Sailing True North

by Admiral James Stavridis, USN (Ret. )

  Finally, and this may be counterintuitive, we have to understand that perhaps our vision is wrong. This means challenging ourselves even as we implement the vision, ensuring that circumstances don’t change or being prepared to learn that the facts that we believed in formulating the vision are inaccurate. Admiral Rickover said, “To doubt one’s own first principles is the mark of a civilized man. Don’t defend past actions; what is right today may be wrong tomorrow. Don’t be consistent; consistency is the refuge of fools.” Finding that balance between creating a vision and implementing it, alongside constantly refreshing and updating it as necessary, is the hardest part of being a visionary. It was the genius of Rickover that he could so consistently find that balance.

  In ancient Chinese mythology there is a minor deity, Yu Shi, who was the god of rain. He was also known as the Master of Rain and represented the capricious nature of the weather. In many ways, I think of Admiral Rickover as the Master of Anger. He used anger like a kind of psychological rain, seeking to create growth from all the tension and pressure he could (forgive the pun) rain down on his subordinates. And like a rain god, he was the one in control; but he was also endlessly temperamental and unpredictable. All of this begs the question, is there a role for the use of anger in character and leadership?

  All of us who have spent significant time in the world have worked for difficult leaders at one time or another. In my case, it was the first commanding officer for whom I served in the late 1970s, who had a titanic temper, did not suffer fools gladly, and often used sarcasm to spark a response in his subordinates on a new destroyer. While there were times when I felt the spur of his temper, I also appreciated that his anger derived more from an impatience to achieve important results—a successful search for a Soviet submarine, correct and instantaneous communications procedures, a crisply executed tactical maneuver of the ship in a tight formation with other US warships moving at speed just a hundred yards away. The Greeks—especially the warlike Spartans of ancient times—often say when a child is born, “May the gods grant my child the gift of fury.” Anger can be the catalyst that drives subordinates (or peers and occasionally seniors) to greater results. In Admiral Rickover, it was on frequent display, from the interviews with frightened midshipmen to his tempestuous rejection of authority from nominal bosses like the secretary of the Navy or the secretary of energy. The question to consider in the sense of how anger plays in the formation of character and the achievement of results is ultimately both a moral and a pragmatic one.

  Morally, the use of anger (call it extreme and visible impatience if you like) is a failure. It is too often an indulgence by someone in a position of power to simply ease tension on them, not a clinically applied technique to improve performance. Anger violates the basic tenets of civility, creates either slavish subjugation or internally hidden reserves of resentment that will ultimately play out. It opens up a chain of behavior that pays forward all the wrong moral cues and leads so often to a cycle of bad behavior. Like hazing at a fraternity or a military academy, all too often, the moral cycle becomes one of “I was abused, therefore I shall abuse.” Even when dressed up as a leadership technique, the use of anger fails in the moral dimension. Pragmatically, the question is more difficult to answer as we think of leadership and character. Every angry leader I have known can point to subordinates who “never would have amounted to much if I hadn’t shown them the error of their ways through harsh treatment, anger, and impatience.” And often, I must admit, some of the subordinates buy into that vision themselves. I have been told repeatedly by supporters of Admiral Rickover that they became vastly better people through experiencing his impatience and anger. This becomes, in the end, a very personal question that leaders must ask themselves, and it sits squarely at the nexus of leadership and character.

  As we all seek to find the right balance for ourselves in terms of character, we need to ask, are we truly using anger and impatience as tools of leadership? Or, when we lie awake at night and review the events of the day before drifting off to sleep, do we admit to ourselves that it just felt good to yell, to dominate, to be sarcastic to subordinates who had little power to respond? For me, on the occasions when I have lost my temper and used raw anger and power to spur a response, I must admit that in the end a significant part of it was a need inside me to find release from the fear, tension, and failure that a subordinate was allowing to come close to me. In the end, if we give Admiral Rickover the benefit of the doubt, I would say that he used anger and impatience to create truly important, significant, and meaningful outcomes—operating nuclear reactors at sea in the service of his nation most obviously. But were the anger and impatience used clinically as an appropriate tool of leadership? Or were they rather a character flaw that he could not control? He was not the most openly self-reflective individual (to say the least), and I am not sure there is anyone in a position to answer the question on his behalf. My view: I suspect that this diminutive, complicated, driven, utterly brilliant leader used anger consciously to achieve results; but the fearsome temper also met some dark need in his own heart. He was at once the Master of Anger and a leader of brilliance as well.

