Ten a Day - Day 5 Are the CPOs of Today Prepared?

The following is a LinkedIn question that raised some good discussions on the boards. After the question is my response. Please forgive my lengthy response but I am passionate about the subject and want to bring up as many discussions as possible. Feel free to respond on this blog or on my Facebook post. I am very interested in your thoughts.

QUESTION FROM LINKEDIN: Something I noticed in the Chief Initiation Season (Induction for some of you) is that it seems to be getting easier every year. Do we really prepare the next generation?

MY ANSWER: I was Inducted (not Initiated) in 2009, but I have served in our great Navy since 1990.  In those 22 years I have experienced some great Chiefs, many satisfactory Chiefs and a few bad Chiefs.  Our society has changed significantly over this time along with its values.  The military has also changed with society (the military is a cross-section of society), but not all customs and traditions carried on from the past were good.  Often times when we remember the past, we only remember the good points and often overlook the bad.  You may remember liquid lunches, Lower Level counseling and sadistic rituals of abuse that brought Sailors closer together, not out of pride, but out of misery, that we called “tradition”.  What we thought were time honored good traditions handed down from the last generations were actually just bad habits that were carried forward, out of a sense of “I had it happen to me, now it is my turn to do it to someone else.”  Before I address Induction versus Initiation further, I would like to put it in context by comparing past Chiefs to present Chiefs. 

Leadership 22 years ago may not have been as great as we remember it.  When I started out as a young Sailor in 1990, the Second Classes ran the shop and it was the First Classes’ job to run interference between the Seconds and the Chief.  The Chief sat in the Mess unless something went wrong; then he gave you a good ass chewing and waddled back to the Mess.  If you saw the Chief, there was a sense of awe and fear of the man.  You didn’t talk to him unless he spoke to you first and he was usually too busy barking out orders to talk to you.  Mission accomplishment through fear was the leadership style of the day.  Good, bad or different that was the way it was in my experience.  Now I want you to think about that Chief I just described.  Is being feared and only associated with problems good traits for a Chief?  I say no.  Our expectations of a Chief are to be visible, approachable, knowledgeable of both his equipment and Sailors, and above all else responsible to his charges.  Mission First, People Always is our leadership style.  Deckplate Leadership isn’t a slogan or buzzword; it is our reality and a necessity of our leadership.

Not all leadership in the past was bad.  Growing up in the Navy, we had designated spaces that we were responsible for.  This included the machinery in it, the cleanliness of it and all Damage Control equipment for it.  You even had a sign posted on the outside of the compartment telling everyone YOU owned it.  In the last 22 years our Navy has slowly shifted responsibility upward (Firsts or even Chiefs are now doing what the Seconds did in the past) and junior Sailors have zero personal accountability.  The definition of leadership development is allowing our Sailors to become responsible for more than just themselves, giving them a chance to make mistakes and holding them accountable for their actions.  They are not being developed into leaders if they lose the chance to challenge themselves and build their problem solving skills.  In the Fleet today when a space is inspected and marked UNSAT; it is always the Division Officer and Chief’s fault.  No one else is held responsible for the upkeep of that space.  Is it the Division Officer and Chief’s fault that the space was UNSAT?  Absolutely!  But more importantly it was their fault for not designating responsibility to someone and holding them accountable for it AT ALL TIMES.  Today’s zero defect mentality only compounds this situation into a culture of zero risk and hero reward.  Everyone is afraid of making mistakes so they don’t do anything and only the heroes who risk all are rewarded for their efforts. 

We always think that the next generation is softer, weaker and not ready for what we experienced, but that’s simply not true in most cases.  The Sailors of today (and Chiefs of tomorrow) are better educated, more motivated and are smarter than any of us old timers.  Our leadership development may still have flaws, along with its Chiefs, but we are continually improving.  That is most evident in the transition from Initiation to Induction.  During the time of MCPON Hagan and MCPON Herdt the Initiation process had been under such public scrutiny for hazing that top Navy officials were going to ban it.  Many of the Chiefs that I have talked to about Initiation stated that it was 99% torture with no real leadership value.  They all seemed to say the same thing, “I survived it but I didn’t get anything out of it.”  MCPON Herdt and his Chiefs’ Mess revamped Initiation into Induction.  Although this process shift helped the current (circa 2000) and future CPOs with transition, it still did not address the legacy problems of poor leadership development that Initiation caused.  MCPON Campa and West both identified significant problems within our Navy leadership, including its Chiefs, and have made strides to improve our Navy and our Mess.  MCPON Campa instituted the CPO Mission, Vision Guiding Principles.  MCPON West, acknowledging that Chief Petty Officers are not made in six weeks of Induction, started the CPO 365 program.  If you’re not familiar with CPO 365, it is a year round, three phase program developed to encourage mentorship and foster a stronger bond between the Chiefs’ Mess and Board Eligible First Classes prior to the Induction Season.

BACK TO THE ORIGINAL QUESTION: Is the Induction Season getting easier each year and are the next generation of CPO prepared? Yes.  With the CPO 365 program and CPO mentorship we can’t sit around and complain about the poor leadership skills of our new Chiefs because they were the very same EP First Classes, whom we mentored and led, the entire year before.  Today’s embrace the CPO 365 program with gusto because we know these Sailors will be our replacements.  We continuously train with our First Classes, both physically and mentally, to ensure that they have better leadership skills and more educated than we were through our Season.  The results of MCPON West’s vision and our hard work will not be seen for 5 plus years, but I know in my heart that this is the right way for us to conduct business. 

One last item, it’s a grammar nuance, but to me it’s huge.  When we talk about the Chiefs’ Mess, it should be plural (as opposed to the Chief’s Mess).  The reason for this distinction is simple; we are all in the Mess together as a team; our brothers and sisters of the past, the Chiefs carrying the weight today and our future Chiefs of tomorrow who will inherit a strong tradition of pride and professionalism.  I am proud to carry it on and live to hear the words “ask the Chief” spoken to our new generation of Chiefs.