This quote of Admiral Rickover's is borrowed from RDML Sean R. Filipowski.
"Responsibility
is a unique concept.
It can only reside and inhere in a single
individual.
You may share it with others, but your portion is not
diminished.
You may delegate it, but it is still with you.
You may
disclaim it, but you cannot divest yourself of it.
Even if you do not
recognize it or admit its presence, you cannot escape it.
If
responsibility is rightfully yours, no evasion or ignorance or passing
the blame can pass the burden to someone else.
Unless you can point
your finger at the man responsible when something goes wrong, then you
have never had anyone really responsible."
3 comments:
Rickover was a genius, of course technologically, but mostly of human nature and motivation. For the "best" of Rickover, Theodore Rockwell's The Rickover Effect is superb...my copy is dogeared!
Rickover was a genius as a young man, and a disturbed individual as he passed into his 70s and 80s. He should have been retired at least 10 years before President Reagan made him do so in the early 1980s.
Although he was "disturbed" to many, he remained, to the end, right about what he claimed. The Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics WAS padding (cheating on) the change orders, just as Rickover claimed.
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