Odds are you probably missed CNO Richardson talking to Naval Special Warfare East last week.
In it, he addresses a sore spot that goes back decades, and in my two decades+ of service only got worse; the infamous Collateral Duty List and its abuse of size and importance.
I highly encourage you to watch the full video embedded below, but here is a rather sublime quote.
(What we’re) talking about is sort of a bigger issue where … it’s just kind of not enough to be an expert at your job, to be a good person, to be a leader, and an exemplary … Sailor. …
Somehow you need to go off and get something more. You need to get a collateral duty. … This whole idea …. that without a bunch of collaterals, you’re just not going to be competitive for advancement.
What that does … it waters down our mission focus.
I want to be the absolute most lethal navy, the most feared navy on the face of the earth, and I don’t need a lot of collaterals to do that. I just need a lot of people who know how to do their job, fight their team, fight their ship, and defeat the enemy – and that should be enough to get advanced in our Navy.
…
You don’t need a lot of collateral duties. A lot of those things are bologna anyway.There are a lot of units out there where the collateral duty list is bigger than the number of people in the unit.
I challenge you to take that notice (the collateral duty list) … and just line out the stuff that is stupid, and then mail that to me, and I’ll kill it.
…Now some of those things please keep. They’re not all stupid, but we’ll just line out the dumb ones and focus on warfighting.
We should all keep an eye on the followthrough, but the CNO is by all intentions sincere here. I expect he will follow through.
It may seem small, but this is a huge thing in the fleet. Command by command, this will free up so much time and decrease wasted effort. Such an easy thing to do that will increase morale and efficiency. There is no downside except for those whose pet ox that is supported by these self-licking ice cream cones is gored.
Next we can move on to a few BA/NMP O2 thieves on everyone’s manpower document that need to recoded with a focus towards warfighting, but for now, we’ll take what we have.
BZ CNO.
