Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders
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I thought about how I would lead the ship when I took over. I shelved my ideas for a radical management change because there would be too much internal resistance. The crew, doing well, wouldn’t see the need. I was resigned to executing incremental changes on the standard hierarchical structure.
• • •
It is precisely the success of the top-down, leader-follower structure that makes it so appealing. As long as you are measuring performance over just the short run, it can be effective. Officers are rewarded for being indispensable, for being missed after they depart. When the performance of a unit goes down after an officer leaves, it is taken as a sign that he was a good leader, not that he was ineffective in training his people properly.
Another factor that makes this leadership approach appealing is the induced numbness. It absolves subordinates of the hard work of thinking, making decisions, and being responsible and accountable. You are just a cog, an executor of the decisions of others. “Hey, I was only doing what I was told.” People get comfortable with this.
There’s a cost to the people, though, which only becomes evident over time. People who are treated as followers treat others as followers when it’s their turn to lead. A vast untapped human potential is lost as a result of treating people as followers. Only in the long run—three to ten years later—does it become obvious, but by that time people have moved on to new jobs.
With Olympia sitting pierside I sped through my program reviews, inspections, and interviews. Already a technical expert on the ship, I got bored with the turnover and decided to take a week’s vacation with my wife. There was a venerable cruise ship, the SS Independence, that cruised around the Hawaiian Islands, and we decided to spend the last week before the change of command on a cruise. The first four days were pretty relaxing, observing the beauty of the islands. I was comfortable with how Oly was operating, and the leadership was going to be right up my alley—the same kind that had gotten me through Will Rogers.
On the fifth morning, while our cruise ship was passing the lava flowing into the ocean from Kilauea, I received a phone call. In those days it was unusual to receive a call from shore and I assumed it was an internal call. I was startled to hear a crackly voice on the other end inform me that my change of command was canceled. I would be taking over the Santa Fe instead, just after New Year’s.
I was panicked. The foundation of my leadership approach, my technical competence, was for the wrong submarine.
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER
In your organization, are people rewarded for what happens after they transfer?
Are they rewarded for the success of their people?
Do people want to be “missed” after they leave?
When an organization does worse immediately after the departure of a leader, what does this say about that person’s leadership? How does the organization view this situation?
How does the perspective of time horizon affect our leadership actions?
What can we do to incentivize long-term thinking?
Change of Course
What’s your level of commitment? I discovered that the hardest thing about my planned turnaround project was my own fortitude.
December 1998: Pearl Harbor, Hawaii
The first thing I did when we returned from our cruise was to visit my new boss and former PCO instructor, Commodore Mark Kenny. Instead of heading down to the submarine piers to continue my turnover on Olympia, I veered into the building that had housed the Pacific Fleet commander’s office during the December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor. Now the Navy’s three Pearl Harbor squadron commanders have their offices in that building. I was literally taking a new turn. The Olympia was in Squadron Three and Santa Fe was in Squadron Seven. My mentor from PCO training, Commodore Mark Kenny, had just taken over Squadron Seven so he was going to be my new boss. Mark had argued forcefully for me to be assigned the job of turning Santa Fe around. He had credibility because he’d be living with his recommendation. It was the reason I got the job.
Later Mark told me that one of the reasons he argued for me was that I’d evinced a particular enthusiasm for learning throughout the entire PCO course. He sensed that a keen curiosity would be vital for the successful about-face of Santa Fe and its crew, a fact I would later deeply appreciate in ways I didn’t then imagine.
When I got the news that I would be taking command of Santa Fe, it was a shock. I didn’t know much about Santa Fe other than it was stationed in Pearl Harbor and scheduled to deploy in six months. In contrast to the Olympia, Santa Fe was the ship we all joked about during the PCO training pipeline. A damning photograph of Santa Fe’s inattentive crewmen had been released on the Internet the previous year. It earned the captain a scolding and was used as a training example of how not to be. Santa Fe was the ship that had trouble getting under way on time. And Santa Fe had the worst retention in the submarine force: in 1998, for example, it reenlisted only three crew members.
Mark discussed my new job. “You need to get Santa Fe and your crew ready for deployment in six months. It’s a dream deployment from an operational perspective, with the Constellation Battle Group, but it’s also going to be demanding. One of the things we’re going to try and set up is a torpedo exercise in the shallow Arabian Gulf, to demonstrate our combat effectiveness.”
What Mark said next didn’t present a pretty sight. “I’m not going to minimize the task in front of you. The ship isn’t doing well. It looks from here like there’s a leadership vacuum. This is a unique situation. In all my time on the waterfront, I can’t remember such a particular confluence of events.
