Redefine Semper Paratus

Then-Commandant of the Coast Guard Admiral James Loy in 1999 delivered remarks titled, “The Curse of Semper Paratus.”¹ The Coast Guard’s motto means “Always Ready” and often is synonymous with saying yes and doing more with less. Still relevant today, Admiral Loy’s remarks illustrate the service’s perennial overarching paradox: The motto that defines the organization and instills pride in its members also is a curse because it stretches limited resources ever thinner.

The Coast Guard’s sometimes unhealthy and unproductive cultural drive to do more with less was brought home during my earliest days in the service. After spending all day fabricating a temporary fix for a potable water station, I was chastised by a senior petty officer, “What the [explicative] are you doing?” As an E-3 fresh out of boot camp, I glanced up from my botched handiwork with gobs of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipe cement on my hands. Getting playfully called out by a senior petty officer was the final straw.

The total weight of disillusionment sank in; my eyes were as leaky as the poor patch job. I explained to the petty officer standing over me that I had watched YouTube videos to teach myself how to fix this potable water station, and it was not going well. This task had been at the top of my shop’s whiteboard to-do list for weeks. He asked why I did not seek help. I shrugged, not wanting to tell him about my jaded supervisors, who often tasked me with “milling about smartly” because we were usually waiting on parts to accomplish assigned tasks. He sighed, laughed, and said, “Sometimes, you have to let the system fail, kid.” I did not understand what he meant, but I did not like it. The advice countered my boot camp indoctrination to embrace my role and the Coast Guard.

I felt stuck. I was unskilled but highly motivated; I only needed on-the-job training. My supervisors, however, were highly skilled but unmotivated to train. In time, I understood how an organizational identity crisis can be contagious without strong deckplate leaders. Today, leaders at every level must redefine and embody Semper Paratus for the Coast Guard to reach its full potential.

Semper Paradox

Our service remains haunted by the curse Admiral Loy emphasized some 24 years ago, even as it is at peak demand domestically and globally. The Coast Guard released a restructuring plan titled “AY24 Force Alignment Initiative” to address the workforce shortage and an aging fleet.² Under this plan, the Coast Guard will decommission or lay up ten cutters and suspend operations at dozens of stations. “The Curse of Semper Paratus” and the “AY24 Force Alignment Initiative” connect systemic issues woven into the service, which is arguably in crisis as it evolves from top to bottom to meet tomorrow’s demands.

Present-day Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Linda Fagan is promoting honest conversations about problems such as the “curse.” These conversations reconcile the past and create a vision for the future. After decades of saying yes to more missions and doing more with less, the organization is reevaluating what it means to live up to its motto through unprecedented actions, such as the force alignment initiative.

Leaders at or near the deckplates are just as important to solving the Coast Guard’s problems. Initiatives and ideas disseminated from the organization’s top can take root only if leaders at every level cultivate them. Trite but true, every crisis holds opportunity; that includes the Coast Guard’s present identity crisis. The service is evolving rapidly to meet the demands of tomorrow, presenting a real opportunity for junior leaders to rise to the occasion and reinvigorate the service.

Prospective junior officers, cadets, and officer candidates get evaluated on their problem-solving skills and ability to achieve results with limited resources. At boot camp, recruits are pushed to their limits and expected to keep pushing. Above all, at every point in every accession program, the Coast Guard’s motto is drilled into prospective service members as a nonnegotiable term of employment. In a bubble, the Coast Guard accession programs do a fantastic job of shaping always-ready service members and leaders. Academy and Officer Candidate School graduates leave New London with pride and a repertoire of leadership skills to meet the mission. Recruits leave bootcamp at Cape May with a can-do attitude. Nearly everyone who joins the officer or enlisted corps goes to their first unit with a sense of greater purpose.

Immeasurable potential, however, goes down the drain without solid leaders to uphold the motto. Disillusionment is the unintended result of a strong indoctrination program with no follow up. With true blue leaders at the deckplates, the service can continue to foster buy-in and maintain momentum in junior members.

