The Navy can rightfully be proud of its progress during the past twenty years in adapting machines and equipment to the purposes of naval warfare. It would seem that every possible scientific and technological development has found application in the recent new construction programs. This progress in the machines of war has tended to make us overlook the other important element of naval power—the man behind the machines. He is just as essential to our over-all readiness as the machines themselves. As Field Marshal Wavell said, “Military history is a flesh- and-blood affair, not a matter of diagrams and formulas, or of rules; not a conflict of machines but of men.” This is just as true today as it ever was. There will never be a weapons system developed that will eliminate the necessity for capable men in military forces.
This element of naval power, we must confess, is in need of improvement today. When we look at our personnel situation, we find that we are not as ready as we might be. In The Great Arms Race, published in 1958, Hanson Baldwin says, “Man is still the heart of battle and, despite all the recent accent upon new weapons and new machines, man is probably the weakest element in the American formula for security.''' This is an alarming situation, and we must rightfully ask ourselves if this statement is true, and if so, why.
Today’s sailors are the best fed, the best paid, the best educated, and the best cared for in the history of the Navy, but the good men that we would like to retain are not staying in the Navy. After we have spent millions of dollars on their training, they are returning to civilian life. This is not only alarming from the standpoint of training expenses, but it results in an over-all inexperienced personnel situation. We not only have high turnover rates, but we do not have the best men left as the process continues. It is a sort of distilling process in which the valuable men we want are vaporized, and we are too often left with uninspired, mediocre people persuaded by our own “security salesmanship” to serve out their twenty years.
In our efforts to correct this situation, we have bent over backwards. We have offered shipping-over money. We have improved housing and living conditions. We have air- conditioned our ships. We are now offering incentive and proficiency pay. If, after all this, a man still leaves the service, many conclude that he just won’t be satisfied anywhere. This, however, is merely rationalization—in most cases, the men who are leaving the service are just the ones we would like to have stay. They are usually intelligent, hardworking, and reliable. When we try to ascertain their reasons for leaving the Navy, we get a variety of answers—many of them disguises for the real reasons, or excuses to cover up their real feelings. In all cases, however, it is apparent that they are just not satisfied with what a naval career offers.
If money and other benefits are not effective in combatting the over-all personnel problem, it is obvious that we must turn our attention elsewhere. There must be some values, or some intangibles, that these men are looking for that not only would induce them to stay in the service, but to give it their best effort while they are in uniform.
In short, we must turn to different incentives, and the only way we can uncover them is through improved leadership. This is the area in which rapid and progressive strides must be taken if we are to combat our personnel problems!
Progress in the field of leadership is absolutely necessary, for as Baldwin states in his book, “ . . . above all, a rigorous standard for leadership [is] essential if United States soldiers, sailors, and airmen are to become tough, disciplined, intelligent, professional forces capable of matching and overmatching the armed men of the Soviet Union.” Modern, enthusiastic, skillful leadership can overcome the deficiencies in our manpower situation. If it is effectively used with our present personnel and coupled with the modern weapons systems we have developed, the U. S. Navy will become the elite ready force the nation needs.
Myriads of questions are immediately posed by the skeptics. If the answer to the personnel situation is as simple as that—improved leadership—how is it then that the problem is still so far from solution? Why can’t we put more emphasis on leadership? Why don’t we train better leaders?
The Navy is trying to do all those things, but its efforts have been faltering and unproductive. In an attempt to place more emphasis on leadership, the Secretary of the Navy, at the very top of the chain of command, has issued a General Order on the subject. This would certainly seem to indicate that there is a universal appreciation of the need for improved leadership. However, there is a wide hiatus between acknowledging the need for improved leadership and actually obtaining it.
Much of the fault lies in the field of our training efforts in relation to leadership. We have so clouded the issue with platitudes on the characteristics of the good leader, and problem solving types of teaching methods, that we have failed to make any progress in getting at the real fundamental techniques and theory of leadership. A discussion of the characteristics of a good leader may be helpful, but to expect to get results from it is really optimistic. It could no more train a leader than a study of the characteristics of a good pilot could enable one to fly a plane. To make any progress in this area, you must get down to actual principles, techniques, and methods.
