Acquisition Leadership Development and Capabilities for Complexity: Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation

Abstract

Department of the Navy (DoN) strategies and plans continue to highlight the need for new thinking and innovative approaches to meet the demands of the future force. Navy leadership has called for cultural changes and programmatic improvements to the way the civilian workforce is prepared for leadership roles and responsibilities. While traditional competency models meet some organizational goals and needs, a more responsive approach to leadership development and capabilities may be needed to meet emergent challenges and opportunities. To address the complex challenges facing the DoN workforce, this research project integrates a complexity perspective of leadership development and capabilities with a process model of organizational learning to (1) study how a complexity perspective of leadership development and capabilities contributes to human and social capital strategies of the DoN Research, Development, Testing and Evaluation (RDT&E) workforce, and (2) assess a process model of organizational learning that integrates relevant forecasts of leadership know-how needed to meet organizational challenges. To conduct this study, an innovative hybrid-Delphi method of expert forecasting and consensus-building is tested with leadership panels drawn from DoN RDT&E facilities.