Organization assessment and transformation

The Air Force Space Command’s Space and Missile Systems Center commissioned an Organization Assessment to examine the Center’s operational efficiency, workforce skills and behaviors, and the opportunity to redeploy resources to activities with higher impact.

Challenge
The work force strategies implemented by the Center over the past decade had significantly impacted workforce composition with implications for 1) alignment of work among resource segments, 2) key process “ownership,” 3) career path management and talent development.

Approach
The purpose of the assessment was to provide an essential fact base and plan to drive organization transformation in a resource-constrained environment. A.T. Kearney established a “war room” to enable inter-workstream and client communications, map progress, and identify/resolve key issues and concerns.

Key activities included:

• Activity Value Analysis with workshops, validation, training, and administration of a survey covering 220 processes, 1400 activities, and 4500 personnel
• Capability Building Assessment effort that included development and administration of a survey and facilitation of working sessions across core functional areas to identify, weigh and validate required key skills; broader sessions to identify and validate common business acumen skills required; and diverse stakeholder sessions to develop inclusive and comprehensive action plans
• Process analysis to identify, map and compare execution of 22 core processes and develop comprehensive action plans to reduce process variation and leverage best practices across the Center

Results
The assessment identified several high value opportunities, such as:

• Reducing time spent on low impact activities (those not required by law) which consumed a sizeable portion of the work force
• Achieving cost benefits by realigning the workforce so that low impact work could be conducted by lower cost employees
• Closing skill and behavioral gaps to improve functional competency and reduce high value employee loss
• Reducing high levels of variability in key acquisition processes providing opportunities to reduce cycle time, resources and contract budgets.

Contact

Randy Garber, partner in the Washington, D.C. office
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