Years ago, when a civilian worker at one of the nation's largest Air Force bases was working for a general, she watched as a team was formed to come up with a better system to handle mail. Mail to the base included letters from multi-starred generals and directives that had deadlines. The "process improvement team," also known as a PIT, had a roster of middle managers, mostly civilians, who spent the better part of a month coming up with a plan. But instead of streamlining the process, they complicated it. "I was horrified," the woman says. "There used to be...