In the coming year, we will face a number of critical challenges and opportunities; the decisions we make in 2005 could affect cancer research for decades to come. Perhaps more than ever before, innovative and dynamic leadership will prove to be the difference. That's why I've implemented steps that will ensure the NCI leadership structure is best positioned to meet every success and exploit every opportunity. Over the next two issues of the NCI Cancer Bulletin, I will provide you with a glimpse of how the NCI Office of the Director will evolve to more effectively meet future challenges.

Early in my tenure, I made the decision not to undertake a major reorganization of NCI. Instead, I have engaged NCI's senior leadership in a series of strategic discussions and decisions to address the institute's mission, strategy, functions, and structure. We adopted as our mission, expressed in NCI's challenge goal: eliminating suffering and death due to cancer by 2015. We have since defined a pathway to achieving the challenge goal, expressed through the functions of the discovery-development-delivery continuum (the three Ds). Now we must focus on structure, with the goal of aligning the organization with function.

My first step in this alignment was to recruit deputies to drive the implementation of our strategic priorities along the three Ds. Four new deputy positions were created to span the discovery-development-delivery continuum. In addition to serving as a focal point for research along the three Ds, a key component of the deputies' function is to move NCI from an organization characterized by isolated compartments to one that is fully integrated across all divisions, centers, and offices. Our goal is to develop and nurture the talent throughout NCI and create opportunities for staff to participate in a broad range of activities, from strategic planning to implementation of new initiatives to effective portfolio management and efficient resource allocation.

This shift toward a matrix structure requires us to think in different ways about how we staff and fund various initiatives. This is a challenge, because rather than dismantling our existing organizational structure we are realigning it. It is also a challenge to undertake such an effort during a time of fiscal constraint, and this is where NCI's senior leadership plays a key role.

With the recruitment of the four new deputies, we created a new decision-making group known as the Senior Management Team (SMT). This group meets regularly and serves many functions, among them: design and implementation of trans-NCI initiatives, long range financial planning, and policy development. Of course, this decision-making group could not hope to succeed without the full complement of key leaders across NCI's many divisions and centers. In next week's Update, I will address how the current NCI leadership structure will advise and work with the SMT to ensure continued and future success.

Dr. Andrew C. von Eschenbach
Director, National Cancer Institute