This post continues the discussion begun in September, covering the fourth and final category of the Airman’s Foundational Competencies: Developing Organizations.
Like the last few months’ posts, I’ll touch on the competencies that fall under Developing Organizations, providing the Air Force-given definition and giving my own interpretation why anyone – including those outside of the military – ought to care.
The Developing Organizations category includes 5 competencies that are meant to “focus on the pursuit of organizational excellence.” They are presented in alphabetical order below.
| Developing Organizations Competency |
| What Is It? |
| Why Should You Care? |
| Change Management |
| What: Adapts, helps others to adapt, or implements change with the goal of ensuring that unit goals are properly aligned to the desired end state. |
| Why: Maybe it isn’t a given for everyone, but I know my experience has been one of constant changes. Promotions, job changes, new partnerships, dissolved partnerships, births, deaths, economic changes, academic changes, the weather…Change keeps happening. Sometimes, changes are easy to adapt to. But, when it comes to addressing change for an organization, it pays to be intentional and proactive.Taking the time to consider the impacts of change on your organization’s goals may allow you to find opportunities to effectively manage. |
| Precision |
| What: A concern for order, quality, and accuracy with an underlying drive to reduce uncertainty in the environment. |
| Why: Being particular about the nuances of your organizational environment will greatly increase your ability to target and tailor the specific changes you want to see. If you do not understand your goals to a certain degree of fidelity, how can you guide change? |
| Resource Management |
| What: Carefully and responsibly administrates resources placed under a member’s control with the intent to maximize readiness and lethality and improve organizational performance. |
| Why: Perhaps the most straightforward of the bunch, it is easier to drive across a city block with a limited amount of gas than it is to drive across an entire state. Understanding what you have at your disposal and understanding what you need to get done with it allows you to allocate/ distribute time, attention, and expertise in the best way to accomplish your goals. |
| Results Focused |
| What: Demonstrates concern for working well or for competing against a standard of excellence. |
| Why: Without an expectation of quality or an understanding of what constitutes “Done,” the pieces of an organization can begin to drift – this may lead to reduced alignment, degraded resource management, building uncertainty, and the growth of dissatisfaction among team members. |
| Strategic Thinking |
| What: Considers and organizes activities and resources to achieve a desired goal;Thinks on a large and small scale, long- and short-term. |
| Why: Strategic Thinking enables the rest of these qualities. One cannot effectively focus solely on results without understanding (or at least considering) the interactive effects of time, resources, efforts (from both interorganizational players and external players), and environmental factors. Strategic Thinking examines what is, what is likely to be, and what has been to predict and guide individual, team, and organizational behavior. |
As with the other categories, Developing Organizations builds on prior categories.
All of those good ideas, generated by teams of well-developed team members, can be used to facilitate effective stewardship and mission accomplishment.
This is the last of my posts on the Airman Foundational Competencies.
Are there any that I should definitely examine deeper in another post?
Do any of the competencies not seem appropriate to be “foundational”?
What other thoughts do you have?
Reference
- Air Force Handbook 36-2647: Competency Modeling
72 Airman's Writings 