Tag Archives: Officer Development

Ethics

What I Have Learned Teaching Ethics to Midshipmen

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By Bill Bray

For nearly three years now, I have taught “Ethics and Moral Reasoning for the Naval Leader” to sophomore midshipmen (“youngsters”) at the U.S. Naval Academy, my alma mater. This is a core requirement for all midshipmen and course instruction is a collaborative effort. One of five philosophers on staff teach ethical theory on Mondays, and in the remaining two classes of each week active-duty or retired officers teach case studies and foster seminar-style discussions.

What I often wonder—and am often asked—is if this formal ethics course at least correlates to better ethical behavior and decision-making by midshipmen and Naval Academy graduates in the fleet. That is the Academy’s stated reason for the course: to “prepare future officers for the difficult moral decisions that they will have to make during their careers.” Otherwise, it would be hard to justify the course as core. Anyone can memorize ethical concepts and become casually familiar with the thinking of some of the greatest ethicists, ancient and modern. Just doing that will make one better at trivia, but it will not make him or her a more ethical leader.

The age-old question of whether virtue can be taught needs no reexamination here. Socrates believed as much, which is good enough for me. The more direct question concerns this course and if it, and similar college-level courses taught elsewhere, does, in the aggregate, produce more ethical leaders. This is not a question that can be definitively answered, given the multitude of factors for which any long-term analysis would have to control, never mind the challenges of collecting valid data. In fact, academic attempts to determine the efficacy of ethical instruction have not been encouraging, although some recent studies have shown some positive effect.

Many valid questions cannot be proven to empirical satisfaction. This is one of them, and merely claiming the course at least cannot hurt is insufficient. It should give these future officers some knowledge about the philosophical tradition of ethics and moral reasoning they did not already have and inspire reflection on how they would navigate ethically fraught situations—those in which the right decision is not immediately clear and require leaders to slow down and deliberately consider all aspects of the situation.

History of the Course

Ethics and Moral Reasoning for the Naval Leader was put into the service academies’ core curriculums following the December 1992 electrical engineering cheating scandal at the Naval Academy by members of the Class of 1994. West Point and the Air Force Academy teach the course to seniors, closer to their commissioning. The Naval Academy teaches it to sophomores on the premise that it is better for them to consider this material before they enter junior year and commit to the minimum service obligation after graduation (referred to as “two-for-seven night”, meaning they have served two years as midshipmen and are committing to seven more years of service—two more as midshipmen and at least five as a commissioned officer).

The 1992 cheating scandal forced some collective introspection among both Navy and Naval Academy military and civilian leaders. After several investigations, all outlined in a January 1994 Naval Inspector General report, ultimately 133 midshipmen were implicated (about 15 percent of the class). Nearly 30 were expelled. It remains the worst cheating scandal since the Academy adopted its Honor Code in 1951. In addition to implementing the Ethics course, following the scandal the Academy revised the Honor Code. Of note, in 2021 the Naval Academy experienced another cheating scandal, this time in Physics, that implicated 105 midshipmen, all sophomores (approximately half were taking the Ethics course at the time they cheated on the Physics final in December 2021; the other half took the course in spring 2022). Twenty-eight were separated.

While the 2021 scandal was disappointing, it did not receive the press coverage the 1994 scandal generated. Yet, it would be fair to ask how this could happen again, especially with midshipmen who were taking the Ethics course at the time. On the other hand, one of the biggest incongruities with the origin of the course and its stated goal (at least since I have taught it) is that it is not designed to prevent midshipmen from cheating on their exams. They should already know not to do this! While the course was borne of an academic cheating scandal, cheating is a clear right-vs.-wrong issue. As such, I do not think the 2021 Physics cheating scandal reflects directly on the course’s purpose or efficacy.

A better measure of the course would be how Naval Academy graduates since the late 1990s have fared in the complex and often ethical gray zones of military operations, particularly combat operations. To prepare midshipmen for the challenge of making the best ethical decisions in these situations, the course must assume midshipmen are not liars and cheaters. No such study exists, however, or probably could exist in the near future.

That leaves only the observations I and others who have taught the course can offer on how midshipmen perform in the course—how they receive and interact with the material, and what that may mean for their future as commissioned officers.

Course Structure

The course includes four blocks of instruction: Moral perception (two weeks), moral deliberation (five weeks), moral excellence (five weeks), and Just War Theory (three weeks). Moral perception concerns how to better recognize morally fraught situations, as they often are not clear initially. This section includes reading on how people from different cultures often view the same issue differently, as religion and culture shape moral perception differently.

During moral deliberation, midshipmen are instructed in a sequential process (roadmap) to navigate decision-making in morally complex situations, including those that include an ethical dilemma. They should consider the following factors in turn: moral constraints, consequences, character/virtue, and special obligations. They are introduced to, among other things, Immanuel Kant’s three formulations of the categorical imperative (moral laws or duties that bind all of us—the due respect, universalization, and mere means tests), common rationalization and socialization strategies people use to justify unethical behavior, Thomas Aquinas’ Doctrine of Double Effect to help determine if a decision with both good and bad consequences should be taken, the concepts of waiving and forfeiting rights, and justice and equity. Case studies include the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq, collateral damage estimations in bombing missions, and considerations of justice and equity in administering nonjudicial punishment.

