“We’re providing our leaders with some inspiration and understanding, and a few tools they can use to maintain our warfighting culture, with the added dimension of business discipline,” says Rear Adm. James Winnefeld, director, Warfare Programs and Transformational Concepts, U.S. Fleet Forces Command.
Realizing the importance of educating leaders as part of a cultural change toward quality and efficiency, the Naval Education and Training Command and the Center for Naval Leadership produced a computer-based training course that provides practical instruction to command-level leadership in the methodologies.
“Although the demands of our wartime footing and the needs to recapitalize have spurred efforts to be more efficient, the American taxpayer rightfully expects we do so as a matter of routine,” says U.S. Fleet Forces Command Adm. William J. Fallon. “We can and will continue to exercise fiscal discipline in achieving combat readiness by undertaking a fundamental change in culture, one that incorporates a continual, rigorous evaluation of the costs in preparing for combat, and the assumptions that drive those costs.”
Commanding officers, executive officers, department heads, command master chiefs, chiefs of the boat and senior enlisted advisors are currently required to take the course. However, Winnefeld reports that the Navy may extend the course requirement to other personnel.
“We’re not only targeting commanding officers, executive offices and senior enlisted leaders,” he says. “There are also many other leaders who serve in a variety of assignments that need to understand these principles as well, and we’re going to push hard to see that as many people as possible take this course.”
As part of the effort to improve processes, the Fleet Forces Command also established a business practices Web site, which serves as a central repository of information on fleet business strategies and policies, recommended reading, links to other valuable sites, and a Web-based system to collect and disseminate best practices from the fleet and reward personnel for innovative strategies.
“This is not just checking the block in yet another new leadership technique or applying the latest business trend,” Winnefeld says. “This is about sailors getting fired up to learn about being smart businesspeople, applying best business practices and ideas to improve the way we use the resources entrusted to us for our nation’s defense.”
The Fleet Forces Command’s business practices Web site can be viewed at www.news.navy.mil.
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