  All of the quotes by Admiral Rickover come from Rear Admiral Dave Oliver, USN (Ret.), Against the Tide: Rickover’s Leadership Principles and the Rise of the Nuclear Navy (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2014).

  CHAPTER IX

  The Angel of Change

  Admiral Elmo R. “Bud” Zumwalt Jr.

  BORN NOVEMBER 29, 1920, SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA

  DIED JANUARY 2, 2000, DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA

  In the spring of 1999, I sighed loudly as I settled into my well-appointed desk on the legendary E-Ring of the Pentagon as the newly installed executive assistant and senior naval aide to Secretary of the Navy Richard Danzig. Having just left sea duty in San Diego as commodore of Destroyer Squadron 21, I was missing the roll of a destroyer under my feet as well as the thrill of being able to lead 2,500 officers and sailors on the eight ships under my command. In short, I was feeling sorry for myself after giving up major command at sea to take command of a desk.

  The only thing making me feel better about the job was the quality of the secretary I would be serving: Richard Danzig was a brilliant Rhodes scholar, PhD, and distinguished lawyer who had just finished up four years as the undersecretary of the Navy. He was also kind, generous, funny, and an innovator of the first order. I knew I would learn a lot. I was also cheered as I looked at the photos of the previous executive assistants on the wall beside my desk—an impressive rogues’ gallery, most of whom would go on from this captain’s assignment to wear an admiral’s stars. I was cautiously optimistic I would do so as well, although it is a slippery ladder in the Pentagon and I was not a typical E-Ring denizen—having published too many controversial articles and certainly standing a few inches short of an admiral’s normally imposing stature.

  As I looked around and tried to focus on the positive aspects of my new job, a flustered staff assistant burst into my office just a step ahead of a jaunty older man in a beautifully cut suit. “Sir, Admiral Zumwalt is here and wanted to say hello” was all the aide got out of his mouth before I leaped to my feet to greet my visitor. He had a pleasant smile on his face, but the first thing I focused on were his strong and quite unruly eyebrows, a visual trademark I remembered well from the time when Zumwalt was the Navy’s most senior officer and I was just about its most junior midshipman starting my studies at Annapolis.

  I invited Admiral Zumwalt to sit, ordered coffee from the mess, and thought to myself how lucky I was to meet a legendary chief of naval operations and someone who had completely reshaped the Navy in which I sailed. He was early for a scheduled chat with my new boss and decided to stop in to see me because he had held the same job I was now in—back when I was in grade school. Over his shoulder, I could see his black-and-white photo from his time working for the secretary of the Navy. Suddenly, the job loo
ked a lot better to me.

  We talked for half an hour, mostly about his time as a former executive assistant to Secretary of the Navy Paul Nitze in the early 1960s. He told me how formative that tour had been for him, and how Secretary Nitze (who was still alive then and in his nineties) had helped him understand the complexities of the Washington interagency environment. I could not help wondering how the job had also shaped his view of the need to drive change hard, something he did better than any other flag officer in the Navy’s history. And I thought also about the terrible sorrow he must have felt having lost his son to cancer, most likely as a result of exposure to Agent Orange. In one of the most painful father-son ironies imaginable, Admiral Zumwalt had ordered the infamous chemical sprayed along Vietnamese riverbanks to save sailors like his son from sniper fire only to see many of those sailors, including Elmo III, succumb to cancers years later.

