By Captain John P. Cordle, USN (ret.) and K. Denise Rucker Krepp

Hard Truths. This article is a collaboration between two authors with very different experiences, in the hopes that some combination of their views – one as a former Commanding Officer and the other as a federal agency chief counsel with 30-plus years of Sexual Assault/Harassment (SASH) experience – will resonate and drive tough conversations among mid-grade leaders. The Department of Defense has received over 65,000 reports of sexual assault since 2010 and each of us has a role in holding individuals who commit sexual assault and sexual harassment accountable for past crimes and creating an environment where sexual assault and sexual harassment are not tolerated.

Part One

Denise: Nine years ago, I testified before the Congressionally mandated Response Systems to Adult Sexual Assault Crimes Panel. My 2014 testimony was based on my experiences as a Coast Guard JAG and Chief Counsel, US Maritime Administration (MARAD). I was invited to testify after writing a September 2013 article for Roll Call entitled “Female Military Personal Aren’t Whores.” I wrote the Roll Call essay after reading Washington Post articles about a USNA female student who was sexually assaulted. She was required to tell defense attorneys in court whether or not she felt like a whore, how she performed oral sex, and whether or not she wore underwear to a party. That line of questioning was demeaning, and offensive. I was appalled that not a single Department of Defense (DoD) leader expressed outrage, so I put pen to paper.

A few months after I wrote the article, I was invited to testify in a closed-door, no press allowed hearing. In my January 2014 testimony, I spoke about the sexual harassment I had seen as a young Coast Guard officer. I also told the panelists about the Inspector General investigation that I requested in 2011 after being notified of numerous sexual assaults occurring at sea and at the US Merchant Marine Academy. I was serving as the MARAD Chief Counsel at that time, and shortly after requesting the investigation I was directed to resign or be fired. The panelists asked if I was ever aware of an illegal order. “Yes,” I responded, “Secretary of Transportation LaHood told Deputy Secretary of Transportation Porcari to fire me because I had asked for the sexual assault investigation.” But retaliation is illegal, is it not? And yet…

John. Two years ago, I assisted a young officer in drafting an article in which she told her story of how the system had failed her personally and professionally as a victim and as a Sexual Assault Prevention Representative (SAPR) for a staff. She advocated for change, especially the idea that the investigation process should be separated from the chain of command. This proposal was widely panned by senior leaders, as such a change would undermine the “sanctity of command.” She finally withdrew the article, despite it being selected for publication, because it was simply too painful and too personal.

To her credit, the idea did go forward and (I believe) contributed to the conversations that led to major changes in the treatment of sexual harassment and sexual assault investigations. Then something important happened – the DoD 2021 Annual Report on Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment¹ revealed some very troubling data and findings, resulting in the Secretary of the Navy (SECNAV) directing an independent committee to produce a report entitled Hard Truths and A Duty to Change² which essential repeated almost everything in my friend’s prescient white paper. Unfortunately one year later, many leaders do not appear to have read these documents. This article is an attempt to bring these findings to a larger, more junior audience along with a deck plate leadership perspective. Their words are included verbatim for one reason – they are profound and hard-hitting, requiring no amplification. A photographic from the DoD report is shown here:

To bring this graphic closer to home, imagine you are in a room with 100 Sailors and Marines. You ask, “How many of you have been sexually harassed this year?” Twenty-nine raise their hands. “How many were sexually assaulted?” Nine raise their hands. Of these 38 people, you ask, “Keep your hand up if you were unsatisfied with the support you received?” Eighteen raise their hands. “Keep your hand up if you were retaliated against?” Nine hands stay in the air. The room falls silent, and everyone is looking at you. Look them in the eye. What do you say to them?

Common Themes: the following are provided verbatim (italicized portion) from the DoD report, followed by our respective comments.

1. Broken Trust – When it comes to sexual assault and harassment, the Independent Review Commission (IRC) concluded that there is a wide chasm between what senior leaders believe is happening under their commands, and what junior enlisted Service members actually experience. This is true across the enterprise. As a result, trust has been broken between commanders and the Service members under their charge and care.

John: Those are incredibly strong and damning words. They tell us what many junior personnel routinely tell us via Command Climate and other surveys, and told Task Force One Navy. That statement should drive leaders at all levels to take a long look in the mirror – and do something about it. More on that later.

Denise: In 2009, MARAD surveyed students at the US Merchant Marine Academy about sexual harassment and assault. We learned that students arrived at the school trusting school leaders to properly address sexual assault allegations. Per the survey results, the students did not have that same level of trust by the time they became seniors. Something clearly happened in three years to break their trust.

I thought back to that lack of trust when notified in 2010 of a possible sexual assault at Kings Point. I asked to talk with the student and the student declined to talk with me, the agency chief counsel, because the student did not trust the agency to properly address the crime.

I spoke about the lack of trust when I testified twice in 2014 before the Congressionally mandated Response Systems to Adult Sexual Assault Crimes Panel and again in 2019 at a US Commission on Civil Rights hearing about sexual assault in the federal government. The gist of my testimony was that the lack of trust in the system – and its leaders–creates a toxic environment that is harmful to victims. To read the same thing in 2021 was, to say the least, disheartening, and deeply disappointing.

