Every challenge is an opportunity Published Aug. 16, 2012 By Col. Marty Chapin 621st Contingency response Wing commander JOINT BASE MCGUIRE-DIX-LAKEHURST, N.J. -- As a commander, one of the more common things I hear when I visit units during the Spring and Summer is, "Sir, we're losing all our good Airmen in the next couple of months!" Unit leaders are genuinely concerned about the loss of their best, brightest and most experienced Airmen, NCOs and officers within their work centers. I have two responses I like to share with leaders facing these legitimate concerns to help ensure they continue executing the mission throughout our annual "summer shuffle." First, step back and look at things from the larger, Air Force-wide perspective. Most of our highly trained and talented Airmen are not leaving the Air Force; we're just moving them from one unit to another. For every Airmen a squadron loses, we generally gain another motivated and talented person. Looked at another way, just think about how lucky the unit is that is gaining the leader you are so concerned about losing. Then remember, some other commander elsewhere is getting ready to send you that one person he or she are convinced is critical to his or her unit. While experience in a particular mission is clearly important, we have an entire Air Force full of folks who are highly adept at spinning up quickly on a new mission at a new unit; it's what we do. The second thing I tell leaders facing these concerns is to trust in the strength of the institution they have built. One of the most amazing things about our United States military is we have always organized ourselves to be adaptive to change and able to cope with the loss of a single leader or person. We do this by creating units with a strong operational focus and culture of excellence. Make no mistake, it's our individual Airmen who accomplish this, but in a healthy organization, our Airmen have created a climate that is more than the sum of the contributions of the individuals. This makes that unit resilient to the loss or departure of even the most key members of the team. I ask our leaders to remember this when it comes time to face the departure of one or more seemingly critical members of their unit: every challenge or problem is also an opportunity. The Airmen you gain through the course of our predictable "summer shuffle" are just as talented as those you've sent off to do bigger and better things somewhere else in our Air Force. In the end, we're making better Airmen, with more skillsets, ready to face the challenges ahead of us. If I still haven't convinced them, I offer this: We've been doing this for 65 years this September ... we must be doing something right, because we remain the world's premier Air and Space power. It's pretty hard to argue with that kind of success.