He understood well, and as well perform’d when he undertooke it, the millitary art in all parts of it: he naturally lov’d the employment as it suited with his active temper, more then any, conceiving a mutual delight in leading those men that lov’d his conduct; and when he commanded souldiers, never was man more lov’d and reverenc’d by all that were under him: for he would never condiscend to them in anie thing they mutinously sought, nor suffer them to seeke what it was fitt for him to provide, but prevented them by his loving care; and while he exercis’d his authority no way but in keeping them to their iust duty, they joy’d as much in his commands, as he in their obedience: he was very liberall to them, but ever chose iust times and occasions to exercise it.—Life of Colonel Hutchinson (1616-64), Governor of Nottingham Castle.
There is a distinction between leadership and administrative ability. They are separate qualities, not always present in the same person. Andrew Jackson is an example of a poor administrator and a truly excellent leader. When, in 1813, he assembled his Tennesseeans to help protect the Mississippi Valley, his intentions were all that could be desired. According to Shreve, Jackson wrote:
I marched in the spirit of a soldier; I came to fight... not to contend for rank, but to harmonize: ... the General and myself will settle any dispute . . . without injury to the public service or disturbance to the public.
But he was soon at loggerheads with his own quartermaster and with others who were ostensibly working for the common good. Nevertheless, even before the Battle of New Orleans, he displayed those qualities of a gifted leader that won him the devotion of his command, composed entirely of frontiersmen of the type that could neither be cajoled nor frightened into ready obedience.
He was aware of his own limitations and revealed them frankly. “No, Sir!” he said in 1821 when the Presidency was suggested to him, “I know what I am fit for. I can command a body of men in a rough way; but I am not fit to be President.” However, his friends were insistent. In 1822 he announced that he would neither seek nor shun the Presidency. In 1828, as President, he proceeded to demonstrate what a really turbulent administration could be like. But the something-doing- every-minute regime delighted the electorate, and with his leader’s instinct, he lustily battled with those things he believed inimical to the state. Consequently, he was re-elected for a second term by an overwhelming majority, and the uproar continued for another four years.
It is perhaps unfair to select a contemporary’s estimate of so great a figure in the science of war as von Clausewitz, but the following will serve to illustrate a general supreme as an organizer, planner, and strategist, who was at the same time deficient as a leader of men. General Brandt, who was well acquainted with von Clausewitz, after paying tribute to his ability in staff work which was even then recognized as outstanding, goes on to remark that he might not be so much in his right place as a leader on the field of battle, due to his lack of experience in command and his inability to inspire his troops.
It is, of course, quite possible for a leader possessing both administrative and tactical qualifications to be burdened with the administrative errors of others when the test of battle is applied. Admiral Jellicoe, when he was Controller of the Navy from 1909 to 1911 and later as Second Sea Lord in 1913, emphatically pointed out the need of larger docks and more of them, so that British warships could be built with better under-water protection and greater powers of flotation. No results were forthcoming. Yet on him devolved the responsibility of fighting at Jutland with ships that he believed could have been better constructed had the necessary measures been taken in time.
Some two years before the Spanish- American War, Admiral Cervera gave in the custody of a relative ashore a document setting forth the errors in naval administration and his efforts to rectify them,
in case some day it should be necessary to bring it to light in defense of my memory or myself, when we had experienced the sad disappointment prepared for us by the stupidity of some, the cupidity of others and the incapability of all, even of those with the best of intentions.
He feared, he said, the fate of the Italian Admiral Persano under somewhat similar conditions. From time to time he added documents to the collection which were duly held under seal of his cousin and two reputable subjects residing in Cartagena.
They were all needed and used to save the illustrious leader during the inevitable court-martial that followed the close of the war. Further, it required the publication of a large part of them to divert from him the scorn and wrath of a humiliated people.
Not only Persano, but also Medina Sidonia, commander of the Spanish Armada, and later the French Admiral Villeneuve, the second best at Trafalgar, had pleaded for time to bring their forces in condition to meet the enemy before sailing. But in each case home authorities issued peremptory orders dictated by political considerations and perhaps by that confidence which the uninformed derive from a preponderance in numbers alone. The Spanish Armada, Trafalgar, Lissa, and Santiago furnish admirable examples of leadership and tactics, but they hold also lessons in administration extending long prior to the events which they profoundly influenced.
