Ten years ago I resigned my commission in the U.S. Navy, after serving an obligatory five years. As a young, fiery lieutenant, I wrote down my reasons for leaving in a short essay. Twice in later years, full of new ideas as a civilian manager, I added thoughts based on my experiences in the corporate world.
The resulting essays, together with some current thoughts, reflect my own evolving perspective on junior officer recruitment, promotion, and retention. Their basic premise is that to retain the best junior officers—the cream of the crop—some processes that affect junior officer retention need to be realigned. Using corporate practices as a benchmark for Navy practices, I bring forward some recommendations, radical though they may be, in the hope that subsequent debate might produce solutions that the Navy is able to implement—because problems do exist, and they should be addressed.
Thus, for those officers familiar only with Navy ways, I challenge you to consider civilian corporate practices and ask why they are different. To readers of middle and senior rank—members and products of the current system who might be quick to defend the status quo—I ask you to keep an open mind. Take the recommendations with a grain of salt if you must, but pay close attention to the voice of that young lieutenant. Listen to his frustration and remember back to this time in your career, a time of rapid personal growth and rampant optimism, when five years seemed forever.
February 1987: Mr. Roberts versus Ensign Pulver
Why am I leaving the Navy? This is a difficult question; for every good reason I have for leaving there is another for staying. My own motivation goes back to the time when I was a starry-eyed ensign on board my first ship. As the inexperienced newcomer, I sought out the best officers to learn from and to emulate. Before long I noticed one disturbing fact: Almost all the highly ranked and well-regarded officers were leaving the Navy, while many of those who were no more than average (or below average) were staying in.
After some in-depth conversations with those planning to leave, the underlying reason for their decisions became clear. They simply were tired of the Navy obliquely rewarding substandard performers by treating everyone equally. They expressed this frustration in a number of indirect ways—complaining about lack of pay, lack of promotion, lack of recognition—but what they actually were saying was, "That guy over there sleeps for a living while I work my tail off. Yet he gets paid as much as I do and gets advanced when I do." In real life, unlike in the popular movie, Mr. Roberts was tired of making up for Ensign Pulver.
Too often in the Navy the nonperformers' duties eventually are passed to the performers, because they "get the job done." Fast burners see nothing tangible for their extra effort until they reach the commander or captain level, when 15 or 20 years of hard work might mean deep selection or an early command.
The Navy is an outstanding organization, with many competent, hardworking people, but it is letting down its most valuable members by tolerating the Ensign Pulvers. Ironically, job security and advancement predictability were touted to me most often as prime reasons to stay in the Navy. But job security also can be a crutch for officers incapable of carrying out their duties adequately and surviving on their own merits.
The current means to fire substandard officers is an inefficient procedure that sometimes can take years to accomplish. In the operational environment on board ship, enough time to effect such a firing usually does not exist. And because commanding officers and executive officers rotate every 12 to 18 months, it is difficult for them to follow the procedure through to the end.
Why not streamline the process? Yes, it takes junior officers time to "blossom," but ten years is extreme. If an individual does not show promise within a year or two, he should be encouraged to find more suitable employment.
Of course, the Navy cannot afford to fire a significant number of officers without affecting readiness, but once the possibility of termination sinks in, the Navy may not have to. For example, at the Navy school where I currently am a program coordinator, our goals are to educate to the highest level possible and graduate as many students as possible. However, because our course is pass or fad, the all-important motivator of grades is missing. To accomplish our two almost mutually exclusive goals, we have instituted procedures that allow us to identify and remove a few substandard students early in each class. in a very short time, the performance of the survivors increases dramatically, that is, once the consequences of poor performance are demonstrated, the students quickly alter their behavior.
It is surprising how many students have to be taken to the point of expulsion (i.e., facing the commanding officer at an academic board) before they decide it is time to work. Because of this, the system has to act as a buffer, so that a student can begin to be processed without being expelled immediately. Metaphorically speaking, we create a cliff, take many to the edge and make them look over, but try not to push all of them off.
