Sailing True North

by Admiral James Stavridis, USN (Ret. )

  During the final segment of her career, she was assigned to the Naval Data Automation Headquarters in Washington, DC, holding that position for six years, beginning in 1977. It allowed her to be on top of the integration of computing into Navy systems broadly. Of note, she was instrumental in developing the first fleet-wide system for sharing tactical data (course, speed, contacts in the area, etc.) with submarines. After her assignment at the Naval Data HQ, she was sent on a three-year nationwide tour conducting lectures and generally pushing the idea of advanced computers at sea. When she finally retired as a rear admiral in 1986, she was the oldest active-duty officer in the US Navy.

  After retiring from the Navy, Hopper worked for Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), but spent most of her time as a national spokeswoman for the Navy, for the role of computers in our society, and for the need to increase the impact of women in science and technology. She was famous for handing out cut pieces of telephone cable of about a foot in length to demonstrate the distance light travels in a nanosecond, illustrating why it takes so long for satellite communications to synch up. And for every lecture, no matter the audience or location, she would wear her service dress blue uniform. While permitted by Navy regulations, it is not the norm for a retired officer to do so. I once asked Admiral Mike Mullen, a former CNO and chairman of the Joint Chiefs, if he ever wore his uniform after retiring, and he said, “I’ll wear it one more time and that’s when they bury me in it.” Yet for “Amazing Grace” it just felt right. She was beloved by the Navy and seeing her in a uniform only brought credit to the service.

  Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, USN (Ret.), died in her sleep in Arlington, Virginia, not far from the Pentagon, at the age of eighty-five. She was buried with full honors at the Arlington National Cemetery nearby. In 2016, she was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the culmination of dozens of national and international awards she received throughout her long life, including more than thirty honorary degrees from universities around the country. Although she made her mark on the Navy ashore, the nation honored her contributions in 1997 when the guided missile destroyer USS Hopper was placed in commission.

  Hopper was a patriot who loved her country. Deep within her was a desire to be part of something larger than herself. This led her to push so hard to join the US Navy after Pearl Harbor, and it illuminated every aspect of her life and career. Despite being turned down time and again, Hopper kept reapplying, refusing to take no for an answer. It also was central to her decision to forsake a traditional path of marriage and children, and instead devote herself to the US Navy and the nation.

  Patriotism is a fundamental quality of character. Are patriots born or made? The answer, of course, is both. Character is often expressed in sacrifice; the willingness to give unstintingly of oneself has often been described as “the price we pay for the right to serve.” As is so often the case for those who have a deep love of their country, Rear Admiral Grace Hopper’s patriotism had an associated level of cost. The character qualities that lead to that level of personal sacrifice are at least in part inherent in an individual, but they can also be nurtured and developed. Grace Hopper’s parents and close relatives set a strong example for her, encouraged her desire to serve, and created the conditions for her to step up for her nation after Pearl Harbor and afterward. Well before anyone coined the phrase “thank you for your service” to say to active-duty and veteran members of the military, Grace Hopper was the beneficiary of parents, friends, and relatives who thanked and encouraged her to serve. This is a very valuable quality of character, the seeds of which can be planted early in a young person’s life.

  There is a lesson for our often-cynical time: the case for service must be made—it is not innate. Too frequently, our society defaults to the idea of the military as the beau ideal of service. I am constantly told, “Thank you for your service,” and believe me, after four decades in uniform, I appreciate it deeply. Yet there are so many ways to serve this country—diplomats, CIA, FBI, civil servants, police, firefighters, emergency medical technicians, Peace Corps volunteers, Teach for America, schoolteachers in low-income districts, nurses in downtown clinics, volunteers at hospitals and food banks, and on and on. I speak often about the value of service to nation, and my thinking was shaped by watching the career of Grace Hopper. Admiral Hopper’s life continues to be an example to each of us that patriotism and service are inextricably intertwined.

