Sailing True North

by Admiral James Stavridis, USN (Ret. )

  Poignantly, much of Zumwalt’s post-Vietnam advocacy was directed at securing public recognition and benefits for US service members harmed by exposure to Agent Orange and other defoliants. Zumwalt became firmly convinced that both his son Elmo III’s cancer and his grandson Elmo IV’s severe learning disabilities were attributable to effects of Agent Orange. Though he never recanted his decision to order the use of defoliants, Zumwalt (and Mouza) never fully forgave himself for his son’s death, either.

  More happily, Zumwalt personally advocated for and his entire family volunteered to sponsor Vietnamese refugees seeking resettlement in the United States after the war. The greatest reward of this effort was the resettlement of his onetime counterpart, the former CNO of South Vietnam—whom Zumwalt considered “a brother”—and his family.

  Zumwalt passed away in 2000, surrounded by his family. His funeral was held at the Naval Academy, where President Clinton delivered a eulogy. Zumwalt and Mouza are buried together beneath a single black tombstone at the Naval Academy Cemetery. Fittingly, the admiral’s gravestone bears the one-word epitaph “Reformer”; under Mouza’s name is written “His Strength.” Zumwalt’s legacy lives on in the Navy, which in 2014 conferred his name on the newly launched USS Zumwalt, lead ship of the newest class of destroyers—the ultimate institutional honor for a destroyer man like Zumwalt. Fittingly, Zumwalt is in a class by itself. It is just as singular a ship as its namesake was a person. She proudly sails the Pacific today, in the waters where Bud Zumwalt’s career began.

  Like all great reformers, Bud Zumwalt was great in vision; bold in challenging old customs, ideas, and assumptions; and both willing and able to make the bureaucracy howl. Zumwalt combined an absolute devotion to the highest ideals of the Navy with an impish streak running at least as far back as his Naval Academy days, when he was known to pull pranks and push the rules at least as far as they would go. Throughout his career, he skillfully wielded both sides of this personality as he continually dragged inherited traditions into line with contemporary culture while remaining true (in his mind, at least) to the best of the old. He was in many ways a classic iconoclast, an instinctively contrarian thinker. That is a quality of character that can be very helpful, especially when wielded in an entrenched bureaucracy. It is also so often a quality that destroys a career before it truly gets underway. So often the enfant terrible becomes the figurative baby strangled in the cradle.

  As with most energetic reformers, however, Zumwalt’s iconoclasm could cut both ways. It fell to Zumwalt to reimagine the Navy, particularly in terms of its people, in a way that felt both true to long-cherished tradition and tenable in the context of modern society. Zumwalt was appointed CNO because a series of traditionalists had dug in their heels in the face of modernity, making an iconoclast painfully necessary. However, just as not all the old ways were necessarily the right ways, some of Zumwalt’s innovations proved unsustainable or misguided.

  Particularly considering today’s focus on “leading change”—and the overall context of changing norms in society in the workplace that appear hardly less significant than those Zumwalt and the Navy faced in the 1970s—modern leaders need to think about how to put just the right amount of iconoclasm into their organizations and their own worldviews. After all, leaders are responsible for keeping their organizations supple, and a little innovation today is often the best insurance against epochal change tomorrow. I often ask—and especially encourage young leaders to ask—what any organization I lead is doing right now that is going to look really wrong fifty years in the future. Zumwalt had a real gift for doing this, and for knowing whom to ask in his organization to find the right answer. It didn’t take too many conversations with black, Filipino, Latino, or female sailors for Zumwalt to spot a lot of ongoing practices that already looked fifty years out of date. As a leader, particularly a senior leader, it’s a very good practice to seek out and listen to the perspective of people in your organization who don’t look like you (including younger people).