  At the end of our chat, he gave me a copy of his superb memoir, aptly entitled On Watch. I’d read it before, but when I opened the copy he gave me, I saw he’d inscribed it, “To Captain Jim Stavridis, with whom I share a desk, and with respect.” I am lucky enough to have many signed memoirs in my library, but there is none I treasure more than On Watch, nor one I more frequently dip back into for renewed insights. He lived a big life, full of both accomplishment and failure, with plenty of triumph and tragedy along the voyage. Admiral Elmo Zumwalt was not only an innovator, but also a thoughtful leader whose character left indelible imprints on the Navy, and on the countless officers and sailors he met.

  He died not many months later, in the early winter of 2000. The cause was mesothelioma, a common occurrence in Navy personnel of his age—many of them had been exposed to asbestos in older ships. I attended his memorial service at the Naval Academy Chapel on January 10, 2000, and I watched with awe the countless admirals, ambassadors, and other dignitaries who joined the president of the United States in honoring Bud Zumwalt. In subsequent years, I’ve had the chance to tour the massive destroyer named in his honor, USS Zumwalt (DDG-1000). Like him, it is a ship built on the idea of innovation.

  Throughout the two years I served in his old job, I thought about him frequently, and continue to do so. The qualities of character he demonstrated in his life and career shine on. My boss during that time, Richard Danzig, summed it up nicely after Admiral Zumwalt’s passing when he said, “At a time when racial hostility and discrimination particularly afflicted American society, he fought these problems with special ferocity in the Navy he loved so dearly.” Ferocity indeed, from his eyebrows to his ideas—he was one of a kind.

  Elmo Russell Zumwalt Jr., known as “Bud” from the moment his older sister met him, was in many ways an “accidental admiral.” Born in San Francisco and raised in Tulare, California, he initially intended to follow both of his parents into medicine and spent much of the first half of his naval career toying with the idea of getting out and going to medical or law school. From the moment he received an appointment to the Naval Academy in 1939, however, opportunity always knocked and kept him in the Navy. In the end, Zumwalt climbed the ranks faster than anyone before him to become, at age forty-nine, the youngest-ever chief of naval operations. At every turn, and especially in his transformative tenure as CNO, Zumwalt applied youthful vigor and almost superhuman energy to reform the Navy.

  If Mahan taught the Navy to think and Nimitz won its greatest victory, it fell to Zumwalt to teach the Navy that no victory is ever final or absolute. Zumwalt graduated with the wartime class of 1943 and saw action as a newly commissioned surface warfare officer in some of the biggest battles of the conflict, including Leyte Gulf in 1944. Like Mahan, Zumwalt showed a penchant for reform early, but he was personally and professionally much more like Nimitz: he sought and acquired responsibility early, demonstrated a genius for organization, and got along much better with people than Mahan ever did. Of the three, Zumwalt probably had the most highly developed bureaucratic-political sense, but it cut both ways. Zumwalt’s career path was much smoother than Mahan’s, and strong political cover put him in position to make his definitive contribution as CNO; but, like many reformers—and unlike Nimitz—he badly overreached at times, and never worse than during the dark final days of the Nixon administration. And his brilliance and exuberance created jealousies among his peers.

  Looking back, Zumwalt’s career path resembled what mariners call a “great circle” route, which looks oddly curved on a flat chart but is actually the shortest distance between two points on a round globe. His time at the Naval Academy echoed Mahan’s in his early desire to make the system around him better and Nimitz’s in his studiousness and fun-loving spirit—but Midshipman Zumwalt had a flair all his own. If the outlines of their defining characteristics were already apparent in Academy days in Mahan’s aloof brilliance and Nimitz’s steady character and sheer competence, so, in their way, were Zumwalt’s. Nimitz rose early to study because he wanted to make up for a missed year of high school; Zumwalt did so because he had generally been out so late the night before pursuing his latest infatuation. Mahan’s idea of the Navy led him to enforce the rules on his peers in violation of long-standing tradition; Zumwalt’s idea of the Navy embraced the spirit of “it is better to beg forgiveness than to ask for permission.”