2. Leadership is Paramount – Preventing, responding to, and supporting Service members who are the victims of demeaning language, sexual harassment, and sexual assault is a command responsibility. Commanders must be held accountable for their unit climates and for their action—or inaction—when it comes to protecting their people.

John: This is a stark reminder that this is not a SECNAV or Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) issue. This is directed at the unit commander, the Command Master Chief, even the Department Head, Division Officer, and Leading Chief Petty Officer. Think back over the past year. Have you repeated, instigated, or ignored an off-color joke, a sexist or racist remark directed at one peer by another, or even worse, from a supervisor at a subordinate? Have you engaged your junior personnel about the work environment they face each day? Have you been guilty of looking away when your best performers step over the line? If so, look in the mirror, ask yourself “am I doing enough?” and act.

Denise: Last fall, I gave a SASH lecture at the U.S. Naval War College. I shared how sexual assault is a leadership issue, one that leaders have to address head on and not ignore. Ignoring SASH creates a toxic environment, one that encourages other negative – and sometime illegal – behavior. During my visit, U.S. Naval War College professors shared that sexual harassment and sexual assault are becoming common topics in class and students are advocating for more discussion on the issue. Students want to talk about the problem because they want to be ready to address it when they take command. This was actually quite encouraging to hear – their proactive requests for help should be encouraged.

3. The Military Justice System is Not Equipped to Properly Respond to Special Victim Crimes
Special victim crimes disproportionately impact certain victims because of who they are, or what motivated the crime. These crimes are often interpersonal in nature, in which the victim and the alleged offender may have a pre-existing relationship or acquaintance. Special victims—particularly survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence—deserve all critical decisions about their case to be made by a highly trained special victim prosecutor who is independent from the chain of command.

John: This finding is a slap in the face of the “Big Navy” as reflected in the 2021 DoD report where only 60 percent of those reporting an incident were satisfied with the way it was handled. Another damning statement—and percentage. To their credit, SECNAV has made drastic changes in policy and process, including to separate the investigative process from the chain of command, to not prosecute the alleged victim for minor offenses, and to fund a cadre of investigators and counselors to improve the system. Is that enough? Not yet, but these are the largest steps in decades and a credit to the current leadership. At the unit level leaders must ensure that professional help is available and is used as soon as possible, and sound the alarm if it is not available.

One huge gap as noted in the report is in the cyber domain, where bullying and threats on social media are often considered outside the jurisdiction of the command, especially if cross command, and the rules governing this area are practically nonexistent – inexcusable in today’s day and age. Threatening or body shaming another service member on social media is not “free speech” and urgent action is required in this arena.

Denise: I have been part of the SASH community for 30 years. I have seen firsthand the trauma to victims, their families, their neighbors, their co-workers. Sexual assault is crime that haunts people for decades and each person reacts differently to the crime.

Training to help a sexual assault victim cannot happen via PowerPoint. Neither is it a one-day or one-week course. It takes months and, I would argue, years to fully train personnel to help sexual assault victims.

In Fiscal Year 2021, the Department of Defense was notified of 8,866 sexual assaults. Victims are reading the annual reports, they know the number of cases filed, and they are watching to see how many of these cases are prosecuted. A sizable number of the assault cases didn’t result in prosecution in 2021 and in past years. I encourage military leaders to ask why cases aren’t prosecuted. Victims won’t trust the “system” if the cases before theirs aren’t prosecuted, and absent trust, victims won’t report the crimes committed against them.

Lastly, I supported the recent changes removing the chain of command from prosecution because, as I painfully learned as MARAD Chief Counsel, the chain of command is often part of the issue and may not always support prosecutions.

4. Sexual Harassment and Sexual Assault Exist on a Continuum of Harm
Sexual assault does not stand alone, but rather exists on a continuum of harm which may begin with sexual harassment and escalate into sexual assault. This is particularly true in the military, where survivors of sexual harassment are at significantly higher risk of later experiencing sexual assault. To think of them as two separate problem sets is to fundamentally misunderstand the challenge the Department–and the force–face, especially with regard to unit climates.

John: I once heard a very senior SAPR officer, when asked about a sexual harassment issue, state that “that is not in my lane.” He later retracted the statement, but it is reflective of a system that treats the two as separate problems. It is still a weakness in these programs that at most levels they are tracked and reported by different people at the command, with little data sharing or recognition that the two are intrinsically related. The 2021 report stated that in commands where sexual harassment is tolerated, there is a fourfold greater change of sexual assault. Again, for the reader at the command level, it is imperative to look at these two issues together and holistically. In this author’s opinion, the Navy and Marines have work to do here at the higher echelons, but that should not stop all leaders from taking a fresh look at the data and engaging their wardroom and Chief Petty Officer (CPO) mess.

Denise: Sexual harassment and sexual assault are not separate in the eyes of the victim and they should not be separate in the eyes of leaders. To treat them separately is to facilitate both, and it shows in the numbers. To put it bluntly, if leaders do not stop sexual harassment, why should victims think that they will stop sexual assault?

Read Part Two.

