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  • Leadership Lessons: No Money, No Mission

    When looking down at the long list of Air Force Specialty Codes during my third year of ROTC to pick my future job, I was only looking at one: Pilot. Not only did I not know much about any other AFSCs or even what a comptroller was, but through my ignorance I believed that if I did not become a

  • Leadership Lessons: 'A' is for Airman

    When I joined the Air Force, I was amazed by the number of acronyms that are used in everyday conversation. When I started working in a Joint Environment four years ago there were even more acronyms used by our sister services that I had to comprehend. I learned that that the Army has seven core

  • Vision Quest

    Many of you were probably surprised when Col. Lewis challenged Airmen to come forward and recite the vision and mission before the Wing Run Oct. 1 on that chilly fall morning.  Why would he do that?  Why is it so important to him that Airmen know these statements?  Aren't they just a bunch of words

  • Leadership Lessons: Why are we wasting all this money?

    Too often I hear this question, but when I ask for specifics most responses refer to the amount of dollars being spent and not what is being purchased. The assumption is "it's the end of the year and there's money to spend, spend it no matter what". As the base Comptroller, I can tell you it's just

  • Leadership Lessons: Full range leadership

    After only five months of being assigned to the 348th Reconnaissance Squadron, I found myself on the hook to attend Squadron Officer School down at balmy Maxwell AFB, Alabama. After quickly accumulating over 450 total hours in the RQ-4 Global Hawk, I saw the TDY as a vacation of sorts.I was only

  • Leadership Lessons: Commander's guidance - Marine aviation style

    Over the years I have collected a number of articles, books, e-mails, thoughts, and notes on leadership. Very few have struck me harder than a straight forward guidance memo written by the commanding officer of a Marine attack squadron who gave his life serving our great nation on September 15,

  • Leadership Lessons: From my dog

    Several weeks ago, the world became a lesser place when a valued member of the Duncan family went to run in fields eternal. Our faithful dog Rusty passed away at the age of 15, which would be 83 to a human. Just think of the leadership lessons one could learn if they sat and talked with or simply

  • Leadership Lessons: Bad apple adversity

    When I was first approached with the idea of writing about leadership and adversity, I wasn't sure I had something meaningful to contribute. You see, there has never been that one event in my life that sparked some kind of epiphany--an "ah-ha" moment that suddenly clarified all sense of purpose and

  • Leadership Lessons: Season of change

    With summer comes change in the Air Force.  As we all know it is a huge PCS season and change is in the air.  Personally, we may be uprooting our lives from one base and reinstalling them in another. As organizations, our commanders, supervisors and coworkers are changing. It is a time where there