Although it might have been missed by many, the key to the problem was given in SECNAV’s General Order. He said “Effective leadership, therefore, is based on personal example, good management practices, and moral responsibility.” There is the answer to improved leadership—and the answer to many of the personnel problems plaguing us.
“Good management practices” sounds like a term taken from the business world, and it might well be. Approximately fifty years ago, leadership first became recognized as a useful tool in the business world, and the businessman looked to the military for all its ideas about the subject. Even in 1956, Colonel Ur- wick of the British Army was holding seminars for businessmen in England and his lectures are published in the book, Leadership in the Twentieth Century. Most often today, however, it appears that industry has taken the subject of leadership and advanced it much farther than the military ever did. To give an idea of the businessman’s attention to the subject, we might turn to the Harvard Business Review of March-April 1958, which published an article entitled, “How to Choose a Leadership Pattern”—a skillful and scientific treatise on whether a leader should be democratic, autocratic, or somewhere in between, in dealing with his subordinates.
Now, a word of caution may be necessary— it is obvious that not all of the thinking of the business world can be transcribed vis-a-vis to the military world, even though von Clausewitz in talking about war said, “It would be better instead of comparing it with any art, to liken it to business competition, which is also a conflict of human interests and activities.” It must be admitted that there are aspects of the military that do not lend themselves to comparison with the business world, and vice versa. The point is—in the military field, which long had a monopoly on the subject of leadership thinking, there have been too few such thought-provoking treatments as those found in various business journals. We are still mired in the realm of problem solving, participation methods, and leadership characteristics.
A more productive approach is again suggested in the Secretary of the Navy’s General Order—“The Navy must also develop and use new concepts of management. ...” In order to develop these new concepts, let us return to the deficiencies of our present philosophies. We have noted that all the material things we have offered the serviceman are not improving the personnel situation. We have, it seems, put the emphasis on the wrong values—the wrong incentives. If security, and pay, and fringe benefits don’t work, what then will?
Let us humble our military pride and read what a businessman of today says. Ben D Mills, a vice-president of the Ford Motor Company, describes a new philosophy of management, the keystone of which “is the conviction that the strongest motivating force in the human being, barring self-preservation, is pride of accomplishment. I mean that pride which satisfies each individual within his own heart that he is contributing something worth while. All aspects of this philosophy are aimed at tapping this powerful motivating force.” Here are the values that our men are looking for—in this philosophy lie the incentives that are lacking for so many in the military! It is this theory that we must convert to practical elements of leadership or management in the Navy. We must develop leadership techniques with the “pride of accomplishment” theory as the basis.
The transformation of this philosophy of motivation into working form results in four fundamental leadership techniques. They are:
(1) association of the individual with the objectives of the organization,
(2) efficient utilization of the individual’s efforts,
(3) delegation of the authority necessary to accomplish an assigned task,
(4) recognition of the individual’s efforts on the part of his superiors.
These techniques do not sound very revolutionary, and they are not. They are all in use to a limited degree in most commands— but none of them are utilized fully in any command. Undreamed of results can be obtained from further exploitation of these principles.
The first principle or technique, associating the individual with the objectives, has been sadly overlooked in the past. This principle itself eliminates many erroneous and out-of- date practices. For years military leaders never bothered to explain the mission and tasks of the organization to anyone. However, the sailor we seek for our modern Navy is an intelligent, alert, thinking individual. It is imperative then that we treat him as such. There is no longer any room for “non-thinking” followers—we must have energetic, capable, willing men working within the traditional military framework.
The “theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die” practice is no longer effective. In fact, it was not valid when the Light Brigade charged down the north valley at Balaclava. It was certainly not leadership that inspired that charge—not with Lord Cardigan living on his yacht and drinking champagne while his troops were lying in the mud ashore and dying of cholera. Loyalty to the unit inspired the unswerving line of cavalry to charge into the cannon’s mouth, and the reason the results were so tragic was in fact because of a complete breakdown in leadership on the part of the generals commanding.
