So You Want to Be a Speechwriter?
peechwriters need to know how writers most effectively function within the personal staff and with outside entities. The following thoughts are offered in the hope they may assist aspiring speechwriters. In the interest of simplicity and clarity, we have used the term “principal” instead of a specific person or title.New writers imagine themselves sitting down and working out a speech with the principal having provided overarching guidance well ahead of time, then reviewing several drafts and discussing the speech at length afterward. But the reality is there is never enough time for this. The principal is simply too busy.
Where Are You?
The first thing to do is determine where you are in your principal’s tour: the honeymoon, the agenda, or the conclusion phase. Everything is new in the honeymoon stage. The principal is fresh; each speech is a chance to tell the operating forces, industry, or Congress something different. The principal’s vision, personnel initiatives, and the value of the operational force are often topics for speeches at this point.
The agenda phase may start the first week of your principal’s tenure. Then every word is parsed, and subtleties matter. Force structure and current operations are in focus for remarks during this phase, and the principal’s comments are closely scrutinized for hints about coming programmatic decisions. They also may be used against him as times goes on.
In the conclusion phase, the principal is usually focused on the successes of the tour and on realizing the vision that began it. There is urgency to complete projects that were important but, for one reason or another, sidetracked. On balance, this is the most instructive and probably the most challenging year to serve as speechwriter. Here you will see and learn the most about how the staff works.
Learn—But Don’t Be—Your Boss
You need a solid history of what your principal has said in the past. Testimony is relatively easy to obtain. Speeches, articles, and award ceremonies are slightly more difficult, and talking points for a specific all-hands call can be the most problematic if meticulous records are not kept. Luckily, most principals’ speeches are available online or have been saved electronically.
One of your key challenges is the ability to capture your principal’s voice. Your first—and constant—object of study is the boss. You must subordinate your style and verbal skill. Learn to think and talk the way your principal would. That, more than any contacts or mentors, will be an invaluable education. You must listen very carefully, to what is said and what is left unsaid, because nuances make a difference.
Regardless of your location, you must be prepared to navigate a staff peopled with senior officials and those who want to be. To that end, you must know when to assert yourself as your principal’s representative and when to defer. The former should be the very rare exception. As one staff was warned: Be careful not to wear my stars, because one day you won’t wear my loop.
Principals tend to be creatures of habit; they use similar formats for most speeches. The kicker is to stay aware of how the words are playing, so you can see when change is needed. The only way to do that is to travel as much as possible with your principal. That may be a bit of a challenge on staffs that try hard to keep the travel party small.
Become a Rigorous Fact-Checker
Facts and not emotions must govern your principal’s remarks. Others may disagree with the conclusion or the logic, but the facts that undergird the argument must be unassailable. As the key fact-checker, you must personally ensure the veracity and accuracy of the speech.
Because the landscape changes daily, it’s a good idea to also have your remarks routinely fact-checked by numerous senior officers and officials. From time to time, people will want to edit or contribute to your writing. A challenge for the new speechwriter is to identify which of your principal’s advisers are in sync with her or his vision, and which are not.
In general, walking hard copies of speeches to those who should review them is preferable to emailing them. This lets you meet people and get a feel for what is on the minds of your principal’s staff, while also ensuring drafts are not forwarded on email.
You also need a good working relationship with your principal’s public-affairs officer, as the PAO will “own the message,” whatever it is. Senior public-affairs personnel occasionally need to weigh in, too, but their staff will address that issue.
Tread Carefully
Remember that your integrity and the appearance of impropriety reflect not only on you, but, more important, on your principal. Despite your proximity, none of the authority, responsibility, or accountability transfers to you. To that end, be gentle when calling senior officials and identifying yourself as your principal’s speechwriter. Never give the impression that you can influence that person’s opinion on anything.
At times it will appear that anyone and everyone who has ever worked for your principal wants something. Even though it’s your job to protect your boss, and you can say “perhaps” and “maybe” on speaking engagements and articles, remember that your principal alone says yes or no.
In the end, most senior officials tend to keep their own counsel and are some of the best poker players you will ever see. It is not uncommon for your principal to make a decision and then wait six to nine months for the personnel moves and budget documents to enact the decision. You may not know what is in the cards, but don’t get frustrated. If you do know exactly what is going on, remember that your principal’s trust in you is fundamental to your success.
