Navy Hopes Business Training Will Boost Officers' Managerial Skills
by Ed Thomas
September 28, 2006
(AgapePress) - - The Navy is using business courses to help top commanding officers become better managers of resources. This month, Babson College in Massachusetts hosted its second session this year of classes teaching the Navy's leaders how to think more like entrepreneurs.Larry Carr is a professor at Babson College. Recently on Fox News Channel, he noted that admirals and other officers in the sessions have been very open to the organizational ideas needed for running a modern, efficient Navy.
"They're looking at structuring themselves along [the lines of] an enterprise," Carr explains, "very much like the big corporations, in a matrix organization -- and saying, 'How can we be more nimble, be more creative, and be able to use less resources to deliver our mission.'"
The Babson College instructor says because the war on terror has limited resources, the Navy needs to be intelligent about the way it proceeds and to look at the political, social, and economic impact of what it does. A business-oriented view helps Naval officials do that, he explains.
Among other things, Carr notes, the business element of the classes help military officers deal with having to fight the war on terror while staying within the service's means. "It's not that we have unlimited resources to throw at the problem," he says, "but we want to say, 'How do we solve the problem at what cost.'"
Officers in the executive education sessions at Babson College have been very open to the organizational ideas they provide for running a modern, efficient Navy more like a business, Carr observes. After all, he points out, the Chief of Naval Operations has acknowledged that "in the Pentagon, we're running a very major corporation here, and the Congress is limiting the amount of funds that we have."
With all the agendas the Navy needs to address, the professor notes, Naval leaders are saying it is essential that the armed service branch "be more clever about it and [begins looking] at some corporations that have been very proactive at being innovative."
The business training courses being offered at Babson College are helping officers learn how to create environments that foster creativity and the new organizational approaches the Navy needs, Carr contends. He says all the participants agree they have learned valuable skills by studying for-profit business management.
Ed Thomas, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
