Monday, September 5, 2011

Transients - Ineffective in complex jobs

Complex jobs cannot be accomplished effectively with transients. Therefore, a manager must make the work challenging and rewarding so that his people will remain with the organization for many years. This allows it to benefit fully from their knowledge, experience, and corporate memory.

The Defense Department does not recognize the need for continuity in important jobs. It rotates officer every few years both at headquarters and in the field. The same applies to their civilian superiors.

This system virtually ensures inexperience and non-accountability. By the time an officer has begun to learn a job, it is time for him to rotate. Under this system, incumbents can blame their problems on predecessors. They are assigned to another job before the results of their work become evident. Subordinates cannot be expected to remain committed to a job and perform effectively when they are continuously adapting to a new job or to a new boss.

Admiral Hyman Rickover

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you for posting this. However, I am extremely skeptical of any changes in personnel rotations due to the bureaucratic inertia and "business as usual" attitude. Those at the top are those that best conformed to the bureaucracy; they are not likely to criticize or change a system that enabled their success. Rickover was truly an exception to the rule.

Anonymous said...

Captain Lambert,

I do believe that after more than 50 years the Navy has proven that its policy of rotating personnel every few years has been partially successful. I do not recall a major nuclear power incident occurring in the Submarine force during that time. The loss of the Thresher and the Scorpion were not shown to be connected to reactor operation. And I am unaware that any other major ship problems that occurred were reactor associated.

Admiral Rickover would have liked to have everything his way but his philosophy could not be carried out in the Navy. The Admiral felt that his program was the most important thing the Navy had, but the Navy felt like nuclear power was just another portion of its integrated fleet.

Very Respectfully,
Navyman834

Anonymous said...

834,
Your argument proves the point. In the nuc navy officers and sailors rotate between similar or even nearly identical platforms, achieving mastery of their trade, hence a admirable record of safe operation. In aviation, similar situation, platform purity=expertise at the operator level. The point to be made is at the higher levels, Flag officers changing jobs every year. Just look at the flags in the IW community. It's musical chairs. And not just in the IW community, flags and other senior leaders, who know little about the jobs they are in, or the organizations they command. And that is forgivable if they are left in a job long enough to actually learn the job and set an agenda and lead. But what happens all too ofter is they get about a year on deck and off the go... lending credence to the suspicion of "ticket punching".

Anonymous said...

Captain Lambert,

Admiral Hyman Rickover was no doubt the most driven Sailor that I ever saw and some of the things he did and said to anyone, subordinates, peers or superiors, was always the same, to advance his ideas and his program. And those ideas in my opinion lead our country to defeat the Soviets in the Cold War, and that is what the military service is truly about. He did things his way and cast aside those that disagreed with him because those in power over him had the confidence he knew exactly what he was doing. He did not follow anyone else’s rules, he made the rules for his domain. I did not agree with a lot of things he did, but his programs success was the proof of the pudding.

Very Respectfully,
Navyman834