There's a war on—for the hearts, minds, and labor of today's sailors. Senior leaders have engaged the retention issue—now the fight shifts to the leaders at the tactical and operational levels to win the war for the right people, one sailor at a time.
The Navy's struggle to keep its sailors from leaving remains front-page news and a hot topic in every wardroom and chiefs' mess. Service-wide, we are working to stem the tide of first-term attrition and looking for ways to boost retention. Recently, the Chief of Naval Operations ordered an important stand down to better focus our energies in the retention effort. To make sure the momentum generated by the stand down would become self-sustaining, a call was made for continuous fleet-wide dialogue and the exchange of ideas.
Conditions on the waterfront are not ideal, nor are they dire. The fact that "war" has been declared and it has the full support of our leadership indicates that senior leaders are aware, engaged, and concerned about retention. After this point, however, a fair share of the fighting shifts to us at the tactical and operational levels.
To support that fight, what follows is a wide range of recommendations—both broad and specific. Each is based on the time- and battle-tested principles of leadership that have guided our Naval Academy and Senior Enlisted Academy since their foundings. Though tailored to the needs of an active-duty surface combatant, these recommendations are wide enough in scope to spark broader discussion (and more ideas) in all communities—active and reserve.
The goal is straightforward: mission accomplishment. To remain the most powerful navy in history and ensure the freedom of our nation, we must win the war for the right people, one sailor at a time.
Recommendation #1: Define reality and be positive.
Retention Imperative: In Leadership Is an Art, Max Depree, a well-known author and leadership consultant, writes, "The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality, with the last to say thank you. In between the two, the leader must become a servant and a debtor."'
From 124 check-in interviews with members of the crew of the Monterey (CG-61) in the past 14 months, reality follows:
- The average age of the crew is 23.5 years. That includes an ancient commanding officer of 48, four crusty chief warrant officers, and a typical "goat locker" with an average age of 37. A typical ship connects three generations in close quarters and under some stressful situations.
- The Monterey is 360 crew members strong, crewed with sailors from the four corners of the country and U.S. territories, and representing all social demographic groups and family dynamics. Almost 50% of the crew is married.
- The crew is nearly all male, the only exceptions being three outstanding female division officers. They come from urban and rural backgrounds. Some come from wealth, but most represent hard-working blue-collar American families.
- Some crew members are immigrants from Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. Others are first- or second-generation Americans. Many owe their citizenship to the sacrifices of their parents or other family members who came before them to pave the way for their success.
- Most of the crew is computer savvy. A number of challenges were revealed as well:
- By and large, our youngest sailors are products of a cynical and pessimistic society.
- Most young sailors cannot remember the last book they read that was not science fiction. They have difficulty describing any book or movie that has had a lasting, positive impact on their lives.
- They have difficulty describing an adult (teacher, coach, or employer) who has made a lasting impression on them or offered them life-changing guidance. Their work experience most likely is service (instead of skill) oriented.
- Though I sound like my father, they largely are unaware of "the value of a dollar."
- They have been exposed to drugs and gratuitous violence earlier and in greater volume than any generation before them.
- Most come from homes in which one or both parents were absent.
- Each brings a set of skills, some more closely honed than others. All are "smart" in how the narrow world they grew up in works, but have little appreciation of the many complex challenges of growing to adulthood.
- Some have proved their mettle through an extensive training pipeline. Still others arrive with a monetary bonus or an apprenticeship guarantee, and little else.
All that said, there still is reason to be positive. Despite all of the above, these sailors joined the Navy. They are here and at sea, when they could be doing other things. To ensure those young men and women stay with the Navy throughout their first enlistments and consider staying for a career, leadership must remain uncommonly positive. Secretary of State Colin Powell, in his lessons on leadership, charged that "optimism is a force multiplier and the bedrock that supports any leadership plan." Begin with perpetual optimism and never give up. Be ever mindful that failure in our retention and attrition objectives will, over time, have significant readiness implications.
Recommendation #2: Serve your sailors. Balance their day; plan it with purpose, skill, and knowledge. Focus on respect and results.
Retention Imperative: Covenant leadership requires that our sailors have the opportunity to grow smarter, richer, and fitter each day. They also need to have latitude to make mistakes. A structured, well-thought-out plan that forces sailors to exceed their current levels of skill, confidence, and wellness keeps our covenant to lead them to personal success and victory in every mission.
- Knowledge of our sailors begins with good division officer notebooks. These invaluable documents should include at a minimum financial plans, personal qualifications standards, qualification goals, family histories, schedules to attain associates degrees or apprenticeship certifications in their first enlistments, advancement plans, and welfare and recreation interests.