  In the course of my career, I worked twice on the inner team—as a quasi–chief of staff—to a pair of truly original thinkers, and they could not have been more different save for sharing that originality. The first was Secretary of the Navy Richard Danzig, who shared many of Zumwalt’s qualities, including not only truly original thinking but also a lightness of touch and a fine sense of humor for pranks. He pushed the Navy hard to change everything from its outdated personnel policies regarding promotions to assigning women for the first time to submarines. He picked his fights well, won more than he lost, and ended up making real change over several years at the top of the massive Department of the Navy. And his early work on allowing women to serve in submarines, although not adopted during his tenure, eventually carried the day a decade later—showing that being an iconoclast sometimes means waiting to see the fruits of your labors.

  The other truly original thinker, who literally challenged everything anyone said to him, was Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld. I was his senior military assistant for more than two years, and it was an exhausting time in my career. Despite being a three-star admiral myself and having just finished a two-year tour at sea commanding a carrier strike group centered on USS Enterprise (CVN-65), I just couldn’t keep up with my boss. He outworked, outfought, and outthought everyone in his orbit and left those of us on his staff literally staggering to keep up with him. While he made his share of mistakes in terms of policy choices, overall, he drove the Department of Defense hard and made real changes—from putting in place a Combatant Command for Homeland Security (Northern Command) to reorganizing intelligence functions in the wake of 9/11 to reducing US dependence on overseas Cold War bases. And he did it by thinking originally about every proposition put in front of him. He would challenge the assumptions in every proposal, argue with briefers about seemingly small points until they either proved their point or changed it, suggest completely different recommendations, and—above all—insist on new ways of approaching old problems. I always warned briefers, “Remember, you never get a free one with the secretary,” meaning don’t say something you can’t fully back up, from the altitude of a satellite to the test depth of a new submarine design. I learned a lot about the power of original thought from watching Rumsfeld and Danzig.

  Whether or not it had anything to do with being born in California on the edge of America’s Pacific world, Zumwalt was an admiral straight out of central casting. Even as a young officer, candid and posed pictures show him to be every inch the physically impressive leader—and his effect in person was even more intense. Zumwalt possessed natural charisma in spades, but he also took care to nurture in himself the arts of personality and persuasion: from debate contests as a midshipman to intentionally working in the Bureau of Personnel, essentially running human resources for the entire uniformed Navy, Zumwalt melded tremendous people skills onto a naturally compelling personality to forge the character that would become the youngest-ever chief of naval operations and take on the staid Navy “aristocracy.” Not every successful leader has Zumwalt’s natural charisma, of course: look no further than Fisher, Mahan, Rickover, and Hopper in these pages for far less charismatic examples from the pantheon of historical admirals. Still, it is important to remember that, Hollywood affect aside, CNO Zumwalt did not spring forth fully formed like Athena from Zeus’s skull. Yes, he started with more charisma than many people, but Zumwalt recognized this as a unique gift and took steps throughout his life to develop that gift and put it to work.

  It is also worth noting that there are quieter, subtler forms of charisma as well. In typically extreme fashion, Zumwalt once concluded a keynote speech with a Tarzan yell that brought down the house, but that was credible only because of his gargantuan personality. (That kind of primal scream, for example, doomed the presidential run of Howard Dean in 2004.) Few leaders can effectively channel such raw energy, but everyone can work on refining the forms of communication that best fit their own chara
cter and circumstances. Zumwalt was frequently and widely regarded as a sailor’s admiral. Extreme loyalty to subordinates was one of the hallmarks of his career. Particularly when he commanded at sea or in combat, Zumwalt drove his people hard but also did what he could to share their experience and make life a little easier on them. As commander of all US naval forces in Vietnam, he was a frequent visitor to both frontline combat units and hospitals, and his efforts to improve life for his sailors ran the gamut from delivering cases of beer in his personal helicopter to spending real time with wounded sailors in hospitals.

  Zumwalt’s compassion for his sailors extended well beyond his time in uniform—and indeed beyond his own wartime allegiance. Not only did Zumwalt become a national advocate for service members who had been harmed by exposure to Agent Orange, but he also became a proponent of reconciliation with Vietnam. He visited the country as a guest of his onetime foe and personally sponsored South Vietnamese refugees seeking citizenship in the United States.

