Sailing True North

by Admiral James Stavridis, USN (Ret. )

  Determination has a kind of two-edged quality to it. In the abstract, we admire a determined individual, but determination in one person’s eyes can easily become bullheadedness in another’s. Usually life is not an on-and-off light switch, with a pair of binary and simple choices. More often, life is a rheostat, requiring us to adjust the switch one way or the other, dialing it up or down to achieve the precise effect we seek.

  It is right to be utterly determined in truly urgent matters; but be willing to be flexible and listen to the other side of the argument otherwise. The latter, of course, was not Admiral Fisher’s strength. His will often became a battering ram, convinced as he was of his fundamental rightness, and largely unwilling or unable to admit he was ever wrong. In the preface to his idiosyncratic memoir, Memories, he says it quite simply: “a compromise (the beastliest word in the English language).” And he wasn’t joking. While we admire this quality of ruthless determination, in a more temperate personality even more might have been achieved. Finding the balance between determination and an open mind is one of the ongoing tests of character for us all.

  Throughout his long career, Fisher always chose the hard new path over the easy conservative course. From the very earliest stages of his life and career, he tried the new, clever solution even if—especially if—it flew in the face of conventional wisdom. This was true of his work on torpedoes, gunnery, ship design (above all the Dreadnought), ship construction, and countless other crusades upon which he launched. He summed it up nicely by saying, “You will come across some idiots whose minds are so deliciously symmetrical that they would prefer ten tortoises to one greyhound to catch a hare, and it was one of the principal articles of the ancient creed that you built ships in batches. They strained at the gnat of uniformity and so swallowed the camel of inferiority. No progress—they were a batch.”

  Innovation, in the end, is crucial to the development of character. First, changing something as fundamental as our inner compass requires in essence a desire and ability to innovate. Innovators are willing to look at different models, sort out personal qualities just as they would compare technical options, and make the kind of complex inner choices that result in real change. In my own case, I learned early in my naval career that sometimes—especially in moments of crisis—others resonate more to inspired innovation than to repetitious, by-the-book activities. While there will always be built-in constituencies supporting “let’s do it the way we always have,” more and more our world is responding to the inspiration of innovation. I particularly saw this, logically enough, in the days after 9/11. As a very young one-star admiral, I was charged with running the new operational think tank on the staff of the chief of naval operations. Our mission was to innovate and find ways for the Navy to contribute to this new war on terrorism. I learned a great deal in that posting, which I’ve addressed elsewhere, but above all it taught me the way big organizations can be moved by a combination of timing, necessity, and ideas. Learning this as I first became an admiral was an act of lucky timing, but it informed my ten-plus years in the Admiralty, and paid dividends over the final decade of my career when my responsibilities running NATO and other major organizations demanded it.

  Jacky Fisher showed consistently that his inner course was charted squarely at change. The fight for innovation in the Royal Navy was the task of a lifetime. Toward the end of his life he said, “I fully agree with you about the Navy want of first-class Intellects. Concentration and Discipline combine to cramp the Sea Officer. Great views don’t get grasped.” No one ever accused Admiral Fisher of being cramped by concentration or discipline. He was the innovator-in-chief of the greatest navy in the world.

  Toward the very end of his life, he was still carping about those who tried to hold him back, saying, “I believe that the vindication of a man’s lifework is almost an impossible task for even the most intimate of friends or the most assiduous and talented of Biographers, simply because they cannot possibly appreciate how great deeds have been belittled and ravaged by small contemporary men. These yelping curs made the most noise, as the empty barrels do! And it’s only long afterwards that the truth emerges out of the mist of obloquy and becomes history.”

  An often-underrated quality of character is energy. Naturally, some part of an individual’s energy level is simply a result of their physiology. Some people are naturally more energetic because of heredity, health, socioeconomic status, workload, diet, sleep patterns, and other exogenous factors. But a significant portion of how individuals attain and utilize their energy level is a reflection of their character.

