“I still haven’t even signed my evaluation,” he told me. I resisted the urge to comment on what a disservice this was to him. December already, and evaluations were due on September 15. His file would be incomplete when the promotion board met, reducing his chances to zero. I wondered, if the chiefs’ evaluations are this bad, what about the junior enlisted men?
“And I don’t like how the command is handling evals, anyway,” Chief Steele grumbled.
His “tell it like it is” style may have grated on some, but I appreciated it. He was key to the Santa Fe’s combat effectiveness, and his knowledge of the vertical launch missile system (VLS) was especially important for me.
“Look, Chief, I can’t promise I’ll make you an EP, but I can promise that performance rankings are going to be based on your contribution to the ship’s mission, period.” (EP is the highest competitive ranking—it stands for “early promote.”)
On another occasion, the chief responsible for a nuclear division told me, “No one has reviewed my equipment status log [ESL] since I’ve been here.” The ESL is a large database that includes details about everything that’s wrong with each piece of equipment the division owns and therefore forms the basis of the maintenance and operational plans.
I was uneasy not being the technical expert on each and every piece of equipment on board. The impact of this focus on people was that I was going to have to rely on the crew to provide me with the technical details about how the submarine worked. This went against every grain of my naval leadership and scientific training. But the circumstances demanded a new mode of operation. Doing the same thing as everyone else and hoping for a different outcome didn’t make sense.
I am not advocating being ignorant about the equipment. For me, however, it was a necessary step to make me truly curious and reliant upon the crew in a way I wouldn’t have been without it. Later in my tour I became a technical expert on all aspects of Santa Fe, but the positive patterns had been set and I continued in the same relationship with the crew. If you walk about your organization talking to people, I’d suggest that you be as curious as possible. As with a good dinner table conversationalist, one question should naturally lead to another. The time to be questioning or even critical is after trust has been established.
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER
Are you asking questions to make sure you know or to make sure they know?
Do you have to be the smartest person in your organization?
To what degree does technical competence form the basis for leadership?
Is that technical competence a personal competence or an organizational competence?
How do you know what is going on “at the deck plate” in your organization?
Call to Action
When was the last time you walked around your organization to hear about the good, the bad, and the ugly of top-down management? Walking around and listening was my first step in preparing to command Santa Fe.
December 16, 1998: On Board USS Santa Fe, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii (twenty-four days to change of command)
According to procedure, I was to spend the next two weeks reviewing everything on the ship, including training records, school records, administrative records, award records, advancement records, records pertaining to the operation and maintenance of the reactor plant, the weapons system, the torpedoes and missiles, schedules, exercises, classified material, and so on. I ignored that. Instead, I spent my time walking around the ship talking to people. I also set up a series of walkabouts during which each chief or officer would walk me around his spaces. In order to do these inspections properly, I’d ask them to bring me a flashlight. It wasn’t supposed to be a test, but the flashlights were pitiful. Broken, dead batteries, dim bulbs—you couldn’t see anything. I figured this was what Commodore Kenny was talking about. I got myself a super Maglite that took four D-cell batteries. Its light was as bright as the sun. I carried that flashlight around with me everywhere. Soon, others started carrying flashlights that actually worked as well.
I attended a department head meeting, a routine review of maintenance issues, in the wardroom. The wardroom is a small room in which there’s a ten-man table where the officers eat. It also serves as a training room, an operational planning room, a meeting room, and the place where officers watch movies. If necessary, it serves as the surgical operating room as well.
I looked around at the four department heads. These were the key individuals I would go to war with, entrust the lives of the 135 crew members to, and possibly die with. I felt bad for these guys: the attendees wandered in late, and the captain stayed away until everyone was assembled. Then he was invited. The meeting started late. It might seem like a little thing, but on board a nuclear submarine, little things like lack of punctuality are indicative of much, much bigger problems. At this particular meeting, everyone was waiting for someone else.
The meeting started. Lieutenant Dave Adams, the weapons officer (Weps), briefed a problem with the vertical launch system (VLS) in the bow of the sub. There was a long discussion about O-rings, seals, and retests. I probably should have paid attention to the technical issues because this missile system wasn’t on the Olympia so I hadn’t paid attention to it during my training, but instead I observed the people in the room. Dave was earnest and forthright but frustrated and defensive about all the questions he needed to answer. The other department heads and chiefs were bored.
After the meeting I followed Dave to his stateroom.
“Weps, you seemed a bit frustrated.”
“Look, Captain, I have a vision of how I want this department to operate,” he began. As I listened to him tell me about how he wanted things to be, I became more and more enthusiastic, and impressed. Unfortunately, he was being ignored. As he ticked through the ideas he had for improving his department, I would ask how he had implemented them. Each time the answer was the same: someone up the chain of command hadn’t supported the initiative, so nothing happened. The chiefs working for him didn’t seem eager to step up with their own ideas either. He had wanted to conduct training with the officers numerous times on Tomahawk missile strikes, something we would be tested on in January, but the training either had never been scheduled or had been canceled.
