It is difficult under the complexities of modern warfare for large naval task forces to be any better than the large staffs which control them. For this reason alone it would be essential that a fair share of the best talent of the Navy be detailed to staff duty, in the Fleets and in the Unified and Specified Commands.
Additionally, those officers destined for high command need to be educated in the use of a staff. The practical way to do this educating is to assign the officer to duty on a staff while he is working his way up the promotion ladder. Each officer on a staff should have the comforting thought that he may be the one whom “Big Brother” is educating for high command.
So staff duty is of vital importance—vital to the Navy, vital to the individual officer. It follows that any naval officer who is capable of first-rate service on a staff is of great value to the Navy. This value can be enhanced when the duty assignment is on a joint or combined staff. Here the understanding of sea power by officers of the armies and air services of the Free World may fall well below the Plimsoll mark. Education of these brother officers is a daily must. As for the staff positions with the fast changing civilian officials in the Pentagon, the availability of effective sea power in the next war can well depend upon the educational job which can be accomplished with these officials in short minutes of short hours of short days, which rarely run beyond a dog watch in the lifetime of the professional naval officer.
It may surprise some of the thousands of naval officers detailed to duty on a staff or in a headquarters to learn that in the indices of the U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings covering the 82-year period from 1878 to 1960, there are just two articles dealing with any aspect of naval staffs. One article deals with staff organization and the other with the kind of people who should man the staff organization.
It will surprise hardly any World War II or older vintage naval officers that one of these two articles was written by Lieutenant Commander Robert B. Carney, U. S. Navy, the other by Lieutenant Commander Holloway H. Frost, U. S. Navy, two of the better naval officers who stirred up seagoing minds between World War I and World War II.
But only two articles on staffs and their people in 82 years indicates a lamentable lack of concern by naval officers with this subject over a long period of time.
No attempt is made herein to determine accurately the cause of this lack of naval officer interest. But it can be pointed out that down through the years the staffs of our naval commanders have always been on the smallish side, when compared with those of the Army or with those of European navies. As a result, until recently, a low percentage of the total number of line officers served in staff billets. To support this statement, it is only necessary to relate a few facts, covering the last hundred years of U. S. naval operations.
Admiral Farragut had but three commissioned staff officers to assist him in his 50- ship squadron command gathered below New Orleans and then Mobile in the 1860s. These were the fleet captain, the fleet surgeon, and the fleet paymaster.
Thirty-six years later, Commodore George Dewey had only two regularly detailed staff officers at the time of his victory at Manila Bay. These were his flag lieutenant, Thomas M. Brumby, a lieutenant with 18 years’ commissioned service, and his flag secretary, Harry H. Caldwell, a five-year ensign. The commanding officer of the Olympia, Captain Charles V. Gridley, was given additional duty orders as chief of staff. Rear Admiral William T. Sampson, in command of the 100-combat- ant-ship North Atlantic Fleet in 1888, was fortunate to have a regularly detailed chief of staff, Captain French E. Chadwick, as well as a flag secretary and flag lieutenant, a grand staff total of three.
Nineteen years later, in 1917, the Commander-in-Chief of the Atlantic Fleet, Henry T. Mayo, flew a new four-star flag. His fleet had 200 ships and his staff numbered 12, including a first-rate deputy chief of staff, Lieutenant Commander Ernest J. King, U. S. Navy.
Twenty-four years later, on 1 October 1941, the staff of E. J. King, Commander-in-Chief of the Atlantic Fleet, numbered only 23.
During World War II, it was a generally accepted creed of the hard-steaming and hot- flying line officer of the Navy that only in command billets of ever increasing responsibility could an officer be tried adequately to determine his qualifications for flag rank. Consequently, it was something of a surprise to these officers to discover their contemporaries in the Army being promoted to general officer after careers spent almost wholly in schools and in staff billets.
The background for the naval officer’s belief in the efficacy of the command ladder was that, at every rung, the officer had to make hard decisions. Some of these decisions involved the difficult task of saying “No,” not only to deserving juniors, but also to demanding seniors. The buck could not be passed up or down. Decision making was a command responsibility. Many of these decisions were reached out in the open, on the bridge, in the cockpit, or on the voice radio, for both juniors and seniors to observe or to hear. The judgment displayed by the officers could not be hidden in a maze of graceful double-talk, either written or vocal.
