As WOMPO for the Severn River Naval Command, one naval officer took on the PIMPs by doing some PIMPing himself. But how does a WOMPO PIMP a brass band and a dairy farm? Today’s TQL is a problem PIMP, too.
Not until 1953 was I able on my own initiative to slay my first PIMP—my acronym for Productivity Improvement Program, a substitute for leadership via a “management initiative,” through which upper-level managers further screw up already screwed up organizations by trying to unscrew the inscrutable.
The undertaker was Admiral James L. Holloway, Jr., the Chief of Naval Personnel, and a former Commandant of the Severn River Naval Command and Superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy.
The plot had not started off very well. It was bad enough, from my point of view, that I was the senior (junior, and only) instructor in an oxy- moronic course titled “Naval Organization and Administration”; the senior (junior, and only) instructor in Military Law; the Officer Representative of the Naval Academy’s wrestling team; Secretary-Treasurer of the U.S. Naval Institute, and, " ex-officio (in those simple days) Editor of the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings.
By virtue of this obvious underemployment, I also was designated to serve as the Severn River Naval Command’s Work Measurement Program Officer (WOMPO) to implement the recently initiated Department of the Navy Work Measurement Program.
In my guise as Proceedings Editor, I could smell a copy job (plagiarism) a mile off when I read the directive. I called the Naval Academy Librarian and briefly described the program. In an hour he had found the book from which the idea had been lifted. It was a Harvard Business School case book, addressing methods of comparing the output of various workers in various industrial activities by determining a unit of work and applying a unit of time to it. “Connecting rods manufactured per hour,” and “piston rings manufactured per hour,” were typical cases. Among other facets, the cases had a recurring theme against overtime work, with a fascinating formula to determine the adverse effects. Despite having graduated a son from this “B School,” I am still convinced that it has spent four generations teaching intelligent people how to bankrupt various enterprises.
It took me almost 15 minutes to determine three of the basic “Work Measurement Units” for the company and battalion officers leading the midshipmen, the Naval Academy Band, and the Naval Academy Dairy Farm. Once these decisions had been made, I ceased working on the problem. One function of the WOMPO was to recommend ways to eliminate overtime work. Using two very neat formulae in the directive for this, I quickly determined that since the battalion and company officers were working an average of 60 hours a week, this group violated the overtime formula by either 50% (if the wholesale approach formula were applied), or 33 1/3% if the retail approach formula were applied.
I did not feel qualified to decide which formula to apply, and, hence, I wrote it up as an option for the actual decision maker.
The Naval Academy Band was a little more difficult. Comparative measurements within the band were knotty. A sousaphone player seldom played as many notes as a piccolo player, and it was hard to compare a snare drummer’s output with the bass drummer, or other members of the timpani group, much less the brass section. Of greater concern was the risk of having our band compared with others as “productive units.”
It occurred to me that perhaps, “pieces played per hour” would be acceptable, and we could play a lot of short pieces. It was obvious that other bands would be as smart, however, so we discarded that idea. The next thought was “measures played per minute,” but this too had to be discarded because some would play in 3/4 time and some in 4/4 time, or even up to 8/8 time. In desperation, I settled on “quarter-notes tootled per minute,” as my mind was starting to run out of ideas. It did occur to me that some critics might feel this was “cymbalic” of my general attitude, but I decided I must take this risk.
The Naval Academy Dairy was an even more critical challenge. “Stalls mucked per hour,” had to be discarded, because the Army had a lot of horse stables, which (I guessed) were different from cow stables, and the Department of Defense, whose broad policy attitudes probably did not discriminate between bovine and equine stables, might get into the act, and we'd be locked in. Ultimately, I chose, “Cows’ Teats Pulled Per Minute,” and was prepared to defend it against all comers, as we had the only dairy farm in the Department of Defense.
I submitted the required form from the directive, notifying the Bureau of Naval Personnel that I was ready to discuss the program. In about a week, a funny little wizened up character with a marked shortage of wispy unkempt hair and a handshake like a dead fish showed up.
We convened to the Commandant’s conference room and got right down to brass tacks. The visitor was not very happy with my approach to wholesaling or retailing the overtime problem with our company officers but had to admit that I had stuck 100% with the formulae. He assured me he would take this up with the Chief of Personnel as an exemption to the Work Measurement Program.
The band situation caught him off balance. He was definitely not amused. However, when I solicited his advice as the Navy’s Chief Work Measurement Program Executive, he became completely confused and agreed to give another exemption.
My guest was obviously not impressed with the dairy farm proposal. Indeed, he said not a word. He gathered his papers from the table, shoved them into his briefcase, and without even a nice word of farewell or a limp hand shake, stomped out of the conference room.