“Look, here’s the deal. If you need to change out some people, let me know, but I’m not interested in a lot of turnover. I don’t think that will help the crew. I think a better focus would be on working with what you’ve got. With only six months to deployment you don’t have a lot of time to find replacements.”
I was thinking that too. In the end, I fired no one.
This was important because it sent the message to each crew member that he wasn’t screwed up, the leadership was. My challenge would be to use the same people and support team and by changing the way they interacted and behaved, dramatically increase the combat effectiveness of Santa Fe.
As the captain, I would be assisted by an executive officer (XO), the second in command, who was qualified to take command in case I became incapacitated. There would be the four department heads: weapons, engineering, navigation/operations, and supply. Each department head except the supply officer (Suppo) would be trained in nuclear power and could aspire to command his own submarine someday. The odds were, however, that only one of the three officers would. The jury was out on these men. Mark explained that the XO seemed to be closely identified with the outgoing captain, and two of the department heads were too new to assess.
“Look, you’ve got one hundred percent from me and my squadron staff,” Mark continued, “to help you get the ship ready. We aren’t going to walk down there and tell you what you need, but whatever you think you need, we’ll support.”
We also talked about the junior officers. As a group, they were ignored, untrained, and not staying in the Navy. Because this was their first tour, these men were probably the most neglected group on board. All they’d known about submarining and how to be an officer, other than academically, was based on Santa Fe. They were a mix: about half had graduated from the Naval Academy, and about half came out of NROTC.
We talked about Santa Fe chiefs. Unempowered, uninspired. The twelve chiefs are the senior enlisted men. They are middle management. At our submarine schools, the instructors tell us that officers make sure we do the right things and chiefs make sure we do things right. Their technical expertise and leadership would be key, as would my ability to tap their expertise.
Just as underway time on patrol was the reason the nation built SSBNs, deployments were the reason the nation built SSNs. Deployments were a period of operating for six months away from home port.
During that time, we’d be mostly submerged, operating in areas where our potential adversaries might operate. We’d surface and make port calls to resupply and conduct minor repairs, but overall, we’d need to travel thirty thousand miles on our own. Submarines were most useful forward, in hostile waters, and not sitting back under the protection of the carrier battle group or other allied forces. Deployments required the ship and crew to be at peak maintenance, training, manning, and supply conditions.
The commodore explained that there weren’t going to be any breaks in the schedule to accommodate the abrupt change in captain. The Navy and nation needed Santa Fe to be a “full-up round”—that is, a fully capable submarine. Mark would have the final say on whether my submarine was ready to deploy. His parting words of encouragement: “I have great confidence in your ability to do this. And just one piece of advice, you might want to get a good flashlight.”
We shook hands and I headed down to the boat. How were we—how was I—going to do this? I wasn’t sure it was a possible task. I felt overwhelmed and didn’t know where to start. Preparing for deployment was daunting enough, let alone with a demoralized crew. Was I willing to risk implementing a new leadership approach as well?
• • •
Upon reflection, Commodore Kenny was providing great leadership. He presented me with a specific goal—have Santa Fe ready for deployment in every way—but did not tell me how to do it. The other thing he was telling me was that the people and resources available to the ship would be the same as they were before and the same as they were to any other submarine. Consequently, the only thing we could change was how we acted and interacted. This would be my focus.
Then I began to reconsider the situation. Since Mark wasn’t going to micromanage me, maybe this was a chance to do something different. Maybe this was the chance to set the crew free from the top-down, “do what you’re told” approach to leadership. Maybe this was the opportunity of a lifetime. Of course, I would be solely responsible, and if Santa Fe wasn’t ready, it would be my fault and likely my job.
I resolved to give it a try. I left his office and headed down to the pier where Santa Fe was berthed.
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER
What are you willing to personally risk? (Sometimes taking a step for the better requires caring/not caring. Caring deeply about the people and mission, but not caring about the bureaucratic consequences to your personal career.)
What must leaders overcome mentally and emotionally to give up control yet retain full responsibility?
What’s the hardest thing you experience in letting go of micromanaging, top-down leadership, or the cult of personality?
How can you get your project teams interacting differently but still use the same resources?
What can you as a subordinate do to get your boss to let you try a new way of handling a project?
Do you give employees specific goals as well as the freedom to meet them in any way they choose?
Frustration
Are you curious? I thought I was being curious during my previous tours; turns out I was only “questioning.”