Quite the contrary circumstances were believed to exist for officers serving on staffs. They rarely were confronted with having to make a decision to which their names were publicly attached. At best, they recommended this or that to a senior on the staff, or to the flag officer, who made the hard decision, took the responsibility, and absorbed any brickbats. Consequently, it was easily believed that long or repeated service in a staff resulted in an erosion of backbone, as well as a lack of training in decision making. Some believed and said that a smart, fast-talking smoothie with the backbone of a jellyfish might well be a successful officer on a staff. Even worse, it was said that the Navy would degenerate into a “yes-man” organization, if a large percentage of its flag officers came up via the staff service ladder.
Despite a general reluctance on the part of flag officers to ask for large staffs, and a somewhat greater reluctance of the Bureau of Naval Personnel to authorize them, naval staffs burgeoned during World War II. The Navy has gradually accustomed itself to these large staffs during the Korean War and the ensuing ten years of Cold War. While perhaps not yet agreeing that the Navy has reached the delicate position indicated by General Hunter Liggett’s statement that “without a Staff, an army could not peel a potato,” there are not many in the Navy now who would disagree with this quote from the “School of the Citizen Sailor.”
No military or naval force, in war, can accomplish anything worthwhile unless there is back of it the work of an efficient, loyal and devoted staff.
With the coming of NATO, SEATO, CENTO, OAS, and the ballooning of the Joint Staff, the Navy finds itself with a large number of its officers serving on staffs, either afloat or ashore.
Hence it seems an appropriate time to look at some of the requisities of an officer for staff duty, and then to add a few hints on the manner of performance of that duty.
John Paul Jones was a flag officer in the Russian Navy, but not in our Navy. So we have no good quote from him in regard to the desired special personal characteristics for officers to serve on his staff.
However, a contemporary of Jones, serving in the Continental Army, George Washington by name, said that a staff officer should be:
. . . firm and strict in discharging the duties of trust reposed in him. Be he too pliant in his disposition, he will most assuredly be imposed upon, and the efficient strength and condition of the Army will not be known to the Commander-in-Chief.
At other times, General Washington listed desirable qualities of staff officers as:
(1) first-rate abilities
(2) established character
(3) great activity
(4) proved integrity
(5) prudence
(6) experience
The value of these personal characteristics are self-evident. The only question is, are they sufficiently detailed descriptively to be the real measuring rod for the earmarking of first- rate staff officers?
The question will be immediately asked: Are not the requisite characteristics for a first- rate flag officer, and a first-rate senior officer for a staff, the same?
The simple answer to the question is “Yes.”
The sensible answer is, however, that there just aren’t enough officers with all the required characteristics of the outstanding flag officer to man all the staff billets which the Navy is called upon to fill. The requirement created by this hard fact is the naming of the distinctive characteristics which may serve to assist the seaman’s eye in solving the problem.
To support the conclusion that first-rate flag officers have within their many definite capabilities all those required for a first-rate staff officer, one has only to recall the staff assignments of the last three Chiefs of Naval Operations; Carney served as Chief of Staff to Admiral Halsey, Burke served as Chief of Staff to Admiral Mitscher, and Anderson served as Chief of Staff to Admiral Radford. If they hadn’t been fully first-rate staff officers, their careers would not have flowed on to the peak of their profession.
On the other hand, being a first-rate staff officer does not automatically guarantee that one will become a flag officer. To support this conclusion, one has only to look over the rosters of today’s staffs to note that many eligible captains were not on the recent flag selection list. In this area, many are called but few are chosen.
The one essential characteristic of the senior naval officer of the line is “marked leadership.” This is so despite the recent accent on “management ability” in the higher echelons of the defense organization. The marked leadership characteristic includes three qualities which, as has been demonstrated, are not absolute requirements of successful “management.”