John Cordle is a retired Navy Captain who commanded two warships, was awarded the Navy League John Paul Jones Award for Inspirational Leadership, and the 2019 US Naval Institute Proceedings Author of the Year.

K. Denise Rucker Krepp spent several years on active duty in the U. S. Coast Guard, graduated from the Naval War College, and served as Chief Counsel for the U.S Maritime Administration. Krepp also served as a locally elected Washington, DC official and Hill staffer. She is a longtime advocate for the rights of sexual assault and harassment victims.

References:

^[1] Department of Defense Annual Report on Sexual Assault in the Military, 2021

^[2] Independent Review Commission Recommendations on Countering Sexual Assault in the Military, 21 July 2021

Featured Image: 190119-N-KW492-1054 MANAMA, Bahrain (April 11, 2019) Capt. Jason Rimmer, commanding officer of the Wasp-class amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge (LHD 3), speaks to the crew during an all hands call on the flight deck. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Ryre Arciaga/Released)

“History shows the navy which adapts, learns, and improves the fastest gains an enduring warfighting advantage. The essential element is fostering an ecosystem—a culture—that assesses, corrects, and innovates better than the opposition.”—Admiral Michael Gilday, Chief of Naval Operations, remarks at 2022 Surface Navy Association Symposium

Assembled and edited by notetakers Professor Mie Augier and Maj Gen (Ret.) William F. Mullen, USMC.

Learning is an important topic. The increasing pace of change in the operating environment, as well as the evolving requirements of leading each new generation that comes of age, makes both individual and organizational learning essential. At the same time, dedicated time for learning may be missing, or the desire for continued learning is lacking. But it can be reawakened through learning about learning itself, and discussing the need for both individual and organizational learning for warfighters.

The CNO’s recent initiative of “Get Real, Get Better” (GRGB) touches on the importance of learning on several levels. Learning is difficult and often painful as it involves transformation and change, and is not just something that one can put on “like a new suit,” as Mortimer Adler wrote in his classic piece, “Invitation to the Pain of Learning.” The emphasis in GRGB on taking hard honest looks at our performance and to have the courage to take the steps to improve have resonated well with the recent iteration of our Naval Postgraduate School course, “Maneuver Warfare for the Mind: The Art and Science of Interdisciplinary Learning for Innovation and Warfighting Leaders.” We sat down with a handful of students/learning leaders to listen to their reflections on the topic and how learning about learning itself can help us get real and get better as warfighters and warfighting organizations.¹

The course starts with understanding the ‘why’ of learning, the need to exercise our minds, and embracing the pain along the way. It approaches learning as a manifestation of Marine General Al Gray’s approach to “maneuver warfare,” and as a mindset that is relevant across industries, organizations, services, and warfighter topics. We focus on different dimensions and elements of learning, such as the mechanisms for individual learning, organizational learning, learning organizations, and some of the key tradeoffs between refining existing competencies and exploring and experimenting for new ones.² We use a broad set of interdisciplinary as well as warfighter-oriented readings ranging from Mortimer Adler’s ‘How to Read a Book,’ Herbert Simon, James March, General Gray, Secretary Mattis, Colonel John Boyd, and other articles on behavioral strategy, organizational learning, and counterfactuals.

We believe that active minds are best developed through active learning, and not lecturing and rote learning (no PowerPoints). That too was something emphasized in Gen Gray’s approach to learning and education, and we try to honor that by facilitating discussion through questions, small groups, and relating scholarly material to warfighter issues. As a result, we studied and learned from Gen Gray’s leadership and the maneuver warfare movement not just as an important episode in USMC institutional history, but also an approach to thinking, leading, and learning that can be useful to help evolve current initiatives (such as GRGB) into something that can have lasting impact on how our organizations think, learn, and fight.³

In the conversation below, our learning leaders reflected on aspects of what we studied and discussed in the course; such as different mechanisms and levels of learning, some links between individual and organization learning, the role of leaders in facilitating both, and how learning is essential to ‘get real, get better.’

What is your main takeaway about the importance of learning at the individual level and how it can help us become better learning leaders? How does that help us ‘get real’?

Individual learning becomes a building block for the organization. If learning is inculcated on an individual basis, it is more likely that the organization can become a learning organization. However, while individual learning is important, it is not the only thing needed. The organization has to provide the space, time, and opportunity for the individuals to be learners. And specific to Navy or military bureaucracies as a whole, there has to be a culture to allow for learning, innovation and innovative thinking, and the status quo needs to have less of a hold on progress. The status quo can be an inhibitor of innovation and of change in general.

Another takeaway is the role of the leader as a teacher. You cannot teach if you do not have a desire to learn, understand the mechanisms of how people learn, and more importantly for the sake of the organization, you need to understand how to help others be lifelong learners. That is really important because in organizations like the Navy and Marine Corps that are multi-tiered and stratified, the one thing you can find that will bind us all together as a learning organization is to cultivate this in future leaders/teachers. This is an example of something that links individual learners/leaders to building learning in others and a broader learning culture as well.

It is not enough to say you are a learning organization – you have to learn how to learn, and you have to learn to teach how to learn. That is a mechanism for how our approach to learning as individuals can help transmit and transform the organization into a learning organization.