Enough has been pointed out to warrant the distinction between leadership and administrative ability. Both qualities should be present in a successful commander or supervisor (including his staff, if there be one), but the presence of the one quality does not necessarily indicate the existence of the other. Further, administrative excellence is required in all those who set in motion a myriad of causes which converge, during the progress of time, with cumulative effect upon the event of battle. The)- are the personnel of the directing, co-ordinating, and co-operating agencies of tie forces in contact with the enemy. These | agencies include planning, supply, inspection, distribution, maintenance and sanitation services, all of which contribute, for good or ill, to the final result. The good will and loyalty of countless civilians are involved in these activities, most of whom, as far as relates to the Navy, come directly \ or indirectly under the administrative | jurisdiction of naval officers. Even the first shore duty of a naval officer may require administrative skill of a high order, to the end that the Navy may be best served.
In a military organization, leadership—the exercise of command in preparation for and in the conduct of warfare—is usually more direct and spectacular than the exercise of purely administrative functions. Administration has to do with getting day- by-day results from personnel and material, to the end that the general purpose is well served. The principles governing proper administration are alike applicable to civilian and military organizations, large groups of individuals and small ones. , They are fully as active before and after the impact of an emergency, military or otherwise, as they are during a conflict or crisis.
Good administration of a military' force insures that there are no intangible obstacles to overcome within that force , which might hinder the proper execution of its leader’s decisions, a condition usually covered by the term “high morale.” It also insures adequate and timely logistic support from co-ordinating forces. Morale of sorts can be achieved by a series of military successes—a leader’s reputation for victory. But after a long period of peace, a new generation, professionally speaking, is in charge. What morale a new and untried organization has is largely the product of administration. When faced with reverses, high morale so produced is more persistent than that created by previous victories. In what follows, the terms supervisor, commander, administrator, and leader are used interchangeably, as are also the terms subordinates, juniors and men.
Perhaps the primary requisite for a successful administrator is the wholehearted dedication of himself to the work in hand and to the organization to which he belongs. The force of example is potent. Under these circumstances, subordinates equally dedicated to the cause may be readily won over to personal loyalty to him. When this happens, the whole group is rendering the maximum service of which it is capable. Nothing is more heart-warming to a leader than to see the unconscious signs of personal loyalty in his subordinates; nothing makes service quite so worth a lifetime of effort to a junior as to be under the immediate supervision of a man whom he admires and wishes to emulate.
When an administrator, obsessed with a sense of his own power, diverts his group from a full compliance with the orders and purposes of higher authority, either through pique, disappointment, or self- interest, he need not be surprised if personal loyalty from those more completely dedicated to duty vanishes. Not that his orders, in a military organization, will be less scrupulously obeyed, but the administrative lifeblood of enthusiasm will be checked; perplexity and doubt will chill it. Where those equally disposed to evasion remain personally loyal, it aggravates the harmful results of the leader’s disaffection.
It is not at all necessary for a successful administrator to be a paragon of all the virtues. Indeed, history is replete with instances of great leaders beloved by a large and devoted following whose foibles and idiosyncracies formed the basis of innumerable amusing stories circulated at the height of their power. The mental attitude toward others usually described by the term “straightforward” is, however, a prime requisite. The spectacle of a supervisor acting with the avowed purpose of “getting something on” subordinates, not in order to purge the organization of the inefficient or disaffected, but to convert a dubious loyalty to the cause into a personal subserviency to himself, is one that is certain to create discontent among civilian employees as well as others. What men demand in the leader to whom they are to give their whole-hearted personal fidelity is manly, sterling, affirmative qualities, untainted by greed or personal acquisitiveness.