Nonperformers on board ship never see—much less reach—the edge of the cliff. I propose that the Navy institute a policy stating that officers not meeting the service’s basic standards will be terminated within two years. Then it should institute a program and start firing people. I suspect that it will take very little time before most of the nonperformers who can shape up will do so. And the Navy will be better off without those who cannot. The system should include a buffer; most substandard performers need only to see the cliff to find motivation. Even Ensign Pulver eventually blossomed.
June 1990: Free-Market Detailing
Clearly, the firing of nonperformers is not a motivator for the top-performing junior officers; indeed, it is not a reward for anyone. Something positive also must be added.
For two years now I have been in a position to observe the operation of a government organization and several private-sector firms. Both base their positional promotions (advancement in position, not to be confused with advancement in rank) on individual initiative and competition—something the Navy does not do. I now suggest that the Navy use competition for billets to invigorate its officer corps. It would give the motivated junior officers tangible goals and rewards within the Navy, and it might stop them from looking elsewhere for challenges. In other words, rather than have detailers plan all officer transfers, the Navy should mirror private and civil-service organizations and let individuals seek out and apply for billets.
A free-market billet assignment system may be a difficult change for a highly structured military organization, but it could prove more efficient than the present detailing system. Individuals would (and should) be responsible for their own destinies. Officers would have to plan and work toward their next billet. Failure to obtain a specific assignment no longer could be blamed on a faceless detailer. Selection for a coveted assignment would be a significant reward and a visible form of recognition.
Here is one way such a program might be put into practice: Each command would submit a list of expected available officer billets to the Naval Military Personnel Command (NMPC), which would have job descriptions and qualifications for each availability. NMPC would compile, publish, and distribute a combined listing to individual commands each month.
Officers would maintain personal resumes according to Navy guidelines. At six to nine months prior to rotation, the officer would review the monthly NMPC listing for desired billets and submit resumes to the appropriate commands and/or schools. Individual commanding officers then would review the resumes received and choose the best officer to fill each position, notifying NMPC of their selections.
Deleted from this process, of course, are the detailers and the preference card system. NMPC still would publish recommended career paths, but it would be left to the individual officers to pursue and follow them. It would be the officer’s choice (and based on performance) to pursue the fast track, an average career path, or even no career path. Billets would be filled by supply and demand. Officers could apply their own criteria for choosing their next jobs (e.g., career, location, or sea/shore).
This is a radical departure from current practices, but it would have many positive benefits:
- The best junior officers would get first shot at key career-enhancing billets. Competition for these billets would be keen and would encourage extra effort from those officers aiming for the early promotion fast track.
- Shore duty would become a true reward and an incentive for hard work. These billets probably would go to those officers who performed best at sea.
- Duty station location and relocation would become a matter of choice, based on demonstrated performance. Either moving around or staying put could become a significant motivator, depending on the individual.
- Officers would have a chance to see everything that is available. Everyone would be able to find a billet to shoot for—something to spur their performance and efforts.
Note that I have not said it is necessary to speed up the advancement process. In fact, in today’s increasingly complex surface Navy, advancement already is fast enough. Tangible recognition for good performance need not come in the form of money or overly rapid promotion (and Navy Achievement Medals and exceptional fitness reports, while nice, are not truly tangible).
Individual competition for future billets would provide a tangible reward and recognition system. Every officer, regardless of ability, would have an incentive to work harder. The next assignment opportunity would depend directly on how well the officer prepared. Free-market detailing would engender the greatest rewards for the Navy’s best performers, average results for the average, and the smallest payoff for the poorest performers.
September 1992: Trickle-Up Promotions
The Navy is unusual among large organizations in that it must continuously recruit new officers as a result of its up-or-out promotion mentality. Yet, like all large organizations, it has a pyramid structure, with fewer positions the higher one goes in the organization. The result is that the Navy brings in an excess of junior officers and then slowly sheds them over time. Why? Some would argue that the Navy needs younger personnel to function effectively under wartime conditions. This is true in those billets that demand extreme physical fitness, but most of the Navy does not fall in this category. Indeed, such an argument does not hold up for a shipboard unit in which the senior officer and senior enlisted corps are required to function under the same conditions (perhaps harsher because of their increased responsibilities) as the rest of the unit.