For junior members to thrive, emotionally intelligent leaders must address the fact that the motto, when degenerated, results in burnout. Many service members feel perpetually weary from sailing shorthanded or making do with scarce resources for years. In addition, leaders must inspire service members who may be jaded or experiencing cognitive dissonance after hearing conflicting narratives. The “do more with less” mentality, occasionally results in accepting unnecessary risk to get a job done. In time, driven by burnout and reinforced by mishaps, the same narrative defaulted to “let the system fail to drive change.” This degenerated interpretation of the motto and resigned attitudes precipitate learned helplessness, even in some junior members, thereby canceling the nonnegotiable Semper Paratus term of employment instilled during accession programs.

Redefine the Motto

The Coast Guard must redefine and hold fast to the motto to counter disillusionment, burnout, and learned helplessness. As the service evolves, leaders at every level must reconcile themes of yesterday’s organizational identity with today’s and create a clear vision for tomorrow. The message must align with the organization’s top leaders, but on a different scale. Leaders must exercise discernment. They must sift through conflicting narratives—separating the good from the bad and making sense of it all for others.

For example, accepting unnecessary risks to get a job done is ill-advised and unacceptable in today’s Coast Guard. It needs to be clear that is not what Semper Paratus means anymore. Having grit and a spunky attitude is still Semper Paratus. Conversely, the “let the system fail” expression is sometimes an excuse to not try—that is not Semper P. Raising fundamental questions about organizational efficiency or framing risk mitigation, however, is very Semper P. Rather than encouraging risk-taking to accomplish a task at any cost or using “system failure” to prove a point, a true leader at every level decides when it is acceptable to push risk and other issues up after doing everything reasonably possible within their control to be Semper Paratus.

In the past six years, a lot has changed for me. Sadly, I no longer work with PVC cement, though I occasionally hear the same advice: “Sometimes, you have to let the system fail, Ma’am.”

Recently, my chiefs and I were working through another Semper Paratus paradox involving a piece of potable water equipment, no less. A symptom of the aging fleet, the potable water pump on a nearby ship had died days before a scheduled patrol. Supply chain issues hindered a new pump from arriving to the ship in time, so my ship gave away ours. I agreed to wait for the new one because we were in a dockside period. It took much longer than expected for my ship to get underway because there were extended delays in the pump’s delivery, so the crew could not train as scheduled. When my ship finally received the new pump, I was stuck. We needed more qualified crew members to get underway, but we needed to get underway to qualify crew members. The final kicker was that with the workforce shortage, qualified personnel from other ships willing to get underway for extra days were as scarce as spare potable water pumps.

We communicated the situation up the chain of command. We made a plan to mitigate the risks of sailing shorthanded. Our chain of command supported us in shifting priorities to get people qualified, even though it meant taking a step back from other operations. Within our scope, we redefined Semper Paratus for that patrol.

Resolve the Paradox

As tempting as it may be to throw in the towel out of frustration about scarce resources, that type of thinking does not fit with the Coast Guard motto, even as we redefine it. On one hand, giving up is not an option; it will condemn the service, and scarce resources will continue to dwindle until the Coast Guard is irrelevant. On the other hand, being too prideful to establish reasonable boundaries for strain and risk-tolerance will perpetuate the “curse,” rendering the service dysfunctional forever.

Redefining Semper Paratus takes more than case-by-case problem-solving; it requires striking a balance between competing principles. The new meaning of the motto must incorporate tomorrow’s readiness as much as today’s so the organization can indeed be “always ready.” We must resolve the Semper Paratus paradoxes that inhibit potential in individuals, units, and the organization within our scope.

Everyone in the Coast Guard plays a part in building the service’s identity and upholding the motto. Still, leaders set the standard—drawing the workforce closer to stalwart service without crossing the line into dangerous territory that can eventually lead to burnout and system failure. How we, as leaders, redefine Semper Paratus today will determine whether the Coast Guard can achieve its critical missions tomorrow.