l Aw-shucks = 15 Attaboys?

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In the past few years, I have heard this equation expressed more and more frequently in nearly every venue of Navy life from the fleet to the Penta­gon. But it is a new development in my Navy, which seemed to me in my destroyer-days youth to be a place that fostered innovation. We were short­handed, underfunded, and usually oper­ating equipment left over from World War II. Innovation was a simple re­quirement to make the ship operate.

We did not always go by the book, and in many cases we obtained our suc­cesses outside the system. I recall all sorts of incidents in which individual risk-taking was encouraged by an atti-

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tude of “Why not try it? It might work!” The action that attitude fostered was the antithesis of the 1 AS = 15 ABs formula. You tried things, and you were judged on the basis of your successes. My bosses tolerated my mis­takes because I balanced my foul-ups with real improvements in the system.

It was like the way football manage­ment evaluates professional quarter­backs—on their touchdown to intercep­tion rates. Can you imagine how much passing would result if the quarterbacks believed their bosses subscribed to a 1:15 ratio? Can you imagine how few wins their teams would have?

This is the box we have painted our­selves into. We discourage innovation by pronouncing that failure harms a career more than success helps it. This flies in the face of all the recent man­agement literature documenting that successful businesses actively promote innovation in their work forces, reward it handsomely, and recognize that inno­vation is never error-free. One com­pany even provides a tongue-in-cheek prize for the “turkey of the week” to communicate that management will tol­erate an innovator’s failures as the price of his success.

What happens to a Navy that dis­courages innovation? It gradually drifts into sycophancy, with junior officers seldom challenging those in power with new or revolutionary concepts; we start viewing command at sea as a “high- risk” undertaking that should be post­poned until we are senior enough to have a “safer” ship, one less risky to the career because subordinates are more experienced; and we begin to be­lieve that serving as someone else’s executive assistant is preferable to holding authoritative positions of our own in which our ideas will be chal­lenged in the crucible of discussion and negotiation. In this environment, junior officers perceive that their commanding officers are “running scared.” The JOs

are reluctant to delegate authority o^f act without checking with their super¹ ors. A Navy that discourages innova­tion in peacetime is unlikely to find ¹ in combat, when it is often the key ¹⁰ victory. Will a 1:15 man try a new I³ tic in the face of the enemy, when expects to get a new ship if he fails using the “book” but a court-martin^ he fails using something new—even the odds favor the innovative tactic.

I realize that this is overstating the case, and that there are exceptional si uations and jobs in which “zero de­fects” is an absolute requirement cannot compromise safety until the shooting starts, and then only to the extent required to succeed. But we should not elevate these exceptions¹ a rule of life for our young officers- We must allow them to make mistah®_s One element of intelligent command to give our subordinates enough room to fail, but not enough to endanger

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the

ship, their jobs, or their careers, ^e need to encourage them to try new ideas, to support them when they f^al ’ and to reward them for innovation when they succeed.

If the Navy is to continue dealing effectively with rapid changes in ^teC nology and international politics, ^we^_ef need the kind of innovation I remem from those old destroyers—demand accountability for mistakes, to be su ^ but weigh an officer’s mistakes ag^al^ his or her successes and new ideas. • well. Let’s try for the pro quaiterb®^c formula: 1:1 breaks even. Because have to make mistakes to do anyth¹¹¹® People make mistakes, rocks don t­Action makes mistakes, inaction doesn’t. And organisms and organ>^za tions that don’t adapt innovatively new environments inevitably fail ^t0 vive.

Captain Bonds’s final assignment before his

ment earlier this year was with the Center

Naval Warfare Studies at the Naval War

for

Co lleg^c*

Proceedings / October