Why Is the Staff Sergeant as Important as the General?

Uwe Horstmann says the staff sergeant who uses a system is as important as the general who buys it, and for Stark often more important.

The buyer is usually a senior official who controls the budget. The user is the soldier. Horstmann says that soldier's feedback is the input the company needs most. A light plastic case made the gap obvious. The team showed up with a box that was easy to carry. Soldiers asked for wood, because wood can go on a fire and keep them warm in the winter. The design from the whiteboard and the design that survives a winter field were not the same.

Stark treats those soldiers as the customer. The habit it is pushing against is dropping equipment on a unit and blaming the user when it fails. The company would rather be told the product is wrong and come back with another version the next day. That is how it tries to win trust, ahead of the procurement meeting.