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Volume 5 Issue 2, May 2007
Becoming a "Sense-and-Respond" Academic and Government Organization
Elizabeth McDaniel, Mary McCully and Robert D. Childs
National Defense University, Washington DC, USA
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The Information Resources Management College (IRM College) is the largest of four colleges of National Defense University, the pre-eminent U.S. graduate-level institution, responsible for educating military and civilian senior leaders across government for national security. The IRM College, dedicated to developing information leaders who can leverage information and information technology, is rapidly becoming an adaptive enterprise. During the past two years the College began transforming into a "sense-and-respond" organization (Haeckel, 1999), that is increasingly agile, an essential quality for survival in a dynamic environment. By engaging more directly with stakeholders, the College is sensing the learning needs of government organizations. In response it is re-designing current, and designing new, educational programs, re-framing its courses into professional development seminars, and designing tailored educational services to meet the learning needs of government organizations.
Via its large distributed learning program, the College reaches students around the world, and is expanding its global reach by supporting communities of practice aligned with perceived stakeholder interests. It is also encouraging faculty participation with networks of government, academic, and the private sector colleagues to enrich learning. Cross-boundary communication, collaboration, and leadership are valued as essential to better government and the agility of the College, and are infused as curricular goals.
As part of its transformation, College leaders streamlined the organizational design to create teams that collaborate to develop and deliver programs. Replacing its command-and-control systems, the leaders are adapting the organizational context by reframing the organization's reason for being, governing principles, and high-level business design. While continuing to offer credit-bearing courses and programs consistent with the academic traditions of a graduate school, the Information Resources Management College is transforming from a "make-and-sell" to a "sense-and-respond" organization that models agility in today's information-driven federal government environment.
Keywords:
agility, sense-and-respond, transformation, netcentricity
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