December 15, 1998: On Board USS Santa Fe, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii (twenty-five days to change of command)
I approached Santa Fe with a mix of curiosity and anxiety.
In the U.S. Navy, we name the submarine classes after the hull number of the first ship in the class. The Los Angeles–class submarines are 688s, and the class was split into two “flights”: first flight and second flight. The Olympia is the thirtieth ship of the first flight 688s; Santa Fe is a second-flight 688. Other than the overall hull shape, the ships are significantly different. The first-flight 688s have sail planes, four torpedo tubes, and a reactor plant that needs to be refueled once during the life of the ship. The second-flight 688s have bow planes, twelve vertical-launch Tomahawk land-attack missile (TLAM) tubes in addition to the four torpedo tubes, and a redesigned reactor plant that has enough fuel to last the entire life of the ship.
I descended the narrow hatch. As I passed through the mess decks, I heard the topside watch announcing “Commander, United States Navy, arriving” per protocol. I made my way forward through the narrow passageways. I pleasantly greeted each crew member I passed. The passageways in a submarine are about two feet wide; you can’t pass someone without acknowledging their presence. It’s just like passing someone in the aisle of an airplane. Mostly I got mumbles or grunts and a lot of men looking down at their shoes. They seemed embarrassed. They avoided eye contact. They avoided conversing. These guys were beaten. They had been told over and over they were the worst ship in the submarine force and they believed it. Just across the water from Olympia, it was worlds away.
I stopped by the captain’s stateroom to let him know I was on board. I was his relief, and in a couple weeks this would be my responsibility; but right now it was his. That was a bit awkward since he would be leaving command a year early. Eventually I would be assigned the second desk in the XO’s stateroom for my base of operations, but for the moment I didn’t have a place. The change in orders had caught the crew of Santa Fe by surprise too. Not having a place to plop down, I walked into the control room and looked around instead. The equipment was shut down but I could see from the panel faces, gauges, and dials that it was different from what I’d seen before. Since I didn’t have a place I started wandering around the ship. After a time I started asking nearby crew members about the various pieces of equipment. For the first time, I was truly curious.
Walking the ship, I would ask the crew questions about their equipment and what they were working on. They were skeptical about these questions initially. That’s because normally I would have been “questioning,” not curious. I would have been asking questions to make sure they knew the equipment. Now I was asking questions to make sure I knew the equipment.
My unfamiliarity with the sub’s technical details was having an interesting side effect: since I couldn’t get involved with the specifics of the gear, I opened up space to focus on the people and their interactions instead, and to rely on the crew more than I normally would have. I decided I’d do physical inspections of the ship and review the records, but only as a guise for understanding the crew. Whereas on Oly I had reviewed some records by myself, I decided that everything I did on Santa Fe would be with an officer, a chief, or a crew member.
I started interviewing the chiefs and officers in their spaces. After having them tell me about their people, I asked them a loosely structured set of questions like these:
What are the things you are hoping I don’t change?
What are the things you secretly hope I do change?
What are the good things about Santa Fe we should build on?
If you were me what would you do first?
Why isn’t the ship doing better?
What are your personal goals for your tour here on Santa Fe?
What impediments do you have to doing your job?
What will be our biggest challenge to getting Santa Fe ready for deployment?
What are your biggest frustrations about how Santa Fe is currently run?
What is the best thing I can do for you?
Later, I thought about some of the things I had heard. A lot of things were problems with how Santa Fe did business.
“Admin disappears into a black hole.”
“The duty officers delay getting maintenance started.”
“The junior officers are the source of low standards.”
“I was previously qualified for this watch station, transferred ship to ship, and now have to start over with a blank qualification card.”
“I’ve been waiting for four weeks to get a test so that I can qualify.”
“There’s no participation in the wives’ club.”
“The radio installation and upgrade we just received left us with less capability than what we had before.”
“I was promised a certain job when I came here, and it hasn’t happened.”
The conversation I had with Fire Control Technician (FT) Chief David Steele was typical. “I’ve asked to be transferred,” he admitted. Chief Steele had been on board Santa Fe for two years and wasn’t having fun. He wasn’t one of the command’s favorites and wasn’t moving up in the performance rankings. A high school dropout, Steele had gone to see the Navy recruiter when he turned eighteen. He performed well enough on the aptitude test to be selected for submarines, so the recruiter convinced him to take the GED and enlist. Now, Steele ran the fire control system (FCS) that sent targeting instructions to every missile and torpedo Santa Fe launched.