The process of directing a large organization sometimes becomes “the management problem,” simply because the principal effort in its behalf conceives and approaches it as a problem.
Management can of course be a problem—a difficult one if it is poorly done. And management, like the best of families, will have its share of problems in human relations and human limitations. But good management has a positive and purposeful approach, and implicitly supplies a judicious measure of preventive medicine to keep itself free of the problem label. As in many things, constant surveillance is an active ingredient of the medicine.
Management, formalistically, is intelligent manipulation of resources, circumstances, and energy to achieve a desired result. While we customarily apply the term to nonmilitary operations, it finds a classical example in the military organization, wherein extreme precision in material and utmost attention to procedural detail reflect the intense effort to assure victory.
Always a dynamic seeker of perfection, military science is able to purge potential problems by continuous review and prompt adjustment as the fluid shape of war changes. With time and distance factors now so compressed and weapon power so exalted, we no longer leave military readiness and sufficiency to a peacetime paper exercise of plans and token forces, to be given substance upon risk of war. The risk stays with us now. Technology has enlarged and sharpened war-making capabilities, and armed readiness in being and in depth have become the military norm.
The accelerated progress of weapons and tactics has brought a need for equivalent readiness, responsiveness, and depth in military support and for equivalent care and precision in perfecting its management. As managers, we now have a positive challenge to support adequately and efficiently the high level of capabilities and readiness required of the naval forces. The same surveillance is needed, along with adjustments in support management as may be necessary, to keep pace with tactical science and the military objective.
In the exercise of this surveillance, the Department of the Navy completed in last December a nine-month review of its management processes. Other reviews preceded it and more will probably follow, in the continuing self-evaluation inherent in good management. But this particular review is distinguishable for its timely focus on support management and for two attributes: (1) It had unusual breadth and depth; and (2) it concentrated on processes—the interface and interplay of management elements.
The results of this review are of fundamental substance in the Department’s management and will be a strong influence in the effective attainment of the Department’s objectives. Its clearer orientation of the basic management effort will help greatly to maintain required readiness levels. A general understanding of this orientation will be important to meeting the management challenge successfully.
The methodology of the review helps to explain the pattern of its conclusions and the direction of its recommendations. With management processes as their object of inquiry, task groups headed by the most knowledgeable senior officers available studied in depth the Department’s major functional areas—research and development; manpower management; material management; facilities management; financial management; and planning, programming, budgeting, and appraisal. They gave particular attention to the interfaces and management interplay in these areas.
Paralleling these functional studies, the principal management components of the Department studied their own processes, again emphasizing their interfaces with other components. A separate task group analyzed the external influences and management environment in which the Department must function, thus rounding out the perspective needed for a comprehensive review. As could be anticipated, cross-references provide these multiple approaches highlighted management processes in which deficiencies existed between causeand desired effect, between design and performance. Theresul ting recommendations accordingly were concerned principally with improving processes of this nature.
It will be noted that the studies emphasized processes, not organization, although some organizational recommendations naturally followed the identification of needed adjustments in the management process. The Department’s organization has successfully met the test of two global wars and numerous lesser emergencies. In the static aspects, its soundness is apparent. In the dynamic aspects, one of its principal attributes is its adaptability to the variables of tempo and form presented by the demands of national security and international relations. By continuous review and adjustment of the dynamic features—the interplay of management processes among management components—we exploit this adaptability and advance the quality of management as military science, objectives, and requirements advance.
In the months ahead, we will be firming some current adjustments identified by the review. Thus, we continue to keep management on top of the vital and volatile task of national defense.
The unusual breadth and depth of this review brought under early consideration the Department’s philosophy and principles of management. The management organization itself appeared to be clear and well understood. Over-simply stated, as Secretary, I manage the Department of the Navy; the Chief of Naval Operations and the Commandant of the Marine Corps manage their respective armed services; and the chiefs of bureaus manage various resources as the Chief of Naval Operations and the Commandant of the Marine Corps specify that they are needed. But as these managers work, each creates related tasks for performance by the others—a normal process in a large organization, but magnified in the so-called “bilinear” concept under which the Department of the Navy is organized.
In examining this dynamic cause-and-effect process, it was apparent that accelerated developments in defense affairs in recent years had generated varying interpretations as to how this bilinear distribution of responsibility should work in the interplay of management. Clarification of the Department’s management philosophy was necessary to provide a current management doctrine, one that would be commonly understood and universally accepted.
In the bilinear scheme, wherein the Chief of Naval Operations and the Commandant of the Marine Corps determine and levy requirements which the several resource managers produce, this doctrine finds its predominant expression in the fundamental management functions of planning, programming, execution, and appraisal. Thus:
A. In Planning
(1) User expresses needs to producer.
(2) Producer advises user of feasibility.
B. In Programming
(3) User selects feasible work.
C. In Execution
(4) Producer performs selected work.
D. In Appraisal
(5a) User reviews progress or readiness, and military worth.
(5b) Producer reviews progress and resource utilization.
Agreement on this management philosophy brought sharper focus to both the functional and component studies and enabled clearer identification of management areas which needed attention. Some 220 people participated in the 20 separate studies which produced an eventual 223 recommendations for improvements in the Department’s management. In the aggregate, virtually all the studies pointed up a maze of responsibilities, authorities, and lines of control in the “producer” area of the management process. The need for improvement in this function was impressive and constitutes the principal rationale for the major recommendations.