Even though you may be junior in age and rank, you must be prepared to coordinate and, more important, deconflict remarks between multiple senior speakers at the same event. For example, if the President, a service chief, an ambassador, and a senior State Department official are all eulogizing an individual, it’s up to you to contact their writers or the speakers themselves and politely protect your principal’s equities while helping to shape each speaker’s remarks so they properly recognize the fallen without overlap.
Be prepared to offer constructive criticism and your perspective when you have an informed opinion and when you are asked. Tread carefully: You are talking to a very senior officer or government official who has plenty of other important things to think about. But if your principal asks for your opinion, you have an obligation to be politely honest.
What Are Your Qualifications and Desires?
Only you can answer questions about your perspective and goals. Here are some things you need to think about very carefully. Be honest with yourself.
• No matter how successful you have been previously, are you ready to try to think like your principal every day?
• Do you like working on every speech? You will be the only speechwriter on a staff with several people assigned to protocol, aide, and exec-assistant duties. They can cover for each other, but not for you.
• Do you enjoy having to hit a home run each time at bat? How will you react when you eventually strike out at the worst possible time?
• Are you willing to work in a position where everything that passes between you and your principal is forever private and confidential?
• Do you like a steady churn? The annual pace averages over 100 speeches and 4 published articles.
It’s Not Your Speech
It’s your principal’s speech, and that’s who wrote it. Modesty is not a virtue; it is an ironclad law. No school can prepare you for speechwriting. But you will learn a lot about yourself and what you want to accomplish in your career, as you progress through the nomination and application process. For background, good books include Chip Heath’s Made to Stick (Random House, 2007), Frank Luntz’s Words That Work (Hyperion, 2006), Peggy Noonan’s What I Saw at the Revolution (Random House, 2003) and On Speaking Well (William Morrow, 1999), and Steven Jobs’ Presentation Secrets (McGraw Hill, 2009).
And before your interview, be ready to write one to two speeches on current topics for your principal to present to civilian audiences. This shows how well you conduct research, as well as your ability to capture your principal’s voice and to speak clearly about military topics without using acronyms. Best of luck.
Captain O’Connor is the Deputy Commodore for Amphibious Squadron Eleven in Sasebo, Japan. He served as a speechwriter from 1999 to 2000.
Lieutenant Probasco is an instructor in political science at the U.S. Naval Academy. She served as a speechwriter from 2007 to 2010.
Mission-Level Engineering: Play by the New Rules
In the balance between manned and unmanned capabilities, the Department of the Navy is approaching what former Intel CEO Andy Grove called a strategic inflection point, meaning old ways of doing business no longer apply and new rules take over. It is too soon to pretend we have all the answers, but it’s fair to say we are beginning to understand where the operational trades should be made.
One change is that lead system integrator tasks are once again recognized as inherently governmental responsibilities involved in developing affordable, sustainable warfighting capabilities needed by the nation’s forces. This is why the Department of Defense and armed services recently initiated programs designed to cultivate and expand DOD’s acquisition workforce in a decisive push to restore its capacity to execute critical lead-system-integrator tasks.
These decisions were thoroughly justified, but consideration should be given to defining what an expanded federal acquisition workforce would actually do. This will become even more important now, in a more challenging fiscal environment that will put additional pressure on the existing workforce. What’s needed to cope with today’s strategic inflection point in manned and unmanned systems is a new set of rules, a shift in the current effort from platform- to mission-level engineering.
Today’s Challenge Is Different
Complex net-centric operational and technical environments make diversity and fragmentation across organizations and programs unavoidable. This condition demands new rules to ensure informed deliberation at every level on the trade spaces that these complex environments create.
Deliberate and detailed mission-level engineering can be the new rule set. It is not platform-centric; it should be indifferent to organizational lines that separate platforms and programs because it cuts across many mission areas and material solutions. In other words, it can deliver analytical insights supported by explicit technical details to supply decision makers with the data they need to make hard choices about technical requirements and cost-trade space.