  Commissioned into destroyer duty, Ensign Zumwalt immediately became one of the millions of men on the thousands of ships under Nimitz’s command. He saw furious fighting during the Battle of Leyte Gulf and saved his own destroyer from going aground by alerting the conn (ship driver) to a navigational error. Young Zumwalt was recognized for his bravery and his alertness, and quickly came into much greater than usual responsibility immediately after the war when he was appointed prize captain of a Japanese river gunboat and its two hundred crew. He and a small crew of US Navy sailors, all armed to the teeth, took charge of the Japanese ship and sailed upriver to Shanghai, where Zumwalt was promptly smitten by an infatuation that eclipsed any he had ever experienced.

  Mouza Coutelais-du-Roche, daughter of a French father and exiled White Russian mother, did not speak any English and Bud Zumwalt barely spoke Russian, but, in his words, “both spoke the international language of love,” and in that language understood each other perfectly. He proposed within days and they were married within weeks, immediately before Zumwalt had to sail from Shanghai. Mouza, already pregnant, sailed for the United States months later, where she was warmly embraced by her new in-laws in California while Zumwalt was still on duty on the East Coast. Bud and Mouza’s love affair lasted for the rest of their lives, through the births of three more children and the tragic death decades later of their first child, Elmo III. Like his romantic life, the great circle of Zumwalt’s career was picking up steam. From 1946 through 1952 (and despite lingering wishes to leave the Navy for medicine or the law), Zumwalt progressed rapidly and with increasing responsibility through a series of early command positions at sea and ashore. Like Nimitz, his years teaching in a Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps unit (in North Carolina) were among the happiest of his life, and he would ultimately elect to be buried in the community in which he taught as a young officer.

  After a year at the Naval War College, Mahan’s legacy and still an important stepping-stone for naval officers on course for high rank, Zumwalt reported for the first time to the Bureau of Personnel and the assignment that would define the rest of his career. BuPers, as it is known, is the direct organizational descendant of the Bureau of Navigation as the Navy’s HR department. As a tour at BuNav had been instrumental to Nimitz en route to his defining work as CINCPAC and CNO, so that first tour with BuPers would shape the latter-day organizational genius of Zumwalt—who at first despaired of the assignment as a “career killer.” Not surprisingly for someone of his energy, as long as Zumwalt was going to be in the Navy, he wanted to command ships rather than shuffle people around.

  Far from killing Zumwalt’s career, however, that tour at BuPers turbocharged it. In the first place, i
t forced him to confront the immense challenge of people management in an organization as big and bureaucratic as the Navy, as well as the institutional racism and sexism that then governed so much of the Navy’s personnel system. Before long, Zumwalt discovered that applying his creativity and energy to reform the bureaucracy and improve sailors’ lives was a different but no less fulfilling form of service than being on the bridge of a destroyer. Second, by making that shift in the way he worked, Zumwalt made his reputation with the chief of the bureau, who put a note in his files to bring Zumwalt back after his next fleet rotation.

  After two years of highly successful sea duty, Zumwalt returned to BuPers in 1957 and promptly resumed burrowing into and reforming the bureaucracy, first for six months at BuPers and then for a further year and a half as an aide in the office of the assistant secretary of the Navy. In that time, Zumwalt renewed his appreciation for the problems of naval personnel management and his commitment to solving them and developed an increasingly high-level perspective on naval operations as directed by the senior-most civilian and naval officials. As his bureaucratic and political skills and connections also began to blossom, Zumwalt was unknowingly building the institutional launchpad and political support tower that would enable him to rocket to the top of the Navy within a decade.

  The last decade of Zumwalt’s career was a crowded series of big assignments of about eighteen months each, building to his four years as CNO. After BuPers and the assistant secretary’s office, he commanded the first purpose-built guided missile frigate, USS Dewey, for eighteen months, then reported to the National War College for a yearlong capstone course. There, Zumwalt—who had joined the debate team on a lark as a midshipman and promptly distinguished himself—gave a talk that so energized his fellow students that, a few days later, they peppered a guest lecturer with more questions about Zumwalt’s remarks than his own. More intrigued than incensed, that lecturer—the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, Paul Nitze—demanded to meet this Zumwalt character. Thus, in 1962, Socrates met Plato—and Zumwalt truly launched.