We feel strongly that the role of the organization is essential. That is not specific to learning only – but to everything since the leader drives where the organization is going. We also saw that in some of the cases we discussed in class and some of the guest speakers. Boyd did that; Gen Zinni did that; Gen Gray too. All of those leaders offer examples of people in key positions deliberately driving change and learning in their own way.

There are important traits and skills that characterize learning leaders. It takes vulnerability to push folks beyond their comfort zone, to admit they may not know something, or to be willing to ask for another’s advice. It can also take vulnerability to stand up for learning efforts, especially when their takeaways challenge the norm. We discussed Gen Grays emphasis on “we,” not “me,” which is one manifestation of humility. How do you see the roles of humility, vulnerability, and courage in learning?

We better understood that through one of the readings, the Levinthal and March reading.⁴ In their article they are looking at learning at the individual level, and how that has implications for the organizational level. They are also looking at the cultural and social aspects for why learning fails or does not always succeed. That could be due to friction between people; people being too focused on themselves and not the organizations; and the myopias of learning.

It is also connected to the idea of satisficing – that we are often satisfied with the minimum solution, or what is good enough, to be effective. We also probably over-attribute success (or failure) to particular events or people. What if the success or failure was just by chance? What happened, and how much of that was attributed to things we were doing intentionally, and how much of that was influenced by chance? It involves self-awareness and comfort with uncertainty. Too often people and organizations attribute success or failure to efforts, mainly individual efforts, that may not have much to do with the actual causes. The “Myopia of Learning” article speaks to that in a great way. Admitting that you as a leader may not be the source of all great things involves some humility as well.

At a deeper level, it also relates to the idea of moral courage as a leader and that revolves around humility and vulnerability. Humility is difficult to teach, but it might be easier if you engage in a conversation about vulnerability as well. There have been leaders who lead with the statement, “I will confide in you something that I wouldn’t tell anyone else, and you do the same.” It is a challenge because it relies on trusting someone you may not know well. So vulnerability here builds trust. And that is part of the fuel that gets to learning.

Modeling learning behavior is critical, like with any other favorable leadership trait. To be a leader you need to be willing to be vulnerable, not only for accepting outside criticism, but also to be self-critical. As you embark on Senge’s concept or discipline of personal mastery, it is a journey that is ongoing and you never fully arrive at the destination. We can tie in a little bit of Boyd as well. A lot of folks naturally start the OODA loop with the first part, the observation. But once you delve into it you realize that you never take off on the OODA loop unless you get the orientation right, the part where you consider the implications of your observations. And orientation is itself its own OODA loop that is built on things like culture, norms, shared values, and others. But through observation from other parties and your own self-observation you are able to change that orientation. This then changes the nature of the OODA loop and how you perceive the environment, decide, and act.

As a leader, what we talked about regarding vulnerability, humility, and values, if you tie it back to Boyd, you are hitting the center of the orientation piece and the necessity of you as a leader to really understand yourself. A leader has to have the self-awareness to understand their strengths and shortcomings, while actively striving toward personal mastery so that they can make better decisions, and they can model better learning behaviors for those they lead.

How can learning help the Navy “get real, get better,” and what are the difficulties in creating learning organizations? Is there anything from the course that would be particularly useful to share? What would we do to help make it more like a movement, like MW/FMFM-1 Warfighting?

You can take a page out of General Dempsey’s “Mission Command,” and you have intent, trust, and communication. This helps with explaining the importance of learning, not just for learning’s sake, but for the mission and the organization, a point Gen Gray made in the maneuver warfare panel we discussed. This would ideally guide you as a leader and your colleagues to foster an environment where people have your intent and your trust. Trust is defined here as the absence of fear of humiliation, mocking, or ridicule, including for wanting to learn something new or pursue a novel idea. Once you have that environment, a leader can embrace those efforts, including those trying to understand what is wrong and develop solutions.

If you as a leader do not foster an environment where people can think outside the box – can think beyond the NAVADMINS and instructions and guidelines – then you are going to struggle to explain the orientation part of your thought process. You are going to struggle to think differently. If a leader does not foster trust, adequately communicate their intent, and foster an environment where people are not afraid to explore beyond the conventional boundaries, then they will struggle to develop creative solutions. It is not enough to say we need to harness constructive failures. We have to be able to create an environment where people are not afraid to explore beyond the boundaries of what they would normally do or think about. You will struggle to get to the creative solutions GRGB is aiming for without that organizational environment. GRGB is both about individual-level traits and approaches, but definitely organizational culture as well.

Boyd was able to use the bureaucracy against itself at times. The true secret is to reward the behavior you want and carefully manage the incentives. A perfect example for the U.S. Navy is this – I came across a NAVADMIN that completely rewrote the definitions for performance evaluations, and it put out exactly what should be ranked in terms of efforts to create and sustain a learning environment at both the individual level, in the workspace, at the organizational level, across the U.S. Navy. We saw this document come out – and be completely ignored – and then we had the perfect opportunity where the performance evaluation system was completely revised. Now we have gone from navfit98 to eNAVFIT online. Lo and behold, all of that wonderful criteria that was supposed to evaluate me on how good I am as a personal learner and how good I am at getting those under my charge to be learners – it evaporated overnight! How can we get better in building more lasting changes? It needs to be pushed within the bureaucracy itself, we need it to be sustained, unlike the implication of that NAVADMIN, unfortunately.