- A consolidated ship's maintenance plan and ship's force work list are vital to retention. Sailors hate broken equipment, and they know there is only so much that can be fixed in the days prior to getting under way. Avoid crisis management. Report casualties as necessary and keep the chain of command aware of your maintenance requirements. In my 23 years, I never have seen a ship required to sail when it needed to be fixed.
- Do not waste sailors' time. According to the National Military Families Association, "over 65% of military spouses work outside the home and many more say they would like to work if they could find appropriate opportunities.112 A planned day for sailors allows more time with wives or husbands or children.
- Establish a long-range training plan that sets realistic goals for watch station personal qualification standards and rating advancement. To support this plan, each work center must contain a training "center of excellence" where sailors have access to current study material.
- Increase opportunities to conduct fire fighting, Buttercup, and weapons firings. We need to increase output in those very worthwhile facilities. If we could get selected reserve units to operate those facilities on Saturday mornings or later in the day, we would have more confident, qualified duty sections and repair lockers. That would lead to more responsibility at an earlier stage for junior sailors.
- Weapons ranges must be used to exercise varied rules of engagement for sailors tasked with antiterrorism/ force-protection responsibilities. Equipping sailors to make sound decisions in live-fire, no-nonsense scenarios is essential. Establish surface ship dive teams trained to provide underwater force protection; sailors want to defend their ships in any and every way possible.
- Use a rigorous "planning board for readiness" process. The Monterey is $1-billion worth of infrastructure manned by 360 national assets. The idea that a planning board for readiness can be concluded without a detailed agenda and produce only a plan of the week or some other schedule makes little sense. Planning and scheduling are not the same.
- The planning board for readiness must include a "professional development matrix" that allows our chain of command to track financial, discipline, medical, physical-readiness test, alcohol, or exceptional family member issues over time. Remember, an operational specialist in a 60month sea tour might work for as many as three division officers, four department heads, four executive officers, and three commanding officers. If there is no leadership continuity throughout that tour, a sailor with a problem might never see it resolved. He may not even finish that first sea tour.
- Navy College Afloat Program courses (online and professor-led) during the work day in port and at sea are essential to our future. Examine your courses to ensure associate degrees are possible in financial management and personal finance. Move away from 100- and 200-level courses where feasible. Given today's technology and the Navy's commitment to off-duty education online,' there is no reason sailors should not be able to complete associate degree programs in two years of dedicated study.
- Conduct functional skills courses that allow self-study and ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery) retesting. Most sailors striking for ratings find themselves short (some dramatically) of required ASVAB scores. They took theirs in high school and did not realize at that time the potency of this test to determine their Navy futures.
- A vibrant, mandatory intramural sports program to complement the physical-readiness testing program is essential. The Naval Academy has made this part of life at Annapolis for good reason. Ships are in even greater need of continuous team building. Officer, chief petty officer, and sailor contact time is too limited. Interaction on a command run or the sports field also is a leadership opportunity.
- Assign as your morale/welfare/recreation officer the best in the wardroom. This is arguably the most important collateral duty on board.
- Develop the healthiest possible menus and conduct continuous health risk assessments. Young sailors all believe themselves to be ten feet tall and bulletproof. They will act accordingly unless well educated on their mortality and the costs of an unhealthy lifestyle. They are only young, not stupid. Provide blood pressure, cholesterol control, smoking cessation, and obesity programs and they will participate.
- Establish a "geographic bachelor" policy that allows sailors to work additional hours during the week to ensure time to travel home at regular intervals. This policy must be results-oriented and wholly measurable. In providing this outlet, you respect the career sailors' family decisions.
- Develop long-range leave plans that ensure family time built around operational schedules. This is another take away from the Naval Academy. If a midshipman can travel home no less than twice a year, why can't our sailors? Check their leave balances often. Young sailors with too much leave on the books are not happy sailors.
- The greatest challenge on a ship is balancing watch rotations in port and at sea. If we can do no better than port and starboard or three sections under way, we will lose this war. The Monterey has 70 engineers and a requirement to man ten watch stations. Our goal is no less than six underway watch teams. The pilot house also is moving to six sections and the combat information center is moving to four. In addition, every sailor should be sounding and security qualified. Every sailor should be a qualified pier sentry.
Recommendation #3: Invest in technologies that directly contribute to sailor quality of service. Balancing quality of life with quality of work ensures near- and long-term mission readiness.
Retention Imperative: Sailors are comparison shoppers; other options abound and often you do not have to look far. Just skim one of the periodicals on your wardroom or chiefs' mess table.
- Technology. On board the Monterey, we are the recent recipients of a state-of-the-art smart ship engineering control system and integrated bridge systems This system yields more information—faster than most of us thought possible. As a result, our watch teams spend less time gathering information and more time making better decisions. Another result is fewer watch standers. This offers more time for sailors to study or qualify. With their automated central control system, our engineering enlisted ratings now become proficient in technology-based maintenance on our ship's propulsion systems. In addition, our onboard trainers will allow greater training opportunities in port and under way. Most important, we now operate on a shipwide fiber optic local area network and we can improve the system in a matter of hours with a new software load. We should continue and expand these technology initiatives.