In the Department’s present structure, executive responsibilities and authority are divergent and ambiguous in a number of respects. Naturally, this condition impedes the responsiveness of management, and we lose effectiveness and economy as a penalty. Particularly, it frustrates proper co-ordination of the work of the bureaus and shore activities, which co-ordination is essential for the continued development of superior naval weapons and for economical control of highly expensive programs.
It was disclosed, for example, that responsibilities for the administration of shore activities are often so fragmented that it is difficult to determine precisely who is responsible for performance. The typical shore activity is under a single bureau for the purpose of business management, but is subject to technical direction by each of the other bureaus, and to the military command of CNO exercised through the commandants of the naval districts.
Among the planned improvements, we will remove these ambiguities by clarifying executive responsibility for performance, and by grouping bureaus and shore activities more coherently for management purposes. The responsibilities of the Chief of Naval Operations will be expanded. The many shore activities which directly support naval operations and which frequently are under the management and financial responsibility of the bureaus will be transferred to the operating forces of the Navy, under CNO’s command. In addition, he will assume complete responsibility for both the qualitative and quantitative aspects of the Navy’s manpower requirements. The Bureau of Naval Personnel will continue to report to the Secretary of the Navy as the manager of resources for naval manpower, having the responsibility to administer the programs for filling the personnel needs so determined. Thus, the executive responsibility for and authority over functions and shore activities which are essential to effective operational support of the naval forces will be concentrated in the Chief of Naval Operations.
A Fleet Activities Command, reporting to CNO, will be established. It will provide the means for correcting many of the problems which fragmented responsibilities now generate. At the local level, complexes of activities which furnish direct fleet support will be consolidated into naval operating bases, each under the command of the senior officer who will report to and be directed by the Fleet Activities Command. The commander, naval operating base, will also have the responsibility for the military administration of all shore activities within the Base including those which are not a part of the operating forces of the Navy. Naval district boundaries will not be altered, nor will the naval district commandant be eliminated as such. For maximum co-ordination and utilization of headquarters, however, the commandants of the naval districts will also be the operating base commanders of the respective bases within which the naval district headquarters are located.
As noted before, the need for a positive approach to management of the support function dominated the conclusions of this review. In general, the planned improvements will consolidate the total material support effort into a cohesive management body as the Naval Material Support Establishment, under the command of the Chief of Naval Material. This will provide a single responsible executive for the task of developing and providing the weapon systems and other material support required by the operating forces of the Navy, as determined by the Chief of Naval Operations and the Commandant of the Marine Corps.
In the composition of the Naval Material Support Establishment, the Chief of Naval Material will supervise the work of the Bureau of Naval Weapons, the Bureau of Ships, the Bureau of Yards and Docks, the Bureau of Supplies and Accounts, and the related technical and industrial shore activities. He will have complete responsibility for and authority over the support programs of these organizations. They will in fact derive their respective responsibilities from the broadened responsibilities of the Chief of Naval Material, as approved by the Secretary of the Navy.
The broadened function of the Chief of Naval Material will pull together present divergent lines of executive control, and eliminate ambiguities in the co-ordination and direction of the work of the material bureaus. It will provide the means for overcoming many problems inherent in existing fragmented responsibilities for the administration of technical and industrial shore activities. Of particular significance, it will provide the means for effective supervision of the development of complex weapons systems and the utilization of resources in the total material effort.
The Chief of Naval Personnel will remain in his present relationship to the Secretary for providing the Navy’s military manpower requirements. Similarly, the Chief of the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery will continue to report to the Secretary as the Department’s executive for medical support.
Effective management of shore activities has been frustrated in the maintenance aspect also. Responsibility for operation and maintenance of facilities of shore activities has been assigned to bureaus on the basis of primary interest in the activity. With ten bureaus and offices managing activities, and the Bureau of Yards and Docks charged with technical direction of facilities maintenance, there has been a gradual deterioration of facilities which hampers support of the operating forces. As an improvement measure, responsibility for maintenance of facilities and operation of utilities at Navy shore activities and complexes is being consolidated in the Bureau of Yards and Docks.
The important management function of planning and programming will be reconstituted so as to provide more active and authoritative co-ordination and direction within the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations. In addition, there will be established an office under the Secretary of the Navy to provide him with an increased capability for appraising the adequacy of programs and the effectiveness and economy with which they are executed. Improved planning and programming, and the strengthened Chief of Naval Material, will provide a framework for substantial improvement in weapons system management.
With other recommendations for the improvement of management processes, these measures will accomplish adjustments made possible by the adaptability of the Department’s bilinear organization and needed to bring its management to the level required by the progress of and demands on the Navy and Marine Corps.
My goal as the Department’s manager is inseparable from that of every other person and every component in it—the finest, strongest, most modern Navy and Marine Corps, manned by superior personnel who are loyal, motivated, and dedicated. My personal management philosophy for achieving this is relatively simple. I believe in positive centralized direction, decentralized execution, common doctrine, and management by exception. But I have deep faith in individualism. A person’s motivation is strong when his talents are recognized, he is encouraged to use them, and he is recognized for a good performance. Conversely, he is frustrated when misplaced, when his talents are wasted, or when recognition centers on his mistakes rather than his accomplishments.
In this vein, I believe that, as a basic principle of good management, there must be a positive, accountable leader for each substantive organization who will set clean-cut objectives and provide a clear path for those under him. Without an effective leader there can be no effective followers.
I believe that successful management of a large and dynamic organization must rely on these principles, and on continuous surveillance to adjust management processes when needed in accordance with these principles. Support of the modern Navy and Marine Corps must fully complement and respond to their progress in the science of war and be equally well-managed. This is the Department’s management challenge today, and we are meeting it squarely.
Secretary of the Navy