Consequential reasoning is introduced next, with some cautionary reminders that even the best consequential outcomes cannot override clear moral constraints. Among the cases studied, the midshipmen read commentary on the mid-2000s U.S. debate surrounding the use of enhanced interrogation (torture) techniques on unlawful combatants (today’s midshipmen had barely been born yet). The special obligations discussion includes voluntary and involuntary special obligations and a reading on Constitutional ethics—what the oath really requires in terms of balancing one’s duty with personal views and beliefs. Critically, how an officer should resolve a conflict between his or her deeply held personal belief (conscience) if they find it in conflict with the requirement to follow a legal order.

Character and virtue deserve their own four-week block. When the scope of the 1992 cheating scandal became apparent, some contended the root of the problem rests with American society—it was producing less ethical midshipmen. This claim is unprovable, and always struck me as reactionary and a version of buck-passing. The bulk of this block focuses on how to cultivate virtue (for Aristotle virtue [excellence] involved knowledge and habit, with a heavy emphasis on habit—virtuous people repeatedly do virtuous things). The midshipmen are reminded that in considering how to make the best ethical decision in a difficult situation, they should think beyond just what is technically acceptable to how the decision will reflect on their character in the long term. How do they want to be remembered? No one thinks of virtue as a transactional or transitory trait. When we think of virtuous people to emulate, we do not think they are virtuous at certain times but not others, or in certain situations and not in others.

Just War Theory—what is commonly referred to now as the traditional theory—include the principles of Jus ad Bellum (justice of war) and Jus in Bello (justice in war). The history of U.S. warfare presents countless case studies for this section, both good and bad. This may seem rather elementary to a college philosophy major, but hardly any midshipmen were introduced to just war concepts in high school and moreover will be far more likely to put philosophical theory into professional practice.

Three Types of Ethics Students

In addition to being asked about the course, Naval Academy graduates from my generation (around my 1988 class) often ask my general impression of the midshipmen today. The question is often, though not always, freighted with generational bias, the implication being that today’s midshipmen are not as tough, not as patriotic, etc. I find no evidence of this, however. On the contrary, I find the quality as high as ever. These are some of the best and brightest young men and women the nation has to offer.

That said, while most of my students have been excellent as far as completing the coursework and writing good exams, they vary when it comes to what they bring to the class in terms of genuine interest and engagement. To broadly frame this variety, I can identify each student I have taught into one of three types: a cynic, a calculator, or a seeker.

Cynics comprise, thankfully, a small group, but I have had at least one in each section. Cynics believes the Ethics course is largely a waste of time. Ethical decision-making is mostly common sense, and midshipmen either have that or they do not. Cynics do the minimum amount of course reading and only superficially participate in class discussions. Cynics do not seem to appreciate the fact, demonstrated repeatedly in case studies, that good officers regularly fail to recognize ethical blind spots in making weighty decisions. They are convinced that will never be them.

Calculators form the next biggest group, although still slightly in the minority (again, thankfully). Calculators are transactional students—what do I need to do to get an A in this course? Calculators do more of the reading and participate more regularly in class discussions. But they tend to do so less out of a genuine interest in the material, and more in the interest of checking the boxes needed to get the highest grade possible. They want the discussion to give them the “right” answers to ethical dilemmas, so they can deliver them back on tests and papers. The process of working out the best decision in ethical gray areas is far less important than knowing what the right answer is. Calculators occasionally ask for their papers to be reviewed in draft form, to see if they are indeed “on the right track.” They prefer short, discrete exam questions to long essays that are scored heavily on how they apply what they have learned in thinking through the problem. They often give feedback that the course is graded too harshly. If they can get an A in an engineering class, there is no way they should get anything less in an Ethics course.

Seekers are the best students, although they do not always get the best grade. They are less concerned with their grade-point average and class standing and far more with the immense leadership challenges they will face in just a few short years. They read well. They bring great energy and curiosity to the class discussions. They are not afraid to speak their minds on sensitive topics. They are humble before the awesome responsibility that awaits them. They appreciate that Ethics is not a science. There is rarely certainty. There is almost always complexity and ambiguity. They recognize their chosen profession will demand nothing less than their best judgment.

I have enjoyed the privilege of teaching and knowing all my students, but the seekers keep me coming back. I cannot wait to get to class to hear their thoughts on a reading assignment or a video shown in class. Their papers are not pro forma—they often read as if the student is bearing the burden of the choice herself. Seekers are reflective and thoughtful. Many are deeply faithful. All respect different viewpoints and backgrounds, religious and secular. Much more than wanting to avoid mistakes, seekers want to be better.