  Another fundamental quality of Rear Admiral Grace Hopper was her instinctive sense of mentorship. She constantly pushed others to excel. In doing so, she consistently demonstrated the ability to speak at the level of her audience, whether in a casual conversation in the laboratory or before hundreds of international scientists. Throughout her long and purpose-driven life, she took time to encourage, educate, and mentor others. Toward the end of her life, she would often remark that her greatest accomplishment was not the creation of computing languages, programming the Mark I computer at Harvard, or attaining high rank in the Navy. Her greatest accomplishment was the teaching, mentoring, and advancement of so many young men and women. In the end, they represented the very best of Admiral Hopper, and the gorgeous trajectories of their lives were what gave her joy. In later life she said, “The most important thing I’ve accomplished, other than building the compiler, is training young people. They come to me, you know, and say, ‘Do you think we can do this?’ I say, ‘Try it.’ And I back them up. They need that. I keep track of them as they get older and I stir them up at intervals, so they don’t forget to take chances. People in a way are very much waiting for someone to express confidence in them, and once you do it, they’ll take off.”

  The way in which she did this mentoring affords us valuable lessons. True instinctive mentors take the responsibility of mentorship seriously and go about it in a systematic and organized way. Too often, “mentors” pay lip service to the idea of helping others up the ladder, but don’t truly follow up or remain consistent in their approach. Mentorship should include keeping a file of good people to draw upon for key assignments, following up with mentees frequently (at least every six months) on both professional and personal aspects of their progress, actively seeking to place mentees with other outstanding role models, and providing honest and thoughtful advice to ensure that mentees make intelligent career and personal decisions. Being a mentor is hard work that is quite often not rewarded with obvious and consistent reinforcement and is a perfect example of the way in which we must pay it forward to say thanks to others for what they have given us. When I think of mentoring I have received over the years, I am humbled—and I always vow to pay it forward whenever I can. People like former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs General Colin Powell and Admiral Mike Mullen, as well as former secretaries of defense Bob Gates and Leon Panetta, have always been willing to slow down, take time, and give me the course corrections I needed. They were also there when I stumbled to help me recover my bearings and move forward. Like Admiral Hopper, I’ve tried to do the same for others coming along, and a part of that was observing her do so for countless young people.

  Grace Hopper was also endlessly kind and considerate, with a clever sense of humor that she was unafraid to deploy in tense situations. She was also a practical joker, although not a mean-spirited one. For example, knowing that one of her coworkers was going on an important date, she would hide his uniform dress cap in the pipes in the ceiling—a grave difficulty as naval personnel cannot venture outside without a hat on when in uniform. Whenever she traveled, she returned with spoils for her staff and friends, often carrying a pair of matched string bags that would be filled up with her gifts.

  Of the comparisons that are often made of Navy innovators, the least accurate (though often heard) pairing is that of Admiral Hyman Rickover, the “father of the nuclear Navy,” with Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, “the mother of COBOL.” Rickover was irascible, irritable, famously difficult on an interpersonal level, and often full of anger. Hopper
was just the opposite; she managed to win legions of friends wherever she went in her life, despite being employed in tense and challenging work environments in which she was often not taken seriously at first because of her gender. She was also modest and humble. As she once said, “I never thought about what I wanted to accomplish in life. I had too many things to do. I was so deeply involved in things, I just kept on going. Then something came along and changed the direction. I went off with it. I didn’t know where it was going to lead me. It just keeps on leading me.” As we’ve seen, some believe there are times when righteous anger can be an effective tool of leadership. But both my own life experience and many empirical studies demonstrate that an angry, fearful workplace is a vastly less effective workplace. In all her leadership roles, Admiral Hopper’s fundamentally decent, kind nature served her extremely well in creating a sense among those around her that their efforts and abilities were valued and consciously appreciated.

