RCAF Launches PITT Crew Under Op TALENT As First Fully Virtual RCAF Team

Magazine Article / June 1, 2020

by Major Cole McGregor, 429 (Transport) Squadron Operations Officer, CFB Trenton

People have always been at the forefront of strategic decision-making within the RCAF, but the dynamic and evolving environment the RCAF faces today places additional importance on personnel-related innovation for our RCAF team. The Personnel Initiatives Tiger Team, or “PITT Crew,” is a program designed to identify mechanisms by which the RCAF can enable its personnel to perform at the highest levels and to help guide those mechanisms through to implementation.

The program began in February 2020 when I pitched a concept at a Commander’s “Vector Check,” a briefing intended to give RCAF members a platform for presenting ideas directly to the RCAF Commander. During this pitch, I identified opportunities within the RCAF to use administrative and technological innovations to help align real working environments more closely with the RCAF’s strategic intent under Operation TALENT.

The goal of this PITT Crew concept is to make life easier for RCAF members and to facilitate getting them the modern tools they need to work effectively and efficiently. As the RCAF responds to operational demands and emerging work-conditions, those tools need to streamline tasks wherever possible. Making life easier for our aviators ─improving their work-life balance─ is one of Op TALENT’s fundamental principles. Success in this vein will directly contribute to the sustainability of the RCAF’s workforce, ultimately ensuring the effective delivery of air and space power now and into the future.

RCAF Commander, Lieutenant-General Al Meinzinger, endorsed this perspective and has personally taken on the role of Program Champion for the PITT Crew. Deputy Commander, Major-General Blaise Frawley, is also committed to the initiative and has volunteered to serve as the Program’s Lead.

The PITT Crew has a modest core team that is highly collaborative; we gather as much information as we can to identify where a pressure exists at the tactical level for our members, and then we try to trace that pressure back to its fundamental origin at the strategic level. By identifying the origin of the pressure, the PITT Crew can investigate to discover if an enhancement is possible and, if so, recommend that enhancement as something we call a “Value Multiplier.”

Value Multipliers are innovations that increase efficiency and productivity; they reduce the time it takes to perform a task, or distribute one member’s efforts to many members. The goal is to design strategic tools that eliminate work duplicates, automate tasks wherever possible, reduce task-time requirements through purposeful technology, and distribute work outputs for shared efficiencies.

Value Multipliers are the PITT Crew’s main product, and we work collaboratively with a broad spectrum of the RCAF to ensure that those products are individually optimized for the folks who need them. We want to arm members with purposeful tools, and Value Multipliers are how we identify and propose those tools to RCAF leadership.

“Having a team like the PITT Crew, with its ability to analyse problems and trace their origins to propose real and practical solutions is a game-changer for the RCAF,” said LGen Meinzinger. “It also validates the benefits of the Vector Check, proving great ideas can come from all ranks within our air force.”

Having solidified our core team membership, the PITT Crew is now expanding to include a team of “Agents,” who are motivated representatives from different RCAF trades, ranks, and communities across the country who will contribute to developing new Value Multipliers.

If you or someone you work with would like to get involved in this virtual team, sent the PITT Crew an email (internally only) at:

• +PITTCrew – ESIP@C Air Force DGAS@Ottawa-Hull (P-OTG.PITTCrewESIP@internal.mil.ca)
• Or to the Office 365 address at: PITT Crew@@Defence O365 (pittcrew@ecn.forces.gc.ca)