This three-tiered classification is hardly rigorous and certainly not set in cement. Some students display characteristics of a seeker and a calculator. Many will (hopefully) grow, and with maturity become seekers. Some will experience an ethical “close call” as a young officer and find in it an epiphany they take to heart in becoming seekers. Regardless of the journeys these midshipmen take, all will face difficult ethical choices as officers. Some will be of the life-and-death variety. Many will be immensely consequential, especially for those who choose to make the Navy or Marine Corps a career and ascend to command.

Whether better studies someday shed more light on the efficacy of ethics instruction, I believe the Naval Academy’s Ethics course reinforces the seekers and plants seeds for growth in the other students. Someday, in the crucible, these future officers will have to rely on their knowledge and character to make the best decision in an agonizing situation. When that moment comes, they are on their own.

Bill Bray is a retired Navy captain. He is an adjunct professor at the U.S. Naval Academy.

Featured Image: ANNAPOLIS, Md. (May 18, 2020) The United States Naval Academy holds the fourth swearing-in event for the Class of 2020. (U.S. Navy photo by Kenneth D. Aston Jr/Released)

Human Factors Week

Weaponize PME to Improve the Force

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Human Factors Week

By Bobby Holmes

If the sea services and the defense community are to improve and sustain human capital to accomplish the missions of the future, they must create a more educated workforce by incentivizing nontraditional and self-study Professional Military Education opportunities. War is a human endeavor. This fact applies universally to all conflicts, regardless of when they are fought, where there are fought, or what weapons are used to fight them. The human factors of war dominated Napoleonic Europe and the trenches of World War I, just as they did in Al Anbar for the last two decades and in Kharkiv today. Any future conflict, particularly between great powers with technologically exquisite platforms, will be built on a human foundation. The United States Department of Defense and the sea services must invest in their people as much or more than they invest in their things.

Professional Military Education (PME) is a key vessel for this human investment, but the sea services are not doing enough to compel their top performers to seek out valuable PME as a career enhancing opportunity. Put more emphatically, there is not enough incentive for Sailors, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen to pursue self-study education programs, either concurrently to their primary MOS duties or as part of a dedicated PME tour. This lack of incentive is best reflected in the risk one assumes to their chances of O-5 promotion and command tours should they embark on a nontraditional PME program. This causes an exodus of the sea services’ top performers before their talents can be fully utilized. Adding additional PME opportunities reserved for top performers and decoupling nonstandard PME and decreased promotion and command opportunity will go far in developing a more intelligent naval workforce that is well prepared for the future’s challenges.

The Problem

The personnel evaluation systems of the sea services do not create incentives for well-meaning servicemembers to pursue nontraditional or self-study PME. In any fleet unit, the axiom that “learning is good, but doing is better” reigns supreme.1 The command climates throughout the naval workforce implicitly communicate this through evaluation methods that are abstractly comparative and do not adequately reflect the gains to be had from a more educated and intelligent workforce. The metrics used to compare servicemembers against each other are largely the same across each service’s force and do not appropriately weight self-study PME against basic MOS proficiency. Any time spent studying and learning beyond typical MOS training and standard “roadmap” PME courses is viewed as time that could be better spent in the office or in the field. While this article does not argue in the least against putting the time in when it is needed, the most driven servicemembers should have more and better opportunities to self-educate. 

Moreover, it is nearly impossible to communicate to one’s chain of command when gains in technical competence or tactical proficiency are earned through individual PME. While these gains may be lauded for what they are, the return on investment for the individual servicemember does not hold. This feedback loop then creates a self-fulfilling prophecy at the institutional level: the sea services’ top performers writ large do not pursue self-study PME because this is time they must spend outperforming their peers in basic tasks and duties, and connecting this outperformance to additional PME is not feasible in most command climates. Note that this argument does not mean that a poorly performing Marine should be able to just read a book to compensate for their shortcoming; it means that an imminently qualified Marine should not be penalized for pursuing a nontraditional education program that is concurrent to their professional duties, assuming their performance is already above reproach. If the sea services can modify their evaluation practices, the best members will take advantage of it, and the services will collectively benefit from a more educated force. 

The final deterrent to many servicemembers’ aspirations towards PME and career progression comes in the form of increased risk to O-5 promotion and command opportunities. Simply put, the sea services do not value increased education as much as they do increased experience. Promotion boards expect to see a standard conveyor belt of “key billets” that culminates in a selection to O-5 command. While certain levels of experience are necessary to ensure successful and effective command, this model creates institutional groupthink amongst its leaders and stifles the creativity of its most imaginative service members.

Promotion boards reinforce this trend through the people and career paths they prioritize for promotion and command. This reinforcement then trickles down and compels resultant career decisions amongst the company grade officers and junior staff noncommissioned officers throughout the individual services. Even those who would prefer a nontraditional PME approach do not seek it out simply because they cannot assume the risk to their career. This hesitancy is amplified by the services’ manpower management practices, which are designed to check requisite career progression boxes that collectively make members competitive for O-5 command.

