Management seems to have become a dirty word, and over the past several decades the concept has been viewed with a certain amount of contempt. While there is no doubt that solid leadership significantly impacts organizational effectiveness, it seems the Navy has forgotten that management competence also impacts warfighting readiness.
Volumes have been published on leadership, and Department of Defense senior leaders are consistently reinforcing the development of competent leaders. But perhaps our efforts to reinvigorate strong, decisive leaders have allowed our management competence to erode. Our military and civilian workforces perform management functions daily, but they do not or cannot realize the broader context of how management functions and processes work together to meet objectives. As a result, our overall management competence is greatly diminished.
The indicators are everywhere. Simply query front-line supervisors (first class petty officers, chiefs [CPOs], or junior officers) and ask if they view themselves as leaders or managers. More often than not, they will respond that they are leaders or that they “lead people and manage programs.” Visionary mother of naval information technology Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, however, echoes opinions I have heard from commanding officers who feel that “they do not pay chiefs to be technical experts and managers, rather, they rely on them primarily for their leadership.” Although well-intentioned, these commanding officers fail to consider the potential impacts the ignorance and atrophy of managerial skills among front-line supervisors can have on material and personnel warfighting readiness.
Deeper discussions with many leaders will likely reveal a lack of knowledge of basic managerial functions—planning, organizing, directing, and controlling. That is because a large portion of our officer and enlisted leadership development curriculum is focused on character and programs aimed at preventing destructive behaviors, and fails to sufficiently educate on management fundamentals and their application.
Furthermore, Board of Inspection and Survey (INSURV) trends, shipyard package growth work, and deployment scheduling delays because of maintenance phase rework or extensions, as well as maintenance mismanagement observed during type-commander sponsored inspections, indicate declining management competence in all levels of the Navy.
So why has this deemphasis on management acumen occurred? Perhaps the rejection of the Total Quality Management (TQM) initiative in the eighties was one influencer. Senior leaders explored applying industrial and collegiate approaches that they honestly felt could translate to military settings, but they appear to have failed to fully communicate the “why” or to develop the organizational buy-in needed. This could have yielded a rejection by the operational warfighters in the fleet who then deemphasized those approaches when they became senior leaders.
This cultural resistance to well-intentioned efforts to introduce industry or academic approaches into our Navy (Total Quality Leadership, TQM, adaptive leadership, personality indicators, etc.) further erodes our management reputation. Furthermore, we have made deliberate choices to outsource maintenance management functions from our CPO mess to contractors.
In addition, our reliance on modern email communication has an impact. Too often daily work assignments are reprioritized or reactively driven from the tasking received in our electronic
in-boxes. Regardless, use and application of the word management has declined to a point where it is rarely spoken or evaluated. If we do not turn around this trend, we risk cementing an already developing culture of a short-term, reaction-based approach to mission readiness.
Few would argue that a primary role of our enlisted force is to manage the material readiness of warfighting platforms, making it essential to develop high levels of both management and leadership competence in our force. A reconciliation of these complementary and interrelated skills is necessary for the Navy of the 21st century.
Leadership provides the influence needed to develop commitment to objectives, ensure compliance with organizational standards, or overcome resistance to organizational effort or implementing change. Why have we failed to emphasize the roles of and relationship between leadership and management?
Leadership capability is important, but we must possess strong management skills as well. Our flag staffs fulfill (or should be fulfilling) the management functions of planning, organizing, directing, and controlling the processes and resources that generate and develop readiness. Our executive officers are responsible for the management of key material and personnel readiness programs, including maintenance and material management (3M), damage control, personnel distribution, and training. Chiefs and their division officers spend the majority of their days managing personnel manning, training, qualifications, preliminary design reviews, maintenance, and special projects. In addition, the broader CPO mess is expected to actively collaborate to manage significant command milestones and objectives. These include INSURV, 3M, the Operational Reactor Safeguard Examination, Aviation Maintenance Inspections, and other certification tools that certify a unit’s warfighting readiness.
Furthermore, a strong, respected leader with poor management skills can have detrimental impacts on divisional climate and mission readiness. Leaders who cannot plan, organize, direct, or control, risk frustrating their sailors, which can impact personal behaviors in ways that increase the probability of destructive behaviors, adversely impact retention/attrition, and negatively affect the unit’s warfighting readiness and climate.
There are several things we can do to increase our management competence. First, with the disestablishment of the Center for Personnel and Professional Development and realignment of our leadership development continuum to the Naval War College, we should use this opportunity to reestablish and expand the continuum of management competency development. The Leadership Development Continuum Council should be renamed the Leadership and Management Development Continuum Council (LMDCC), and it should ensure that a curriculum is developed to educate young officers and petty officers on basic management functions, skills, and tools. Curricula for mid-grade officers, senior petty officers, and chiefs should introduce them to the finer aspects of technical management and more advanced management theory such as root-cause analysis and project management. Senior officers and senior enlisted management education should incorporate topics of organizational management theory and structures, processes such as budgeting and manpower, and the management tools to support those processes. This council should seek to leverage lessons learned from the Naval Nuclear Power Program which recently developed a course for leading CPOs, engineering department master chiefs, and non-nuclear leading CPOs to improve technical management skills.
Second, we should review the extent to which our officer and enlisted evaluations and selection and promotion boards are considering, incentivizing, and rewarding management competence. Enlisted board precepts should be shaped to strongly weight management skill. Enlisted evaluations, which are currently under review, should incorporate management competencies and skills in addition to the leadership traits we currently use to evaluate the potential for advancement. Selection boards and evaluations serve as key influencers of fleet CPO mess behavior, so we need to leverage these processes to reemphasize technical management expertise within our Navy-wide CPO mess.
Finally, we should take inventory of the importance we place on management competence during our discussions with wardrooms and chiefs’ messes. Management needs to become a common part of our vernacular. Just as we do with demonstrated leadership competence, we should look for opportunities to recognize and reward those who demonstrate strong management skills. Instead of diminishing the expectation that our people possess high levels of management skills, we must start to expect it, demand it, and better explain how management skills achieve organizational objectives.
Years ago, the Navy defined effective leadership as the right balance of personal example, effective management principles, moral responsibility, and inspirational efforts. This definition still holds true, and the Navy should invest as much in management skill development as it does in naval leadership. Although the roles of leadership and management can and will continue to be debated, we must ensure management is considered an inherent and necessary skill set for leaders at all levels in the chain of command.
Management competence in our Navy reduces workplace stress, improves personnel morale, and enables our warfighting and personnel readiness. It ensures successful execution of all phases of the fleet’s Operational Fleet Response Plan and improves self-sufficiency in our capability to conduct emergent or casualty repairs at sea in high-end warfighting scenarios. Just as we are reemphasizing the need to reassert our sea control capability, it is also time to reestablish the value we place on management competency.