These are the last few days of the Year of the Chief. 1 April 2013 will mark the 120th Anniversary of the Chief Petty Officer. By any measure, the past year has not been the best one for our Navy Chief Petty Officers. Having been raised by Chiefs since first joining the Navy on 14 July 1975 and enjoying their support for 30 years, I can understand their trepidation over the changes involved with embracing CPO 365. Back in 2007, I enjoined our Navy Chiefs to "Anchor Up, Chiefs ! Reset The Mess" HERE. MCPONs Campa and West adopted my anthem and MCPON Stevens continues with "ZEROING IN ON EXCELLENCE", which the Navy has been championing since the 1980s. We need to keep working together to, again, make "Ask The Chief" the highest form of professional compliment rather than the pejorative it has become alongside "Shipmate".
6 comments:
I've heard enough about the chiefs for the year.
I've heard enough about the "Anchor Up" for a lifetime!
In the short 15 years I have served to date I have served with some great Chiefs; however, as a whole the Chiefs have lost their sense of rating knowledge. They focus on "taking care of Sailors" and forget that by doing their job, and doing it well, they are in fact setting the example to follow; and that starts with demonstrated technical in-rate knowledge.
Shipmate,
You need to find something else to do.
Maybe, go ask the chief.
Ask the chief? You have to find them first...start at the Chief's Mess/Goat Locker and if they aren't there perhaps a personal cell. Far to much entitlement for me, perhaps the saying should be, "ask your available supervisor/mentor"?
Captain Lambert,
I see a number of posts on this subject that tend to criticize the Chief, let me make a statement about what I think of these anonymous folks that have made these remarks is really all about, there are some in this Navy who had never had the ability to make Chief and it has been my experience that these Sailors that have been unable to make Chief are the biggest complainers about the Chief, also there are many Junior Officers that have had to deal with the Chief and in many cases their response was; who is this uneducated lout who thinks that simply because he has lived many years with great experience that he can tell me what leading Sailors is all about. I was Chief for 15 years and that rate was not given to me, I always tried to live up to the responsibilities of that rate, I felt that it was my obligation to my fellow Sailors and Shipmates. In my Navy years I have completed correspondence courses on Navy Leadership, many courses on Navy Organization and other subjects which were considered at the time to be prerequisite to the next Navy rate, but I have never seen a course on how to become a proficient Chief Petty Officer, such a course may exist these days but I am unaware of its existence, maturity, experience and technical proficiency are certainly a part of what the Chief is and if those values were not brought forward during the years that this individual was a Navyman then the system did fail us.
Very Respectfully,
Navyman834
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