This requirement to maintain competitiveness for O-5 command is present whether a particular servicemember wants the opportunity or not. The sea services are missing a valuable opportunity and bypassing a valuable talent pool strictly through the use of a short sighted and outdated promotion model. Everyone is treated like they are a future ship’s captain or infantry battalion commander – regardless of personal aspirations – and this is a mistake.

A Proposed Solution

This article now proposes two potential answers to the aforementioned problem. Both are designed to increase the incentive for servicemembers to pursue self-study PME, with one approach creating the opportunity to do so and the other removing any potential negative side-effects to one’s career progression.

1) Choose Your Own (PME) Adventure: If the sea services want to truly revamp and weaponize their approach to PME, this is one of the most nontraditional opportunities to do so. PME selection boards – be they for company grade, field grade, or top level school allocations – can set aside a small portion of their allocations for only the highest performing servicemembers on the board and allow them the chance to design their own PME program. Prospective students would get to pick the school (a traditional university, PME institution, trade school, or other options), the field of study, and the recommended utilization tour upon completion of the program.

There are two methods to solicit these programs. The first is to field said programs from individuals seeking to embark on them before a given PME selection board convenes. Boards will then convene and determine, much like they do for every PME program, if the requested program fits the needs of the service and the servicemember is of sufficient quality and talent to warrant approval to the program. The second method is to select those servicemembers for this self-designed PME option, then instruct them to build and submit their program for approval. Either approach is feasible, however the first approach of solicitation then allocation most likely nests better within the current timelines of PME selection and rotation dates.

Note that this option is in no way a “free ride” or “vacation” for the servicemember. Potential self-designed programs should nest within a member’s professional duties and fit the general needs the member fulfills for the service. The servicemember, who will most likely spend a considerable amount of time away from traditional military installations and communities, should also uphold basic tenets of military life (physical fitness, military appearance, off duty conduct, etc.) throughout the program. Moreover, these programs would also warrant substantial utilization tours and service obligations once completed, so the services will benefit from continued retention of their best performers in fields these members actually want to be in. The author is not naïve to personnel requirements of the sea services and this option is not meant erode the potential pool of ships’ captains, department heads, or battalion commanders. It is merely an entrepreneurial recommendation for the services to better utilize their top performers, with effects that will ripple down throughout the entire force.

2) “Learn More and Do Better”: The sea services must eschew the notion that “learning is good but doing is better.” This is a false dichotomy that assumes a zero sum game between personal development and professional competence, where one comes at the expense of the other. This is ridiculous, yet promotion boards implicitly communicate this at every convening. Myopic rules about what constitutes a “key billet in grade” should be discarded in favor of a more wholistic look at the entire person up for promotion or command. Is the Marine Corps really assuming increased risk by promoting an already high performing and self-educated Major to Lieutenant Colonel without a traditional Executive Officer or Operations Officer tour? This article submits that there is minimal risk in this decision. Is there a proper combination of education and experience that can allow a potential ship’s captain to bypass a department head tour in favor of a nontraditional education program? This article again posits that there is indeed a combination of learning and doing that can compensate for the standard cookie cutter approach of career progression.

What this requires is a massive shift in the mindset of the services and their leaders. Once promotions and command allocations better account for self-driven PME, trust will rise amongst the naval workforce to pursue individual improvement opportunities. The relationship between personal development and professional competence is not zero sum but complimentary. By learning more, servicemembers will do better.

Conclusion

The sea services will need people – not equipment – to do the hard things that are sure to come in the next conflict. The wars of the future will transcend current known quantities such as weaponeering and single domain warfare. This future war will be cognitively rigorous, and the leaders who can think effectively first will be the ones who attack effectively first. An educated and intelligent naval workforce is a requirement if the sea services are to succeed in these future wars. Professional Military Education, long an area of investment in our human capital, needs to be revamped and better weaponized to attract and retain the brightest minds in the naval force. Leaders at all levels must provide incentives for self-study PME, not judging it against time spent in the office but more so as a compliment to this time. Leaders must also realize when individual increases in proficiency arise from entrepreneurial PME initiatives and laud them.

Institutionally, the sea services should allow for the best and brightest servicemembers to design their own PME program, provided that it nests within their professional duties and the needs of the service. The services’ highest leaders must champion the notion that education does not equal a degradation of experience but more so an increase in potential performance. Promotions should reflect this shift in mindset, effectively communicating to the workforce that there is minimal risk to one’s career if they seek out education. Combining these grassroots and institutional-level efforts will increase the intelligence and commensurate performance of the naval workforce, provide apparent levels of career satisfaction for all involved, and allow the sea services to better fight and win the next war.

Captain Robert Holmes, USMC, is a graduate student of Eurasian regional security studies and a Eurasian Foreign Area Officer at the Naval Postgraduate School.

