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Case Studies
Client problem
Over the past decade, the Air Force realized its strategic landscape was steadily changing, and its workforce needed to adapt. Air Force civilians were sharing more leadership responsibilities with military members, meaning the role of the civilian was becoming more important as their mission critical responsibilities increased. The Air Force needed to enhance the leadership skills of these civilians and improve the process in which they were being groomed for these higher roles so that when a position became vacant, there was a pool of qualified candidates from which to choose. However, the current cadre of leadership development courses in place were proving inefficient. Civilians were not showing proficiency in the competencies that were deemed critical to assume these higher roles and, thus, the expected return on investment was not being met. The Air Force needed to create a leadership development program portfolio that would provide its civilian workforce with the education, training, and experience necessary to lead the Air Force of the future.
Demonstrating a history of developing successful workforce development programs and having collaborated with the Air Force on prior initiatives, Wedgewood Group was selected to develop the new leadership program portfolio.
Developing the portfolio
With the goal to develop a set leadership portfolio, Wedgewood Group first identified the programs available and how they differentiated from each other. Upon identifying a total of 120 different Air Force leadership programs, Wedgewood Group performed advanced research and analysis to determine which ones were best to pursue. After investigating what each program offered, the associated cost as well as the competency level that it was designed to build, the list was ultimately narrowed down to the top 60. These 60 programs represented the final portfolio to be offered to the civilian workforce. Taking this to the next level, the Wedgewood Group technology team created an easily updateable and scalable database to house program information, with the added ability to create leadership catalogs for distribution to the Air Force community.
Based on our research and analysis, Wedgewood Group realized the Air Force needed a way to depict the multitude of programs, their differentiators, and the expectations of the civilian workforce. By collaborating with Air Force’s senior staff, Wedgewood Group developed the civilian leadership development continuum to provide civilians a visual roadmap of leadership development opportunities. The continuum gives each civilian a bird’s eye view of where they currently stand, what opportunities lie ahead, and the development path they can choose to take. Our goal was to encourage each individual to use the Continuum card to help plan, monitor, and track their development progress throughout their career.
Outcome
As of 2009 and for the first time in its tenured history, the Air Force now benefits from a structured system explaining to the various levels of civilian personnel the leadership development paths available, which courses are best to help them reach their professional goals, and what the Air Force expects of them. The new portfolio has proven to be more cost effective, allowing the Air Force to better resource for development, which, in turn, allows the Air Force to allocate necessary funds to other areas that might benefit from improvement. The combination of the leadership portfolio and the civilian leadership development continuum provides civilians, supervisors, and leaders powerful tools for developing the Air Force leaders of tomorrow.
Client Testimonial
“We started out 10 years behind on this project, now we’re five years ahead. A lot of that progress and success is from Wedgewood.”
Director, US Air Force