It's Your Ship -- Tips from Captain D. Michael Abrashoff

“The key to being a successful skipper is to see the ship through the eyes of the crew. Only then can you find out what’s really wrong and, in so doing, help the Sailors empower themselves to fix it.”

“Give the troops all the responsibility they can handle and then stand back.”

“Whether you like it or not, your people follow your example.  They look to you for signals, and you have enormous influence over them.”

“Give me performance over seniority any day of the week.”

“Leaders need to understand how profoundly they affect people, how their optimism and pessimism are equally infectious, how directly they set the tone and spirit of everyone around them.”

“Never once did I do anything to promote myself, just the organization. That way, no one could ever question my motives.”

“Your people…are more perceptive than you give them credit for, and they always know the score – even when you don’t want them to.”

“In addition to ensuring our safety and security, we should be providing life-forming experiences that shape the characters of young men and women to make them outstanding citizens and contributors to this great country.”

Standards

“You owe it to your men to require standards which are for their benefit even though they may not be popular at the moment.”

GEN Bruce Clarke

Thoughts for today

"You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face."

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."

Eleanor Roosevelt

Ethical Decisions

Your job is to make decisions. But your duty is to make the right decisions...the ethical decisions. In my first letter to all Flag and General Officers of the Navy and Marine Corps, sent the day I was confirmed as Secretary of the Navy, I stated this duty very frankly: "If we cannot do something ethically, if it is not in keeping with our values--then we just won't do it."

I want to restate that to each and everyone in the Naval Service...to make sure that every Sailor, Marine and civil servant knows that that is the standard. If we can't do something ethically, I don't want it done. We need to develop and maintain--within each of us individually, and collectively within the entire Naval Service--the character to make ethical decisions. 

Former Secretary of the Navy, John Dalton

Etiquette

1. the forms, manners, and ceremonies established by convention as acceptable or required in social relations, in a profession, or in official life.
2. the rules for such forms, manners, and ceremonies.

Some of you should brush up on your etiquette lessons; some could use a simple refresher; still others need to start from scratch.  And then, there are some Commanding Officers who simply don't have a clue.  You know who you are.  It will come back to bite you in the end. (And, by in 'the end' I mean butt also!)

Wish I Had This Problem

The Captain

The Captain, in the first place, is lord paramount.  He stands no watch, comes and goes when he pleases, is accountable to no one, and must be obeyed in everything, without a question from his chief officers.

Richard Henry Dana
Two Years Before the Mast (1840)

MCPON West on Hazing

Our men and women are tremendously dedicated to our Nation and our Navy: They make many sacrifices. No matter where they are in the world, or what they do for our great Navy, their contributions to the country’s Maritime Strategy are impressive. Today’s Sailors are the best ever, performing their missions with distinction and integrity. I am very proud to be their shipmate. We owe them a positive environment that fosters equitable opportunity for success based on proven merit, professionalism, and mutual respect.
 

It is the responsibility of every Sailor, and leadership in particular, to ensure that we are creating a climate of inclusion, where every member of the team believes his or her views, skills and dedication are valued. Consequently, every man and woman serving in our Navy, from the most junior seaman to the most senior admiral, has an obligation to abide by regulations and to make the appropriate authorities aware of any conduct that runs counter to organizational excellence and the fair treatment of all: This unequivocally includes hazing. No commander, no Chief Petty Officer, no Sailor may condone or ignore hazing in his or her unit.

From MCPON West's congressional testimony before the House Armed Services Committee on 22 March 2012.  His entire prepared statement is HERE.

Navy Vision for Information Dominance

The promise of future strategic and operational capabilities arising out of information dominance and decision superiority is profound. The U.S. Navy stands on the cusp of a transformational revolution no less important to our warfighting preeminence than the transition from sail to steam, from battleships to carrier aviations, from fossil fuels to the introduction of nuclear power. The implications for our force structure and the operational employment of information-centric warfighting capabilities are equally profound, spanning all current mission areas. The Chief of Naval Operations has set a clear course for realigning Navy organizations to operationalize cyberspace and information operations by establishing FLTCYBERCOM/TENTHFLT and reorganizing the OPNAV Staff to achieve integration and to foster innovation. Information-centric functional integration, innovation and an end-to-end approach to development of unmanned and autonomous systems will deliver warfighting dominance across all domains. Our follow on strategy and roadmap will guide requirements, architecture and the procurement plan to attain Information Age operational capabilities.