  In this sense, Jacky Fisher was both blessed with a strong, energetic constitution and able to draw on inner reserves of character to catalyze his energy. He commented over and over about the need to drive at problems, to attack with real enthusiasm, and to show others that everyone on the team must give 100 percent of their effort 100 percent of the time. In his book Memories he said, “Two qualities rule the world—emotion and earnestness. I have said elsewhere, with them you can move far more than mountains; you can move multitudes. It’s the personality of the soul of man that has this immortal influence.” By “emotion” he meant energy and passion, both of which he had in abundance.

  For each of us as individuals, there are steps we can undertake that lay the physical groundwork for a high level of energy. This means getting sufficient rest and sleep, taking care of our health broadly while addressing any emergent specific physical challenges, creating a work environment for ourselves that permits the best possible level of energy, finding time for a reasonable level of exercise, sleeping well, and thinking about issues of diet in terms of how to boost energy. This truly came home for me in my late thirties, when I was a captain for the first time just as my natural metabolism was slowing a bit with age. And the opportunities to exercise and above all to sleep sufficiently were greatly diminished by virtue of the job. I adopted the idea that sleep was as important a part of my ship’s weapons system as the guns and the missiles. We looked closely at sleep cycles, made sure people could take naps when they needed to, and tried to moderate watch teams on the bridge and in the combat centers of the ship in order to improve performance. I can still remember, despite all that, sailing into the Arabian Gulf in the mid-1990s for potential combat missions in a state of dizziness, dehydration, and general exhaustion. Watching our physical health is an act of character and can enormously help with our ability to perform.

  Having thus worked on the exogenous variables to build a higher level of energy, we need to try to think of energy level as an internal quality of character that we can improve through a variety of means. Several ways to do this include mentally organizing tasks in a coherent, simple, prioritized way in our minds; reading and studying the stories of those who have lived particularly energetic lives (like Admiral Fisher); looking consciously for the good in the people we meet; focusing on the humor in difficult people and situations; accepting the things we cannot change; thinking about the long term and overcoming day-to-day frustrations by keeping them in perspective; and recognizing that the best end to a disagreement is the creation of a win-win outcome. A tool to consider in this regard is meditation, or simply finding time to quietly think about life while listening to good music.

  Closely associated with all of this is the quality of optimism. Admiral Jacky Fisher was relentlessly upbeat and positive. While it may seem a small thing, his love of dancing was part of how he increased his level of energy, even as it was a way to deal with his exuberant animal spirits. While happiness is not always a choice, an energetic frame of mind can be. And the two so often go hand in hand, as they did in Admiral Fisher. As former chairman of the Joint Chiefs and secretary of state Colin Powell, a mentor of mine, has said to me on more than one occasion, “Optimism is a force multiplier.” There are lessons there for us all in terms of how we wake up and frame each day in our mind’s eye.

  Finally, there was that questing and relentles
s mind, endlessly asking the question, “Why can’t we do that?” So often, the most defining issue of character is curiosity. This is the wellspring that leads directly to achievement in many of the great innovators in history. Walter Isaacson’s brilliant biographies of Steve Jobs, Benjamin Franklin, and Leonardo da Vinci show this clearly in three of the most extraordinary innovators in history. Jacky Fisher certainly fits into the category of a curiosity-driven character. It appears throughout his life, and often led to his brilliant (and occasionally failed) attempts to change gunnery, torpedoes, communication, armor, ship design, fleet organization, uniforms, and seemingly a thousand other things.

  For each of us individually, curiosity can be both a natural tendency and something we can develop in our own character. I asked former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich once how he survived so many boring Washington, DC, cocktail parties, and he said to keep asking questions until you found someone doing something interesting, then ask them endless questions. Drill down and learn something. What terrific advice. A mind that gets into the habit of asking questions is the mind that will learn more, accomplish more, and be satisfied more.

