Recent events have called into question the quality of Navy commanding officers (COs). Annual statistics depict an increasing number of detachments for cause (DFC) or firings over the past ten years.[1] In addition, highly publicized sexual assault cases and hazing incidents can be traced to failures of command leadership. While only a small percentage of commanders are relieved early, and negative trend or perceived moral compromise is a cause for concern. Navy COs are trusted with our most valuable asset—our sailors. Even a few incidents that betray this trust are unacceptable and must be addressed.
The Navy has engaged this problem with a broadside of training courses, instructions, and mentor programs. Prospective COs attend class at the Navy Ethics and Leadership Center (NELC) to fully grasp the ethical and moral aspects of their assignments. In addition, new skippers sign their names to the Chief of Naval Operation’s (CNO’s) Charge of Command Memorandum, a document that delineates the expectations of a commanding officer. These are positive steps to stem the rate of CO reliefs, yet the trend continues, sometimes with deep-reaching negative effects on the Navy’s public image.
The Navy has the leadership talent on board to ensure that every unit has a commanding officer who demonstrates integrity and embodies Navy core values. What it needs is a better way to identify the most gifted leaders and maximize their opportunity to exercise their talent. The Navy needs trusted leaders to understand the trade of command and use it to practice high-velocity learning, a recognized line of effort in CNO Admiral John Richardson’s “Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority.”[2] High-velocity learning values trust, experience, and knowledge to swiftly resolve operational problems on the spot and disseminate innovative solutions.
At odds with the idea of maximizing the leadership time of our best leaders is the drive to increase command opportunity for as many candidates as possible. Policies limiting the duration of command tours are designed to augment the rolls of qualified officers for promotion, but instead have increased the flow rate of COs through commands. In addition, limiting officers to one command tour per grade has prompted screening boards to dip deep into the talent pool. To maximize promotion prospects, the Navy has widened the aperture for command opportunity, but has effectively shifted judgment for leadership competency from the screen board to the command tour, with poor performance as a CO increasingly being the differentiator for marginal leaders.
Increased scrutiny at command screening boards or new training and evaluation programs will have little effect on improving leadership quality while a relatively high opportunity rate dictates the need to screen large numbers of officers for command. By taking steps to identify our very best leaders and increasing their time and number of tours in command, the Navy can limit expectation for command to only the very best officers and stop sacrificing CO quality for increased opportunity. This will make our best better and give sailors the leaders they deserve.
Identify the Best Early
In 2010, the Navy initiated a commanding officer DFC study to address the rising trend of relieved officers. One of the recommendations was to “develop an officer leadership training continuum from accession through major command,” to include behavioral assessments and in-depth training based on a series of milestones to identify and develop the skills needed to be a successful commanding officer. [3] Fully embracing this proposal would be a vital first step toward improving command leadership.
Currently, there is no standardization in applying personality and psychometric evaluations to officers. Some of these assessments are sporadically administered at NELC, but they are not tracked as part of a comprehensive program. Although a score or personality would not be a qualifier or disqualifier for command, the increased self-awareness would be valuable for leaders and help focus training paths.
Standardization of these tests would help populate a range of information for a more selective command screen board. Navy leaders have become skilled at writing universally positive fitness reports while carefully managing their reporting senior averages, making the task of selection boards to find the best and fully qualified officers difficult. Voting members often are starved for information to differentiate true potential commanding officers from less qualified officers. To help identify our best young leaders, an officer would accumulate a leadership portfolio to be briefed at command screening boards alongside the standard performance record. This information only would be available to command screening boards and not used for statutory promotion boards.
Created upon an officer’s selection to lieutenant commander (O4), a command portfolio would include psychometric test results, training evaluations, leader certification board results, and inputs from previous COs. There also would be a requirement for each officer to submit a self-assessment for command. This vigorous long-term process would help prepare future commanding officers, and ensure that there is a wealth of information for boards to consider in choosing future command leaders.
Singling out talented upcoming leaders is only the first step in producing better command leaders. If policies and guidelines continue to maximize command opportunity rates, screening boards will continue to be forced to draw deep into the talent pool to fill command slates. Changes must be made to ensure individual merit and qualifications drive the number selected for command, rather than a contrived requirement.
The Value of Time
Most officers who have served in command will agree that their tours seemed to pass quickly. There is a reason why command tours seem shorter than other assignments; they are. Command tours are 24 months in length compared to standard 36-month tours.[4] This limitation affords greater command opportunity, allowing more officers to put a check in the box for career progression, but what is sacrificed in leadership quality by abbreviating command tour lengths?
Air Force Colonel John Boyd hypothesized that when confronted by a changing environment, all intelligent organisms undergo a continuous cycle of interaction and adjustment, which he modeled with the OODA (observe-orient-decide-act) loop.[5] Colonel Boyd pointed out that success in problem solving depends on the diligent and thorough completion of these cycles.
