The Navy is at a tipping point. With the rapid rise of advanced technologies in the commercial sector and shrinking defense budgets, the Navy is being forced to modernize at the same time that it is contracting. Near peer adversaries like Russia and China, regional actors like Iran and North Korea, and even terrorist forces are able to take advantage of social networks and personal communications devices to organize, communicate and provide command and control of their forces.
In many cases, the tools they are using to communicate – iPhones, Twitter, and Facebook- are superior in some ways to the tools our Navy uses to communicate. Our potential adversaries can leverage the power of social media and collaboration in ways the Navy has not mastered. They do it cheaper, faster, and with more agility than the US Navy. The Navy seems to be frozen in time.
Technology is the simple part. The existence of the right technology is not the problem. Low-cost computer systems are powerful enough to run nearly any software we like. The exponential development of microprocessors and storage has driven the cost of commercial software and hardware to the point of making these essentially disposable. Software designers can program vehicles to drive autonomously and coordinate over the air communications for hundreds of millions of people every day.
The problem is, the Navy as a business enterprise is not able to take advantage of low cost, disposable solutions. The Navy enterprise is made up of people and people make decisions. In the aggregate, the decisions the Navy makes are not leading to a leaner, more lethal force. The current culture of the Navy is designed to reinforce maintenance of the status quo.
The Navy has a culture problem. The CNO’s Rapid Innovation Cell tried to fix that problem.
The Chief of Naval Operation’s Rapid Innovation Cell (CRIC) had two missions. The first was to rapidly bring new concepts and technologies into the Navy. The second was to build a culture of innovation within the Navy. For the first mission, the CRIC was wildly successful. The CRIC, in three years, brought additive manufacturing to ships, highlighted augmented reality in the workplace, and used data analytics and machine learning in new ways to drastically reduce the time and cost of integrating systems of maintaining aircraft. Two CRIC projects, a cyber security project and a project on rapidly reconfigurable mission packages, shifted over $1 billion in Navy investment. None of these projects cost the Navy more than $2 million and most took fewer than two years to complete.
The second mission, building a culture of innovation, has been harder.
CRIC was founded in the middle of sequestration and as a result has had a prejudicial mark against it from Congress since its beginning. As a result, CRIC was unable to grow and accept additional funding from outside sources. The mark against the CRIC was a procedural step, likely meant to set a firm stand against small, pet projects. It was an easy cut for a staffer in Congress to make.
CRIC members have included Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard personnel in the ranks of E-5, E-6, O-2, O-3, and O-4. Despite the direct relationship to the Chief of Naval Operations, CRIC members universally received strong resistance to their implementing their ideas. This resistance came from a single group.
The people who were barriers to innovation for CRIC members were E-7 to E-9, O-5 and O-6, and GS-15 in the civilian ranks. Without exception, those who have a tendency to resist innovation, and the power to do something about it, are the senior managers in the Navy. This group is the “frozen middle” of the Navy. It is both the group that is most resistant to change, and also the group that is most needed to carry forward change.
The enlisted sailors had it the worst. There were several enlisted CRIC members who were unable to continue in the CRIC simply due to the pressure they felt from the Chief’s Mess at their parent commands. In some cases, enlisted sailor’s careers were only salvaged when they transferred out of their commands. The success of many of our enlisted CRIC members was only because of influence from our CRIC director, and in some cases, intervention by the Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy himself. The CRIC was often toxic for enlisted sailors. It gave them hope they could change things in the Navy.
The culture of the Navy does not support enlisted innovators. It is not clear that has changed.
On the officer side, life was only marginally better. The Navy has a culture that supports officers speaking their ideas. Essays in Proceedings and USNI Blog are evidence this culture is strong. It is a different thing altogether for junior officers to implement their ideas.
Resources for innovation are only held at the flag officer and senior executive level. The O-5, O-6, and GS-15 of the Navy are the gatekeepers. Those resources are hotly contested and subject to large councils of stakeholders, who make decisions on if and when the resources will be allocated. For the senior officer on the council, their ability to maintain funding and support for their project portfolio is paramount. New ideas, injected in the council, especially from those twenty years their junior, may disrupt projects that span decades. As a result, those people responsible for maintaining those programs are resistant to, if not openly hostile to CRIC ideas.
The problem comes in when the new idea is actually better than the old idea. There is little opportunity to supplant the old idea because the gatekeepers knowingly or unknowingly block access to the meetings and resources. When ideas are considered, the administrative requirements to present an idea from the junior lieutenant level up to the decision-maker provide additional barriers to innovation beyond what the senior manager is required to provide.
Despite it all, the CRIC was successful in getting projects completed faster, cheaper, and more effectively than the rest of the Navy. The CRIC accomplished this in part by recognizing the importance of the “golden triangle.”
For any successful enterprise, three roles are critical. First is the junior-minded individual with an idea. This person is important because they provide fresh perspective to problems and youthful energy. The second is the mentor. That is the senior person who provides wisdom, experience, guidance, and often resources. The third is the technical expert. This is the person who has the technical acumen to actually take the idea into reality. The technical expert could be an engineer, policy maker, or acquisitions professional.
In the CRIC, the Chief of Naval Operations played the role of senior mentor, providing the ultimate top cover. Each successful member of the CRIC had more than one senior mentor. The CRIC developed strong working relationships with many of the other flag officers and senior executives throughout the Navy.
The CRIC member played the role of the junior-minded individual. Junior-minded is key because the role is tied to a mindset, not an actual age or rank. CRIC was able to develop strong relationships with senior mentors because CRIC provided raw, unfiltered opinions and ideas directly to the leaders. Both groups were reminded that not only were there ways to do things better, but the senior leader had the ability to make consequential changes to remove barriers to innovation.
Technical experts varied. Arranged groupings between subject matter experts for a CRIC member’s project and the CRIC member usually ended in failure. The better way was when the CRIC member and the technical expert met each other and discovered a shared passion. The CRIC member often brought with them top cover and resourcing from the senior mentor.
There is another group critical in the CRIC’s success. There were key individuals in the ranks of the “frozen middle” that were not frozen. They may not have all been innovators themselves, but they were enablers. They provided top cover and process development for the CRIC member. They were the ones who took the initial CRIC idea and turned it into doctrine and policy. They were the ones physically removing language in the policy documents, and standing in those rooms fighting for resourcing for the CRIC projects.
Those Chiefs, Commanders, Captains, and Senior civilians became a part of the “golden triangle.” They embraced change and innovation and shepherded the Navy on a new course. There are small pockets of hope within the “frozen middle.”
The CRIC built a culture of innovation for junior sailors and officers and for a generation of senior leaders. The CRIC is fading away under its congressional mark, but its work is not over. It is time to unfreeze the middle in order to build the future Navy … even in today’s constrained fiscal reality.
The time for the CRIC to change the culture is over. The Navy needs to take the culture of innovation developed by the CRIC and transition it. That is a job for the newly unfrozen middle.