In essence, Dave was describing a problem inherent in the leader-follower model, although he didn’t use those words. Because of his insights and passion he would become one of Santa Fe’s greatest engines for good, embracing the concept of leader-leader and carrying it forward.
I found Dave an incredibly intelligent, driven, and gifted officer. He grew up the younger son of a career Army enlisted man. Likely influenced by his demanding father, Dave acquired a drive I’ve rarely seen equaled. He also learned to appreciate his men but at the same time demand excellence from them. I felt better about my plan because I was going to have to rely on the technical expertise of Dave and the other department heads if it was going to work.
Dave wasn’t the only frustrated officer. Lieutenant Commander Bill Greene, the navigator (Nav) and senior department head, had requested a transfer out of the submarine force. Two of the junior officers had submitted their resignations.
As things on Santa Fe deteriorated, the crew adopted a hunker-down mode in which avoiding mistakes became the primary driver for all actions. They focused exclusively on satisfying the minimum requirements. Anything beyond that was ignored.
During one of my walks around, I noted that one junior sailor looked particularly forlorn. When I pressed him on how he was doing, he told me he wasn’t sure he was going to get home to the mainland for Christmas because his leave chit wasn’t back yet. Turns out he’d submitted it weeks earlier and the holiday break was coming soon. He hadn’t bought airline tickets yet since he didn’t know if his leave would be approved, and now, this late, the tickets were bound to be expensive, if they were even available.
The Standard Submarine Organization and Regulations Manual (SSORM) states that the XO will sign all enlisted leave chits (and the CO all officer
leave chits). Since we enforce the chain of command, that means that a leave chit from a junior sailor must go though his leading first class petty officer, divisional chief, department chief, chief of the boat, division officer, department head, and, finally, the XO. Seven people! The form had only five lines for signatures, so we were using rulers to half-split some of the lines so everyone could sign.
We had done this sailor wrong.
I rushed about, tracked down his leave chit—it was sitting in someone’s inbox—and took care of it. It was the system, not the people, that failed, however.
Once I had acquainted myself with my men, I devoted time to observing some of the ship’s routines. One morning I was talking to the engineer (Eng), Lieutenant Commander Rick Panlilio, when the radioman arrived with the message board. In those days, we took all the naval messages that came to the ship each day—there might be thirty or forty—printed them out, and routed them on a clipboard with a routing stamp. The stamp had a spot for each person to initial indicating he had seen the messages. Some messages were general and administrative, announcing courses or changes in requirements for paperwork or updates to manuals. Some messages were material, reporting changes in maintenance procedures or requesting data on a particular valve if made by a particular company. Some messages were operational, providing direction for the ship’s schedule, assigning navigational waterspace, and tasking the ship for operations.
Rick flipped through the sheets of paper and was visibly aggravated. “Here, look at this,” he said. By protocol the messages are routed first to the captain, then to the XO, and down the chain of command. This way, the captain would be the first to know of any change in the ship’s schedule. It is how we controlled the information.
The message board had already been to the captain and XO. Many of the messages had notes on them from one or both: things like “Enter this message change in the publication,” or “I want a report back on this by Friday.” Rick looked downcast. “See, this message is an urgent change to a publication; you don’t think we know that we are supposed to enter the change? I’m getting told to do stuff before I even know I have stuff to do!”
“Why do you think the captain and XO feel they need to write those things?”
“Well, look, I may be wrong, but let’s say something doesn’t happen—some report does not get sent or a school date changes and we don’t catch it—and some inspection team is looking at the records. The captain can say, ‘I told him to do it,’ and bully for him. He gets good marks for being very involved, having his fingerprints everywhere. But from my perspective, it’s not helpful; it actually hurts. Not only are they telling me to do stuff I already know I have to do, but also frequently I get told exactly how and when to do it. That takes away any decision-making opportunities I might have.”
As was the case with the message board, like every other submarine, Santa Fe had quarters on the pier a couple times a week. This was a morning formation with the crew standing behind their chiefs and officers in a square. The CO, XO, and chief of the boat (the senior enlisted man, known as the COB) were in the middle and made announcements. On the day I’m describing, we conducted an awards ceremony. It was great to see some sailors getting well-deserved recognition. The awards were for people leaving the ship or for the previous upkeep. Unfortunately, no wives had been invited to attend, and there was no photographer, so we lost the chance to promote these accomplishments in front of a wider audience. There was a last-minute scramble to assemble the citations and medals. We welcomed new crew members and bid aloha to departing ones. The captain seemed unfamiliar with the details about the men: where they had come from, where they were going.