An officer approaching a new tour of duty uses an OODA loop pattern. The level of attentiveness at which a freshly reported officer observes and orients is a good indicator of the quality of future decisions and actions. U.S. Coast Guard research recently demonstrated the benefit of giving military members more time to observe and orient. Former Commandant Admiral Bob Papp stated that the service extended tours for command positions and is convinced of the benefit. “There were some places where we’re leaving people in place for only one year,” he said. “You could hardly learn your area of operations in that one year, plus the relationships you need to establish and maintain with industry and with the public.”[6]
The overarching degree of authority, responsibility, and accountability of a commanding officer tour make it more difficult to produce well-constructed decisions and actions without an investment of significant time to observe and orient. Interrupting long-cycle OODA loops with a change of command negates advantages gained through the completion of the sequence. As the most intricate and complex problems demand a lengthy analysis, meaningful command challenges may not be properly addressed because of frequent command leadership rotations.
Defense journalist Thomas E. Ricks, in examining U.S. military command, observed that excessive commanding officer “rotation [is] the enemy of competence and accountability.”[7] The CNO Charge of Command Memorandum adds that “when accountability is not enforced . . . the command eventually fails.“[8] Extending a command tour to three years would reduce leadership rotation and emphasize accountability by allowing a commander’s OODA loops to properly cycle through to maturity. This would ensure that trust, experience, and knowledge are congruent with accountable decisions and actions.
Most important, new COs must have the time to build and maintain trust within their organizations. In recent history, the U.S. Army truncated command tours to as little as six months, often resulting in negative consequences. Numerous official reports commissioned to investigate shortcomings or misconduct in Korea and Vietnam cite shortened command tours for “destroy[ing] unit cohesion and trust.”[9] A 1970 report on Army ethics and morality emphasized the impact on unit trust. A frustrated company commander summarized the findings, stating that trust and “loyalty among [subordinates] are not developed overnight.”[10]
The CNO Charge of Command Memorandum underlines this importance, asserting that “trust is a fundamental building block of our command and control structure and our ability to achieve mission success.”[11] Research and experience have shown that trust is key to mission success and needs time to be established and nurtured. Excessive leadership rotation erodes this process by continually resetting the command’s relationship with its leader. Extending a command tour to 36 months provides time to create and capitalize on confident command relationships. Lengthier command tours will produce longer and deeper levels of leadership trust and subsequent command success.
Building trust also is essential in applying the tenants of high-velocity learning. A senior leader must earn the strong trust needed to rapidly apply operational remedies that may not be apparent to subordinates. Without fully establishing trust, the crew may not buy in to the on-the-spot initiatives and timely decisions that provide a high-velocity advantage. A high-velocity Navy must allow adequate time for COs to build strong trust relationships with their crews.
There is no substitute for time and the trust it builds. After two years on the job, many COs are becoming knowledgeable and oriented with their challenges. It is a time when talented and trusted leaders are most competent and effective in leveraging their relationship with the command, making key decisions and exercising high-velocity learning improvements. A third year will give COs the opportunity to produce lasting positive effects for the unit instead of feeling the frustration of relinquishing command when poised to make real differences.
Play It Again?
The limitation of one command opportunity per senior paygrade also needs to be reexamined. With rare exception, a screened officer will have only one two-year command tour during his or her six to eight years in rank. Although multiple command tours for every screened officer would overly limit command opportunities, there are clear benefits in rewarding the Navy’s very best COs with a second command tour in grade.
The Navy consistently produces a number of stand-out commanding officers. These talented and transformational leaders are typically identified early and breakout in the top third of fitness reports when ranked against their fellow COs. These officers are solving the leadership problems that most trouble senior leaders and circulating their best practices. These high achievers mentor our future leaders, are good examples to peers, and make command decisions that align with Navy core values. The Navy greatly profits when these officers are in command, and their services need to be maximized.
As with early identification of prospective commanding officers, exceptional COs need to be systematically recognized for follow-on commands during their initial command tours. The goal would be to distinguish the top third of early promote (EP)-rated COs as eligible for further commands, with a limited number receiving offers for second command tours based on career timing and availability.
Placements of second-tour COs would depend heavily on type command (TyCom) evaluation of various unit needs and missions. Underperforming units or upcoming vital command missions would be some of the considerations for TyComs. By spreading the knowledge gained from innovative solutions and best practices, second-tour COs would serve as cornerstones of high-velocity learning in the fleet, attacking problems at the source and strengthening operational excellence. More commands would receive skippers who are ready from day one to advance the mission with limited observe-orient time. This would be a significant benefit to forward-based and combat intense units.
The most important advantage to offering a follow-on command tour is consideration for our sailors. Maximizing the time our best officers serve in command gives our sailors the competent and highly qualified commanders who they can trust. By identifying our best leaders early, maximizing their time in command, and reusing their skills, we make our best leaders better and give our sailors the informed guidance and command support that leads to success.
Command vs Career
To significantly change the career guidelines for commanding officers will conflict with current conventional career paths and mandated experience, including joint qualifications, required schools, and staff billets. Many counterarguments to these recommended changes in commanding officer policies can be based upon incompatibility with established officer community career progression.