And so it came to pass that the next morning Admiral Holloway was on the telephone with the Commandant of Midshipmen, Rear Admiral Charles A. Buchanan, wanting to know what the hell Joe Taussig had done to his Work Measurement Program Executive. He had personally reported to Admiral Holloway that the WOMPO at the Severn River Naval Command obviously did not take the program seriously, and worse, he was not only facetious but lewd.
We got on the telephone to Admiral Holloway, who was apparently somewhat amused by my use of the overtime formulae and not unhappy at all about my band analysis and decision. When it came to the dairy farm. Admiral Holloway simply broke up. He was gripped with the dry chuckles and sudden guffaws. He kept pulling himself together sufficiently to say “Cows’ teats pulled. . .” or two or more words in the sentence.
Finally, the Chief of Personnel pulled himself together and informed Admiral Buchanan that he would exempt the Severn River Naval Command and the Naval A Academy from the Work Measurement Program.
I had slain my first PIMP all by myself.
But it was about time. I had been extremely well trained to kill PIMPS.
I had served under such expert leaders as Admiral Jerauld Wright, Vice Admiral Oswald S. Colclough. Rear Admiral Richard H. Cruzen, and Rear Admiral Bruce McCandless. All four were completely mission-oriented and capable of cutting through red tape and bureaucratic gobbledygook by exercising common sense, judgment, and ingenuity, despite all the confused efforts of the Congress, the Secretary of Defense, and the Secretary of the Navy to make common sense as hard as possible by issuing endless statutes, rules, regulations, and decrees.
An odd anachronism during our academic training years was that we could stand quite high in the class, despite a consistent shortfall from perfection. In my day, a 3.4 on a 4.0 scale at the Naval Academy warranted the award of stars. Yet in “mature life,” despite the fact that we are always learning, any shortfall below a complete 4.0 is professional incompetence, plain and simple.
A pure leader exercises the art of imperfection as he pursues his missions, while a pure manager strives for perfection through the exercise of the science of management.
At the extremes, these concepts are diametrically opposed. To attain the status of a leader, however, one must have mastered enough of the science of management at least to earn his stars.
PIMPs are products of management.
Since time immemorial, managers have undoubtedly sponsored PIMPS. None of us is old enough to know the origin of these efforts. All PIMPs are theoretically "for motherhood and against sin,” in the context of increasing the effectiveness of management. But unfortunately, many find an analogy in the fact that 60% of all prostitutes are mothers.
Despite the massive PIMP efforts over the centuries, it is obvious that the perfection of the science of management has failed, and failed miserably in the quest for perfection. Indeed, with the evolution of the communication revolution, we have been beset by an ever-increasing number of PIMPS, sponsored by an ever-growing number of sponsors.
Every congress and every administration has taken a cut at these problems, and generally, exacerbated them.
We old-timers remember the Hoover Commission following World War II, which was supposed to lead to efficient and more economical government organization in the postwar era. The major PIMP in the Navy was “The On-Site Survey Board,” which consisted of Washington- based groups visiting all of the shore establishments, generating thousands of recommendations that the commander ashore was supposed to “implement.” These ran into the inertia of established management procedures. They were far more effective at the highest echelons, while less so at the lower administrative level.
Concurrently, the principle that “the effort to implement a PIMP is inversely proportional to the time it has been on the streets,” became evident.
Few people remember the Hoover Commission, the Packard Commission, or the Grace Commission as major White House efforts to unscrew the inscrutable. Other less-publicized efforts have enjoyed even shorter stints on the public memory.
In 1981, when the Navy tried to take out its ultimate revenge on me by offering me the political appointment to serve as Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy (Civilian Personnel Policy and Equal Employment Opportunity), I found 11 major non-Navy PIMPs addressing my functions. Two of these were ordained by statutes. Two were White House-sponsored; one was pushed by the Office of Management and Budget; two were ordained by the Office of Equal Employment Opportunity; two by the Office of Personnel Management; one by the Department of Labor; and two by the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
At the time of my appointment, I had already reached the conclusion that Secretary of the Navy John F. Lehman was the kind of person I wanted as a civilian Navy leader. President-elect Ronald Reagan had announced his intention to “rebuild the Navy.” As soon as Secretary Lehman was sworn in, he hit the deck running.
In an otherwise grossly dismal situation, the Navy was extremely fortunate to have Admiral Thomas B. Hayward, probably the best peacetime Chief of Naval Operations we had ever enjoyed. Secretary Lehman and Admiral Hayward made a superior team.
I would have liked a higher appointment, but I accepted the offer, on the theory that of the ten appointments available to Secretary Lehman, this must be the bottom, and I had no maneuvering room. If I were to participate in the rebuilding, I had better get my nose into the tent.
At the time of my appointment, 70 active-duty flag officers had been students of mine when they were midshipmen. Most were delighted that I was in the Pentagon, but not too sanguine as to my capabilities to survive. Two weeks after my appointment, a contingent came to my office to offer me the chance to join their anchor pool on “how long Joe Taussig will last.” When they paid me the $47.00 in 1985, I found that the average bet was seven- and-a-half months. The “short straw” was 30 days.