As the formation went on, I wandered around the periphery. Standing in the back, where most of the crew was, I couldn’t make out anything the captain said. His words were muted and garbled. I asked one of the crew members if he could hear. No, but it didn’t matter, he said. If there was something important, the chief would tell them at divisional quarters, a meeting that followed this meeting. With leader-follower it didn’t matter.
• • •
The overwhelming sense on the ship was that we needed to avoid problems: avoid drunken driving citations, avoid liberty incidents, avoid physical fitness failures, avoid tagout errors, avoid rework, and avoid a reactor problem.
Still, there was a spark, a desire to do well despite all these frustrations.
It was clear to me that whereas the Olympia crew wasn’t as good as they thought they were, the Santa Fe crew wasn’t as bad as they thought they were. There was a thirst to do better and an eagerness for change.
I felt the crew’s pain and frustration in a physical way. When I arrived in the morning, my stomach was in knots as I anticipated finding out about some new way the crew’s time was being wasted and their talents ignored. At the same time, I knew that their pain and frustration were providing me with a tremendous call to action. There would be an eagerness to change the way we were doing business that I could tap into. I resolved that we would turn everything on its head. I’d try the initiatives I had tried unsuccessfully on Will Rogers.
I went back to Commodore Kenny and told him I could definitely work with this. We would deploy on time.
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER
Is there a call to action in your organization?
Do people want to change, or are they comfortable with the current level of performance?
Are things too comfortable?
Is there a feeling of complacency?
Do people take action to protect themselves or to make the outcome better? Does leadership in your organization take control or give control?
“Whatever They Tell Me to Do!”
What goes on in your workplace every day that reinforces the notion that the guys at the top are the leaders and everyone else is simply to follow? I was startled to find this was pervasive on Santa Fe.
December 26, 1998: On Board USS Santa Fe, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii (fourteen days to change of command)
It was a quiet day over Christmas break. Only a skeleton watch section remained on board, and they were not doing any maintenance. The men were just taking logs and completing daily routines like loading potable water and pumping the sanitary tanks.
I wandered about the ship with my flashlight and made my way to the engine room. En route I passed the maneuvering room, which is the control room for the reactor and the propulsion plant. Formality here is to be stressed at all times. All personnel must ask permission to enter. It doesn’t matter how senior you are; even admirals have to ask to be admitted. To be informal in the maneuvering room is detrimental to the safe operation of the ship, and thus a huge taboo.
I recalled the photo I had seen during PCO training that showed a bunch of shaggy-looking guys. They weren’t just informal; they were cracking up. To make matters worse, this picture had gone around the Internet, and you could see in the background some of the dials and instruments for the reactor plant. The point of showing us the photograph during PCO training was to demonstrate how bad things could get without proper enforcement of standards. And, yes, the guys in the photo were crewmen on board Santa Fe.
I recognized some of the watch standers from the picture. I wondered if they knew how famous, or infamous, they were. Probably not. I stopped to chat with a first class petty officer on watch in the engine room. First class petty officers are one rank below chief. They are the workhorses of the Navy, doing a tremendous amount of watch standing, hands-on maintenance, as well as training of the junior enlisted men. They are considered to be budding leaders.
“Hi, what do you do on board?” By asking open-ended questions like this, I could better gauge what the crew thought their job was.
“Whatever they tell me to do,” he immediately replied with unmistakable cynicism. He knew he was a follower, and not happy with it, but he also was not taking responsibility. He was throwing it back in my face that the command was all screwed up. It was a stunningly insulting thin
g to say, yet a brilliantly clear description of the problem. I should have been irate. Instead I felt strangely detached—like a scientific observer.
“Whatever they tell me to do.” That was the attitude all over the ship. I began to see things in a new light.
Whatever They Tell Me to Do!
Toward the end of one day, I was sitting with the XO in his stateroom. Lieutenant Commander Bill Greene, the navigator, came in and asked the XO if he had anything more for him that day. The XO, who was caught off guard by this question, said no and Bill headed home. Bill was, like everyone else on board, ready to do whatever he was told.
This was a show for me. I asked the XO if checking out was normal practice. In a proud voice, he told me that he liked the department heads to check out with him so he could go over what they “owed” and make sure they didn’t go home with a significant issue open. But, he admitted, they didn’t always do it.
I subsequently went over this end-of-day checkout event in detail with all the officers. The problem, I explained, was that in this scenario the XO is the one who was being responsible for each department head’s work, not the department head himself. Psychological ownership for accomplishing the work rested with the XO, not the department head. Checking out is fine, I said, but it should go more like this: “XO, I’m shoving off for the day. The charts for next week’s underway are coming along fine, and we’ll be able to show the rough plan to the captain tomorrow. I wasn’t able to see Petty Officer Smith for his qualification interview but will be able to make that up tomorrow.” In this scenario, it is the department head, not the XO, who is responsible for the department head’s job. This is leadership at all levels.
Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders Page 5
