a hard one, it's a zinger, you ready?

[00:32:17] Brian: Ooh, okay.

[00:32:18] Bonnie: Would you dip your grilled cheese in hot chocolate?

[00:32:21] Brian: Oh, this is easy. No, cause I do not eat cheese other than pizza, I do not eat cheese. My girlfriend loves to harangue me about this, cause she's like one of those what's the place where you go and you dip everything in the cheese or whatever, yeah, fondue. She loves that stuff. And I just, it just grosses me out.

[00:32:36] Brian: So nothing in cheese, nothing with cheese. I don't put cheese in my burgers. Nothing.

[00:32:40] Bonnie: Is it no cheese because that's a preference or because it's like a messes your stomach up 

[00:32:46] Brian: No, , I have lots of like weird food, I don't want to say habits, but like preferences. I like things extremely plain. I don't eat flavored really anything. I only do regular flavored chips. I don't put cheese in my burger. I only eat ketchup as a condiment.

[00:33:00] Brian: Like it, I just really have, you could clearly tell him a weird person. This is just like one of my weird quirks. So cheese is an easy one. Don't do it. 

[00:33:08] Bonnie: Yeah. . 

[00:33:09] Bonnie: well 

[00:33:09] Brian: my job is interesting. My life is boring. That's why I keep 

[00:33:12] Bonnie: Maybe that's how you balance it out. Like you got to keep it so I, that actually makes a lot of sense. Okay. 

[00:33:20] 

[00:33:20] Bonnie: I can't thank you enough for giving me some space to, to share kind of your thoughts and opinions on what's going on out there. This is one of the cool things that we get to do to uplift or surface some things that are happening in our field and in our function so that like we can look at things honestly.

[00:33:39] Bonnie: Even if we don't agree on it like honest disagreement, it's a big deal for us. And being able to have that, have people like you be very candid is really cool. So thank you for that.

[00:33:49] Brian: Yeah, I really appreciate the opportunity. Hopefully somebody out there will find this useful and inspiring.

[00:33:54] Bonnie: All right. Take care.

[00:33:55] Brian: Thanks.