These three qualities are:
(1) a fighting spirit
(2) physical courage
(3) a complete and sympathetic understanding of, and a wholesome respect for those who serve under and support the leader.
Consider the first quality, fighting spirit. Whether an officer is given to swift and vigorous reaction to the thrusts of the enemy, or whether he has the feel for the dangerous fight, can only be truly assessed when missiles or bombs are falling and the enemy appears to be winning. No source of entry into the Navy, no particular form of peacetime fitness report, no method of promotion, no physical size or attractiveness of physical appearance nor prowess on the athletic field will provide the full answer in determining the amount of fighting spirit a naval officer possesses.
Ten years have passed since there was a long continued, although unspectacular, test of the fighting spirit of thousands of naval officers as they battled the Communist guns shooting down from the high cliffs of Wonsan Harbor, or flew their aircraft into heavy antiaircraft fire around the dams, reservoirs, and bridges of North Korea.
The only arena for the true test of fighting spirit—a hot war—is not available. So the nuances of this essential quality must be judged by reactions or lack of reaction to the moves of the Communist enemy in the Cold War, to performance in make-believe war games, and to carrying the flag in the daily, unending battles of paper and words, largely in the Pentagon.
Because of the frequency of the opportunity for testing and assessment, this latter aspect of fighting spirit, as displayed by the willingness with which one risks one’s official neck over a piece of paper, an idea, a sound principle, or one’s Service, is the more likely to be known to selection boards and detail officers. This is particularly so when the officer’s fitness report records cover a minimum of ten years and as much as 17 years of non-combat service.
Consider the second quality of the leader— physical courage. “Fear makes men forget, and skill which cannot fight is useless.” Fighting spirit is measured by the vigor, resolution, and eagerness with which one battles the enemy, and one’s opponents, under both favorable and unfavorable conditions. It is also a measure of an officer’s ability to live from day to day and to grow stronger from day to day, while under frequent and heavy attacks of the enemy, or of one’s opponents.
Physical courage is all this plus the quality to keep thinking and acting offensively when there is a great element of personal hazard.
Tactical and strategical skill, if united with physical courage in one man, will permit him in moments of great danger to remember, and to play out his talent to the utmost.
The third quality of the naval leader is much more than “loyalty down.” It never demands loyalty. It earns loyalty, and gets it.
It is not that aspect of “management ability” or “The Management Process,” which considers that a happy worker, or an “adjusted worker,” produces more, and hence all workers should be kept adjusted and happy. It has no particular relationship with a pleasant disposition, an introvert or extrovert personality, or even a flair for the spectacular. This quality encompasses an interest in and a real knowledge of humanity, and the humans who support the leader in his endeavors; and it produces loyal shipmates to admirals of seamen, airmen, and firemen.
All the desirable qualities and characteristics of the leaders are desirable and helpful for an officer on a staff, but the three qualities just discussed are not a sine qua non for the first-rate staff officer, and certainly not for those officers below the chief of staff.
If every young American, once he put on the uniform of a commissioned naval officer, automatically became a leader, all the staffs would be particularly well served by a 100 per cent complement of naval leaders. But this is not so.
Since there are not an unlimited number of senior line officers who possess all the qualifications to grow into future Chiefs of Naval Operations, let us attempt to list the basically essential characteristics for an officer serving on a staff, if its commander is to be well served. These are:
(1) High intelligence. This means a marked mental capacity. It does not mean clever, nor, necessarily, intellectual. It stresses the quality of meeting and solving problems with a high degree of common sense. Common sense, despite the dictionary definition, includes both accurate appraisal and sound knowledge.
(2) Ability to think and speak quickly and accurately. This means that the high degree of intelligence is quickly available for use by others in the staff and its commander.
(3) Ability to work hard. No matter in what area he may operate, or how much may be expected, the indefatigable worker produces much more worthwhile work than is demanded of him.
(4) Strong moral courage. While the officer serving on the staff may not need to display great physical courage, he must have and display moral courage to a high degree to be first-rate. These two aspects of courage (physical and moral) are not like hen’s teeth, never found at all, much less together. But in this era when making friends and influencing people rounds off the strong edges of character, moral courage takes a bit of looking for.
