What worked in Germany’s WWII Air Force?

Here is Admiral Rickover providing insight into innovative organizations:

Admiral RICKOVER. This group is responsible for the design, the development, and the construction and operation of the nuclear plants. We review and approve the technical details of those plants. We set the objectives. We approve the design parameters. We decide what technical items go into these plants. We have found this procedure to be necessary.

 

Mr. HOLIFIELD. Do you do the contracting ?

 

Admiral RICKOVER. No, sir. We use the regular contract organizations in the Atomic Energy Commission ‘and the Navy to do the detailed contracting work because we don’t want to have contracting people in our headquarters organization. As I have said, we try to get rid of every possible activity we can, and have it done by the routine Government organizations. When something becomes routine we try to get it out of our organization. But as far as research and design and development, we control that lock, stock, and barrel from my office.

 

We make the basic decisions ourselves. Now this leads to the point of what should be the philosophy of Government operations in this respect.

 

Shortly after the last war Col. Leslie Simon, I believe he was then connected with the Army Ordnance Department, was sent abroad to study how the Germans did their research and development during the war. In my opinion the most impressive thing that came out of his study was the vast difference between the research land development ability and the accomplishments of the German Air Force as compared with the German Army and the Navy. As you well know, the German Air -Force did an outstanding job. They were defeated because one country was fighting the entire world.

 

Looking at this matter bluntly and without any moral considerations, they did an outstanding research and development job, better than that of any other combatant. It seemed to me to be a good idea to investigate why the German Air Force was so preeminent. Goering, head of the German Air Force, decided very wisely that he would have trained scientists and engineers at headquarters, men who were equally as capable of judging research and technical matters as those in German industry.

 

The German Army and the Navy traditionally had not operated in that manner. They had turned over most of their research and development work to industry, with the government acting more or less as a contracting agency. But the German Air Force had people right at headquarters who knew just as much about the job as the people in industry.

 

Mr. HOLIFIELD. In other words, they built the inhouse capability.

 

Admiral RICKOVER. Yes, sir.

 

Mr. HOLIFIELD. In the military or were these civilians?

 

Admiral RICKOVER. That is immaterial, sir, as I will explain later. When you get killed the bullet does not know whether you are wearing gold braid or you are “just a civilian.” It does not make any difference. For instance, in my organization I have both civilians and officers, but they do not duplicate work. We have civilians working for officers. We have officers working for civilians. We have had a lieutenant commander working for a Reserve lieutenant (jg). Whoever can do the job best gets the job and that is all there is to it.

That exchange occurred back in March 1959. There were a bunch of insights there:

(1) That innovative organizations should outsource routine administration.

(2) The best person gets the job, regardless of age, rank, status, or otherwise.

(3) In-house technical excellence is a pre-requisite to successful projects and productive relationships with industry.

Rickover is probably one of the most credible and articulate of 20th century thinkers on organizations and management. Excellent Rickover snippets like these abound in at least 183 testimonies before Congress between 1950 and 1983. His discussions also ranged into engineering, production, health and pollution, patent policy, law, education, accounting, politics, economics, philosophy, and much more.

Source: ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT OF MISSILE PROGRAMS HEARINGS BEFORE A SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT OPERATIONS HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES EIGHTY-SIXTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION FEBRUARY 4, 5, 6, MARCH 2, 3, 5, 13, AND 20, 1959, pp. 604.