No supervisor can ever have a considerable body of men under his control without being under almost constant scrutiny by those well-disposed, ill-disposed, and indifferent toward him. The insistent urge to purvey news is not at all confined to women. It is equally certain that no obsequious subordinate ever made a present to his superior, produced on time or of materials not his own, that the fact did not become generally known at no enhancement of the superior’s prestige. Surely the anomaly of enforcing economy and preventing peculation on the one hand, and gathering—be it ever so little—loot for one’s own gratification on the other, must be apparent to the lowliest.
The easy, complaisant administrator lays the foundation for his own early failure. Human nature being what it is, that which is easy today becomes onerous tomorrow. Complaisance has never been completely disassociated from spinelessness, which is one of the cardinal sins that have been repugnant to men since the beginning of time. Just where the path of duty lies is not always surely known, but the weak and the strong, the lazy and the active, will not fail to follow a firm and just leader who has won their confidence.
To bestow privileges, or a favored status on a few individuals, as part of a generally applied system of reward for merit, is sound administration. When the basis for the distinction becomes the object of suspicion or doubt, the harm done to morale is incalculable. No precaution is too great to maintain the manifest justice and impartiality of the awards.
Should punishments be framed from the point of view of the salutary effect on the culprit or of the deterrent effect on others? Our naval schedule of punishments is generally flexible enough to admit of both methods. It may as well be set down now that neither method is a cure- all, and that punishment is the most difficult administrative implement to master. It requires administrative genius to accomplish a wholesome, beneficial result by punitive measures, for here, indeed, circumstances alter cases and rarely are two alike. Wise administration tends to prevent infractions. It is actually capable of conquering initial perversity in individuals and in allaying, even converting, ill-will. It is the effective bulwark against subversive doctrines, since it orientates correctly the intimate viewpoint of individuals even while they are comfortably removed from personal supervision.
Administration does not thrive on the use of rose-colored glasses. On the contrary, there is no better sign of qualification in that art than the ability to face disagreeable facts and evaluate them dispassionately. Consider the presence of a financial cheat in an organization requiring physical and moral fortitude to be exercised at a time when the lives of many may be the price of a panicky rush for self-preservation on the part of one. Now, a financial cheat is simply a person who has not the moral stamina to resist acquiring what he cannot pay for, or the resolution necessary to deny himself creature comforts that would have to be dropped to do what he agreed to perform.
In either case, it is clear that, under pressure, his controlling thought is of himself first, and the thought of his duty to others is subordinate or entirely suppressed. This reaction to a minor emergency discloses exactly how he will turn in a major emergency, for instance, in battle. Surely wisdom would dictate the removal of these proved menaces to other activities where their ideas on the sanctity of duty toward fellow-men can do less harm.
It has been established as good procedure, when a new administrator takes over a unit, to have him distribute duties > among his subordinates and then hold them responsible for performance. This, however, by no means divests the head of the responsibility for his unit to higher authority. Any other point of view would relegate a nominal administrative head to the position of reporter or recorder of that group for the common superior. To have charge of an organization means also to be answerable for its performance. This situation makes it natural for subordinates to address their efforts to the administrative head whose fortune and interests are linked with theirs, in the hope that skill and initiative will be recognized, since they redound also to the credit of the one in charge.
When, through lack of success, the group comes under the scrutiny of higher authority, subordinates will be quick to note whether the leader attempts to divert attention from himself to some of them who thus far had carried out his assignments to his apparent satisfaction. If in these circumstances there is no shirking [ of responsibility and loyalty flows downward, confidence and good will will flow upward. When subordinates feel that their case will be correctly presented to all outsiders by their chief, it can be concluded that the group is free from that cover-up, mutually suspicious attitude among its personnel which is so inimical to the integrity of any product.