These four are the essentials. Any of the following characteristics additionally available will increase the value of the officer’s service to his commander:
(1) A calm mind.
(2) Plenty of imagination; speed in conception, and aptness in perception.
(3) Plenty of determination, boldness, and a willingness to take the calculated risk. Good management, in these days of the electronic computer, receives advice from the mechanical computer and avoids taking risks based on judgment alone, by making the decisions which the mechanical brain suggests. Good leadership in time of war consists in taking risks (as the Japanese did at Pearl Harbor) which surprise, confuse, and dumbfound an enemy. It is only when an officer has learned to take bold risks as he moves up the ladder in peacetime, that he will take the much greater, but more necessary bold risks in war.
(4) Natural discretion. The staff officer must be not only officially discreet with highly classified matters, but also discreet in regard to the internal workings of the staff.
(5) An ability to gain good will with others, through being not only tactful and sincere, but also well mannered.
The frosting on the cake, as far as the flag officer is concerned, comes if the officer has the following skills and capacities in addition to the desired personal characteristics:
(1) Planning ability, including writing in grammatically correct and understandable language.
(2) Administrative ability, including a first- rate knowledge of how to get things done in the Pentagon, or on joint or combined staffs.
(3) Wide range of technical knowledge and/or general knowledge, together with the memory to rake it up at the needed moment.
The listing of “strong moral courage” as one of the four basic characteristics required for a first-rate staff officer may raise a few eyebrows, since there exists a frequently expressed opinion that neither the civilian officials in the Pentagon nor flag officers desire to be strongly crossed. Strong moral courage leads to strongly expressed opinions, even though expressed in a well-mannered way and in accurate and simple language.
Any discussion of the willingness of the present civilian officials in the Pentagon to be strongly crossed would neither be tactful nor well-mannered, but it can be stated for the record that two of the Navy’s great modern Secretaries, Mr. Forrestal and Mr. Gates, welcomed frank opinions, even when they ran strongly counter to their own, so that the possibility that this happy quality may be present in one’s civilian officials is a very real one.
The next question to be examined is “Do flag officers value frank and honest opinions, when they may run counter to their own?”
The answer is that “Most of the best ones do.” The following incidents illustrate the point.
The rear admiral had been in command of his destroyer flotilla just four days. He had just come from a chief of staff billet. His freshly assembled staff numbered seven. Three had had previous service on staffs. Four had not. One of these four was the Flag Secretary, a lieutenant commander of three years’ seniority. Only the Chief of Staff had served directly with the Admiral previously.
The Flag Secretary had just settled down, on a bright June morning in San Diego to wade through the usual mountain of destroyer paper work on his desk, when the Admiral’s buzzer for him rang.
The Admiral greeted him cheerily and said, “I want you to run off some copies of this draft order which I have just written out. At breakfast, I asked the Chief of Staff to call a staff conference here in my cabin at 1030 this morning, and I want all the staff to give me their comment on this draft order at that time.”
The Flag Secretary gave a cheery “Aye Ay,” and added that the notice on the staff conference was already out.
It was to be the first staff conference and the Flag Secretary was anxious to see his Admiral in action, and to learn of his plans and policies. As the Flag Secretary handed the draft order over to the Admiral’s writer and told him to append a note, “Admiral wants comments on this at 1030 conferences,” he was surprised to discover that the subject of the draft was “Leave and Liberty.”
The conference of the small staff commenced promptly at 1030. The Admiral first discussed a number of policy matters on which he wanted all the staff advised, and then had a number of matters he wanted looked into for possible future action. Then he asked if any of the staff had matters to bring up. Next, the Admiral took up the question of the draft order. “Would each member please give his comment?”
Turning to his friend of many years, the Chief of Staff, he asked, “Chips, what’s your comment?” Chips hedged just a bit and thought it “Might need a bit of smoothing out, but if that was what the Admiral wanted, that’s what would and could be done.” The next senior officer and then on down the seniority line to the Flag Secretary, who was next to junior, were all asked. None were enthusiastic, but none objected, or uttered a word of caution.