  In addition, Hopper was loyal. Wherever she worked, and no matter how demanding her immediate boss, she tried hard to support him (and it was always a him). She well understood that the opportunities for women were severely circumscribed simply as a matter of gender, but despite this, she never let frustration, or a sense of injustice overcome her innate loyalty to the larger Navy. She was also a believer that it was loyalty to principle that mattered, not blind loyalty to any given boss. Several times in her career, she was willing to tell her chain of command that they were simply wrong—either in their leadership approach or in their technical judgments. Admiral Hopper managed to be loyal without being slavish or obsequious. She showed us that in terms of character, loyalty is in many ways a two-edged quality. At times it is the most important character quality an individual can manifest. We naturally esteem it as a highly prized attribute in our subordinates; but it is worth remembering that loyalty must run both up and down any chain of command. More senior people need to be as loyal to their subordinates as they hope their subordinates are to them—a kind of golden rule of character. But there is another side to loyalty, and it is a darker one. When is it appropriate to be loyal to a boss who is simply a bad leader? Or demonstrates ethically unacceptable views? In this sense, we owe not blind loyalty to the individuals above us in the chain of command, but rather loyalty to the larger values of an organization or a nation. When members of the US military are promoted, as Grace Hopper was many times, they do not swear allegiance to their chain of command, but rather to the Constitution of the United States—the ultimate repository of our system of values and our inalienable rights. In today’s morally challenged world, I often think “how low can we go?” in terms of the character failings in some of our leaders. It feels like athletics turned upside down—in sports, records are made to be broken, as the old saw goes, and they inevitably are improved upon. Sadly, our ethical and moral standards are becoming a lower and lower bar to surmount, and that should give us pause. What I take away from Admiral Hopper is that loyalty is a quality of character that has to be thoughtfully but not blindly given.

  As a senior officer, Admiral Hopper always had her eye on the distant horizon. Along with many of the other admirals in this volume, she thought not only about the present and the immediate future, but about the very long term. She would often challenge her subordinates and even audiences she was lecturing to think not about tomorrow or next year, but about the hundred-year future. Intimately tied to this kind of approach was her endless drive to stay current about the world of complex computing, even in ripe old age. At the very heart of Admiral Hopper’s character was her sense of vision. From the moment she started working on naval problems in the Second World War until her improbably long career finally ended, she had a consistent vision of moving the Navy into the computer age. She knew that the post–World War II Navy would continue to grow in complexity and absorb new technologies, and that the tools of which she was a master—mathematics and computer science—needed to be the drivers of those advances.

  For any good leader, vision is the quality that makes the most difference in terms of inspiring subordinates. Only through an abiding sense of vision can other important character traits be fully embodied over time. Vision shows us how what we do today will shape the future. A vision of the distant future allows a valuable sense of perspective, and can enable the humor, thoughtfulness, mentorship, and loyalty that come together to create the long-lasting outcomes that really matter. It was Hopper’s ability to push the Navy forward that enabled the truly advanced systems we put to sea today: the vaunted Aegis combat detection system, which can track hundreds of targets at almost infinite ranges including into space; our constellation of integrated satellites for seamless global navigation and communication; gunnery and missile systems that are “hands off” in high-speed combat; unmanned vehicles both in the air and under the sea that can maneuver with complete autonomy; the use of artificial intelligence in maintenance to predict casualties before they occur—the list goes on and on. So much of it ultimately stems from the vision of this slight, mischievous, and thoughtful visionary.

  Finally, it is worth remembering in terms of her character that Rear Admiral Grace Hopper was not a charismatic person in a physical sense. Her diminutive stature and small voice never allowed her to step into and dominate a room in the way so many other leaders have been able to do throughout history. She was no Themistocles striding to the front of the Greek rowers to inspire them to defeat the Persians at Salamis, nor a stately Chester Nimitz blessed with a strong and pleasing appearance complemented by a powerful physical presence. But throughout her life, people who spent time around Grace wanted to be on her team. They came to value her character, seeing in it the fundamental goodness of a curiosity-driven dreamer with the practical skills to achieve powerful and meaningful results. Her devotion to change inspired those around her again and again: “I have insatiable curiosity. It’s solving problems. Every time you solve a problem, another one shows up immediately behind it. That’s the challenge. Nothing ever stays the same, it’s always new and different.” When I met her at Annapolis so many years ago, I was mesmerized not by her appearance, nor by her mannerisms, but by her obvious goodwill, enthusiasm, and vision. For Admiral Hopper, the combination of character attributes she developed and deployed throughout a long and eventful life reflected a powerful and highly refined mixture, and she put it to good use—changing the Navy profoundly and permanently. As she said at the end of her life, “Wouldn’t it be dull to do things that ended? I’m having a heck of a good time and contributing a little bit here and there to solving problems.” Not a bad epitaph for Amazing Grace.