In a military organization, it is taken for granted that responsibility goes with authority, and by the time an officer reaches command rank he is usually past being unnerved by having to face responsibility for fat already in the fire due to his own inadvertence or to the lack of adroitness on the part of his subordinates. There are probably few leaders, however, who habitually go as far in assuming responsibility for a subordinate’s act as did Captain, later Admiral, John H. Oliver one day when the fleet was cruising off the coast of New England. Upon the arrival of the portentous signal, “Who is Officer of the Deck?” he stepped over and relieved the distracted young officer in question, so that his own signal number flew at the yardarm in response to the demand, to be read by the whole Atlantic Fleet. Small wonder that this strict yet kindly commander was the idol of the crew as well as of the officers. Speaking for the newly arrived passed midshipmen beginning their naval careers under his command—who could readily visualize their prospective need for just such benign judgment—the news of this intercession by our generous Captain kindled in us the spark of personal devotion that lasted long after our ways parted and up to his lamented death. Our keen desire to make good was thus unhampered by a defensive, look-out- for-yourself attitude.
Of a different character was the case of a young administrator who arrived on a station to take charge, with definite ideas on how to run a cafeteria and proceeded to supervise the details of the one in his organization, giving minute instructions to the officer in charge. His first assistant’s dissenting advice was met with a history of the chief’s long study and experience in that sort of administration, including a hand in promulgating the existing departmental instructions governing cafeterias, and an unmistakable hint that when suggestions were needed they would be asked for. As for the young officer in charge, he became the compiler of multifarious verbal and written instructions laid down for the guidance of himself and the manager. One day the department sent a board to investigate, among other things, what was going on in the cafeteria. When the board arrived, the leader mentioned casually to his first assistant that of course he, as first assistant, was responsible for the supervision of the cafeteria. The junior’s reply, that he acknowledged general responsibility for everything on the station, but that he had refrained from interfering with his chief’s personal supervision of the officer in charge and that the printed organization did not allocate that duty to him, met with only reluctant acquiescence.
To the junior, this was but an incident that frankness had clarified, but to the senior, daily contact with one who had witnessed his craven attempt to avoid the consequences of his personally conducted experiment in the care and feeding of civilians, apparently served as a mute reminder of his previous panic. There inevitably followed acts of childish retaliation that made normal administration impossible.
In an organization where rotation in office is necessary, the harmful effect of lack of continuity in administration, of a leader’s ignorance of local history, and of his inexperience with present local conditions is partially offset by the presence of comparatively permanent subordinates. It can be still further offset if each leader would prepare frank and full written data for the use of his successor. These should be human documents compiled in a spirit of helpfulness to future incumbents and loyalty to the service. It is true that many prefer not to be acquainted with the point of view of any predecessor, being content to start from scratch and confident of their ability to make a go of it. Loyalty to the organization requires that the record be there and that it be kept continuous for those who may wish to use it for administrative purposes.
Extreme individualists will find themselves largely dependent on subordinates, and their points of view must necessarily be affected by the imperfections of those in whom they place confidence. They are those who cannot bring themselves to part with a representative cross section of their subordinates to comply with the wishes of higher authority, but feel justified in yielding only those whom they would most readily discard. Human nature? Not at all. Merely an incomplete dedication to the cause, permitting self-interest to supersede the best interests of the organization. Self-abnegating devotion is inherent in mankind, is psychologically contagious, and is capable of being inspired and developed in large masses of people simultaneously. The nation that commands that kind of service is a strong nation irrespective of its size. Its armed forces, man for man, are superior to those in which this inspirational force is lacking.
The wise administrator will keep the avenues of contentment and well-being— recreation, supply, commissariat, equipment, maintenance, sanitation and medical service—constantly patrolled by the best staff service he can organize and inspire. These avenues all converge on and lead to efficiency, wherein are to be found results, the attainment of which is the reason for a naval officer’s existence.
Some of what has been here discussed concerns factors intrinsically minor in their direct bearing on the state of mind and the feeling of well-being in individuals of a large organization. These factors might be held in abeyance for a time with no great damage to morale or to the will of a group to do its utmost for the general good. But in the accomplishment of a great purpose, no detail is too small to be neglected. Administrative skill must be exercised to carefully orientate all impulses to further the general plan and to prevent their remaining static or becoming cross currents in the flow of effort. Sound administration produces willing workers. And for willing workers there is no adequate substitute.
We shall more certainly preserve peace when it is well understood that we are prepared for war. —Andrew Jackson, March 4,1837.
*This article was submitted in the Prize Essay Contest, 1935.