- IT 21 and E-mail at Sea. The dilemma for those at sea is to reconcile bandwidth limits with increasing reliance on the Internet for getting information, forms, advancement material, and online college courses to sailors. Our immediate problem is that web sites are growing faster than satellite leases can keep up. IT 21 technology is a huge recruiting tool. More and more potential careerists are subsidizing "show me the money" with "show me the IT training and college opportunities" come reenlistment time.
The following are difference makers at retention time:
- Allowing "early promote"-ranked sailors the opportunity to participate in exams one year early
- The Guard 2000 Program, which allows reenlistment for a particular job or location
- Career rating management that directs strikers into ratings that offer the best hope for steady-state advancement
- Funded split tours, in the local area or across country or overseas
- Detailer communication initiatives; allowing more open flow with constituents, more often
- Star conversion program; allowing promotion to E-5 with a class "C" school
- Hometown Area Recruiting Program; more than 25 Monterey sailors have participated in this return-to-hometown initiative
- Cross decks and duty swaps; offering opportunities to alleviate the stress of hefty sea tours with platform swaps or type-duty swaps
- Rewarding sea duty-for both senior officers and enlisted
- Training at Surface Warfare Officer School and the Senior Enlisted Academy that teaches surface warfare officers and command master chiefs how to fight the war for people
- Review the time period under which seamen and firemen serve in deck or engineering divisions under the apprenticeship program. We are challenged to keep these billets filled. With a time-in-rate requirement to E-4 short six months after arrival, these sailors test into ratings and quickly become petty officers, and in some cases are lost to the command.
- Signals warfare "fly-away teams" during work ups and deployments. By creating these cells, cryptologic and intelligence support can be directed on time, every time. Keep their perishable skills fresh.
Recommendation # 4: Never give up.
Rationale: Although not all sailors are keepers, unless we use every possible resource to keep them, we risk breaking the covenant. There are discharge absolutes, but all interventions must have failed before that course is taken. When sailors are separated, it must be absolutely clear to all that they—not the Navy—failed.
Retention Imperative: Sailors know hypocrisy. They know when there is a mismatch between "we care" and efforts to help them solve the really tough problems. No sailor I have met in 23 years consciously joined the Navy with the expectation he would be dishonorably discharged for a drinking problem, smoking habit, being 30 pounds overweight, wearing a tattoo, or carrying a bad credit rating. Sailors join because they want our best leadership. It just takes some of them a while to realize it. For those times when calibration is necessary, here are some programs that help:
- "Mentors": Commanding officers and command master chiefs must carefully select these individuals based on proven leadership. They are given time with their charges (during the workday if needed). Our mentors also assist the parent leading chief petty officer and division officer in developing their charges into productive members of the team.
- Drug and Alcohol Abuse Counselors: Select an aggressive chief petty officer. Use the three-level responsive program based on need. This is the second most important collateral duty on board.
- "Prevent": In the past year, this program that teaches/trains junior sailors how to use alcohol responsibly is making a difference.
- Marine Corps Correctional Custody Unit: When more structured discipline is needed, we have used the Correctional Custody Unit at Camp Lejeune to great success.
- Extra Military Instruction: Ensure a vibrant program exists that includes a requirement for community service with various local agencies. For example: do not give general military training on the value of wearing your seat belt or driving within the speed limit is issued when those laws are violated. When violations occur, have community service performed at a local Veterans Administration spinal cord injury facility. This is value-based service that requires sacrifice by "giving something back."
- "Bearings": We have not had the opportunity to use this new two-week nonresidential program that helps junior sailors adjust to Navy life, but I expect we will.
- "Second Chance": This is another important initiative. If there is a sailor looking for a fresh start with this program, we are open for business.
Will all this be easy? No—it is not meant to be. Leaders lead, and it's not pretty and it's never easy. Leadership is a time-consuming and in some cases extremely arduous task. I know, and I have the brain calluses and gray hair to prove it. But we owe these men and women every opportunity, even if we are not around to see the seeds we planted grow. Keep that in mind when you next reach the point of exasperation. Take a deep breath, get your second wind, and leap back into the fray. Take a moment and acknowledge their contributions to the nation's freedom. Appeal to their senses of self-respect and patriotism. Ours is a noble way to make a living. So keep charging—there are a lot more folks counting on you than you may think.
Master Chief Evangelista serves as command master chief in the Monterey (CG-61). In the past 12 months, the Monterey has reenlisted 67 of 84 eligible personnel.