Individual officer promotion is centered on the identification of “best and fully qualified” candidates as published in community-specific convening orders. As priorities compete, “best and fully qualified” has come to describe officers who are well-rounded or broadly experienced, as reflected by the various community career paths. However, this understanding of value in versatility should be reconsidered.
The U.S. military traditionally has excelled when forced, either by historical imperative or by empirical results, to choose its commanders purely by leadership merit, rather than by career or seniority considerations. In World War II, leadership assignments were based on a sense of urgency to rapidly produce a superior fighting force. Setting the tone at the onset, service leaders quickly relieved commanders failing to meet combat standards while pushing forward more junior officers who exhibited leadership potential. Command in the war would be reserved for those officers with proven leadership skills. There was little concern for opportunity or with building a well-rounded experience portfolio. [12]
In later wars, however, there was less of an imperative to ensure the best leaders were assigned combat command. In fact, after World War II, Army leadership initiated a deliberate plan to ensure that officers who lacked combat experience were assigned leadership positions in order to produce more versatile senior officers. The results of this policy were disastrous, as evidenced by the ineffectual field performance of Army units early in the Korean War. In August 1950, a research report confirmed that poor leadership selection was the main culprit. General Mark Clark sent the report to General J. Lawton Collins, the Army chief of staff, explaining that “the detrimental effects … on combat efficiency is an inescapable corollary of the program … which seeks… to produce well-rounded and versatile officers.” [13] Unfortunately, these findings did not cause significant change in policy. Shallow but versatile officers continue to be prized, often times with persistent mediocrity being rewarded over merit.
The CNO Charge of Command Memorandum states, “Command is the foundation upon which our Navy rests.”[14] Command also should be the foundation and centerpiece of a Navy officer’s career path. An officer that demonstrates a high aptitude for command leadership must remain focused on fulfilling and refining that role for the Navy, rather than be distracted by mandated career checkpoints. There will undoubtedly be opportunities for post-command officers to complete short staff tours and build general knowledge levels, but career ambition and progression ultimately has to be tied to the art of command. To ensure consistent mission success and the highest quality organization for its sailors, the Navy must maximize the talents of its best officers for its highest purpose.
Improve Command Leaders
The fitness of an officer for command must be comprehensively and systematically ascertained prior to assignment. Spot lectures and required training sessions are not enough to transform marginal leaders into high-quality fleet COs. The Navy actively must identify the talented commanders of the future and enable them to do what they do best. The fundamental change of prioritizing command tours and identifying and fully using our best leaders will produce the elite standard bearers to stamp out the nagging issues that linger at Navy commands. It will produce leaders who earn the unconditional trust of our sailors, shepherd high-velocity learning throughout the fleet, and empower officers and sailors to new standards of excellence.
[1] U.S. Navy Commanding Officer Detachment for Cause Study (2010), www.secnav.navy.mil/ig/FOIA%20Reading%20Room/NAVINSGEN%20Commanding%20Officer%20Dismissed%20For%20Cause%20(DFC)%20Study%202010.pdf.
Staff Report, “2014-2016 Navy firings: Commanding officer, XO, senior enlisted,” Navy Times (2016).
www.navytimes.com/2016/03/10/2016-navy-firings-commanding-officer-xo-senior-enlisted/.
[2] Admiral John M. Richardson, “A Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority,” January 2016, Version 1.0, 7. http://www.navy.mil/cno/docs/cno_stg.pdf.
[3] U.S. Navy Commanding Officer Detachment for Cause Study (2010).
[4] SSN Commanding Officers are an exception with 32 month tours. Most CO tours are 18-24 months with limited exceptions. See Military Personnel Manual (MILPERSMAN) 1301-110 OFFICER DISTRIBUTION – PRESCRIBED SEA TOUR (PST) AND RECOMMENDED SHORE TOUR LENGTHS for more details. www.public.navy.mil/bupers-npc/reference/milpersman/1000/1300Assignment/Documents/1301-110.pdf.
[5] Wikipedia entry, Col John Boyd. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Boyd_(military_strategist).
[6] Meghann Meyers, “Tour Lengths Extended for More than 2000 Jobs,” Navy Times, 12 January 2015, www.navytimes.com/story/military/coast-guard/2015/01/12/coast-guard-tour-lengths-pcs-overhaul/21383561/.
[7] Thomas E. Ricks, The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2012) 415.
[8] Admiral Jon W. Greenert, “Memorandum for All Prospective Commanding Officers,” 08 Nov 2011, 3 www.public.navy.mil/bupers-npc/officer/Detailing/Documents/The%20Charge%20of%20Command_11_8_2011_9_28_40.pdf.
[9] Ricks, The Generals, 276.
[10] Ibid., 313.
[11] Greenert, Memorandum, 3.
[12] Ricks, 2012, Part 1 throughout.
[13] Ricks, 2012, 171-172.
[14] Greenert 2011, 1.