Neither is there a place for “drivership” in the new philosophy. It should have been obvious to us long ago that you can’t force a man to do a good job of anything, if he doesn’t want to do it. The technical age has suddenly awakened us to that fact as we have discovered you can’t force a technician to repair complicated machinery. However, you can’t force a cook to prepare a tasty meal unless he wants to, or force a painter to do an efficient job unless he has the desire to do it properly. Each individual has to want to do the job well, otherwise the best you can hope for is merely an adequate job. Discipline or the threat of discipline may get the job done, but you can be sure it won’t be done to the best of the individual’s ability.
The principle of associating the individual with the objectives is necessary if we are to get the best performance from our men. He has a right to know the “reason why”—we can not expect maximum effort if he doesn’t. This is true not only because of the technical nature of the Navy today—it is true because many of the things we are asking the modern sailors to do are in intangible fields. For instance, in the execution of the President’s “People to People” program, there is little hope for any measure of success unless the objectives are known to the individual. In the efforts to bolster the moral and spiritual fiber of our sailors, the “reason why” must certainly be made known. In combatting the threat of Communism in all its subtle forms, there must be a clear-cut understanding on the part of all the men of what they are up against, why they are opposing it, and how it can best be done. How can we expect our foreign policy not to confuse our friends occasionally, if we don’t even take time to explain it to our own armed forces who are often charged with carrying it out?
In every ship and station, there is certainly room for improvement in this field of tying the individual with his role in accomplishing our objectives. We might not think that it is important for the men down in the boiler rooms to know where the ship is going and what its mission is, as long as the steam pressure is sufficient, but it certainly makes a difference to that man’s ego and sense of accomplishment. The result of a little effort in this field will soon show itself in superior performances all around.
The second leadership principle, based on the “pride of accomplishment” theory, is efficient utilization of the individual’s services. In these days of personnel cutbacks it would seem that the need for this is quite obvious. However, here again, a little investigation discloses that there is much that can be done. The armed forces have traditionally been extremely wasteful in manpower. Many of the inefficient wartime methods have carried over to the modern peacetime Navy.
For instance, practically every ship afloat is so organized that about twenty-five per cent of the men are engaged in cleaning, painting, and maintenance operations. How long do you suppose a businessman could exist in a competitive world if one-fourth of his labor force was in the janitor category? He would very soon see the necessity of power tools, paint sprayers, pneumatic hammers, electric polishers, and other labor-saving devices so that his janitor force could be reduced. Yet, far too often, in a Navy that already is operating at eighty per cent manning levels, requests for power tools are turned down because they are not on the allowance list or are too expensive, and manual power must be substituted. This is an extreme case of being penny wise and dollar foolish.
There is no good reason why there couldn’t be a general “fleeting up” of all hands in the Navy to more important and critically short rates if we could cut the demands for manpower at some of these lower levels. A recent BUPERS Instruction listed an excess of 3,825 men in such rates as Boatswain’s Mate, Steward’s Mate, Gunner’s Mate, and Commissaryman. The same instruction disclosed a shortage of over 8,000 in rates such as Quartermaster, Signalman, Sonarman, Radioman, and the various technical specialties. Perhaps not all of the people relieved in these excess billets could qualify for some of the more technical rates, but it is certain that a large number of them could—or relieve at an intermediate level from whence we could train a technician.
This technique of utilizing men to the maximum degree possible is closely connected with the first leadership technique discussed. It is pretty hard to impress someone with the importance of his contribution to the over-all objectives if he himself doesn’t feel his talents are being effectively used, or that he is treated as another warm body.
Much has been said about delegating authority to the man responsible for doing the job. This is also well recognized as an important leadership technique by many, but unfortunately it is not carried out sufficiently. If you assign a job to a man, it is obvious you must hold him responsible for its successful completion, but you don’t have to have your finger in the pie all the time he’s doing it. Instead, if you are going to tap that “pride of accomplishment” reservoir you must give him a free rein . . . you have to delegate the authority completely or not at all. Halfway delegation is not delegation at all—or even 99% delegation for that matter. It has to be all or nothing. Interference breaks down the whole leadership pattern that you are trying to build—the individual loses confidence because he is not allowed to complete the assignment, he loses incentive because there is no pride of accomplishment, and he loses his identity with the job because it is no longer his. The assignment of a certain piece of work, with no restrictions as to the “how” process and with complete delegation of the authority to accomplish it, are methods used by only a few very good leaders. This is one of the most difficult techniques of leadership to develop, because it is so easy to think that you could do some aspect of the job better.
