Tuesday, November 25, 2014

On the way out . . .

In his interview with Charlie Rose, before announcing his resignation as Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel went on to note that a good leader prepares their institution for future success, saying that “the main responsibility of any leader is to prepare your institution for the future. If you don’t do that, you’ve failed. I don’t care how good you are, how smart you are, any part of your job. If you don’t prepare your institution, you’ve failed.”


This is really sound advice for our NIOC Commanding Officers, also.  Think about how you prepare your command for future success.  We typically do CRI/IGs on commands and the new CO has the burden of cleaning up the last mess.  How do we really assess 'success' in command?  FITREPs state how an ISIC feels about the CO but where is the actual objective evaluation of performance of the command - promotion/advancement rates, PRT scores, retention rates, command awards/recognition, language proficiency?  In many cases, success = completing the tour.  How many times have you seen a CO leave with an MSM/LOM and the ISIC tells the new CO - fix command morale and its other problems? We need to break the cycle.

6 comments:

DDG CO said...

This problem is not unique to IWs or the IDC.

OPNAV AO said...

Mike

This kind of criticism of our NIOC COs has no business being on a blog. We prefer to do this behind their backs.

Anonymous said...

What an odd sense of priorities. Prt, advancement rates but not a peep about mission priorities. New school. We don't care about mission accomplishment, we want you to feel good. Have you considered free drugs?

Anonymous said...

What an odd sense of priorities. Prt, advancement rates but not a peep about mission priorities. New school. We don't care about mission accomplishment, we want you to feel good. Have you considered free drugs?

Your other brother Anonymous said...

Anon at 1:20AM

Has a shore command's mission ever NOT been accomplished ? Mission just happens. No one has ever measured it in my experience. Never has the ISIC come in an graded any of our commands objectively on their official MISSION, TASKS and FUNCTIONS. Now THERE is a novel idea !!!

HMS Defiant said...

YBA,

Oh yes. Many shore commands have been found wanting.