  All quotes by Grace Hopper in this chapter were taken from Lynn Gilbert with Gaylen Moore, Grace Murray Hopper: Women of Wisdom (self-published, 1981).

  CHAPTER XI

  Resilience and the Modern Admiral

  Thus far, our sea stories have centered on ten admirals who now sail on the great fleet plying the seas of the heavens. But a study of character in the modern world would not be complete without a few observations about admirals (and generals) who are still with us today. One key element of each of the stories we’ve discussed is resilience. Each of the ten admirals we’ve examined demonstrated deep reservoirs of resilience over the course of their careers. It is clearly a central element of character, perhaps the most important one of all. So as we turn to modern admirals, let’s look at some stories of resilience in a few more recent sea stories.

  The stories of modern admirals are illustrative of what can happen to anyone given the complexities of commanding powerful fleets while facing a variety of significant personal challenges. And of course, while not everyone is a fleet commander, we all face similar personal challenges in terms of our lives and the voyage of character. These can range from the medical issues we all must eventually face to the societal barriers that confront many of us as we move forward as leaders. And ego can play a part in the voyage of character. Indeed, it is often said that the true tes
t of character is not how we perform in adversity, but rather what happens when we are given power. This is certainly true of senior military officers.

  Let’s begin with power. Many wonderful things come along as you rise through the ranks of military service. If you are lucky enough to become an admiral (or a general), you get to travel to fascinating places, meet interesting people, and participate in events that would have been unimaginable before you put on those hard-earned stars. With all those benefits come burdens, although I know it is hard to generate much sympathy from the public in that regard. Believe me, though, the burdens are real. Along with the spotlight comes a microscope. Everything you do and don’t do is scrutinized in minute detail. For the most part, it comes with the territory. As Luke 12:48 says: “For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required; and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more.” Keeping that biblical wisdom in mind sometimes requires more than the patience of Job.

  In my memoir of my NATO days, The Accidental Admiral, I spoke about the challenges and need for resilience that stemmed from career-changing highly public negative events in the lives and careers of fellow four-stars Army General David Petraeus, Army General Stan McChrystal, and Marine Corps General and Naval Academy classmate General John Allen. Stan McChrystal was fired while serving as our commander in Afghanistan over comments some of his staff made about civilian leaders in DC. It was a highly public and embarrassing end to a brilliant career. Dave Petraeus was caught having an affair with a reserve officer who was writing a biography of him, and—more seriously—caught passing her classified information. Charged with a felony, he eventually pled guilty to a misdemeanor and had two years of probation and a $100,000 fine. John Allen was accused of having an inappropriate relationship with a socialite in Tampa based on emails that came to light in the investigation into Dave Petraeus’s affair. He was ultimately exonerated but chose to retire instead of taking another four-star assignment. I also underwent my own trials and tribulations in dealing with accusations of travel violations from which I was ultimately exonerated. In my case, there was an anonymous complaint that I had taken a trip to France while NATO commander for a “wine tasting,” when in fact it was a widely attended gathering with the chief of the French Armed Forces at which I gave a formal speech (in full dress uniform and in French) about the value of NATO. The investigation dragged on for months and put a cloud over my final months in uniform. But all four of us have recovered from those embarrassing moments and moved on in our lives in positive ways: Dave is a partner at a huge private equity firm, KKR; Stan runs a successful consulting business; John is the president of the Brookings Institution; and I went on to serve as dean of a top graduate school of international relations and today work at the Carlyle Group, a large international business firm. There are good lessons in terms of the need for resilience and how to cope with the most demanding circumstances from each of those cases, and they are described fully in The Accidental Admiral.