Another problem is leadership turnover. Leaders often want to put their mark on things and change things just for the sake of change. But they often rotate out of the position after so little time in the seat that things can rarely be sustained, or rarely do leaders have to live with the possible consequences of their initiatives, and the cycle repeats with turnover.⁵ So we need to help build a sustainable vision and change how the organization thinks, so it becomes embedded in our overall approach, much like the Marines and Gen Gray did with FMFM-1 Warfighting.⁶

What do you see as barriers to GRGB?

I think if you survey all members of the Navy, most would want the organization to become a learning organization where they can have time for personal learning, have the room and freedom to think, and they want to become deeper learners themselves. But it is hard. Learning is painful as we discussed in class, and it needs to be. On the organizational level, it is often everyone else’s fault for why it doesn’t happen. Because of the Navy mentality and what is valued, certainly in the officer corps it is often about FITREPs and promotion. No one is going to make the push that is needed when it may be seen as professionally risky. In other words, there can be a mentality of, ‘The system that promoted me can’t be wrong,’ but the GRGB initiative could change what the system values in people.

The Marines seem to have done a decent job at reversing some of these trends, both historically with the reforms Gen Gray lead, but also more recently. They seem to be at least trying to build an organization that embraces learning and exploration, with MCDP-1 Warfighting and the recent publication of MCDP-7 Learning really demonstrating that. Not having as much funding and having different challenges might have helped. We could learn something from how the Marine Corps institutionalized the emphasis on thinking and learning with FMFM-1 early on and the value of lifelong learning it embodied.⁷ It doesn’t cost money to think as Gen Gray reminds us.

Some of the recommendations in the Education for Seapower study can address these themes if we applied them. These include an organizational emphasis to developing learning and thinking as part of the culture and the ethos of the organization. It includes emphasizing this in the key documents which the organization derives guidance from over time, not just in a set of instructions that are changed tomorrow. The Navy hasn’t done that.

In the Navy we are so focused on our communities and too focused on depth, and unwilling to accept breadth in knowledge and proficiency, that we sort of get in our own way. We focus so much on operating our highly technical platforms that it signals to people that this is all we really care about. But what do you do in your free time, what do you do to educate your mind? What do you do officially, formally, organizationally to enhance learning for yourself and your command beyond the baseline standards?

What can we do to help GRGB become more of a movement and build it into our organizations?

We saw examples of the mentoring process in class and having a dialogue about the purpose, where to get more information, and how it can be implemented. Taking the time to discuss and share the ideas behind the GRGB initiative is essential and can help build excitement for it as well.

But it is really about renovating or transforming organizational culture and that is very difficult. The pamphlet and training package is good in providing some structure and training for how to deliver GRGB. But what they don’t really get at is where does it go from here, what is the follow-through? Who does this? What is the qualification? Where do we do this? There is nothing that says this is part of our organizational DNA now, as MCDP-1 is for the USMC. So as far as you can help make GRGB be part of the organization, you have to make it an agent of change, to make it something that is genuinely embraced by the organization, not just printed by the organization.

There are things happening at a high level now that supports making it a movement, such as mandatory GRGB training for flag officers, and the fact that it is a warfighting enabler is important. The Navy respects and acts upon what is written in ink. If it is not in ink then it is less likely to care. This spans from completing a travel voucher, to performance evaluations and other things. We need to have that hard document that I can wave and say, ‘This is why we are doing this, because this is directive, this is official.’ That is when it will really start to take hold.

The idea of publishing an FMFM-1/MCDP-1-type document for the Navy is key. It can become something the organization embraces as a sign of it becoming a deeper learning organization. It can be something that is foundational to new and experienced members of the organization, and part of who we all are and how we learn. An outline for an MCDP-1 type document might be a good start to at least start the conversation and discuss the benefits of a more structured organizational movement.

We look forward to you writing that!

Commander (Dr.) Art Valeri is an Operative Dentist stationed at NMRTC Great Lakes serving as the Department Head/Chief, Dental Service of the Veterans and Military Staff Hospital Dental Clinic, Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center, North Chicago, IL.

Commander Paul Nickell is a Naval Flight Officer currently stationed at the United States Naval War College as a student in the College of Naval Warfare in Newport Rhode Island and an MBA Candidate at the Naval Postgraduate School. 

Captain Daniel G. Betancourt is a career Foreign Area Officer and Naval Aviator specializing in Latin America and the Indo-Pacific. He currently serves as Chief of the United States Naval Mission to Colombia.

Commander (Dr.) Jay Yelon is a US Navy Trauma Surgeon currently stationed at the military-civilian partnership at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

References

1. The course, inspired by Gen Gray’s approach to thinking and learning, utilizes organizational documents, scholarly articles as well as cases and examples relating to learning to study and understand different dimensions and levels of learning and how we can improve.