DOD needs to regain ownership of that trade space. If we incorporate programmatic, platform, and mission-level performance factors supported by mission-based testing grounded in authoritative mission architectures, operational threads, and performance metrics, better options and opportunities for fielding capabilities at cost cannot help but emerge. In this context, realistic concepts of operations that evolve at the same rate as the technology, through close Fleet collaboration, can have a profoundly positive impact if the mission-level (versus system-level) experimentation is also backed by engineering rigor.
Admiral John C. Harvey Jr., Commander, Fleet Forces Command, routinely reminds the Navy engineering community of the obligation to deliver to the Fleet capabilities that are ready to perform to design specifications throughout their service life.1 Admiral Harvey is right. Those of us in the systems-engineering community must recognize the strategic inflection point and adapt our practices accordingly.
The Systems Engineer’s Job
Given the numbers of new manned and unmanned systems and platforms the Navy already has under development, the importance of understanding where these trades should occur cannot be overstated. New rounds of belt-tightening to impose greater austerity and streamline business processes are inevitable.2 In what could turn out to be the next “inter-war” period, the Navy must make better use of its resources to prepare for an uncertain future involving new kinds of crises and conflicts.
Mission-level engineering can give more confidence to leaders faced with tough choices in a fiscally constrained environment. It can help bring them to the point of decision by raising the critical questions: What is the most efficient mix of solutions to accomplish a mission? How will performance objectives affect life-cycle cost?
Getting the right answers to these questions necessitates the provision of far more cross-capability, cross-program engineering support during the formative stages in the acquisition process. These early phases drive costs, particularly in the coevolution of concepts and technology, as well as in the process of integrating operational, technical, training, and manpower requirements. Facilitating hard calls earlier in the development cycle can assist senior leaders to enforce discipline in the requirements process. It can deliver more affordable and sustainable capabilities that are in the condition in which the Fleet needs them. If executed along these lines, mission-level engineering can accomplish several important tasks:
• The systems-engineering process must help stakeholders and decision-makers challenge key assumptions in the early stages of operational requirements and the development of concepts of operations.
• Systems engineers must help identify the cross-system and multiple-domain implications of options and trades, including non-material solutions, for stakeholders and decision-makers as operational demands emerge or mature. If these implications are highlighted early, technical forecasting becomes more proactive and provides those who make the decisions with a better grasp of the warfighter’s true needs.
• Cross-domain engineering must provide better context to support more informed science and technology priorities, as well as determinations to transition the desired capability to a program of record.
• Mission-level engineering must throw into sharper relief tough trades in requirements, technology, cost, and risk. This will help reveal potential cost avoidance and savings by showing how non-recurring engineering can really be non-recurring, and how long-term manpower cost savings can be designed into systems by leveraging diverse mission-support solutions from across the enterprise.
Implementation Will Not Be Easy
Getting these things right is tough. But without improved mission-level insight as to how components, systems, and platforms can be better engineered and integrated to meet specific mission needs, the requirements process will likely remain challenged by under-informed decisions. Without mission-level engineering rigor, end-to-end performance parameters in specific missions typically will not be fully understood or efficiently met. In any constrained fiscal environment, these inefficiencies are not sustainable without significant loss of Fleet capability and capacity.
These points notwithstanding, if the restored acquisition workforce does not make fundamental changes in how it works with and across DOD and in what motivates that work, the structure of incentives will continue to drive it back toward platform-level engineering. In the end, DOD will fail to realize many of the efficiencies (both operational and fiscal) that are available in the technical, requirements, cost, and risk-trade space across the myriad platforms that support the missions of the Navy and Marine Corps.
We know the requirements process struggles to achieve stability. In part this is because during the formative stages of solution development that most drive costs, decision makers often have insufficient information to refute the demand for or the promise of new or more capability in the form of some new “silver bullet,” or, as we frequently call it, “unobtainium.” In practice, affordable capabilities that work today should triumph over the promise of a revolutionary new capability that is perpetually just over the horizon. The laws of physics should not be suspended during the early phases of solution development.
