Greetings! This is the first of my quarterly letters to readers of the EPFP™ Web site. We are pleased to welcome you to the newly redesigned and updated Web site and hope you'll be a regular visitor.

EPFP™ sites and the IEL office are busy preparing for the opening of the 2000-01 program year. Probably none of them approaches the new year with as much anticipation as our two new sites in Connecticut and Washington state. We at IEL are delighted to have Connecticut back in the network under new sponsorship and to welcome Washington for the first time.

No time lacks interesting content for musing about leadership, but the throes of a presidential contest certainly must be one of the most fascinating occasions. Consider one or more of your favorite concepts of leadership. Perhaps it is James MacGregor Burns' formulation of "transformational leadership" or Ron Heifetz's image of leadership that reconciles discrepancies within and among individuals' values and behavior or "strategic leadership" as it is taught at the National Defense University (NDU). How do our candidates for presidential office measure up to these ideals? What do these theories have to tell us about the candidates? Especially if you're a Fellow this year, you can look forward to several occasions to ponder these questions in class, at the Leadership Forum and at the Washington Policy Seminar. Have fun!

EPFP™ coordinators learned the acronym VUCA at their summer meeting this July. VUCA stands for "volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity." Sound familiar? These are the characteristics of environments for which NDU prepares its senior officers and civil servants to exercise "strategic leadership." (We are indebted to Professor William Knowlton for his generosity and skill in sharing these concepts with us.)

Without going into the theory itself, let me just note one of the interesting questions our discussion raised. Although NDU construes "strategic leadership" as a practice that occurs at very high organizational levels, encompasses large amounts of resources and extends over long periods of time, perhaps years, we coordinators saw something else. All of our environments are defined by VUCA. The teacher, school principal, social service manager, local politician -- you name it -- has some considerable degree of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity in his or her professional life. Aren't we all called upon to practice strategic leadership, if that's what it takes to deal with VUCA? If your curiosity's been aroused, get in touch with the EPFP™ coordinator nearest you for further information!

EPFP™ provides regular opportunities for considering new ideas and for structuring thinking, experience, professional practice and growth at the office in productive new ways. If you're signed up as a Fellow for the coming year, welcome to the fun. Alums, IEL and the state sites are adding to their calendars more informative, useful events of value to you. Keep your ears cocked. Sponsors and potential applicants, let us hear from you!

Thank you for visiting the EPFP™ Web site. I look forward to talking with you again this fall.

Sincerely,