  If I could pick only one admiral to spend a long evening with, it would be Jacky Fisher. That combination of relentless perseverance and an unbounded desire to “seize the new” is very, very rare in leaders. When you combine it with the formidable intellectual firepower and the easy charm, deployed at will, it adds up to a remarkable figure whose qualities of character leave much to be admired. And through it all, he managed to literally dance his way through his life. Yes, a dinner with Admiral Jacky would be a delight—especially if we could organize a dance afterward.

  All of the quotes herein are drawn from Admiral Fisher’s two memoirs, Memories (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1919), and Records (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1919).

  CHAPTER VII

  The Admiral’s Admiral

  Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz

  BORN FEBRUARY 24, 1885, FREDERICKSBURG, TEXAS

  DIED FEBRUARY 20, 1966, YERBA BUENA ISLAND, CALIFORNIA

  You can’t be an officer in the US Navy and not know about Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz. He hit my radar when I arrived at the Naval Academy in the early 1970s and started getting asked challenging questions about him and his various famous quotations as part of the hazing process applied to new “plebes” at Annapolis. But what I went through was nothing compared with the fate suffered by my classmate and friend Midshipman Fourth Class Steve Nimitz. There is a special place in the hazing universe reserved for the progeny of admirals, especially famous ones—and, in the US Navy, there is no admiral more famous than Chester William Nimitz. (Luckily, Steve not only survived his plebe hazing but went on to a career worthy of his famous ancestor, including command of a destroyer, nuclear power training, and the four gold stripes of a captain.)

  But I really focused on the admiral a few years later as a senior at Annapolis when I was assigned to go to sea on the ship bearing his name, the proud USS Nimitz (CVN-72). The massive, 100,000-ton warship was then a brand-new nuclear-powered aircraft carrier—the ultimate symbol of American sea power. At the time, I was considering whether to join the nuclear Navy myself upon graduation, so a two-month training cruise on a “nuke” seemed to make sense. I arrived and was scooped up by the Reactor Department, the part of the ship’s company in charge of the carrier’s propulsion system. Once there I was told my job would be “reviewing logs.” In practice, this meant being stuck in a closet-like office with a huge stack of log pages on which the temperature of oil lubricating the main bearings on the massive carrier’s engines had been recorded in black ink. I was given a red pencil and told to meticulously go through the vast stack one by one and “circle any number greater than 180 or less than 130.” Not very inspiring work.

  After a couple hours of that, I snuck out, went up to the “dirty shirt” wardroom (the one where you didn’t have to wear a formal uniform, frequented by pilots in their flight suits), and hung out with the aviators. It was clear to me I was not cut out for service in the nuclear Navy, and luckily the skipper of one of the aviation squadrons (then-Commander and later Admiral Leighton W. “Snuffy” Smith) arranged for me to finish out my cruise with his unit. It was a terrific summer in the end, and while I discovered that I was not a good fit for nuclear power, I learned a lot about naval aviation that stood me in good stead in later years. I chose neither nuclear power nor aviation, but settled on a traditional destroyer man’s career, and loved every day of it.

  In the two months I was unofficially assigned to one of the carrier’s two light attack jet squadrons, I felt the spirit of Admiral Nimitz everywhere I went. While a submariner at heart, he was in every sense an officer for the entire Navy. It is highly unlikely that any admiral in the future will ever command the massive firepower and fleets that he did in the Pacific during World War II. As I walked around USS Nimitz on that summer voyage, I thought about his life and career and promised myself that I would try to emulate three of his best qualities: a quiet sense of humor, unshakable and sincere humility, and an unbreakable bond with my friends and peers. I haven’t done any of those things as well as Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, but I’ve truly tried to do so, and became a better person and naval officer as a result. That cruise was an inflection point in my own voyage of character, and I walked off Nimitz a better person than when I boarded, and with a deep and lasting appreciation for the character of the ship’s great namesake—all the more profound when you consider the distance he traveled to become a legendary American admiral.