Mission-level engineering is a necessary precondition for raising Navy leadership’s expectations of the quality and timeliness of information available to support their determinations. Many among us remember how DOD allowed important systems-engineering competencies to atrophy while former senior leaders abdicated governmental functions to industry. Currently this trend is being reversed, but merely restoring the human-resources capital accounts without changing the employment of that capital may not be enough to change the eventual outcome.
A Cultural Change Is Essential
We must correct the pervasive stove-piped, tribal, service, and platform-centric organizational incentives and behaviors that contributed to decisions to outsource this work to private-sector integrators in the first place. Our workforce must be refocused on tasks that will produce meaningful change at the mission level. This should bring us a step closer to becoming a better customer if we are going to achieve the balanced and affordable force structure that meets the nation’s needs.
The application of mission-level engineering’s new set of rules should not be viewed in isolation from the larger strategic inflection point looming on the U.S. horizon. As today’s conflicts wane, the demand for sea power to protect the United States and its allies’ security interests is likely to increase—all the more so given the high probability of greater American reliance on air and naval power in an era of economic stringency.
It is essential that we start now. The nation’s public debt continues to rise at a relentless pace due to continued deficit spending.3 Mission-level engineering is one way to cope with this challenging new environment. The new rule set of mission-level engineering must be implemented with one eye on the budget and the other on a new strategic inflection point in U.S. national military strategy. We need a national-security culture that is dominated by air and sea power brought about by a well-balanced mix of manned and unmanned capabilities.
1. ADM J. C. Harvey Jr. Commander, Fleet Forces Command, Serial 006, “Transitioning New Capabilities to the Fleet,” July 2010. http://usfleetforces.blogspot.com/2010/07/transitioning-new-capabilities-to-fleet.html.
2. Nathan Hodge and Julian E. Barnes, “Fight Is Just Beginning over Cuts in Defense,” The Wall Street Journal, 22 November 2011. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203710704577052551746085544.html?KEYWORDS=NATHAN+HODGE-
3. David Stockman, “Four Deformations of the Apocalypse,” The New York Times, 31 July 2010, op-ed page, www.nytimes.com/2010/08/01/opinion/01stockman.html?pagewanted=all.
Captain Yurchak is an independent consultant and defense analyst who specializes in integrated analysis and solutions to complex government and defense challenges.
The Right Readiness—Right Now
After a number of attempts to kick-start a change in readiness reporting policy, the Department of Defense released Directive 7730.65 in June 2002, establishing the way forward for the Defense Readiness Reporting System-Strategic (DRRS-S), the military’s near real-time, Web-enabled, capabilities-based readiness reporting system. Similar to the requirements of Homeland Security Presidential Directive–8, this system allows for a capabilities-based preparedness system in which all services will speak a common language, at a common level, providing a far more detailed look into a unit’s readiness than we have enjoyed in the past.
As with many new and joint-service systems, there have been growing pains. But now that the Navy has implemented DRRS-N (its feeder system to DRRS-S) throughout our operational forces, this is the time to divest ourselves from legacy reporting systems and learn the new language of readiness.
Newfound Flexibility and Freedom
DRRS-N retains the ability to inform senior leadership of a unit’s ability to fight and win in major combat operations. Building on this basic requirement, DRRS-N permits the examination of specific mission-essential tasks (METs) within a unit’s mission-essential task list (METL) to identify units that have attained the appropriate level of readiness to perform a required specialized mission. This allows decision makers the flexibility to search for, locate, and task a unit that in the past may have fallen through the cracks due to a lack of refined readiness data or location in the interdeployment training cycle.
In the past, Fleet readiness reporters have used spreadsheets, secondary software programs, and message traffic to calculate and communicate their readiness and resource data. As we move forward, they will continue to input raw training figures through preexisting software programs known as authoritative data sources. But with the implementation of DRRS-N, readiness information now can flow through type-commander-approved matrices and calculations so data are calculated and displayed automatically, allowing the reporter to shed the burdensome requirements of spreadsheets and message traffic. To aid in its utility, DRRS-N is available in two forms: an ashore version, which hosts a valuable business-intelligence tool; and an afloat version embedded on each ship’s server, programmed for use in a low-bandwidth environment.
