Leadership Lesson of the Day: "Sometimes a fan room is not just a fan room"

A U.S. Navy Petty Officer, Korrie McKinney, relates a story of leadership that ought to be required reading for managers/bosses everywhere in the USNI Blog's ‘Show Me’ Leadership:

Eleven years later, I still use what I call the “Show Me” leadership style. Not only do I use it train my junior sailors; I use it to learn from them as well. This type of leadership builds teamwork, respect, and trust which is the foundation on which to lead a division or an organization.

My leadership training advanced over the years by walking around ships or bases where I have been stationed and asking sailors “What are you doing? What does it do? What is the purpose?” At first the sailors are confused because they have only had supervisors hovering over them to make sure tasks are done correctly. As they begin to explain their task, you can see the moment when they realize that the job assigned to them is important.

BZ, PO McKinney!

Deck plate management at its best.

Fun with the Littoral Combat Ship: New Council to Watch Over the "Testing and Introduction"

Nothing says "winning program" like the need to establish a high-powered committee to take charge, which is what the Chief of Naval Operations has done, as set out in "CNO Establishes LCS Council":

The Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) established a board known as the LCS Council Aug. 22 made up of four Navy vice admirals to oversee continued fleet testing and introduction of littoral combat ship (LCS) sea frames, mission modules, and mission packages.

Adm. Jonathan Greenert designated Vice Adm. Rick Hunt, director of the Navy Staff, as the council's chairman. Other officers on the council include Vice Adm. Mark Skinner, Principal Military Deputy to the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition; Vice Adm. Tom Copeman, commander, Naval Surface Forces; and Vice Adm. Kevin McCoy, commander, Naval Sea Systems Command.

The focus of the LCS Council will first be to develop a class-wide plan of action to address the areas identified as needing improvement in recent assessments and reviews. The plan is expected to be implemented by Jan. 31, 2013.

"Addressing challenges identified by these studies, on the timeline we require, necessitates the establishment of an empowered council to drive action across acquisition, requirements and fleet enterprises of the Navy," said Greenert.

It is expected that issues will arise in any first-of-class shipbuilding program. Navy ships are designed with test and trial periods to ensure everything is working correctly, and repairs can be made, if required. That approach also allows for the incorporation of lessons learned into the follow-on ships before they're delivered.

I can tell already that this is just going to be swell.

Four Vice Admirals. Great googly moogly!

More on Management

U.S. Navy photo by Lt. Jan Shultis

Yesterday I noted that one of my favorite business books is available on Kindle and added a couple of quotes from the book, Up the Organization: How to Stop the Corporation from Stifling People and Strangling Profits.

Thinking it over, I left out my favorite quote:

Excellence: Or What the Hell Are You Doing Here?

If you can't do it excellently, don't do it at all. Because if it's not excellent it won't be profitable or fun, and if you're not in business for fun or profit, what the hell are you doing here?

More than that, one of the fundamental concepts of Mr. Townsend's work is the importance of management's primary job - that being giving the employees the right tools they need to do their jobs.

Not tools that "sorta maybe kinda" allow them to get the job done (often by using
work around" of their own creation), but the right tool in the right hand at the right time.

Not tools that have the "potential" to get the job done in some idealized future, but tools that work right now - tested before they are introduced to the workforce.

Any lessons that you choose to take from that concept and apply, say, to the Littoral Combat Ship, well, that's entirely up to you.

Of course, there is this from Phil Ewing:

“We’re making it up as we go” and “We don’t even know what it is yet!” are two Big Navy rallying cries for LCS, and they’re also two reasons why the program continues to have so many skeptics in and out of uniform. People want a ship to be a ship, not for a multi-billion dollar defense program to be a free-form jazz odyssey.

You know, what prompted some of my return to Up the Organization was our conversation on Midrats a couple of weeks ago concerning "Disruptive Thinkers" and by Galrahn's post over at the USNI Blog, Diversity Is Currently Dead in the DoD, Redundancy Reigns, referring, of course, to intellectual diversity - replaced, at least in Galrahn's view, by apparent "group think."

Which leads me to another Townsend quote:

Disobedience and Its Necessity: A commander in chief [manager] cannot take as an excuse for his mistakes in warfare [business] an order given by his minister [boss] or his sovereign [boss's boss], when the person giving the order is absent from the field of operations and is imperfectly aware or wholly unaware of the latest state of affairs. It follows that any commander in chief [manager] who undertakes to carry out a plan which he considers defective is at fault; he must put forth his reasons, insist on the plan being changed, and finally tender his resignation rather than be the instrument of his army's [organization's] downfall. citing Napoleon, Military Maxims and Thoughts

Best Business Books: Up the Organization: How to Stop the Corporation from Stifling People and Strangling Profits

Fooling around with my Kindle, I was pleased to see a Kindle version of what I have found to be one of the more timeless business books on my shelf* - Up the Organization: How to Stop the Corporation from Stifling People and Strangling Profits by Robert C. Townsend.

If you have ever wondered how so many organizations (profit and non-profit) seem to have wandered off the rails, this book might be just right for you.

Not at all a lengthy text book, it's a simple book full of good stuff.