The Admiral looked the Flag Secretary in the eye and queried, “Your comment?”
The Flag Secretary looked the Admiral in the eye and said, “It smells to high heaven.” The Admiral looked startled and stern and questioned, “You mean my order stinks?” and the Flag Secretary said, “It stinks.”
The Admiral asked why, and the answer in general was that it represented a drastic curtailment in the general area of leave and liberty. More, no officer in the staff (nor the Admiral) had recently served in the destroyer flotilla command and had thereby gained knowledge that such a curtailment was necessary in order to accomplish the mission of the command, as it existed in the books, or as the Admiral had outlined it that day in his policies.
The Admiral said nothing and the Flag Secretary caught an “Are-you-crazy?” look from some of his fellow staffers. The Flag Lieutenant strung along with the majority opinion of “No cheers, but no bellyaches,” and then the conference was ended.
The Flag Secretary had hardly reached his office when the Admiral’s buzzer for him rang. He expected the worst.
The Admiral proceeded directly to the point. “This is a new staff, and with the exception of the Chief of Staff, I hadn’t served with any of you before. I wanted to find out from whom I could get a fully honest and frank opinion. I wrote out that draft order with care so that it did stink. I got my answers from the staff. If you will look in my wastepaper basket, you will see the remains of the order.
“I won’t always agree with you in the future, but continue to give me your honest and frank opinions. I will appreciate them. You will profit by giving them to me.”
That Destroyer Flotilla Commander was Rear Admiral James O. Richardson, U. S. Navy, who, when he was Commander-in- Chief of the U. S. Fleet in 1940-41, on behalf of the Fleet in Pearl Harbor, gave some frank advice to his boss, the President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy.
Here is another illustrative incident. World War II was three weeks old. The heavy cruiser flying the three-star flag of the Force Commander was being brought alongside the dock at Pearl Harbor by the Executive Officer. As the lines were being shifted along the docks, the Flag Secretary to CinCPac, yelled up to the Executive Officer via a megaphone, “You leave on the PanAm plane at 1330 today.” The Exec megaphoned back, “Why didn’t CinCPac cancel my orders?” (as he was authorized to do). The Flag Secretary said, “He did, but they were uncanceled by the Department.”
The orders detaching the Executive Officer directed him to report to “The Chief of Naval Personnel for Special Duty.” No information as to what this “special duty” might be was available in Pearl.
Early in January 1942, the Commander walked into the office of Assistant Chief of Bureau of Naval Personnel in Arlington and reported. He was informed that he was to be on the staff of the new CinCUS, Admiral E.J. King, U. S. Navy.
The Commander had never served with the Admiral. He had observed the Admiral’s sharp incisive mind function from the platform at the Fleet critiques held after each war game. The Admiral had a reputation as a hard taskmaster.
As the Commander climbed the stairs to the second deck of the old Navy Department, his spirits were low. The “special duty” was “shore duty in Washington.” What could be worse? He reported to Rear Admiral Russell Willson, the Chief of Staff, and soon was told by the Flag Lieutenant that Admiral King would see him.
As the Commander walked the long distance from the door to the Admiral’s desk, the Admiral sat and looked at him, neither approvingly nor disapprovingly. The Commander came to a military halt in front of the desk and formally reported for duty.
The Admiral did not rise and grasp his hand and say, “Welcome aboard!” He just sat there, and after a ten-second pause, said, “You look unhappy.”
The Commander said, “I am unhappy. I was the executive officer of a fine fighting cruiser in the war areas, and now I find myself on shore duty in Washington—why shouldn’t I be unhappy?”
The admiral sat for 30 seconds and said nothing. Then he got to his feet and said, “If I tell you why you are here, you may be just a bit less unhappy. I was told by an officer, for whose judgment I have great respect, that if I wanted an officer on my staff who would spit in my eye, when (with accent) it was necessary to spit, I should send for you.” He then smiled warmly and said, “Welcome aboard—there’s much to be done.”
Admiral Richardson and Admiral King merely laid emphasis on the fact that moral courage was an essential ingredient of officers they desired for duty on their staffs, and that they, as naval leaders, were broad enough in character and calm enough in disposition to wish to receive honest opinions even when they might be strongly contrary to their own.
