AAFES commanding general visits Andersen Published Oct. 28, 2007 By Senior Airman Angelique Smythe 36th Wing Public Affairs ANDERSEN AIR FORCE BASE, Guam -- Army Brig. Gen. Keith Thurgood visited Andersen Oct. 25, two months after assuming command of the Army and Air Force Exchange Services Aug. 15, to communicate his thoughts on the upcoming new Base Exchange and his goals as the new AAFES commander. Q: How do you like what you've seen of Guam so far? A: I absolutely love Guam. This is my first visit here, and I'm excited about the growth in Guam and all of the things that this great community is doing to make it even better. And as part of AAFES, we're glad we can participate in that by making sure we have a nice, new facility that will be opening in August or September 2008. Q: How will the new BX better serve the Andersen community? A: It's going to be much bigger. We'll have a store that will give everybody a new shopping experience. We want to make sure we have the right assortment and merchandise for this store to meet the needs of our patrons. I think it will be a great thing for the community. Q: How do you enjoy being the AAFES commander? A: Well, I've been on the job for about two months now. And I absolutely love it. One of the things that amazes me about AAFES are the capabilities that it can bring to bear to help the combatant, base, wing and garrison commanders across the globe -- whether it's in real estate, legal, architecture or engineering, we can do all of that. AAFES has 45,000 associates; we're doing business in 30 countries across the globe. It's basically a $10 million enterprise. Our mission is to do two things: one is to provide a benefit to the patrons who visit our stores, and, secondly, to ensure we're providing a service to those folks who come to our stores. Every time a patron comes to our stores we try to give them a good value proposition so they want to come back. If they like the assortment and it's a good experience, they spend their money. Over the past decade we've delivered well over $2 billion in dividends back to the Air Force and the Army. And all that money goes to help the MWR (Morale, Welfare and Recreation) funds and the services funds. Q: What are some of its challenges? A: I talk all the time about the challenges, and I capture it in what I call my "ABCs." We want all of our associates to be proactive business owners. So my first A is "act now." Associates need to have the ability to make the decision to be proactive and to solve the customers' problems. We are a solution-oriented organization. Another challenge is making sure we have the right type of leadership for the future. And I call that B for "build the bench." Part of our job is to make sure that we're growing leaders for the future, and then we're also developing efficient managers. I want our folks to be great leaders and efficient managers. If we can run the stores more efficiently, we will return that money right back to the services. C is for "customer." The number one reason we exist is to support our customers. We have to be very attentive to what they want and what their needs are and develop solutions to meet those needs. The second thing we're focused on in terms of C is "cost." If we can drive productivity in our supply chain, we can be a much more profitable organization, and, therefore, return more money back to the Army and the Air Force. We're focused on our cost, infrastructure cost and reducing cost in the supply chain. The third C is about the "cash." It's about the dividend returned and I want people to think about making a significant difference in AAFES. I don't want them to think about a half percent or one percent change; I want them to think about five, 10, 15, 20 percent changes. The next C is "community." Not only are AAFES members part of a large global community, but we're also members of the local community. We want to do everything we can to support the families and military folks, or troops, who live here. Our job is to make sure we're doing everything we can so that this command is ready to go from an operational standpoint and ready to provide the services that the families deserve and respect. We're a part of that community and we want to be engaged in that community. Those are the ABCs. Q: What goals do you hope to accomplish as the AAFES commander? A: I want the services to know and understand the great capabilities that AAFES can bring to bear to support the community and the commanders. The second thing I want to do is make sure that we are doing everything we can to position ourselves to be relevant in the future as it relates to BRAC (Base Realignment and Closure) and the global repositioning initiatives, so as we move forces around throughout the world, we need to be positioned as an organization to provide the absolute best service that we can. Q: What will be the biggest change in AAFES in the next five years or so? A: One of the biggest changes is going to be the way we build our stores in the future. Today, when you go into an exchange, they all look the same, and we do that for marketing reasons. But if you think about the demographics of the future and the shopping experience that the customer wants in the future, it's different tomorrow than it is today. So one of the things we're going to do is build a different kind of facility, and we're going to call it town centers. The first one we're building is at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas. So we'll spend millions of dollars designing and building a new kind of shopping experience. Imagine going downtown; there's a walkway; on one side of this walkway are all of these brand name stores; and then you go down to the corner and there's a nice little fountain. On the other side there's some eating establishments, maybe even a different kind of theater. When you come to that, you come to shop there. You can dine with your family. You can get a little bit of entertainment with your family. It's a nice venue. Maybe five years from now, those are the kind of stores that you're going to start seeing at installations across the globe. Q: How is this job different than your previous position? A: It's very interesting. And I'm unique to this position for a couple reasons. One is I just got back from Iraq. I was in Iraq for a year as the commander of the 143rd Transportation Command and, simultaneously, as the deputy commander of the 377th Theater Support Command. Those two units really ran the logistics of the theater of operations over there. I'm actually an Army Reservist mobilized to this position. So I came from Iraq, went back to my job for Pepsi for a couple months, and then remobilized to this position. This position is unique in a couple ways. It's really a business that we're running here, and so our competition is the global supply chain across the world. We have to run this very efficiently and we want to do that so we can get great returns back to our troops. That's what's different about this job. It's a business as opposed to a war fight. There are some common things, too. One is, at the end of the day, everything we do is about leadership, and it's about everybody in our organization reaching out and touching a customer, touching a troop, making our organizations better in a way that drives the business in a way that we want to go in the future.