By Betsy Herriman
NAVAIR Public Affairs

NAVAIR Business Strategy Focus Group co-leaders presented the group’s update on areas of interest, recent accomplishments, concerns for the future, and next steps for their initiatives to the Executive Leadership Council on July 9.

Dr. Ron Smiley, BSFG co-leader, addressed business strategy processes and tools that are underway to better enable a more effective approach to the business of supporting naval aviation. Specifically, he said the command’s smart sourcing effort and strategic technical business initiatives are being used to determine what new businesses are required for the future. The focus group is seeking to leverage the use of business modeling techniques and learning tools to help strengthen corporate decision-making.

“We do well at understanding the parts, but do not yet have the benefit of holistic, corporate metrics that indicate how well we know, understand and meet the current and future requirements of our warfighter customers,” said Smiley. To help make these determinations, the group is applying strategic customer value analysis techniques. Knowledge management is also a key focus to continue to fully utilize core expertise and know-how. With the potential for a “tidal wave” of employees potentially leaving around 2005 and after, preserving core expertise is crucial, Smiley added.

About six months ago, the focus group worked with a Corporate Operations and Contracts team to implement the Smart Sourcing initiative. The smart sourcing strategy is structured to allow for a balanced approach toward growth and hiring practices. The Smart Sourcing Web tool contributes to smart decision-making and recognizing opportunities internally, as well as help identify hiring requirements to meet naval aviation demands. Based on NAVAIR’s progress with smart sourcing and collaboration with the People Focus Group, the BSFG has reviewed the growth and hiring targets for 2003 as well as the overall long-term strategy.

Several of the BSFG subgroups are working toward meeting future requirements. The BSFG Strategic Initiatives Subgroup has teams actively working in the areas of unmanned aviation, high-speed systems, Coast Guard technical support, energetics, anti-terrorism/force protection, Joint Strike Fighter, potential NAVAIR-industry commercial service agreements (CSAs) and network centric warfare.

The Strategic Customer Value Analysis Subgroup successfully co-created, with the Project Golden Wing, a command worldwide learning map to increase knowledge of NAVAIR forward deployment presence. The group is currently working on creating a strategy for the Sustainable Customer Knowledge Engine, which will link various efforts, including Project Golden Wing metrics.

“There is tremendous synergy in what we found here with strategic customer value analysis and what we are doing with our Project Golden Wing alignment efforts,” said Smiley.

The Knowledge Management Subgroup successfully set up a “Statistical Community of Practice” pilot to assist the statistical experts in developing an ongoing network. Additionally, the pilot and Knowledge Management portals are being developed.

The Business Development Subgroup successfully coordinated exhibits for Sea/Air/Space and International Shows along with building a NAVAIR Capabilities/Tool Kit site which is currently ongoing. This subgroup is also improving policies and procedures for responding to new business opportunities by the BSFG’s initiation to build collaboration efforts across all NAVAIR sites and competencies.

“We don’t just do business development for the sake of business development, so we are working through the Program Executive Offices to find out requirements which will allow the warfighter needs to drive our business development,” said Bob Prine, BSFG co-leader.

Prine and Smiley, along with other focus group members, are concerned with potential changes facing the national security infrastructure and how the Navy and NAVAIR is set up to meet new requirements for homeland defense and conflicts abroad.

“Our Navy is visibly changing,” Smiley said. “We in NAVAIR are faced with changes in demands and changes in the way we do business.”

The leaders see a need for collaboration of resources by each sub and focus group, along with a shared pooling of talent. Other concerns address timely and informed corporate decision making in NAVAIR’s dynamic environment. Because of the wide scope of change facing NAVAIR, leaders agreed that many of the changes would cross multiple sites and become complex throughout implementation.

“There are opportunities to create value for the warfighter that we could miss if we don’t ensure our relevance in the future,” Smiley said.