Chief Learning Officer - January 2009 - (Page 28) mentioned the less-than-enthusiastic response to the idea of having the ambassador to Afghanistan give a presentation as part of the DIA orientation program. “We invited the ambassador of Afghanistan to speak to one of those orientation classes, and the system had to react to that,” he explained. “[The organization] wasn’t used to having an ambassador from that part of the world come in and give a presentation. It was a great idea, though, and we got it to work. We actually ended up hosting it across the intelligence community. We had new employees come in from the CIA, NSA and FBI. Senior leadership welcomed the individual and worked with him throughout his visit.” Still, the transition has been mostly successful, due in no small part to the fact that DIA didn’t overcentralize its human capital structure. “You can’t centralize everything,” Peters said. “That “You really need to have a distributed network. One of the things we’re trying to do at DIA is identify those customers and their requirements and prioritize them.” – Matt Peters, Defense Intelligence Agency means you really need to have a distributed network. One of the things we’re trying to do at DIA is identify those customers and their requirements and prioritize them. Within my organization, which is called human capital learning, we essentially have program leads who are connected to different business units. The key to our success is that we have great leaders at all levels. I have seven direct reports working with our customers in different areas. Then, there are 40 to 50 middle managers working on their own programs, coordinating with customers on projects, how they’re measured and what we need to do to be successful.” Peters’ department is comprised of approximately 300 personnel, which includes headquarters staff, employees who run DIA’s four “schoolhouses” and people who work in internal consulting organizations in the 28 Chief Learning Officer • January 2009 • www.clomedia.com areas of global learning and the science of learning. Also, Peters exerts additional influence on learning at DIA and beyond by serving on various governance councils. “One of my responsibilities is chairing the General Intelligence Training Council, which has representatives from all Department of Defense intelligence communities, where we look at all-source analysis and collections and try to work out standardized solutions in development and delivery across the entire domain,” he said. “That’s a collaborative body, and we’re trying to insert some more rigor into it. We’re also trying to take it across the intelligence community, so we’d be bringing in the CIA and other organizations. “There’s a lot of recognition that people need to train, grow and improve,” he added. “We’ve been able to establish some governance councils on how to articulate requirements and priorities at some of our distributed sites. There are combatant commands throughout the world: Southern Command, Special Operations Command, Pacific Command and others. In each of those organizations, there are intelligence pieces. DIA is now responsible for the professional development and training of the intel officers at those sites. There are 10 major sites throughout the world that we’ve had to figure out how to support, so we’ve established these learning governance councils to try to balance out what they’re getting locally and what we have to push to them.” A particular area of focus for Peters has been leadership development, which is especially challenging considering that about half of DIA’s workforce has been around for fewer than five years. To help the organization grow its future leaders in the face of such demographic obstacles, Peters and his team developed Gemstone, an end-to-end leadership development suite that runs from frontline supervisors all the way up to pre-executives. The first tier of Gemstone is a two-week, off-site program called Frontline. It’s a mandatory course that covers the fundamentals of leadership, specifically designed for DIA’s young and untested employees. “Previously, you had a workforce that had 15, 25 or even 30 years of experience in leadership,” Peters explained. “Now you have people with three years or less. They’re being thrust into these leadership positions, and they’ve got no experience to draw on. That’s why we need to insert that course.” Peters also implemented a rigorous, off-site program for pre-executives that involves several action learning and experiential learning elements. “Probably the most significant thing about that is, for the first time, participants were handpicked by senior leadership based on performance,” he said. “We http://www.clomedia.com
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