When airplane pilot Captain Sully lost power to both engines after colliding with a flock of geese, he could easily have given up and done nothing in the face of an unprecedented and seemingly insurmountable challenge.
But, of course, we know what he did instead. First, he drew on his experience and expertise. Then he assessed the limitations and opportunities provided by the situation. And finally, he took decisive action that saved 155 lives (not including the geese).
Unfortunately, Captain Sully can’t pilot our economy out of this global pandemic. But organizations can still follow his lead if they want to successfully see their way through to the other side—and Defense Acquisition University is already well on its way to doing so.
As the crisis unfolded, the university’s leadership team leveraged its existing base of knowledge and expertise, embraced the new reality, and responded quickly to challenges as they arose. As a result, the university is now able to confidently pursue the best path forward despite the uncertainty of the situation.
Let’s take a closer look.
Leveraging Existing Assets
Last year the university transitioned from DAU.mil to DAU.edu, which immediately increased its access to a broader range of online learning software solutions. It also began the process of rolling out virtual instructor-led training (VILT) versions of existing courses with the help of a dedicated VILT support team. So rather than scrambling to reinvent the wheel when we were sent home that fateful Friday, March 13, DAU only needed to pick up the pace of efforts already underway.“I can’t imagine what we would have been like if we hadn’t been in this position, because it has been a huge advantage as far as bringing in online learning tools from the educational ecosystem,” says DAU Vice President Frank Kelley about the transition. “Before this ever happened, … people [were] saying there was no way we could do a lot of this online, and now we’re showing that we can.”
Embracing the New Reality
Many DAU courses include case studies or exercises, real and hypothetical. But with the pandemic taking center stage, some instructors decided to give it a starring role. William Long relocated an existing disaster response exercise to the COVID-19 hot spot of New York City. In this new scenario, students were required to plan how two contracting support brigades should set up and execute a contracting capability to support the response.Long was even able to weave in his own experience with natural disasters, sharing a lesson learned from his 2006 deployment to Afghanistan and Pakistan as an air force major. “I was the sole contracting officer on the ground when a magnitude eight earthquake hit northern Pakistan,” he says, recalling how difficult it was to work without electricity. “So now I teach all my students how to manually fill out the forms.”
Let’s just hope they don’t have to put those skills to use any time soon.
Responding Quickly to Challenges
Several in-residence classes were already in progress when it was clear that campuses would need to close—and soon. This might have tempted some instructors to cut it short. Spoiler alert: It didn’t.“At the front of everybody’s mind was not ‘How do we wrap this up?’ It was ‘What do we do?’” says course manager Sean Herr. “Because every member of the team is dedicated to providing the best experience we can for our students and making sure they get everything they can out of it.”
Instead, they discussed with the support team how to ensure students could complete the learning objectives required for graduation. “It was a bit clunky and not at the quality of what we typically do in the classroom, but we all made it work—and all the students stayed engaged and were extremely professional,” said Herr. “They didn’t take it as, ‘We’re just going to get through here.’ They embraced it just like they were in class, asking questions and helping each other.”
Moving Forward With Confidence
With a strong online foundation in place, DAU is able to spend much less time reacting to the crisis and much more time focused on executing its mission: to provide a global learning environment to develop qualified acquisition, requirements, and contingency professionals who deliver and sustain effective and affordable warfighting capabilities.“At the end of the day, we’re about the students—our purpose is to train the workforce,” says army veteran William Bailey, who is a VILT instructor and has been a VILT student. “The pandemic may have pushed us to move faster, but now there’s no going back.”
Of course, none of this can compare to the Miracle on the Hudson. But as we grapple with the uncertainty and anxiety of a global pandemic, it helps to know that a safe landing is possible.