  Today’s leaders can emulate Zumwalt’s compassion for his people in several key ways. First, leaders should constantly be on the lookout for systemic injustices in their organizations. As Zumwalt demonstrated in forming advisory committees of younger sailors or by hiring Lieutenant Commander Bill Norman to help him resolve the contradiction between “being black and being Navy,” as Norman put it, truly effective compassion as a mark of character does not consist in random acts of kindness but in an active approach to leadership. Second, compassionate leaders not only look for problems, but recognize they do not have all the answers. Zumwalt was quickly convinced that not-so-little things like shipboard food and cosmetic offerings were not enough for minority sailors, but he empowered the sailors themselves to suggest acceptable changes rather than presuming to provide solutions on his own initiative. Finally, leaders need to recognize that an actively compassionate style also requires having the courage to act, even when the necessary changes are difficult or painful to make (as they so frequently are).

  Of the many leaders for whom I’ve worked closely, I’d say that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates had the highest level of compassion for the troops under his command. Strange perhaps to think of that coming from someone who served so effectively as the spymaster of the United States during a long and successful career in the CIA, culminating in his service as the director in the early 1990s; but I saw him repeatedly make decisions that were ultimately grounded in a deep and abiding concern for the troops. And despite the fact that he wanted out of the job as defense secretary, he ended up serving both Presidents Bush and Obama in the most important and exhausting job in the cabinet. When I asked him once at a reception in my quarters at US Southern Command, where I was the combatant commander, how he was doing with the evident strain of the job, he took a sip of Grey Goose vodka, smiled wanly, and said, “I can’t just walk away from the troops. They are giving it everything they have, and I have a duty to them to continue.” It is not coincidence that the title of his fine memoir of those days is called, simply, Duty. It was a sense of duty in his case that stemmed from his compassion for his troops. That is a fine element of character, and one worth thinking about for each of us. Zumwalt had it as well.

  Zumwalt was not only comparatively youthful, but throughout his career, demonstrated boundless energy in everything he did. He relished tough assignments in the belief that “if you start at the bottom, there’s nowhere to go but up.” He infused his own energy into his commands, raising everyone’s esprit de corps. And, particularly in leadership positions, his work ethic was a living monument to the idea that successful reformers need to work both smarter and harder than the opposition.

  Zumwalt’s energy allowed him to outwork the entrenched bureaucracy, but much of his success depended on his ability to direct his energy against the right targets. From early actions like changing his destroyer’s limp-sounding radio call sign to something with a lot more pop to his “wild ideas” and Z-Grams, Zumwalt’s reforms always seemed to address just the thing that needed to be changed to shift the whole culture of an organization. As any leader should recognize, this did not happen by luck. However wild his ideas might have been, they were almost invariably developed through friendly but frank debate with advisers Zumwalt trusted to tell him what he needed to hear. This allowed him to make well-crafted, specifically targeted policy changes rather than boilerplate, bumper-sticker statements. As with compassion, leaders cannot get by on responsiveness forever: sooner or later, they must lead by striking out ahead of the crowd—and striking at the right target. As “Zoomwalt” discovered early on in his career, focused energy skillfully applied can put the opposition back on their heels and swing momentum around to the reformer’s direction.

  Charisma plus energy plus skill gave Zumwalt great self-confidence—but, like all truly great leaders, Zumwalt did not rely on confidence alone. Using the furnace of his energy and the hammering of excellent mentorship (particularly by Paul Nitze), Zumwalt forged his enormous raw talents on the anvil of experience and was rightfully confident that the results would prepare him to succeed throughout his career. Like the iconoclasm it supported, however, Zumwalt’s confidence was a double-edged sword. He could not have succeeded as a reformer if he were overburdened with timidity or trepidation, but supreme self-assurance and a reformer’s crusading tendencies often lead to overreach. Although the collective effect of his Z-Grams changed the culture of the Navy forever, few of Zumwalt’s specific changes stayed in place after his watch ended. Today’s Navy, while miles ahead of where it was before Zumwalt’s tenure, is still in so many ways restrictive and lagging behind many organizations in the private sector.