At my first briefing, my staff informed me of 320,000 full-time civil servants plus around 40,000 civilians serving the Navy’s Non-Appropriated Fund Instrumentalities. I also was informed that we had around 40,000 other “temporary appointees,” who were laid off every 30 September to allow us to report “the number of employees” and rehired on 1 October. I also was aware that the Navy “supported” several nonprofit universities and think tanks, Beltway Bandits, and commercial repair and maintenance facilities.
At the time, we had a fleet of 480 ships. When I added in military personnel, it appeared that we had around 2,000 people on the various payrolls for each ship. As for the civilian cadre, I had only 11 PIMPs that I could rely upon to make this a more effective and economical work force.
Having long since reached my convictions regarding the various aspects of PIMPs, I informed my civilian personnelists that I would put complete trust and confidence in their professional qualifications and serve them as a “Horatio at the Bridge.” These people never let me down. Indeed, the Navy was blessed in having such outstanding people. 1 viewed my job as holding off the adverse effects of PIMPs, while winnowing out the wheat from the chaff.
My major receptacle was my office refrigerator. Not having much feel for the viability or residual sponsor interest in the 11 PIMPs, I simply placed all the reports in my ice box. Most of them died there. It was amazing how few requests for follow-up I received. Slowly but surely, I was able to issue instructions to ignore a lot of this mess.
In 1985, Secretary Lehman apparently thought that I could pronounce all the syllables in my title without transposing the words. (My late mother-in-law, Grace Carney, invariably introduced me as the “Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Sexual Opportunity and Equal Harassment.”) Hence, he put me in charge of a new job addressing operational readiness safety and survivability.
Since the Congress, the White House, the Office of Management and Budget, the Office of Personnel Management, and the Secretary of Defense had never had a chance to issue PIMPs for this function, I was left to my own devices.
At the outset, I was besieged by tremendous counter-pressures from the established hierarchies, including the Assistant Secretaries of the Navy (Research, Engineering and Systems and Shipbuilding and Logistics). This translated into various staffs and the Systems Commands.
The perceptions were that apparently the Secretary had not felt that these people were doing a good job and, hence, appointed me to get on the ball, and/or I had a propensity to muck around in their bailiwicks without adhering to established channels.
I simply outlived all these people. By the time Secretary Sean O’Keefe was sworn in, I was the last surviving political appointee of the Lehman, Webb, and Ball tenures, and many from the Garrett tenures.
I had found a Staff Director and a Technical Director in whom 1 had total confidence. They never let me down, and, despite various degrees of opposition inside Beltway, have been awarded several performance medals . . . unusual for civil servants. More important, I simply either turned the organization charts upside down or turned the telescope around and sought out doers in the fleets or shore activities.
I had tremendous confidence in their common sense, judgment, ingenuity, technical (both academic and nonacademic) know-how, and operational experience. I could find similar assets inside the Beltway, but these people were generally bogged down in the administrative and management red tape that plagues Washington.
Despite the inevitable problems associated with transfers and attrition, I am inordinately proud of the performance of these people, who numbered in the hundreds by the time I was involuntarily retired when the Clinton Administration came in. Indeed, I have two Navy Distinguished Public Service Medals they won for me.
Today, the new major PIMPs on the block are the National Performance Review, called “reinventing government,” as if there were some advantages in reinventing dung hills; the Secretary of Defense’s Bottom-Up Review (a name I find it best not to comment on in light of the Tailhook problems), and Total Quality Leadership (TQL), an initiative of former Secretary of the Navy H. Lawrence Garrett.
TQL is based on common sense, but it contemplates no more than three levels of effort. Hence, it can succeed in the field but is doomed inside the Beltway, because there are far more than three levels of management between flag officers and most 0-6 level officers and “equivalent” civil service grades. It is impossible to “stay in channels” and comply with TQL procedures.
The best bet for a productive PIMP is simply to go back to a former date and decree that whatever directives existed at the time will be reinstated at some future date. In the interim, everyone will have a chance to eliminate, revise, or reissue directives from this baseline.
Indeed, this was tried in the 1970s. One directive imposed a sunset clause on all directives that had not been issued or updated in the previous three years.
This PIMP was born from the Paperwork in Government Act of 1978.
Unfortunately, it committed suicide. It died by its own hand, because nobody reissued it nor updated it within the subsequent three-year period.
Captain Taussig is currently retired and living in Annapolis. Maryland. He served on the staff of the Secretary of the Navy from 1981 to 1993, during which time he became the only holder of two Navy Distinguished Public Service Medals. A February 1941 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and holder of a Juris Doctorate (honors) degree from the George Washington University School, Captain Taussig retired from the Navy in 1954 as a result of wounds suffered during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.