A staff officer who is so busy bowing and scraping and “Yes, Sir-ing” his admiral that the problem which the admiral desires to explore with him or the solution which the admiral desires to direct, is not covered fully, is not really serving the admiral at all well.
At best the staff officer will be cluttering up the administrative channels of the staff with directives which have to be rewritten, and, at worst, he will be sending out operation or combat “action dispatches” which do not reflect fully or correctly the admiral’s desires.
It is an unfortunate fact that the Bureau of Naval Personnel can issue no extra brains, moral courage, nor good manners, when it promulgates the orders to an officer to duty on a staff. It has not wrapped the mantle of the flag officer in the 8½ X 11 sheet of paper which carries the details of the duty assignment. The Bureau has issued a challenge to the officer to be at his best, for the good of his flag officer, his Navy, and his country, and in that way to serve his own career the better.
Thus, officers serving on staffs must:
(1) Be imbued with the idea of co-operation and teamwork.
Every military organization should be imbued with the idea of co-operation and teamwork. Nowhere does observance of this principle pay more “extra dividends” than between staffs and within staffs.
Co-operation of the mutally uninformed is difficult, and teamwork is at low ebb. To overcome this problem there is both an offensive and a defensive huddle in football.
When the “big staff” of headquarters commence to believe or to act as though they have a corner on the brains of the Navy, teamwork is being depreciated. The resources of the “little staffs” are bypassed.
When the operations section of a staff starts looking down its collective nose at the logistic or intelligence sections, and the long- range planners take off from Space Platform 27 in fiscal 1965, when the short-range planners cannot even reach Space Platform 7 in fiscal 1964, teamwork within the staff, or headquarters, is off on a holiday.
Staff teamwork requires a minute-by- minute, hour-by-hour, day-by-day effort to ensure co-operation and to keep others adequately informed. It is not a battle where the interests of the commander are furthered by infighting between individuals or staff sections. When such battles are indulged in, they represent a gross personal failure of the individual staff officer to his commander.
(2) Take the time and make the effort to be well informed. Use your feet, as well as your eyes, ears, and brains in becoming well informed. Visits to individual ships, stations, or other echelons of the staff or command with specific purposes in mind yield much information not always to be gleaned from written reports or cocktail party intelligence. Visits should be brief and to the point. Never become a routine interrupter at higher echelons or a source of harassment at subordinate commands. Your commander can best be served with all the facts. Get them.
Always assume that if you already are well informed, you can be still better informed. Don’t close your mind when you close your office desk.
(3) Be objective in advice. Avoid dogmatic advice. Many opinions are not facts. Prejudices for this or that manner of accomplishing the desired purposes are soon apparent and may be quite unreasonable. The missions of the command may be accomplished in no less than a dozen ways. The manner in which they are accomplished may be no more than a matter of taste. In presenting advice, a certain amount of detachment frequently raises the true value of the advice as well as the readiness with which the advice is accepted. One can be sturdily of an opinion without downgrading the quality of other opinions, or perversely hamstringing the efforts of others of a contrary opinion. Be firm. Define the opinion clearly.
Staff officers must clearly and concisely present the problem and then, in their advice, present steps towards a solution. A brilliant idea or just a valuable idea should not be lost in its careless presentation by unintelligible jargon or careless writing.
Once the decision is taken by the admiral, it becomes your decision. Support it 100 per cent. Fight no rear guard or delaying actions. If the decision turns sour, you will profit much if you never make a remark to that effect. This will be hard to do, but your advice will be listened to more attentively next time, without any such jarring reminder to either senior or junior.
(4) Be concerned with details. Napoleon, at Saint Helena, remarked that if he had the opportunity to start fresh again, “I would not bother myself with details.” But since some must bother themselves with details, officers serving on staffs must do so. If they do not, and the admiral, as should be, does not, things will go more than awry.