The Cornerstone
The accuracy and utility of a unit’s readiness data lie not only with the input source, calculations, and resultant data, but with the relevance of the metrics against which they are measured. The cornerstone of the DRRS-N readiness metric measurement is the METL, which is unique to each type of unit according to its specific capabilities and tasks. To ensure joint capability, each task in a unit’s METL is derived directly or in part from the Universal Joint Task List.
Improving on legacy systems, DRRS-N displays readiness data for each essential task in a unit’s METL. Never before has Navy leadership seen this level of granularity. MET data are then combined and calculated to provide readiness information for a unit’s capability areas (known in the Global Status of Resources and Training System as primary mission areas). Last, DRRS-N calculates a roll-up of readiness data specific to each unit’s personnel, equipment, supply, training, ordnance, and facilities, the PESTOF pillars.
The data provided by DRRS-N and displayed for each MET, capability area, and pillar are in the form of a figure of merit. On a scale of 0 to 100, 0 to 59 (colored red) is associated with “not ready”; 60 to 79 (yellow) signifies “qualified ready”; and 80 to 100 (green) means “ready.” Once the cells are populated with their figures of merit, the data are displayed in an intuitive dashboard format to provide an extremely detailed look into a unit’s readiness.
Some have argued that the most important metric in DRRS-N is the commanding officer’s subjective assessment. This evaluation is based not only on the command’s calculated data but on the inherent knowledge of the assets available and their ability to succeed at their assigned tasks.
In what is called his core assessment, the commander evaluates each MET and capability area, as well as the unit’s overall readiness. His choices are “Y” for ready, “Q” for qualified ready (ready but with risk), or “N” for not ready. While making these judgments, a commander can create a date-stamped statement when desired, or when required by instruction.
The Navy has implemented 100 percent of its operational forces onto DRRS-N. To get to this point, countless individuals from the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, U.S. Fleet Forces Command, and the individual type commands, both military and civilian, have worked tirelessly to produce this robust readiness reporting system. The Navy Readiness Reporting Enterprise, Enterprise Readiness Metric Teams, Cross Functional Teams, Type Commander Pillar Teams, and type series readiness matrix-building teams came together to produce a quantum leap forward in readiness reporting. But, as with many new and joint-service systems, there have been systemic difficulties in the development and implementation of the program.
Impediments
• Redundant reporting systems and requirements: Systems such as SORTS, TORIS, TMS, and the varied individualized requirements from the chain of command put an unnecessary burden on the readiness reporter. While it is impossible to create a one-size-fits-all system that satisfies the desires of each decision-maker up and down the chain of command, it is imperative that we examine what is being asked of our commanding officers. As leaders, we must take a holistic look at legacy reporting systems and their subsystems and requirements. We must eliminate or align these efforts wherever possible.
• Training: We must continue to get DRRS-N training teams in front of the right people at the right time. This effort has been ongoing since the inception of DRRS-N, with unimaginably small type-commander training teams traveling far and wide in an effort to get units up to speed. The delivery of DRRS-N doctrine, standard operating procedures, and training materials is good, but it’s not enough. The Fleet requires an increased presence of knowledgeable instructors available for classroom and one-on-one teaching, whenever and wherever needed.
• Global Status of Resources and Training System: To meet the requirement of Joint Staff readiness systems, the obligation to report Global Status of Resources and Training System information is a necessary evil that is not going away anytime soon. Although attempts have been made to auto-generate the data and meld the two systems, the mandate continues to burden the Navy readiness reporter and impede the potential of the DRRS family of programs. One of the maxims of the Lean Six Sigma philosophy is: “It’s difficult to make progress when you hold on to ideas of the past.” Until the requirement to report Global Status of Resources and Training System information is fully removed, military leaders will be reluctant to invest the necessary time and effort in learning the full utility of the DRRS program.
In creating DRRS-S, DOD has asked the services to take charge and carry out the plan. In accordance with Navy tradition, our leadership has taken the lead by creating DRRS-N. The capabilities of this new system far exceed that of legacy readiness reporting systems, and the Navy is working tirelessly to make the new system easier for the reporter to use. This, combined with the fact that the Navy has implemented DRRS-N in the operational Fleet, reinforces the reality that now is the time to divest ourselves from legacy reporting systems and learn the new language of readiness.