  The first years of the life of the admiral whose career would offer the nearest parallel to Nelson in the US naval tradition gave little hint of the shape of his destiny. Chester William Nimitz was born in the German immigrant community of Fredericksburg, Texas, which at the time of his birth was pretty much the last outpost of so-called civilization on the Texas frontier. Where Nelson was quintessentially English and grew up around the water, Nimitz’s childhood was one of rural ranching and farming and culturally German American, and had nothing to do with the sea. Throughout his life, family and friends in Fredericksburg communicated in German as much as or more than they did in English, and their closest approximation of a naval tradition was the legacy of the prairie schooners that had carried their forebears into the Hill Country where they built their beloved Texan “burg.”

  As with the young Alfred Thayer Mahan, however, Nimitz’s childhood had some powerful martial influences. During and especially after the Civil War, soldiers riding through town would stay at his grandfather’s hotel, which, as it happened, the elder Nimitz had designed to resemble the prow of a great ship. From the soldiers, Nimitz developed an early inclination to apply to the Military Academy at West Point; from his grandfather, he absorbed wildly embellished tall tales of ships and the sea loosely based on his “Opa’s” brief service in the German merchant marine in younger days. In another similarity to Mahan, Nimitz tried but failed to secure an appointment to West Point and only considered the Naval Academy as a second choice. There the similarities between the two end, however: Nimitz was from the start a much more outgoing, committed, and social midshipman than Mahan ever was. This was lucky, for Nimitz attended the Academy at the same time as many other future three-, four-, and five-star admirals. These men, along with Nimitz, would be instrumental in the naval campaigns of World War II. Among these classmates and near-classmates were Nimitz’s future boss, Ernest King, and his two greatest subordinates, the mercurial William “Bull” Halsey and the thoughtful “quiet warrior,” Raymond Spruance.

  A trait that would become a hallmark of Nimitz’s character, discretion, was reinforced during his time at the Academy through both public controversy and private experience. At that time, two admirals were mired in a years-long public argument, known as the Sampson-Schley controversy, about which one deserved credit for an 1898 naval victory during the Spanish-American War. The undignified spat
played out in Congress and the press and accomplished little other than sullying the Navy. Deeply repulsed by the officers’ conduct and the damage they caused the service, Nimitz resolved early on not to emulate or tolerate such behavior.

  Shortly before graduation, Nimitz himself benefited from a senior officer’s discretion. Nimitz was a semiregular participant in the unauthorized but well-established practice of buying beer from the haberdasher in downtown Annapolis, and on one such trip, he blithely filled a suitcase with beer under the apparently uncaring eye of another customer in the store. The next morning, Nimitz was shocked to encounter that same man in uniform as an officer newly appointed to the Academy. The officer gave no indication of ever having seen Nimitz before, and the young man instantly learned a lesson in whether and when to punish people who made atypical mistakes.

  For the rest of his life, Nimitz went to great lengths to avoid “washing . . . the Navy’s dirty linen in public,” as his biographer put it, as well as to preserve the careers, reputations, and egos of well-meaning subordinates who made an occasional mistake. Indeed, Nimitz’s “almost obsessive discretion” is the subject of the first sentence of his biography, and no sailor—or admiral—whom Nimitz protected ever forgot it. Nimitz’s personality and self-confidence enabled him to inspire his subordinates and get every bit of effectiveness out of his peers and superiors. Named to his defining role as Commander in Chief, Pacific, or “CINCPAC,” after Pearl Harbor, Nimitz took great care to do what he could to protect the man he was replacing, Admiral Husband Kimmel, and his staff (“It could have happened to anyone,” Nimitz said of the Pearl Harbor disaster). Throughout the war, he would demonstrate masterful tact in managing both the admirals around him and the men below, enabling each to do his work with a minimum of friction.