The chief engineer had come two decks and three levels up to my divisional office as a courtesy before sending one of my sailors to a discipline review board, executive officer’s inquiry, and, ultimately, captain’s mast. He handed me pages and pages of checks on damage control equipment—fire extinguishers and other gear critical to saving the ship and her crew in an emergency—that were electronically signed as completed. Two senior engineering department leaders had personally walked all the equipment in question, checking to see if a mis-serialization, gap in training, or some other honest misunderstanding could account for the errors. They could not. More than 100 checks had been marked done by a sailor whose work I had trusted for more than a year. The sailor admitted straightaway to “gundecking”—knowingly signing for maintenance he had not completed. Now, every piece of maintenance he had ever signed for as our division’s damage control petty officer (DCPO) was in question. It would all have to be redone, a burden that would fall to other sailors. My sailor would have to answer at captain’s mast.
Surface warfare division officers are told to take full responsibility for themselves, their watch stations, and their divisions. Admiral Hyman G. Rickover is frequently quoted as saying: “If responsibility is rightfully yours, no evasion, or ignorance, no passing the blame, can shift the burden to someone else. Unless you can point your finger at the man who is responsible when something goes wrong, then you never really had anyone responsible.” Reading Admiral Rickover’s comment—through the lens of full responsibility—implies that “pointing the finger” at someone else is to eschew the responsibility of leadership. When our senior leaders fail, we must ask ourselves how we could have better supported them; when our subordinates fail, we must ask ourselves how we could have better supported those sailors. However, when we earned our commissions, we were trained to provide “no excuses.”
My sailor—who I had selected to represent my division as a DCPO—had failed. I asked myself what more I could have done. I had to admit that I also had failed—as a leader. My sailor previously had come to me to discuss two problems he was experiencing. He felt overwhelmed by his divisional maintenance and damage control responsibilities and by his position on flight quarters, which often kept him up throughout the night.
At the time of his mast, he had been holding the DCPO collateral duty—in addition to his normal workload—six months past his anticipated relief date. I failed to ensure a DCPO was identified and trained to relieve this sailor on time. The sailor in question had taken the initiative to identify his own duty relief and ensure his relief finished the requisite training. But I had not pushed for a complete turnover; instead, I had allowed a partial turnover to facilitate the sailors dividing the watch and splitting the imposition on their rest time.
Failing to fully resolve the sailor’s concerns about his workload and not ensuring a timely turnover of this DCPO collateral duty contributed to his mistakes. How could I have missed gundecking to this level—was I naïve? If I missed this, what else had I missed? I took these doubts about the extent of my personal responsibility with me into the executive officer’s inquiry and captain’s mast.
Trust, But Verify
While leaders are supposed to have both character and competence, first-tour surface warfare division officers arrive to their ships with no experience. Recent programs such as the Basic Division Officer Course and Officer of the Deck Phase 1 enable new ensigns to stand watch on the bridge right away for on-the-job training. Given the range of divisions and associated responsibilities, as well as the frequency with which new division officers are shuffled, it is not realistic to train most division officers for the specific roles they will assume. Like my predecessor, I arrived to a division without a chief. Unlike the department’s two limited duty officers (LDOs), who both gave me significant mentorship, I would never be a subject-matter expert on the maintenance for which I was responsible. Even they could not be experts on all the equipment the division touched.
As weeks and months passed and I grew into the division officer role, I learned to lean on the experience and knowledge of junior sailors. Every week when we reviewed the current ship’s maintenance project, I relied on them to give me accurate job status updates, an honest assessment of their capabilities to make repairs, and a realistic timeline for repairs. When I reviewed SKED—the Navy’s maintenance scheduling software—before sending sailors home for the week, I trusted that their signature on a maintenance action or an evolution checklist meant it was complete. The LDOs helped me learn which questions to ask, when to push for more information or a reassessment, and what processes to use to get the technicians what they needed. I learned to brief our equipment and what information the chain of command wanted for exercises and inspections, functioning as a bridge between the technicians and the ship’s senior leaders.
Initially, I depended on the sailors’ knowledge and experience because I did not know the equipment; with time, seeing their talent and work ethic, learning what mattered to them and what they hoped for their futures, I grew to trust in our team.
“Trust, but verify” is a common adage in our profession. Probing further and asking questions, conducting spot checks and inspections, and walking spaces are all means by which junior officers verify; however, for large divisions with multiple work centers, it is impossible to check everything, and trust and delegation are required to accomplish long worklists and manage equipment and programs. Moreover, trust and delegation enable the best people for the job to take ownership of the task and benefit from subject-matter experts who can carry out tasks better than a leader who micromanages. Not every sailor will live up to that trust, but, ultimately, trust remains at the core of our work as division officers.
Point the Finger?
I stood before the captain at mast and told him that I set my sailor up for failure and was therefore responsible for his behavior and the effect his gundecking had on the ship. However, I was wrong to claim responsibility. My sailor was responsible for his actions, and his leaders were responsible for holding him accountable to deter other sailors from making the same bad decisions. Here was the limit of my personal responsibility and the beginning of my sailor’s.
The distinction between individual autonomy and collective responsibility in the military environment is a fine line. We are supposed to hold each other accountable. For the chain of command, it can be difficult to distinguish between a sailor’s autonomy to deviate from standards and the responsibility of leaders to ensure standards are met and followed. Returning to Admiral Rickover’s quote, responsibility for that maintenance fell to the sailor, especially once he put his signature to it; by taking that sailor to mast, leaders could and did point the finger at him.
For some infractions, the action of an individual could result in a captain’s removal from command. For others, the action of a single individual results in a quiet administrative separation. Two key lessons emerge for leaders, especially midlevel leaders. The first is to make and enforce decisions at the correct level, bringing concerns to the appropriate person. That could be a work center supervisor or the department head who forwards the case to the captain.
The second is that an individual’s deviation from standard is not necessarily reflective of the whole group. A division reflects the division officer, just as a crew reflects the commanding officer. Each individual is part of that collective, but each individual retains the autonomy to stand alone. It is when the individual alone deviates from standards that full responsibility for leaders constitutes holding that sailor accountable. When deviation is characteristic of a group, full responsibility for leaders means holding ourselves accountable. An individual’s autonomy to make decisions is a strength, as it allows subordinates to stand up when an order is unlawful, or to do the right thing against peer pressure from the group. That autonomy is integral to personal responsibility.
Take Responsibility Without Undermining Accountability
The sailor who violated my trust and gundecked maintenance checks lost his position of trust. He also the autonomy that goes with the level of responsibility of a petty officer. I had to come to terms with the risks and rewards of trust and autonomy. These attributes are the cornerstones of a successful team, one in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
The limit of personal responsibility for leaders is more nebulous. Lawyers have argued this in famous cases such as Nuremberg and My Lai. Psychologists study organizational climates and personal influence. Philosophers contemplate free will. Junior officers are left to question themselves. Embracing the inherent discomfort of the ambiguity of personal responsibility for us as leaders is itself a form of holding ourselves accountable.
Learning from one’s failures without undermining individual accountability is an important lesson for all young officers. We must continually contemplate how we can better serve, and how can we better lead.