For the Senior Executive Service at the Defense Department, it’s back to the future.

The department has launched “Developing 21st Century Leaders,” an initiative that envisions a senior management cadre that rotates through an array of operations, absorbs a variety of experiences and acquires enterprisewide leadership skills test

DOD’s Bradshaw says that a coming wave of retirements makes change imperative. (Image: Drake Sorey)

ed for a coming era of demanding, even disruptive, change.

The initiative draws from a key premise in the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act—that effective government requires career leaders who are mobile and able to analyze issues and problems with a global perspective. As numerous studies have documented, the government never quite pulled off the idea. Many career executives today were selected because of specialized and technical knowledge and rarely venture outside their area of responsibility.

Patricia S. Bradshaw, deputy undersecretary of Defense for civilian personnel policy, hopes to revitalize the spirit of the 1978 law and create consensus inside the Pentagon on how best to select and groom career executives at DOD.

“The vision is that, at the end of the day, we will have leaders who have the ability to lead the department at a time when we are in a global war on terror, which we believe requires additional competencies that we have not had,” she said.

Bradshaw’s initiative is an important part of an effort across government to rethink the roles and responsibilities of SES, which has more than 6,200 members who oversee daily operations and often serve as the institutional memory for the federal workforce.

One of the main goals of Bradshaw’s initiative is to strengthen the structure that supports SES at Defense, much as the military has put in place a well-rounded system for developing its senior officer corps.

One idea on the table is to give the secretary and deputy secretary a greater voice in the selection and promotion of SES members at Defense, Bradshaw said.

There are about 1,200 SES positions in the department, and it probably makes some sense to put civilians into some high-level administrative and management jobs so that generals and flag officers can better focus on war-fighting responsibilities.

In the future, Bradshaw said, Defense executives will need to be able to sift through competing views and determine which are in the best interest of the department rather than the office or agency where they work. “Sometimes,” she said, “what is best for the component is not best for the department.”

Future Defense executives will probably need to be more willing to rotate through a variety of jobs and pursue more training and professional development opportunities, she said.

The rotations, she said, could extend beyond the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines to include other national security agencies, such as the FBI and Homeland Security Department, and even nongovernment groups that help set the agenda for the nation’s defense.

The Pentagon is not alone in renewing interest in rotating SES members through a series of positions to broaden their experience. The director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte, issued a directive this summer that mandates “joint duty” assignments in order to win promotion into the senior intelligence ranks. His top personnel chief, Ronald P. Sanders, said requiring employees to serve tours of duty outside their home offices will help integrate operations among the 16 agencies in the intelligence community.

The talk of rotations has caused some anxiety at Defense, in part because some SES members see their jobs as crucial to continuity of operations because military managers and political appointees come and go every three or four years. Although the majority of SES jobs are in the Washington area, some SES members are concerned they could be rotated into jobs overseas or in other parts of the United States, disrupting family life.

Bradshaw, in an interview, acknowledged that the concerns of SES members must be taken into account, in part because many play important roles as deputies in Defense offices. While Defense hopes to encourage movement in the SES ranks to broaden experiences and skills, “we are not suggesting mandatory rotation,” she said.

The Pentagon hopes to pull together a strategy in coming weeks and present it to SES members in December to get feedback. “We hope to have something early in the new calendar year that we can implement,” Bradshaw said.

Although any changes may occur in phases, Defense needs to act with some urgency to chart a new path for the SES at Defense, she suggested. The department likely will face demands to fight wars or respond to terrorist threats while also providing quick responses to hurricanes, earthquakes and other natural disasters here and overseas.

A coming wave of retirements also makes change imperative, Bradshaw said. Slightly more than a quarter of SES members at Defense are eligible to retire, and by 2010, projections show that 59 percent of Defense SESers will be eligible.

“We like to look at this as a great opportunity—how do we seize the moment?” Bradshaw said.

Stephen Barr writes the Federal Diary column at The Washington Post and hosts a weekly online discussion on washingtonpost.com.