Roadmap for a New Command: Lessons from Strategic Air Command and Air Combat Command

This thesis seeks to answer the following question: Given the challenges of major organizational change, how can the Air Force successfully create Air Force Global Strike Command (AFGSC)? This study is an analysis of three case studies using a 4-phase model as a lens to outline implications for AFGSC during its early development. To find these implications, the stand up of Strategic Air Command (SAC) and Air Combat Command (ACC) are used as the two primary case studies. The third case study looks at AFGSC itself, or at least what has occurred to date. This thesis derived the 4-phase model used in this analysis from an 8-step process created by John Kotter in his book, Leading Change. Through this exercise, Kotter's business experience-based model is adapted to a military context and used as an analytical tool to provide AFGSC principles to create an organization that has a culturally rooted set of behaviors that sustains the organization and ensures it meets its objectives in the most efficient and effective way. By using a military-specific model derived from Kotter's 8-stage process for leading change, AFGSC can learn from the past and provide a more certain and successful future for its organization. Some lessons are unique to the nuclear mission, others unique to a globally focused command, but the goal is to find lessons applicable to AFGSC.

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