A most outstanding example of the proper use of this principle was witnessed on the bridge of a submarine returning to port in the Virgin Islands a few years ago. A young lieutenant (junior grade) was conning the boat alongside the pier and doing quite a miserable job of it. Just when it seemed certain that a crash was inevitable, the Commanding Officer very quietly and calmly relieved him and ordered, “All back full.” When the submarine was again clear, he turned the conn back to the “JG” who tried again. He had no better luck on the second try and again the “CO” averted a collision with the pier by backing down full. Finally, on the third attempt, the “JG” brought her alongside. All during the operation, his commanding officer had avoided any coaching whatsoever—no warning as to the trouble he was getting into, no second-guessing of any of his commands. The young lieutenant not only had the satisfaction of getting the boat alongside, even if it wasn’t a “one-bell landing,” but he probably learned much more from his mistakes than even the best-intentioned coaching could have taught him under the circumstances.
This is certainly a difficult technique of leadership for all to master, but the challenge of this type of situation—whether concerning a staff paper or shiphandling—are prevalent throughout the Navy. The rewards to the leader who can learn to use this technique are tremendous. He will soon find himself surrounded by energetic, willing, and loyal subordinates.
Finally, let us turn to the fourth technique of leadership that grows out of the “pride of achievement” theory: recognition of the efforts of the individual on the part of his superiors. In the past our enlisted system of advancement has been a tremendous barrier to this technique. It permits a motivated young man to rise to the rate of Chief Petty Officer, and then for all practical purposes he is at the end of the line. There are practically no further means available to recognize increased proficiency or outstanding efforts, because of the minute numbers selected for further advancement to either warrant or commissioned status. Thus, we often have a high paid and unmotivated, but fairly young and capable man on our hands— whose only incentive is to complete his “twenty years” and get out. It is hoped that our new enlisted structure with three grades of Chief Petty Officer will alleviate this problem, but we cannot expect it to help unless appreciable numbers are promoted to the new rates.
However, there are methods available to a leader, other than advancement, to recognize superlative efforts and outstanding performances. One of the simplest of these is merely the spoken word. We in the Navy often pride ourselves on our modest recognition of outstanding work. The terse “Well done,” we feel, holds more meaning because it is not easily earned or freely extended. This spirit is worthy, but it can be overdone. It is certainly far better to be a little too free with praise, than to ignore special efforts on the part of an individual. To actually feel the “pride of achievement” the individual must have his efforts noted by his superiors. When the acknowledgement is not forthcoming, the “what’s the use” attitude may creep in, and there is danger of the individual getting the feeling that “The only time I am noticed is when I do something wrong.”
This technique is closely tied to the first principle of leadership discussed. It is only natural, after explaining the importance of the objectives, and the role of the individual in connection with them, to acknowledge his efforts in accomplishing them. This simple word of praise is so often the only reward to honor the performer of an arduous task—it certainly would be foolish to ignore it or thoughtlessly forget it.
After discussing these leadership techniques, it may seem that they are not nearly sufficient to solve the various personnel problems before us, but there is ample proof that they are. These principles are designed to utilize “pride of achievement” as a motivating force—there is no limit to what can be accomplished if that force is effectively used! However, it is not enough that it be confined to a few units or a few stations. It must be universally applied throughout the service to be effective. A man must expect this same appreciation of values wherever he might be transferred.
When all the material values in the world cannot make a happy and effective unit, leadership built on these principles can. It can turn the weak link of our personnel situation into the strongest element of our naval power. The results the American sailor can obtain if properly led are unbounded!
If we are going to have the effective and ready Navy our country needs for the future, it must be manned by capable men and strong leaders. Let us remember what the captain of HMS Serapis said after his defeat by John Paul Jones:—“The American ship was dominated by a commanding will of a most unalterable resolution.” This is the type of spirit that proper leadership can evoke today. We have had such leadership in the past—we must surely have it in the future!