Academic department to provide curricula and classroom instruction in support of educating senior U.S. government, foreign military, and selected private sector personnel in Strategic Leadership. The Strategic Leadership Department's mission is to educate and develop senior leaders to bring strategic thinking skills and innovative approaches to the challenges of transforming organizations and formulating and resourcing our future national security strategy. To achieve its mission, the department provides ICAF’s Executive Assessment and Development Program (EADP), a core course on strategic leadership, and several electives that allow students to go into further depth on various leadership topics. Additionally, the department will sponsor several Commandant Lecture Series speakers on the topic of leadership and sponsor a panel discussion about Strategic Communication.
The purpose of the strategic leadership course is to help students develop into innovative strategic thinkers and change agents who can create and lead agile organizations to attain and maintain a competitive advantage in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous strategic environment. The course is divided into 22 lessons.
SL-1: The Challenge of Strategic Leadership
Comparison and contrast of challenges faced and skills required at various leadership levels
Work of strategic leaders
Transformational and transactional leadership
SL-2: Assessing the External Environment and Managing Risk
The strategic environment and environmental scanning
Nature of the external environment
Assessing and managing risk and uncertainty
Strategic communication
SL-3: Conceptual Capacity and Complex Thinking
Systems thinking
Mental models
Perspective taking
SL-4: Critical Thinking
Tools for critical thinking
Relationship between critical thinking, problem solving, and decision making
SL-5: Creative Thinking
Creative thinking (individual and group)
Relationship between critical and creative thinking
SL-6: Interpersonal Skills
Interpersonal skills (generating respect and trust)
Emotional and social competencies (individual and group)
Dealing with toxic leaders
Building trust
SL-7: Building and Leading Strategic Teams
Building and leading executive-level teams
Managing conflict in groups and teams
SL-8: Managing Decision Making
Decision making in an ambiguous and complex environment
Consensus (as a process and outcome)
Collaborating across organizational boundaries (interagency)
Conflict management
SL-9: Strategic Negotiation
Skills for informal influencing
Strategic negotiation (as a group process)
SL-10: Interagency Decision Making Exercise
SL-11: Building and Sustaining Effective Organizations
Internal organizational environment
Organizational structure, processes, and design
Impact of external environment on internal organization
SL-12: Leading Organizational Change and Transformation
Kotter and Cohen’s change model
Role of a strategic leader in leading organizational change
Why change efforts fail
SL-13: Shaping Organizational Climate and Culture
Organizational climate
Organizational culture
How leaders shape climate and culture
SL-14: Leveraging Power and Politics in Organizations
Analysis of organizational power and politics
Using power and politics to transform organizations
Working in a politicized environment
SL-15: Influencing Organizational Change
Informal networks and organizational change
In-class exercise using a personnel computer simulation
SL-16: Establishing Organizational Ethics and Values
Establishing an ethical organizational climate
Ethical decisions that get senior officers into trouble
SL-17: Building and Communicating a Strategic Vision
Elements of an effective strategic vision
How to create a strategic vision
SL-18: Aligning Vision and Strategy
Ways to align your organization with its vision
Building a strategy
Metrics for success
SL-19: Creating Learning and Resilient Organizations
Organizational agility
Organizational resiliency
Learning organizations
Knowledge management
SL-20-21: Capstone Exercise
SL-22: Course Wrap-up