Endnotes

1. James Wirtz, “The Reluctant Theorist: Colin Gray and the Theory of Strategy,” Infinity Journal (March, 2014): 14.

Featured Image: Students with the Marine Corps University (MCU) participate in the MCU Commencement ceremony at Little Hall, Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, June 8, 2022. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Eric Huynh)

Education

Sustaining an Intellectual Overmatch: Management Education for Our Naval Warfighters

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By Dr. Mie Augier, Major Sean F. X. Barrett, Dr. Nick Dew, and Dr. Gail Fann Thomas

“The 21st Century demands American officers be far better educated and more capable of directing and integrating the Nation’s military instrument.” –Developing Today’s Joint Officer for Tomorrow’s Ways of War1

“The challenges of the twenty first century require holistic approaches to the changing character of conflict.” –Education for Seapower2

Introduction

The Joint Chiefs of Staff’s May 2020 vision and guidance for Professional Military Education (PME) and talent management states, “There is more to sustaining a competitive advantage than acquiring hardware; we must gain and sustain an intellectual overmatch as well.”3 Developing flexible, agile minds was also a major theme a century ago in the Knox-King-Pye report, which helped the Navy steer away from an earlier technical education focus and toward broader skills that helped produce the ideas and leaders that proved critical in WWII.

Fast forward 100 years, and we have reached another inflection point. Numerous studies point to a geostrategic environment that has shifted radically in the past decade toward a future that is filled with uncertainty. The Navy and Marine Corps have realized that key aspects of our institutions, war planning, training, education, and resource management are inadequate to deter and, if necessary, win against our adversaries when the situation arises.

We should look at how management education, with its interdisciplinary and integrative focus, is an essential tool for developing future naval warfighters who have the skills to draw out peak performance from personnel and maximize the effectiveness of a wide range of naval organizations.4 Most people know from personal experience the difference that excellent management makes to organizational performance. A recent study shows that workers who moved from an average boss to a high-quality boss improved their productivity by 50 percent.5 Leaders with high-quality management skills can really make an impact. And while the context of management varies, the practice of management across a broad range of situations fundamentally requires a similar set of core skills.6 Given the need for the Navy team to perform at its peak under challenging circumstances, the Navy would be well-served by incorporating more management education into PME for both officers and enlisted sailors.

The Human Element in High-Performance Organizations

Our naval forces do not operate in a vacuum and are oftentimes nudged by larger economic and societal trends. Therefore, it is worth looking briefly at some general trends in U.S. management before turning to what specifically might be relevant to defense management.

Industries throughout the U.S. have been grappling with issues similar to those facing the naval services. Technology is changing faster and faster. Attracting, engaging, and retaining top talent is an unrelenting task. In response to these challenges, corporations have recognized the need to create learning organizations that support high performance. Evidence of these issues in the Navy is apparent in recently retired Vice Admiral Luke McCollum’s 2018 report in response to the 2017 U.S. Navy ship collisions. The report, Industry Best Practices & Learning Culture – The Competitive Advantage of a Learning Culture, provided a series of findings after surveying 30 Navy-relevant corporations to learn how they build and sustain high-performing organizations. Human factors topped the list. 

The most important component of building a learning culture is inculcating these “human factors” into the organization. High-performance and mission effectiveness are dependent on the humanistic aspects of employees, teams, and leaders. This people-centric perspective dominates high-performing organizations.7

This human-oriented theme has long been recognized by our naval leaders. Admiral Arleigh Burke clearly understood the importance of developing the Navy’s leaders:

“There is one element in the profession of arms that transcends all others in importance; this is the human element. No matter what the weapons of the future may be, no matter how they are to be employed in war or international diplomacy, man will still be the most important factor in naval operations.”8

More recently, the Joint Chiefs emphasized the human factor in their May 2020 report:

“All graduates must possess critical and creative thinking skills, emotional intelligence, and effective written, verbal and visual communication skills to support the development and implementation of strategies and complex operations.”9

Given the centrality of the human element to our naval success, we must understand how to manage it well. This involves a shift in the kinds of skills, capabilities, attitudes, and values at the center of PME. Two central issues stand out.

An increasing need for generalist skills in an uncertain world. In his book, Range, David Epstein claims that cognitive flexibility is increasingly important in today’s world. Training in specific tools and techniques is efficient for mastering repetitive, well-structured problems. However, a world full of uncertainty, ambiguity, and ill-structured problems requires more diverse skills and knowledge (i.e., range and flexibility). Cognitive flexibility manifests in the ability to transfer knowledge between domains and apply knowledge to new situations, which is increasingly important in today’s specialized world. Teaching broad concepts rather than specific information is more advantageous to developing this ability, as well as instilling a broad intellectual preparedness and the ability for ongoing learning. Warfighters need to learn how to think rather than what to think about. As the Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon cautioned, “What we must avoid above all is designing technologically sophisticated hammers and then wandering around to find nails that we can hit with them.”10 An ability to think abstractly can be capitalized on across a range of problems as opposed to specific skills that are limited to particular types of problems. Thus, instruction focused on helping students make connections is more conducive to learning and later achievement than focusing on formulas and procedures.11 Such skills are very relevant to warfighters where there is a high need for flexibility and taking initiative in executing operational orders.

