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Rich Staats |
A Principled Life
Rich Staats
July 2007
Spend some time with Rich Staats, head of MITRE's Operations Research
and Systems Analysis (ORSA) department, and the subject of principles
is bound to come up—the Perrin, Stafford, and Petersen principles,
to be exact. But don't look for these three rules—which Staats
applies to his work and just about every other area of his life—in
any management textbook. He crafted them himself from lessons he
learned from three experts in the field of his favorite hobby: card
and board game design.
Staats's involvement in the game design world began with beta testing
games in the late '70s, and he soon graduated to creating his own
games for fun. While earning his Ph.D. in electrical engineering
and computer science as a Hertz Fellow at MIT, he also taught undergraduate-credit
courses in world design for gaming and in developing non-point-of-view
characters. Last year Staats published Khymir, a game he developed
with author/illustrator Mark Rogers, whose fantasy novels include
Zorachus and The Nightmare of God. Along the way,
Staats met the three men who would inspire his principles.
"Steve Perrin has designed all kinds of games over the years, and
he's very much about consistency and details," Staats says. "So
the Perrin Principle is to be consistent and analytically rigorous."
In the ORSA department, which uses advanced analytical methods to
help sponsors make better decisions and build more productive systems,
the principle means that all work should have reproducible mathematical
and scientific results.
The second principle is based on the game design work of Greg Stafford.
"He is all about imagination and giving people a unique experience,"
explains Staats, "so the Stafford Principle is to offer something
unique." In the context of ORSA's work, this means applying a specialized
set of skills and creative perspectives to sponsors' problems.
The final principle refers to Sandy Petersen, the designer of numerous
role-playing games who went on to become the chief designer of the
Doom computer game. "He says no matter what you do, have fun doing
it," explains Staats. At work, he applies the Petersen Principle
by finding ways to make sure people enjoy their jobs, as when he
instituted a department mascot, the ORmadillo.
"I'm wildly consistent about the principles, so they've been very
effective," he says. "I think about them as three spokes on a wheel.
If they're in balance, things roll around rather nicely."
Baghdad Bound
Seeking a different career path than those available in the agricultural
community where he grew up, Staats entered the U.S. Military Academy
at West Point, where he first studied operations research and systems
analysis. He began his career as an Army officer in 1984 and served
in a variety of positions, including battalion commander. Staats
then transferred to the Army Reserves to work on his Ph.D. After
graduating in 1994, he worked on transportation modeling at the
Virginia-based Logistics Management Institute before joining MITRE
in 1997 to work on projects for the Assistant Secretary of Defense
for Command, Control, Communications, and Intelligence.
On September 11, 2005, Staats's Army Reserve unit mobilized for
service in Iraq. Once in Baghdad, then-lieutenant colonel Staats
served as both commander of the 9th LOG Camp, Post, Station Headquarters
and as Iraqi Security Force Support Director for the Multi-National
Corps-Iraq. His responsibilities included helping the Iraqi Security
Forces with everything from acquiring building materials to solving
power generation issues to training logistical personnel.
To help bridge the culture gap, Staats studied the Quran, learned
Arabic proverbs, and, of course, invited his Iraqi colleagues to
play board games. "I had a chance to interact with the Iraqis on
a daily basis. It was really a once-in-a-lifetime experience," he
says.
Staats's management principles also traveled with him to Iraq,
where he realized they could help him quickly get incoming personnel
working toward the same objectives. Using the principles, he developed
a series of goals and methods for measuring success and began briefing
everyone from four-star generals to the Iraqis. "Seeing people start
to move in the same direction was very gratifying," he says.
Staats' approach was so well regarded that since his return home,
the Department of State has asked him to train future Iraqi Provincial
Reconstruction Teams about the role of the military in Iraq and
approaches that work well with Iraqis.
Back at MITRE
Despite the success of the mission, the deployment was incredibly
difficult for Staats, a full-time single dad, because it meant leaving
his three teenage children in the care of a patchwork support network
of friends. Staats was overjoyed to return home to his family in
November of 2006 after 13 months in Iraq. "It was a wonderful assignment,
great from a professional standpoint," says Staats, "but for my
family's sake, I would really prefer not to go back if I don't have
to."
Staats returned from Iraq with a bronze star for actions in combat
and has since been promoted to the rank of colonel. And he quickly
jumped back in the saddle at MITRE, where he is—true to the
Stafford principle—applying his unique perspective as an Iraq
veteran and an ORmadillo to MITRE's work.
"Your company is supposed to offer you similar employment upon
return from military service," he says. "But MITRE went not just
the extra mile but the extra marathon and kept my position open
for me. So I came back to my beloved ORmadillos, ready to work with
the world-class folks here on issues salient to national defense."
—by Rachael Morgan
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