Our job is simple:  deliver on the promise.

Integrity

Truth sells itself.  Truth gets you through situations nothing else will.

Looking dumb is oodles better than lying.

The risk of false accusations is one of those risks that accompany success and senior leadership positions.  The only way to insure yourself against this risk is to be publicly, privately and deliberately squeaky clean.

Integrity ensures you solve and do not ignore real problems.  It acts as a forcing function for needed improvements.

Lack of integrity on the part of an individual is often a key indicator of a deeper problem in the organization of unit.

No matter what you have heard, personal integrity is in itself an excellent armament.  There is always room at the top for an honest man.

A single lie can deed your soul to the devil for eternity.

From my Shipmate and occasional mentor - Rear Admiral Dave Oliver Jr.

The ultimate sacrifice

Since the attack on America on September 11, 2001, a total of 128 women who deployed to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Kuwait have given their lives in our Global War on Terrorism.

Neither intelligent nor energetic nor moral

"I have known people in leadership positions who were neither intelligence nor energetic nor moral. They create as much havoc among our own forces as an enemy. In most cases they were quickly found out and summarily removed, but their mere existence represented a failure of leadership on the part of their seniors, the ones responsible for or who tolerated their appointment."

Admiral James L. Holloway III, USN (Ret)
Chief of Naval Operations (1974-1978)

Security is trump

Even in peacetime, naval communications involve the complex and cumbersome manipulation of difficult technical means and intricate human resources.

...the Navy persisted in its adherence to a communications policy in which 'security' was trump. They steadfastly refused to realize the truism that often it is more important to get information to one's own forces that to withhold it from the enemy. "During the first year of the war'" Morison noted, "the Navy Department laid such a stress on security of communications that they sometimes failed of their essential purpose to communicate."

From
The TENTH Fleet
Ladislas Farago

We still live by the same truism today with cyber security.  Fortunately, the architecture in NGEN will solve all of that.

Colonel Robert D. Heinl's plea of nearly 56 years ago - restore the special trust and confidence of our officer corps

Point 4: Officer discipline must be unsparing.

Officers who transgress the code of their profession must be punished. In most cases they should be gotten rid of. Misguided reluctance on the part of commanding officers to do individual hurt must give way to realization that the price we pay for “special trust and confidence” is unsparing personal accountability.

If the individual failings which have given rise to blanket restrictions and erosion of officer status had been dealt with individually, the horrible examples with which this essay commences need never have existed.

Furthermore, unsparing officer discipline oughtn’t to start with the cases on the critical list—that is, at the general court martial stage. Commanding officers must discover the moral courage—and be fully supported by higher commanders—to correct and bring to notice officers whose habits and qualities are in the least below par.

An administrative reform which would greatly facilitate such corrective action would be a more realistic philosophy of fitness reporting so that individuals could be routinely appraised in their defects as well as in their virtues.

But commanding officers are not the only ones concerned with officer discipline. Every officer must be jealous of the special trust and confidence reposed in the whole officer corps.

The full essay remains available from the United States Naval Institute PROCEEDINGS archive - HERE.

Chief of Naval Operations Focus

"My guidance for the Navy and what we believe.  We use these three tenets – Warfighting First, Operate Forward, and Be Ready – as “lenses” through which we view each decision as we organize, train and equip the Navy.

I am in the process of drafting a “Navigation Plan” to define our course and speed now that our defense strategy is established and our budget request submitted."

From CNO's Testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) on 15 March 2012.  The full text of his prepared statement it HERE.


Keep a close eye out for the CNO's "Navigation Plan".