Run, hide, cover, and blame is our natural inclination when we miss the mark. A command’s success, however, requires teaching the opposite. Establishing a path to humility, deliberate character development, and a learning culture starts with embracing human fallibility. Leaders who address fallibility, starting with the check-in process, can help inculcate new team members into a culture willing to admit, face, and learn from mistakes.
A ship’s or unit’s combat effectiveness is measured by how the team performs as a whole. True excellence is reflected by the sum of its team members’ outstanding contributions and is undermined by an intractable focus on avoiding errors. The challenge is building a culture that accepts that mistakes are inevitable—not optional.
Set the Tone
To learn to tell the truth about our mistakes to ourselves first and then to everyone else requires character development. Admitting and recognizing when we make an error is important because all people learn, but it is not human nature to admit mistakes. The Navy comprises a variety of individuals, experience, and likely “that’s the way we’ve always done it” baggage, to the greenest recruits, ready to be molded or ready to prove they know more. Assimilating them into a culture of integrity and teaching them to admit their mistakes will be one of the most formidable challenges a leader faces.
Many sailors are driven, smart individuals who may not have dealt with much personal failure or adversity. Most of their lives likely have been all about them. Their focus has been on their grades, qualifications, performance, and curating and cultivating their personas and performance on social media. They are now part of a team. Their mistakes cannot be simply edited or deleted as they can on Facebook or Instagram. Sure, the Navy still recognizes individual performance and contributions, but how the team performs is what matters most. The number of individual achievement medals, admiral’s letters, or sailors of the quarter a ship produces, though powerful and useful carrots to foster individual excellence, means little in warfare.
Leaders can set the tone by looking sailors and officers in the eye at check-in and saying, “You and I are both fallible.” Tell them, “We are all fallible human beings. We all make mistakes, but here we are expected to own and learn from them.” Guiding, teaching, and molding new crew members into sailors and officers who are receptive to and solicit feedback is no easy task.
At the crossroads of trust are character and competency. At the beginning of the check-in process, help personnel recognize the important role both character and competency play in developing trust. Leaders should ask, “What does trust mean to you? What are the elements of trust? Why should people trust you? How do you gain the trust of your subordinates, peers, and superiors?” Make those coming on board wrestle with the answers.
Face Fallibility Head On
The ability to face and admit mistakes takes deliberate character development to overcome human nature. It is, however, necessary to build a team capable of growing from failure. When mistakes are made, they must be owned and reported. It takes effort to stamp out ego, pride, and fear of reprisal. Foster a level of humility that begets a willingness in subordinates and peers to face and admit mistakes, a desire to capture lessons learned, and a drive to make the organization better.
Every day, sailors and officers make thousands of decisions. The command plays a role in overcoming human fallibility by designing the context in which those decisions are made. Provide the time, tools (procedures), and training necessary to do the job correctly, minimize outside pressures, and build muscle memory for better decision-making in the future. In a world driven by metrics, the Navy is quick to define performance by competency alone. Much of a Navy leader’s time is spent on competency, mainly because it often is quantifiable: exam scores, qualification progress, level of knowledge interviews, or performance during monitored evolutions. This leaves little time to develop the trust component of character. If leaders are not deliberate, the time will be near zero.
Fallibility is like gravity. It is why people are prone to fail and fall, and why it takes effort to overcome. Leaders should be direct, look their subordinates in the eye and tell them they believe all people are fallible and will make mistakes. Express that perfection is not expected, but achieving a higher level of competency is. It is powerful to say, “I do not expect a zero-defect sailor or officer.” Once leaders drive home that it is all right to accept fallibility and that character plays a role in developing trust, they must make a commitment to their sailors. After setting the tone, commit to being deliberate about character development broadly.
Think Fast and Slow
A helpful mental model to illustrate instances in which fallibility can manifest in decision-making is found in Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow. The Nobel laureate explains decision-making using “fast-thinking” and “slow-thinking” models. Fast
thinking decisions are made with very little mental energy. They are based on training, repetition, and bias; for example, typing keystrokes on a computer. The typical answer to the question “Why did you do it?” for a fast-thinking decision is, “I wasn’t thinking.” Slow-thinking decisions, on the other hand, require deliberate mental effort, typically take longer, and cannot be indefinitely sustained because of the brain’s limited bandwidth.
Slow-thinking errors typically stem from a person’s ability to rationalize. When given 48 hours to conduct a maintenance item you know should take five working days, it takes mental effort to determine how to best proceed within the given constraints (decision space). This could result in finding an innovative way to achieve the objective, a request for more resources, or cutting corners. The ability to rationalize is where character comes into the equation.
Character development must strengthen the effortless, fast-thinking portions of decision-making. It must send the message, “Our success depends on your ability to admit—even when it is uncomfortable—when you messed up. We promise as a team to always look to ourselves and the ship first before we blame you for the outcome.” It is powerful for leaders to stress that root causes will always be evaluated and subordinates will be provided the time, tools (procedures), and training necessary to correct mistakes.
Fallibility also shows itself in slow-thinking, cognitive decision-making. There are three elements that can culminate in a bad decision: a situation that requires a person to make a decision (such as watchstanding or maintenance), pressure (both from the command and self-imposed), and the sailor or officer’s ability to rationalize potential lapses in character.
For instance, the Navy needs sailors on the watchbill or to perform maintenance, which is straightforward. The part leaders can be honest about is explaining that they cannot guarantee there will be no pressure. Leaders can attempt to mitigate it by ensuring they have enough time, the right tools (procedures), and training to perform as expected, but they cannot remove the pressure sailors put on themselves. There will always be internal or external pressure, but the ability to rationalize a poor decision can be a challenge for even the most experienced sailors.
The Navy must train its sailors to be forthright and honest. Positive character development is the most important outcome, even after poor decision-making. Leaders should tell their sailors, “We can get through it. I will put you back in the game. You will get back on watch. But if you hide it, lie, or fail to take appropriate responsibility, then we are on opposite sides of the table.” And then follow through. Actions speak louder than words. The Navy needs people who see mistakes not as threats to run from but challenges to run toward without fear of reprisal.
Shape the Decision Space
Leaders can help their personnel achieve the objective within an adequate margin to safety by working on their character and employing fast and slow thinking appropriately. When a mistake is made, be introspective, do not blame the individual, conduct root-cause analysis, and figure out what needs to be done to close the gap.
When personnel are given the ability to choose their own adventure, leaders cannot be mad when they choose the path that led to a mistake. The Navy designs E4s’ decision space with narrow boundaries to help them learn what good decisions look like. Leaders must provide enough freedom for personnel to make mistakes and learn. In the instances in which failure could result in grave consequences, there must be several layers of back-up or secondary, independent checks.
Check the Ego
Character development does not happen overnight. Tying the themes of fallibility and character development to the check-in process can keep them at the forefront. It forces a gut check each time a leader has the discussion.
Creating a culture in which sailors and officers feel like they can fail safely and bring mistakes forward requires buy-in from the wardroom and chiefs’ mess. It requires mentorship at all levels and likely a change in style for some. The message of fallibility is powerful and liberating for a crew. Instead of choosing to run, hide, cover, and blame, leaders must face the mistake, determine the root cause, learn from it, and try again. It requires leaders who are willing to demonstrate their own vulnerability daily; those who will check their egos at the hatch, admit their own mistakes, and tolerate fallibility in others. If leaders are deliberate and committed to such sound character-based decision making, the command culture will follow.
