Incirlik improves vision, mission and goals

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman Sara Csurilla
  • 39th Air Base Wing Public Affairs
INCIRLIK AIR BASE, Turkey --  As new leaders flood into Incirlik and mission requirements evolve, Incirlik's vision, mission and goals stay in sync with the ever-changing Air Force.

Incirlik has an official vision statement, mission statement and set of goals that have been recently updated to help ensure Incirlik's mission is better accomplished.

While the actual vision and mission statement stayed the same, the goals have changed.

The updated goals include:

· Maintain and enhance world class mission and base support to U.S. and NATO forces
· Develop Ready Airmen: ready today, ready to deploy, ready for tomorrow
· Maintain and enhance quality of life for our communities
· Maintain and expand host nation cooperation and relationships

"We decided we needed to update the goals to focus more precisely on what we need to do to successfully perform the mission and achieve the vision," said Col. Eric Beene, 39th Air Base Wing commander. "An essential element for the success of any wing is continuous improvement. We must constantly examine what we do and why, and make every effort to improve ourselves and our processes. The change was simply the result of our continuous improvement efforts."

Although the goals are the only part that underwent changes, the modifications are set to help streamline the vision and mission not only for Incirlik's mission, but also support the missions of Third Air Force, United States Air Forces in Europe, United States European Command and the Air Force.

Wing leadership decided on the change by hosting a series of Air Force Smart Operations for the 21st Century meetings with group commanders to discuss the then current vision, mission and goals.

"By using AFSO 21 techniques with the help of Mr. Charles Morrison [39th Air Base Wing AFSO 21] and Master Sgt. Gretchen Brashears [39th Force Support Squadron], we were able to assess what we were trying to achieve and then to refine our goals," Colonel Beene said.

Colonel Beene said the improvements aren't meant to change what we do at Incirlik tremendously, they should simply allow it to better focus on the many important missions here.

"The changes also provide us an opportunity to re-assess the metrics we use to gauge our performance and how well we achieve our goals," Colonel Beene said. "As we looked at the metrics we currently track, we found we were missing many important indicators and others didn't help us achieve our goals. This review gives all Airmen an opportunity to re-focus on what we do and why, and on the ways we can measure how well we are achieving our goals."

Changes may take some time to get used to but by streamlining a path for a better way of achieving Incirlik's goals, wing leadership hopes it will only add to our legacy of excellence at Incirlik.