Back in the day when the Navy Reserve used to trust me to command units, I had cobbled together some the thoughts from this book onto one sheet which I used to hand out to the crew shortly after assuming command.

Here's a sample:

Decisions: All decisions should be made as low as possible in the organization. The Charge of the Light Brigade was ordered by an officer who wasn't there looking at the territory.

Mistakes: Admit your own mistakes openly, maybe even joyfully. Encourage your associates to do likewise by commiserating with them. Never castigate. Babies learn to walk by falling down. If you beat a baby every time he falls down, he'll never care much for walking.

Reserved parking spaces: If you're so bloody important, you better be the first one in the office. Besides, you'll meet a nice class of people in the employee's parking lot.

There's much more.


*A legacy of a M.A. in Management earned in my youth

Quote of the Weekend

From I Like The Cut Of His Jib !!: Protect the risk takers:

"If you are always on the hunt for complacency, you will reward risk-takers, and people who thrive in uncertainty."

"Take the mavericks in your service, the ones that wear rumpled uniforms and look like a bag of mud but whose ideas are so offsetting that they actually upset the people in the bureaucracy.

One of your primary jobs is to take the risk and protect these people, because if they are not nurtured in your service, the enemy will bring their contrary ideas to you."

General James Mattis
United States Marine Corps

Of course, you have to be a risk taker to be willing to protect those risk takers - one "bag of mud" looking out for another . . .

"We've always done it this way" is death to any organization.

Navy Establishes Program Executive Office for Littoral Combat Ships

A complete and unedited press release titled, Navy Establishes Program Executive Office for Littoral Combat Ships:

From Naval Sea Systems Command Office of Corporate Communications

WASHINGTON (NNS) -- The Navy established the Program Executive Office, Littoral Combat Ships (PEO LCS), during a ceremony at Washington Navy Yard, July 11.

"The littoral combat ship is a critical shipbuilding program and demands the very best skill and effort from government and industry teams," said Asst. Secretary of the Navy (Research, Development and Acquisition) Sean J. Stackley in a memo establishing the new PEO. "To ensure that we deliver this program to the fleet successfully, I am establishing a new Program Executive Office, Littoral Combat Ships that will align several program offices into one consolidated PEO, focused entirely on achieving that result. This action takes efforts that are currently managed across multiple organizations, and integrates design and development and tests, trials and evaluations under one roof. PEO LCS will have authority across all aspects of the program."

RADM Murdoch

Led by Rear Adm. James Murdoch, the new PEO provides a single program executive responsible for acquiring and maintaining the littoral mission capabilities of the LCS class from start to finish, beginning with procurement, and ending with fleet employment and sustainment.

"I am excited by the challenge of leading this historic effort to provide the Navy with new and highly capable warships equipped with extraordinary aviation features, large payload capacities and flexible environments for future missions - all contained within a fast, stable and efficient seaframe to support the Navy's needs today and tomorrow," said Murdoch.

E. Anne Sandel has been named as the executive director.

Acquisition and maintenance of the sea-frame and mission modules were previously overseen by two different PEOs - PEO Ships and PEO Littoral and Mine Warfare (PEO LMW), respectively. With the creation of PEO LCS, PEO LMW has been disestablished and resident LCS program functions have been transitioned to the new PEO. Non-LCS program functions from PEO LMW have been realigned within Naval Sea Systems Command and existing PEOs.

LCS and its mission modules have been developed under a different strategy for shipbuilding using modular capability, minimal manning and new sustainment concepts. That strategy and the unique aspects of LCS lend themselves to a PEO structure that takes into account the complexity of a system-of-systems approach. Realignment to co-locate the shipbuilding and mission modules programs, together with fleet introduction, is designed to optimize program communication and increased programmatic synergy.

The new PEO LCS will include the following Program Offices: LCS (PMS 501), Remote Minehunting System (PMS 403), Unmanned Maritime Systems (PMS 406), LCS Mission Modules (PMS 420), Mine Warfare (PMS 495), and essential fleet introduction program and functional offices, such as test and evaluation and aviation integration.

The LCS is an entirely new breed of U.S. Navy warship. A fast, agile, and networked surface combatant, LCS's modular, focused-mission design will provide combatant commanders the required warfighting capabilities and operational flexibility to ensure maritime dominance and access for the joint force. LCS will operate with focused-mission packages that deploy manned and unmanned vehicles to execute missions as assigned by combatant commanders.

LCS will also perform special operations forces support, high-speed transit, maritime interdiction operations, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and anti-terrorism/force protection. While complementing capabilities of the Navy's larger multi-mission surface combatants, LCS will also be networked to share tactical information with other Navy aircraft, ships, submarines, and joint units.

Now, you are all experienced with large bureaucracies . . . whatever could such a move mean? Heh. At least it's some action apparently designed to get this thing under control.

Good luck, RADM Murdoch. Herding cats is just so much fun.

What was it Mark Twain wrote about the man said as he was being tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail? Something like, "if it weren't for the honor and glory of the thing, I'd just as soon walk."

On the other hand, it may be worth noting that the tag assigned to the admiral's photo on his official Navy page is "thumb_mad%20dog.jpg" . . .