  As mentioned earlier, the “admirals’ spy ring” scandal that happened on his watch is no doubt a blot. The activity was a grave violation of US law and custom, and even his principal biographers find it hard to believe that Zumwalt did not know what was going on. While this was certainly under the responsibility of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as well as the CNO, it tarnished his reputation. All might be fair in intramural bureaucratic war, but there are certain lines that a leader must never cross. No amount of frustration or Nixonian subterfuge can justify breaking laws or violating the strongest cultural taboos.

  Nonetheless, taken together, there is an overwhelming amount to admire about Bud Zumwalt. I have admiration for every admiral in this collection to one degree or another, but my deepest affection is reserved for this energetic, enthusiastic, highly original, and idealistic leader. His character is the one I’ve most sought to emulate throughout my own voyage of character.

  All quotations are sourced from Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr., On Watch (New York: Quadrangle, 1976), or from Larry Berman, Zumwalt: The Life and Times of Elmo Russell “Bud” Zumwalt, Jr. (New York: Harper, 2012).

  CHAPTER X

  Don’t Go Near the Water

  Rear Admiral Grace Hopper

  BORN DECEMBER 9, 1906, NEW YORK CITY

  DIED JANUARY 1, 1992, ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA

  I met then-captain Grace Hopper in 1976 at Annapolis in my senior year of studies, hoping to wrap up successfully and get out to sea on a destroyer. She came to give a talk to a group of midshipmen engaged in primitive computer programming, using punch cards to coax the bulky machines at the Academy into esoteric calculations. A tiny person in an elegantly tailored service dress blue uniform, she hardly cut the figure of the swashbuckling seagoing naval officer we so often saw when visiting lecturers arrived. But she had a piercing look and clearly enjoyed being the center of attention in a group of athletic young men. Hopper was both an inspiration and an enigmatic figure to midshipmen; she was as far from the typical heroic naval leader as could be imagined. But her reputation as a pioneering thinker preceded her, and we listened closely.

  She spoke about innovation, and the need to take chances. Those of us in the highly regimented system of the US Naval Academy in the mid-1970s could not imagine anything mo
re exciting than a senior officer urging us to try something outside the norm. To hear such encouragement from a legendary scientist and nationally known naval officer was intoxicating. Years later she would say, “The contemporary malaise is the unwillingness to take chances. Everyone is playing it safe. We’ve lost our guts. It’s much more fun to stick your neck out and take chances. The whole attitude is to protect yourself against everything, don’t take chances. But we built this country on taking chances.” That was the heart of her talk in 1976, and her admonition stuck with me throughout my own career.

  She never spent any significant time at sea, let alone led carrier battle groups into combat. Rear Admiral Grace Hopper was a gifted mathematician and computer scientist (although the term was not in existence at the time she became one) who helped lead the Navy into the computer age. Her work was central to the concept of using words instead of mathematical symbols to compile data, and she was often referred to as the “mother of COBOL” (Common Business-Oriented Language), one of the earliest computer languages.

  Admiral Hopper was above all a woman of enormous character who followed her own instincts in an era when women were not often granted the privilege of leadership. She radiated the kind of blended self-confidence and humility that is magnetic, and in many ways the best indicator of character. It is no exaggeration to say her talk that day was memorable in every way and served as a touchstone for me and many others as the Navy changed to the computer-based organization we know today—as significant a change from the analog days of my youth as was the shift from wood to steel and sail to coal a century earlier. After meeting her, I continued to follow her voyage until the day she died, by which time I was a full commander and had been the captain of a destroyer. I used a lot of what I learned by watching her in each of my commands, and even today I vividly remember that elfin figure so full of big ideas.