An explicit focus on soft skills. Operating effectively in a world in which technology has connected individuals and organizations more than ever requires warfighters with sophisticated soft skills in addition to technological expertise. The President of the Naval Postgraduate School, Vice Admiral Ann E. Rondeau, USN (ret.), explains, “Employers today require the whole package when looking for people to hire and join their teams… They want individuals who have developed intangible skills not necessarily listed as part of a certificate or degree.”12 Today’s reality requires warfighters to have the soft skills necessary to manage organizational ecosystems where leaders do not necessarily wield formal authority but instead must build mutually aligned communities. As Richard Straub writes in the June 2019 Harvard Business Review, “To succeed in the era of platforms and partnerships, managers will need to change practice on many levels…Both practitioners and scholars can begin by dispensing with mechanistic, industrial-age models of inputs, processes, and outputs. They will have to take a more dynamic, organic, and evolutionary view of how organizations’ capacities grow and can be cultivated.”13 Soft skills have thus emerged as a key requirement for managing the performance of ecosystems of organizations.”14

By identifying the Navy’s requirements for high-quality management skills among its warfighters, we can invest in PME that equips naval warfighters with the skills they really need to lead a wide range of naval organizations to high performance.

Management Education for Seapower

Given the need for superior generalist and soft skills to match the challenges of the strategic environment the Navy faces, management education provides many key opportunities for warfighters to develop the right intellectual abilities. Some of the most relevant themes and approaches include the following:

Educating minds to be prepared for the unexpected. Retired Admiral Mike Mullen, who spoke at the Naval Postgraduate School’s first virtual SECNAV Guest Lecture, stated, “We live now in a tremendous time of great uncertainty and even greater ambiguity. We’re facing and will face a completely new, and in many ways unknown, reality where nothing will be the same in the future.”15 Management approaches and education can help in this instance. Management education is centrally concerned with anticipating and adapting to change. It develops proactive problem-solving skills. While the ability to analyze known problems using optimizing techniques has a place, it is important for the Navy also to focus on developing warfighters with skills in thinking through ambiguous and changing situations.16

Leading warfighting organizations to become more agile through change and transformation. In their May 2020 report, the Joint Chiefs observed, “We cannot simply rely upon mass or the best technology…Our job is to learn how to apply our capabilities better and more creatively.”17 Admiral Mullen similarly emphasized the importance of leading change.18 However, change is not easy. For example, former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates noted in his memoir, Duty, that the greatest challenge he faced was changing organizations. Any change, to be effective, must be understood and communicated by people to be implemented in our organizations. In the DoD, this becomes even more complicated because it involves government civilians, military personnel, and contractors, and requires leading across generational divides and a diverse workforce. Given these complexities, warfighters need to use evidence-based approaches on how to best lead change.19

Excelling in communication skills. An intelligent workforce knows how to communicate clearly. Kline’s “Owl Speaks to Lion” humorously describes the detrimental results when an analyst does not know how to translate his findings adequately for the vice admiral who requires the results to make an important decision. Such skills are taught and honed over time and experience. One critical communication skill that must be fostered is writing. The writing process hones one’s thinking and helps one discover the real problem, define the root causes of the problem, and describe the costs and benefits of various courses of action.20

Building exemplary people skills. As the Department of the Navy’s Education for Seapower report explains, “[N]aval leaders must be just as ready to…solve a social problem below decks or in the platoon” as they are “to move against the enemy.”21 Research shows that emotional intelligence, coaching, and feedback upward, downward, and horizontally are key to high performing organizations. And these skills are not “one and done.” Each level of leadership presents new challenges concerning the types and complexity of the problems encountered and the number of people one leads. Social skills are developmental and change over the life of the leader. Additionally, there is evidence that leaders’ skills are directly related to retention. Most have heard the adage, “Employees don’t leave their organization; they leave their managers.”22 Good bosses not only contribute to the high performance of their employees but also increase employee retention because workers quit bad bosses.23

Understanding the influence of cultures. Complementary to (but different from) traditional international relations approaches, management and leadership education emphasize understanding how culture influences decision-making and how it affects collaboration. This is increasingly important to warfighters in an era featuring more and more “shared responsibility for security with other nations,” wherein “[s]trong global relationships and defense partnerships help mitigate the risks of…unpredictability.”24 Greater mutual understanding and mutual trust has enormous practical value in operational environments.

Developing meaningful organizational leadership skills. Vice Admiral Rondeau notes the essential connection between leaders and their organizations: “Leaders set the tone for the culture of their organizations. Meaning of the community, no matter how defined, becomes essential for interconnectedness, for bonding, and for understanding. It all has to do with the relationship between the organization and the individual.”25 The Navy’s PME institutions are uniquely positioned to develop warfighter skills in how to communicate and build essential interconnections using best practices from both civilian and military approaches to leadership development.