Attention to details minimizes the possibility of error. Attention to the tone of a letter, and to the details of language by which the flag officer personally expresses himself, saves many a rewritten letter. If the flag officer likes a certain language—and it expresses clearly the idea prescribed—then learning to use that language is a detail which will facilitate the work of the staff, and improve the standing of the user with the flag officer.
(5) Do not regard questions from lower {or higher) echelons as stupid. Most of the members of a staff, whether afloat, or in a headquarters ashore, are junior to the officers heading up the various commands which are united for the accomplishment of one or more missions. The success of their admiral depends upon all the commands contributing effectively towards that mission.
Members of a staff can do no greater disservice to their admiral than by treating as stupid a question from one of the subordinate officers in the command. If the question is stupid, and it is so pointed out, it will lessen the willingness of the stupid one to give his best contribution to the admiral, even if this contribution is only five cents’ worth. If by chance the question is not stupid, an opportunity has been missed to provide helpful information to a unit or officer within the admiral’s command.
Learning to say “no” to the admiral generally means far more than just putting together the sounds of those two simple letters. If time is available, it means giving some real thought to a problem, consulting with others, both senior and junior, and the reviewing of reference material.
If the admiral has indicated the possibility of a course of action which you, at first glance, consider quite undesirable, you must analyze the problem, and come up with positive and workable alternatives. This must be done promptly before the admiral and/or the staff become publicly and/or definitely committed. Occasionally, you may have to tread lightly on the toes of officers from other sections of the staff.
Your analysis of the problem may convince you that the admiral’s proposed course of action is quite an acceptable alternative to produce the same results as you desired. If so, that is well. But if, on the other hand, your initial judgment appears to be confirmed, you may be doing your admiral a real favor by flashing a caution light.
Most naval officers are reasonable people. If you marshal your reasons properly, and expound them clearly, other sections of the staff will generally respond. They may even wish to take over your idea and the paper which wraps it up, nitpick it a bit, and proclaim it as their own. Let them do just this.
It is far better to have one paper come up to the admiral for his decision—with united staff support—even though individual staff members may have a 10 to 20 per cent mental reservation to some particular aspect of the matter, than to have a jamboree of suggested alternatives to what the admiral’s own desires may be.
If it is an operational matter where a quick decision is the essence of a successful solution, don’t speak until you have properly formulated your reasons for believing a given course undesirable and clearly outlined in your own mind the preferred alternative with supporting reasons. If you can’t do this, it is much better to keep quiet.
But you should force yourself to make, in advance, the decision which the admiral or chief of staff will make for the command. Develop your decision-making power in this way. Don’t merely second-guess the admiral after the event. Try to pre-decide the decision which creates the event.
If you do this regularly, you will continue to develop your decision-making power. The staff ladder and the command ladder will tend to equate in the development of this aspect of “marked leadership” qualities.
In the July 1961 issue of the Naval Institute Proceedings, a commander, in discussing “completed staff work,” said, “unfortunately executives in the military service sometimes achieve positions of authority because of their good conduct, outstanding combat performance or simply their exemplary time in service” -(italics supplied).
If, in fact, there are such “executives” in the 1963 Navy, learning to say “no” to them should be quite easy. Saying “no” to the rugged admirals with steel-trap minds this scribe has known is quite another matter.
If they do this, staff duty will be a real opportunity for an officer to serve and to develop. Definite qualities are needed, but definite advantages accrue. First-rate detailing to staffs by the Bureau of Personnel will produce a greater awareness and a better use of sea power. This will be a real advantage to the Navy and to the other military services of the Free World.
If the Bureau does its job well, will the Navy be in danger of promoting to flag officer a significant number of “yes men”? Will those who perform fast tongue work on staffs and have a wider reputation with the senior officers who are detailed to selection boards than have non-staff officers; will these “yes men” obtain a disproportionate share of the nods from not less than six members of the yearly selection board?
The danger from the “yes men” can only become real if one old myth in regard to flag officers changes from myth to fact. That old myth is that flag officers are not sufficiently mentally alert to detect a “yes man” or sufficiently broad in character and calm in disposition to value a sturdy and resolute “no” from their “efficient, loyal, and devoted staff members.”
1963 is a good year to bury the myth.