Probing the "It Depends" Variables - 30 years for Defense Systems Management School

Program Manager, May, 2001 by Dr. Alan W. Beck

The faculty helps EPMC learners more as consultants than what many view as "teachers." Student questioning drives the learning. This consulting relationship often continues beyond scheduled periods and may follow on for months after the course. The course allows probing of "it depends" variables in the political context of changing situations.

The senior managers who are selected for major Program Manager and Deputy Program Management positions tend to have a higher preference for dealing in context than the general population. As the PMC data several years ago showed a relatively high Perry learning style preference, the EPMC students show higher scores on the Kirton Adaption-Innovation Inventory (KAI). [18] The KAI is an instrument that assesses our preferences or style of creativity from preferring rules, bureaucracy and evolving change (more a "red-flower, green-stem" approach) to one of preferring to waive or ignore rules, avoid bureaucracy, and try a wide variety of new ways. The curve of KAI scores for EPMC learners for the last few years shows a distribution higher than the general population (Figure 6 below).

DAU Developing New APMC

"It depends" will continue to present challenges to our defense managers. To better help managers in the future, the DAU is revisiting the more specific competency needs with a systematic review planned for each competency area. New courses are being developed to provide the specifics and tools managers may need. For the "top end" where managers have increasing need to assess complex issues in our "it depends" context, DAU is developing a new PMT 401 course for those qualified at Acquisition Category (ACAT) Level III. This course is being designed with primary emphasis on case study discussions to probe the various alternatives with critical thinking.

Our rapidly changing world is changing the paradigm in education from being able to know what you need to know, to being able to communicate effectively with others to find out what you need when you need it, and then to be able to communicate effectively to apply the learning. In today's culture, our elementary-school-age children know how to use a search tool to find answers their parents heard in a prepared lecture in high school or college.

Living in an "It Depends" World

The complexity of our "it depends" world will challenge us all to be able to know what we need to know when we need to know it. The problem will be in managing with "information overload." We will each individually need to make smart decisions daily on what we need to learn next in order to best do our job. Sometimes we may not know what we need to know, so mentoring and guidance may be needed. We may not need to sit in class listening to someone read a PowerPoint slide on a competency someone two years ago thought we should know. We may not need to be directed to review some computer screen text some server is giving us in a cost-effective manner, but with an approach that does not fit our best learning styles.