The standard promotion model for civilian organizations dictates that one advances when a more senior position opens up and one is selected for it. This means that an organization (unless it is expanding) simply hires enough new people to replace those who retire or leave. Everyone else trickles up the organizational structure, using a selection process based on performance. That is, in the civilian world, one’s “rank” is tied to one’s position, and promotion is based on advancement to a higher position.
In the Navy, however, promotion proceeds somewhat independently of one’s position. It is not unusual to see officers promoted halfway through a particular tour and then complete the tour at the higher rank; once promoted, officers are eligible for positions of increased responsibility on their next tours. Such a system is unthinkable in the corporate world.
Of course, most billets are designated for officers in a particular grade. But why are the billet-selection and promotion systems uncoupled in the first place? Why promote someone first and then decide what job they will get? This system leads directly to the concept of time in grade and drives the organization to think in up-or-out terms. Punching tickets to prepare for promotion becomes the goal rather than preparing for the next position.
If the Navy were to adopt free- market detailing, these two ideas could work in tandem. All positions would be designated for a certain grade with specified prerequisites.
An officer meeting the prerequisites and selected for a position then would assume the grade prescribed for that position. As an alternative, all officers could be screened for promotion by the board, but they would not advance to that grade until they applied for and were selected for a position that warranted wearing the insignia of that grade. Consider the negative aspects of the system currently in place:
- It is inefficient, requiring additional training and incurring other organizational losses inherent in compensating for the continual influx of new junior officers.
- After spending years and thousands of dollars training each officer, the system sheds many of them, losing valuable experience and assets.
- The up-or-out mentality enhances the Peter principle. How many good division officers end up making lousy department heads? How many great executive officers make lousy commanding officers? Why should the service force good performers into positions they may not want or may not be good at?
Why not dump the up-or-out paradigm and allow officers to serve until retirement in a career path that results from their abilities? What is wrong with career division officers, if they are good?
Whether in conjunction with the free-market system or under the current detailing system, the trickle-up paradigm produces many benefits: better quality new junior officers (and so fewer nonperformers to be dealt with preservation of personnel talent at the highest effective level, increased levels of experience in the officer corps, and significant recognition in promotion to a higher position. Automatically rotating officers based on time at a duty station would become unnecessary. The best would be rotated frequently as they applied for positions of increased responsibility; these individuals would gain the diverse experiences needed for command and flag rank. Others, unprepared for advancement, would stay in place, saving the Navy a lot of money.
Today: Corporate Paradigms and the Navy
With more than a decade spent in private industry, I am surprised at how accurate my initial perceptions were for me. My civilian jobs have given me neither the security nor the predictable promotions the Navy offered, yet I am significantly more satisfied with my career path. Why? Because I feel that I am recognized when I have done well and that I will be considered competitively for future assignments and promotions based on that performance. I no longer am an anonymous member of a year group, subject to detailer whims, working extra hard for no immediate return.
Having now experienced both worlds, I still maintain that the Navy's best junior officers are leaving primarily in objection to a system designed to treat everyone equally. For a competitive individual, this is intolerable. More than 40 Years ago, James Michener expressed this shortcoming in Tales of the South Pacific:
... in the Navy he was merely another ensign. And no matter how good he was, he would stay an ensign for about a year. Then he, and every other ensign, would be promoted. The ill-kempt, stupid, lazy officers would be promoted, just like him. It was too bad.
In today’s downsized environment, the Navy is in the enviable position of being able to retain the cream of the crop; current practices should be realigned to support this goal. Since leaving the Navy, however, I have come to understand how difficult it is to change ingrained organizational culture and behavior. These proposals probably are far too radical for the Navy; they are tantamount to imposing a corporate model on a military organization. And while I believe there are many benefits to doing just that, I also believe that such a change is far too sweeping to be embraced by the Navy.
Yet many of these concepts already are used at the senior officer level, thus, the real issue is how to change the system as it affects the junior officer ranks—say lieutenant commander and below. If these recommendations are too extreme, perhaps they will spark more palatable solutions. It is time to inject a little free enterprise into the service. Make it a challenge to stay in the Navy—not a challenge to get out.
Mr. Fricker, a 1982 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, is a member of the technical staff at TRW, Inc., and a doctoral candidate at Yale University.