Building historical understanding to be decisive in the future. In an operational environment featuring a lack of combat deployments, we must increasingly turn to history to learn vicariously through others. The first President of Marine Corps University, Lieutenant General Paul K. Van Riper, USMC (ret.), reflected, “I wanted to impart a simple lesson: a properly schooled officer never arrives on a battlefield for the first time, even if he has never actually trod the ground, if that officer has read wisely to acquire the wisdom of those who have experienced war in times past.”26 A champion of PME throughout his career in Congress, Representative Ike Skelton also recognized the importance of an appreciation for history: “I cannot stress this enough because a solid foundation in history gives perspective to the problems of the present. And a solid appreciation of history…will prepare students for the future.”27 Management education has long championed these kinds of vicarious learning through the extensive use of case studies. The case study approach heightens students’ sensitivity to history, context, and the particulars of a wide variety of situations. It gives warfighters a reservoir of examples to draw on as they face an unpredictable future.28

These elements of management education can help naval warfighters improve their personal performance and create a higher-performing Navy team that is better positioned to cope with the unpredictability of the future operating environment. In an era when investment dollars are at a premium, these management skills should be emphasized to a greater extent in PME because they provide high return on the Navy’s investments. Management skills can be applied across a wide range of situations and roles, and they typically stay relevant longer than technical skills. Management skills are particularly valuable for warfighters that advance into higher-level positions that usually involve more complex organizational and leadership challenges, and less technical know-how.29 A recent study by Harvard economists David Deming and Kadeem Noray puts it this way:

“[High]-ability workers choose STEM careers initially, but exit them over time…[This] is explained by differences across fields in the relative return to on-the-job learning. High ability workers are faster learners in all jobs. However, the relative return to ability is higher in careers that change less because learning gains accumulate”(emphasis added).30

Return on investment explains why management degrees (principally MBAs) dominate lists of the most popular graduate degrees, since individuals know that as their careers advance, the returns on graduate education favor developing strong management skills.31 Investing in management know-how is also less risky than investing in technical knowledge because the general applicability of management skills means they never abruptly go out of fashion.

Conclusion

“Whoever can make and implement his decisions consistently faster gains a tremendous, often decisive advantage. Decision making thus becomes a time-competitive process, and timeliness of decisions becomes essential to generating tempo. Timely decisions demand rapid thinking, with consideration limited to essential factors. We should spare no effort to accelerate our decision-making ability.” –FMFM 132

The changing geostrategic landscape demands changes in the skillsets of our naval leaders. Because of rapid advancements in technology, the human element will play an increasingly important factor in future operating environments. While tactical naval warfighters need to be technically savvy, operational-level warfighters must excel in the managerial skills needed to get peak performance out of the human element. Fundamentally, this is a general management challenge that applies across a wide range of Navy organizations. The Education for Seapower study and strategy, and the remarks of our naval leaders highlight that this entails a paradigm shift in our approach to PME. The Navy should invest more in management education to develop the intellectual and practical competencies required for excellence in naval warfighting.

Dr. Mie Augier is a professor in the Graduate School of Defense Management at the Naval Postgraduate School and a Founding Member of the Naval Warfare Studies Institute (NWSI). She is interested in strategy, organizations, innovation, leadership, and how to educate strategic and innovative thinkers.

Major Sean F. X. Barrett is an active duty Marine Corps intelligence officer. He is currently the operations officer for the Headquarters Marine Corps Directorate of Analytics & Performance Optimization.

Dr. Nick Dew is a professor at the Graduate School of Defense Management at the Naval Postgraduate School. His research is focused on entrepreneurial thinking and innovation in defense organizations.

Dr. Gail Fann Thomas is an associate professor in the Graduate School of Defense Management at the Naval Postgraduate School. Her research focus is strategic communication and interorganizational collaboration.

References

1. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Developing Today’s Joint Officers for Tomorrow’s Ways of War: The Joint Chiefs of Staff Vision and Guidance for Professional Military Education & Talent Management, (Washington, DC: 2020), 2.

2. Department of the Navy, Education for Seapower (Washington, DC: 2019), 37.

3. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Developing Today’s Joint Officers, 2.

4. We acknowledge the difference between management and leadership. Both can be learned and contribute to peak performance for naval officers. See, for example, Bernard Bass, The Bass Handbook of Leadership:  Theory, Research, and Managerial Applications (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010); John Kotter, “What Leaders Really Do,” Harvard Business Review (Dec. 2001): 2; Abraham Zaleznik, “Managers and Leaders: Are They Different?” Harvard Business Review (Jan. 2004): 1.

5. Kathryn L. Shaw, Bosses Matter: The Effects of Managers on Workers’ Performance: What Evidence Exists on Whether Bad Bosses Damage Workers’ Performance, Issue 456 (Bonn, Germany: IZA World of Labor, 2019).

6. Shaw, Bosses Matter.

7. Luke M. McCollum, Chief of Naval Reserve, Report on Engagement With Industry and the Competitive Advantage of Learning Culture, submitted to Secretary of the Navy, December 26, 2018.