2. The classic tradeoff between exploration and exploitation and the difficulties balancing them and how both are essential for learning, is discussed in James March’s work (e.g. Exploration and Exploitation in Organizational Learning | Organization Science (informs.org)). A recent discussion and application of important parts of “Learning to Win” ( 060822_Learning_to_Win_Report FINAL.pdf)

3. During this iteration of the course, perhaps one of the most interesting aspects is the contribution from the students in the 865 program, which offers an innovative and very student centered graduate degree with a lot of flexibility and electives, in keeping with what navy leaders have emphasized as being essential for the ‘cognitive age’. Each of the students in this program were all taking the course (and in their program) despite working full time in responsible positions, thus already having important intrinsic motivation as learners. The 4 learning leaders in this conversion are all part of this program.

4. The myopia of learning – Levinthal – 1993 – Strategic Management Journal – Wiley Online Library

5. Gen Zinni talked during his visit to class about the problem of leadership ‘By temps’; the lack of continuing to vision. That is a problem both for our own organizations focus over time, and at the national level (General Anthony Zinni (ret.) on Staying Honest with the Troops and Translating Experience | Center for International Maritime Security (cimsec.org))

6. Gen Gray emphasizes the importance of thinking and learning embodied in FMFM-1 as a way of thinking that is applicable across organizations and industries. FMFM-1 later became renamed as MCDP-1; hence it is referred to both by students.

7. Gen Gray and Van Riper both mention the study groups and the informal efforts that helped inspire and facilitate learning beyond instructional learning Warfighting Panel – YouTube.

Featured Image: PACIFIC OCEAN (Oct. 14, 2022) Sailors conduct training in the combat information center aboard Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USS Bunker Hill (CG 52). (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Jordan Jennings)

By Jasper Campbell and James Martin

As the U.S. Coast Guard undergoes a period of “prolific” acquisitions, the service must resolve a lurking specter: How to fill all of these ships with qualified personnel? At a time when the U.S. Coast Guard afloat community, known as cuttermen, are set to receive the largest influx of cutter classes since the Vietnam War, the Coast Guard is struggling to fill critical billets at the O-3 and O-4 levels, despite projecting having 10,000 afloat billets service wide by 2030. There has been considerable discourse on so-called “sea service attractiveness,” though no discrete proposals have been offered to tackle the problem. The proposals that have been put forward focus less on metrics than conceptual shifts targeting shipboard climate, unit pride, or paradigm shifts in officer promotion and graduate school selections.

But, while the woes of the Coast Guard cutter community continue to make headlines, cuttermen do not face their demise in a vacuum. Their infirmities take place in the context of an organization whose workforce is hemorrhaging across specialties and demographics. These reverberations are felt more acutely in certain demographics, such as women and minorities. Dogged institutional focus on the retention woes of a particular specialty, regardless of its contributions to service culture, ignores systemic issues plaguing the workforce. Therefore, a holistic approach to workforce retention may be the solution to meeting the Coast Guard’s “track line to 10,000” while simultaneously securing the future for myriad specialties. They are: foster geographic stability by creating centralized “hubs” for the Coast Guard workforce, buttressed by increased opportunities for remote and hybrid work and education.

With the release of the newly minted Coast Guard Strategy in October 2022, Commandant Admiral Linda Fagan has touted revolutionizing the Coast Guard talent management system and “transforming the total workforce” to account for modern socioeconomic realities. Employing centralized hubs to promote geographic stability is exactly the sort of initiative this strategy calls for, and the Coast Guard must adopt it as soon as practicable.

Coast Guard “Hubs”

There is hearty debate surrounding a perceived diminished “sea service attractiveness” of the U.S. Coast Guard’s afloat community. The basic line of reasoning goes, the ready availability of viable career paths ashore, stressful moves every several years, and sea tours where service members deploy throughout their tour combine to make sea service increasingly difficult to “sell” to families. Further, service members or their spouses must make tough career compromises to remain competitive in their respective fields. This is exacerbated in the modern age, where spouses typically fall into two categories: a) in the service along with their spouse or b) have their own civilian careers in professional fields. In fact, the number of dual-income households has significantly increased since the 1950s, the era in which the modern personnel system was created.¹

A tangible way for the Coast Guard to conduct a meaningful course correction is to reexamine the much-touted concept of “geographic stability.” Geographic stability and centralization should be reimagined at a macroscopic level and seen as a tactic to revitalize the health of the afloat officer corps writ large. By aggressively working to consolidate billets at desirable geographic “hubs” that allow the afloat community to move along linear, successful, and promotable career trajectories, the Coast Guard has the opportunity to stem the growing gap between billets and cuttermen to fill them. These centralization concepts, desperately needed in the afloat specialty, can be replicated elsewhere across specialties.

Key West is the Model

Fortunately, the service need only look to Key West, FL as an ideal model that can be replicated elsewhere. Between a windfall of demanding afloat opportunities across multiple platforms, high-profile staff tour opportunities, and a desirable geographic location, Key West, Florida, represents the model “hub,” which, if emulated elsewhere, would require the following characteristics:

Multiple Fast Response and Medium Endurance Cutters

Sentinel-class, “Fast Response Cutters” (FRC) are O-3 commands and have O-2 Executive Officers. Both an XO and CO tour aboard a “patrol boat” are milestone career tours that afloat officers in the Coast Guard typically must attain to continue to progress in the cutterman community. Medium Endurance cutters (WMEC) also boast multiple junior career milestone billets, from mid-grade department head opportunities to more senior command billets.

Reputable staff tour with multiple O-3 and O-4 billets

Key West is home to both Coast Guard Sector Key West, which has some, but limited “afloat” staff billets, and Joint Interagency Task Force South (JIATFS), which is a joint DoD command that falls under U.S. Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM). Long considered the gold standard of joint operations, JIATFS is home to 13 Coast Guard officer billets spread out across the J2 (Intelligence), J3 (Operations), J6 (Communications), and J7 (Innovations) directorates. In an increasingly complex world, the Coast Guard is called upon to conduct its work in a crosscutting, interagency fashion. Officers with joint or “purple” experience are prized for this unique experience. In fact, the Commandant’s annual Guidance to promotion boards and selection panels specifically highlights joint and interagency experience as something promotion and graduate school panels should focus on as positive attributes in an officer’s record.

Desirable geographic location

While geographic tastes are diverse, many would consider Key West a highly desirable location, devoid of snow and cold weather. Despite arguments to the contrary, attractive duty locations are an underappreciated recruiting and retention tactic, especially among the junior ranks, where the opportunity to be stationed in a vacation-worthy destination is a worthy tradeoff for the hardships of sea duty. 

Key West, Florida, organically possesses all the ingredients for a centralized hub, where given the right portion of each, an afloat officer and their family can remain in one place for four to ten years and, importantly, remain competitive for promotion by meeting career milestones, including completing reputable staff assignments.

There are boundless possibilities when it comes to a career path. Obviously, there are other key considerations, such as graduate school and special “broadening” assignments, that officers aspire to. For those who prize the pressure relief valve on family life that geo-stability can afford, they can pursue it at no detriment to their career. The table below illustrates the versatility and longevity a “hub” can afford an afloat officer in the Key West Area.

Years 0-2	2-4	4-6	6-8
JIATFS Staff (O-3)	WMEC OPS	FRC CO	Transfer
FRC CO (senior O-3)	JIATFS Staff (Make O-4)	WMEC XO	Transfer
WMEC OPS (O-3)	FRC CO	JIATFS Staff (Make O-4)	WMEC XO (O-4)
JIATFS Staff (O-3)	FRC CO (Make O-4)	Chief of Enforcement, Sector KW (O-4)	Transfer

Table 1. Potential Key West Afloat Officer Trajectory.

While Key West contains many of the ingredients necessary to make it a centralized hub, a cutterman can make a home for more than two years, those ingredients can be expanded upon in certain areas to make an even more fertile hotbed for afloat officers. For one, additional medium endurance cutters and fast response cutters would significantly increase the number of first, second, and third tour junior officer opportunities to go to sea without having to conduct a permanent change of station move.

The Coast Guard could also immediately add a number of O-3 and O-4 staff officer billets to JIATF-S. After all, if the service is set to spend a combined $12 Billion on the Legend Class cutters, the service could make a paltry investment in comparison by adding subject matter experts to the command that is the primary controller of cutters deployed for the counter-narcotics mission. Further, the service could add additional Intel and Cyber billets to the JIATF-S staff. As the Coast Guard cyber and intelligence apparatus matures, having officers who have operated in the joint environment with seasoned intelligence professionals will yield enormous dividends for the service.

Key West is just one of many locations where the Coast Guard can look to implement geographic stability in the afloat officer corps. This “blueprint for success” of multiple opportunities for junior and senior command, a reputable staff tour, and a desirable geographic location can be replicated elsewhere with relative ease. Charleston, Hawaii, Miami, and Newport present opportunities for immediate implementation, all containing elements of the necessary ingredients for successful geographic stability. Others still, like Norfolk, Pensacola, and Los Angeles/Long Beach are missing one crucial element or another that can be easily remedied. 

The Future is Remote:
Realizing “Hubs” Service Wide

Fully remote work and hybrid models are an obvious step towards rapidly scaling “hubs” across operational and mission support communities. Unfortunately, many still distrust the basic premise of remote work, citing that the military should be concerned with winning wars, not “keeping pace with big tech.” Others still acknowledge the manifold benefits of remote work but worry it would exacerbate a gap between “operators” and “supporting elements.” However, few can deny that it represents the future of employment across myriad industries.

Anyone who has visited Coast Guard Headquarters recently can attest to this phenomenon, as the home of nearly 4,000 military, civilian, and contractor staff members have been largely partially manned for the past three years since the emergence of COVID-19. Major mission support commands fulfilling critical C5I, naval engineering, and administrative support functions have performed exceptionally in remote and hybrid work conditions as well.

If willing to deviate from established norms, the Coast Guard is poised to offer hundreds, if not thousands, of enlisted and officer billets that can be staffed completely remotely. This number expands dramatically if it includes “flex” or hybrid billets that, with occasional travel, allow members to maximize geographic stability while maintaining successful, varied career paths. For instance, the C5I community is primed to offer a majority of its O-2 to O-4 billets remotely. Doing so would allow those desiring to maintain a “dual” career track (in a traditionally operational specialty such as afloat or aviation specialties and traditionally “non-operational” e.g. cyber, logistics, or legal specialties) to avoid alternating between the National Capitol region and coastal communities, a major known drawback. Simply put, if the Coast Guard is able to offer expanded remote opportunities, it should.