8. As quoted in Rear Admiral P. Gardner Howe III, “Professionalism, Leader Development Key to Future,” Navy News Service, May 26, 2015, https://www.navy.mil/submit/display.asp?story_id=87319.

9. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Developing Today’s Joint Officers, 4.

10. Herbert A. Simon, “What We Know About Learning,” Journal of Engineering Education 87, no. 4 (Oct. 1998): 346.

11. David Epstein, Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World (New York: Riverhead Books, 2019).

12. Anne Rondeau, “Gen Eds – Are They Worth It?” HuffPost, March 29, 2017, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/gen-eds-are-they-worth-it_b_58dbc980e4b0f087a3041ea4.

13. Richard Straub, “What Management Needs to Become in an Era of Ecosystems,” Harvard Business Review, June 5, 2019, https://hbr.org/2019/06/what-management-needs-to-become-in-an-era-of-ecosystems.

14. Such soft skills include communication, teamwork and interpersonal skills, critical thinking, and problem-solving capability in complex, multidisciplinary situations. Casciaro, Edmondson, and Jang note that “the vast majority of innovation and business development opportunities lie in the interfaces between functions, offices, or organizations.” Similarly, Hagel and Brown observe the “productive friction” that results from transactions between companies. Strong interpersonal skills are needed for these results to manifest themselves. See Tiziana Casciaro, Amy C. Edmondson, and Sujin Jang, “Cross-Silo Leadership: How to Create More Value by Connecting Experts from Inside and Outside the Organization,” Harvard Business Review (May-June 2019): 132; John Hagel III and John Seely Brown, “Difficult Business Partnerships Can Accelerate Innovation,” Harvard Business Review (Feb. 2005), https://hbr.org/2005/02/productive-friction-how-difficult-business-partnerships-can-accelerate-innovation.

15. Admiral Mike Mullen, USN(ret.), “SECNAV Guest Lecture” (lecture, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA, May 19, 2020).

16. In the context of business, Jeff Bezos notes, “For every leader in the company, not just for me, there are decisions that can be made by analysis…These are the best kinds of decisions! They’re fact-based decisions. The great thing about fact-based decisions is that they overrule the hierarchy. The most junior person in the company can win an argument with the most senior person with a fact-based decision. Unfortunately, there’s this whole other set of decisions that you can’t ultimately boil down to a math problem.” As quoted in Bernard Girard, The Google Way: how One Company Is Revolutionizing Management As We Know It (San Francisco, CA: No Starch Press, Inc., 2009), 118.

17. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Developing Today’s Joint Officers, 3.

18. Michael Mullen, “Admiral Michael Mullen: Wharton Leadership Lecture,” October 27, 2008, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OD7AfDQhZbw.

19. Jeroen Stouten, Denise M. Rousseau, and David De Cremer, “Successful Organizational Change: Integrating the Management Practices and Scholarly Literatures,” Academy of Management Annals 12, no. 2 (2018): 752-788.

20. Carol Bekenkotter, “Writing and Problem Solving,” in Language Connections: Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum, eds. T. Fulwiler and A. Young (Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1982), 33-44.

21. Education for Seapower, 15.

22. Lori Goler, Janelle Gale, Brynn Harrington, and Adam Grant, “Why People Really Quit Their Jobs,” Harvard Business Review, January 11, 2018, https://hbr.org/2018/01/why-people-really-quit-their-jobs.

23. Shaw, Bosses Matter.

24. Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas B. Modly, “SECNAV VECTOR 8,” January 24, 2020.

25. Ann E. Rondeau, “Identity in the Profession of Arms,” Joint Force Quarterly, no. 62 (3rd Quarter 2011): 11.

26. Paul K. Van Riper, “The Relevance of History to the Military Profession: An American Marine’s View,” in The Past As Prologue: The Importance of History to the Military Profession, eds. Williamson Murray and Richard Hart Sinnreich (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 53.

27. Ike Skelton, “JPME: Are We There Yet?” Military Review 72, no. 5 (May 1992): 2-9.

28. This is complementary to a pure war college perspective in that it blends history with organizations and a strategic lens and is thus more broadly applicable and provides greater understanding for students who can learn from the process of developing and applying analogies to different contexts.

29. See, for example, a survey of Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni, in National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, The Integration of the Humanities and Arts with Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in Higher Education: Branches from the Same Tree (Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2018), 44-45.

30. David J. Deming and Kadeem Noray, “STEM Careers and the Changing Skill Requirements of Work,” Working Paper (June 2019), 3, https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/ddeming/files/dn_stem_june2019.pdf.

31. For example, see “Most Popular Graduate Degrees,” Master’s Programs Guide, accessed May 26, 2020, https://www.mastersprogramsguide.com/rankings/popular-masters-degrees/.

32. U.S. Marine Corps, FMFM 1: Warfighting (Washington, DC: 1989), 69.

Featured Image: Facilities of the U.S. Naval War College (U.S. Navy Photo by Jaima Fogg/Released)