Geographic flexibility could be further enhanced by de-stigmatizing online advanced education opportunities by Coast Guard leadership (and be extension what promotion and assignment panels value). Additionally, geo-stability should take advantage of nonterminal expanded industry partnerships with major private companies (as opposed to DOD Skillbridge, which servicemembers can take advantage of during their last 180 days of service). Both are useful incentives which, if paired with reasonable corresponding obligatory service requirements, could allow servicemembers to significantly reduce the number of PCS moves made over the course of a full 20-year career while remaining competitive at promotion boards. The table below illustrates the “hubs” concept, expanded by access to fully remote billets, industry partnerships, and a greater acceptance of online graduate school opportunities:

Year Range	Tour/Life Event	Location	Incentive
1-2	Div Tour aboard Offshore Patrol Cutter (O-1)	LA/Long Beach, CA	N/A – academy payback
3-5	Sector LA/LB Response Officer (shoreside) (O-2)	LA/Long Beach, CA
6-7	Information Assurance Grad School (O-3)	LA/Long Beach, CA	Open up more grad programs to online school
8-9	CGCYBER Division Officer tour (O-3)	LA/Long Beach, CA	Remote work
10-12	Sector LA/LB Enforcement Chief (shoreside, makes O-4)	LA/Long Beach, CA	Centralized Hub
13-14	PCS to D.C.: CGHQ tour crafting CG Cyber Policy (O-4)	D.C.	Hybrid Work
15-16	Detached Duty, Pentagon: OSD Cyber Policy (O-5)	D.C.	Joint Assignment; Centralized Hub
17-18	Response Department Head: Sector Delaware Bay (O-5)	Philadelphia, PA	Geo-bachelor (minimal weekend commute)
19-19	Industry Partnership at Microsoft (O-5)	D.C.	Expand industry partnerships program
20-21	Special Assignment, National Security Council | The White House: Senior Director for Resilience Policy (traditional CG O-6 billet)	D.C.	Competitive Special Assignment
22-23	CGCYBER Deputy Tour (O-6)	Alexandria, VA (short commute)
24-28	Sector Commander: Sector Hampton Roads (O-6)	Hampton Roads, V.A.	Geo-bachelor (minimal weekend commute)

Table 2. Highlights a theoretical dual officer career path in Cyber and Response Ashore specialties, enabled by centralized hubs, remote/hybrid work, and industry partnerships. As a result, the officer only needs to conduct a permanent change of station (PCS) move one time in a 28-year career.

Final Thoughts

Some will say that the U.S. military should not try to seek parity with private industry. Of course, while there will always be those few whose martial ardor is enough to make familial sacrifices, for many, “love doesn’t pay the bills,” and enthusiasm alone should not be seen as a universal retention tactic. In 2021, only 29% of American youth are eligible for service; the Coast Guard simply cannot afford to put on a “put up or get out” mentality that discredits the valuable service members who simply do not wish to move all the time and have a semblance of normal life in between sea or duty standing tours. What’s more, these attitudes would overwhelmingly affect women and minorities because of the lifestyle flexibility they offer with respect to family planning and make the Coast Guard a less diverse workforce. As the former Commandant, Admiral Schultz stated in the 2020 Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan, part of being the world’s best Coast Guard is being the world’s most diverse Coast Guard.

Ultimately, geographic stability is not a silver bullet to solving afloat retention and bolstering sea service attractiveness. However, it is a simple, meaningful, and easily implemented tool for keeping seagoing officers afloat. The Coast Guard should look to Key West, FL, as a blueprint for success, and replicate this formula elsewhere. What’s more, centralized hubs should be seen as an easily implemented, repeatable, and concrete solution to addressing workforce shortcomings across all Coast Guard work specialties. The concepts illustrated can, in many cases, be easily carried over from the officer to the enlisted world. When bolstered by expanded hybrid and remote work and education options, these “hubs” will remove many service-imposed impediments to “normal lifestyles” that force otherwise willing and capable service members to choose between meaningful service and civilian life. The Coast Guard has all the tools it needs to address the retention crises it faces – it needs only implement them.

James Martin is a permanent cutterman who has served in three Coast Guard cutters, including as com-manding officer of the USCGC Ibis (WPB-87338). He holds a bachelor’s degree with honors in naval architecture and marine engineering from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, and is an Aspen Strategy Group Rising Leader, a Center for New American Security Next Generation National Security Leader, and a senior editor at CIMSEC.

References

1. Concordia St. Paul, “The Evolution of American Family Structure,” CSP Online, 2022, htps://online.csp.edu/resources/article/the-evolution-of-american-family-structure/

Featured Image: Cutter crewmembers based out of Portsmouth, Va. stand at the pier, ready to assist the USCGC Northland (WMEC 904) moor in Portsmouth on Monday. (U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Brandon Hillard)