The Navy must incentivize higher education to face the rapidly changing nature of conflict and maintain a competitive edge against our peers. In his 19 April 2018 memorandum, Undersecretary of the Navy Thomas Modly calls for creativity and talent to counter a “new age of great power competition and strategic complexity,” challenging the Navy’s cultural attitude towards education.[1]
Words like creativity, talent, innovation, and adaptability are just buzzwords—one cannot simply order somebody to be creative—we must take tangible steps to imbue our leaders with these characteristics, as they are essential tools for modern warfare. Higher education degrees outside standard Professional Military Education offer a path towards creativity and innovation.
Intellectually talented individuals should be afforded higher learning opportunities without fear of stalling their careers, and the Navy should routinely leverage their acquired skills and knowledge. Diverse educational backgrounds cultivate novel, meaningful ideas so that our forces keep pace with new challenges at the “speed of change.”[2] Incentivizing officers to seek advanced degrees as a strategy towards an innovation-based culture is challenging, and the greatest challenge may be understanding innovation itself!
Innovation
“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
-Montoya (1987)[3]
We are uncomfortable with innovation; we either fail to recognize it or we actively suppress it. Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work wrote in a 2015 memorandum:
Innovation can be highly disruptive and creates relative winners and losers. It thrives in a culture that embraces experimentation and tolerates dissent and risk-taking. We must generate an environment that encourages this type of thinking.
Innovative cultures do not thrive in the typically rigid Department of Defense (DoD). To combat this, the Secretary of the Navy’s Innovation Vision lists six characteristics of an innovative organization, two being “diversity of thought” and “cultivating intrinsic motivation.”[4] Incentivized higher education promotes diversity of thought, and complements intrinsic with career motivation. In other words, the Navy should invest in its human resource and challenge people to solve problems. Eventually, leaders will value learning, knowledge, and those “Holy Grail” game-changers that repeatedly bring new ideas.[5]
Challenges that Drive Demand
Emerging threats challenge the bureaucracy-heavy DoD cultural norms that are more comfortable in battlespaces that adhere to traditional military learning. Cyber, space, artificial intelligence (AI), and big-data elements confuse these battlespaces. Diplomatic, information, military, economic, financial, intelligence, and law-enforcement (DIMEFIL) elements of national power expand beyond regional borders. Social media exploitation strategies do not obey doctrinal constraints.
Tools, best practices, and knowledge are lagging behind societal dependency on software, systems, and connectivity, increasing the damage potential of cyber weapons. Private companies and non-state actors leverage large data quantities on a greater scale than most governments. De-escalating this asymmetric conflict requires specialized knowledge of ideas, technology, and techniques that may materialize internally or through industry partners. Officers educated in the nuances of the new challenges will know what we really need.[6]
Counterarguments
We are arguing for increased education incentives and improved Navy talent management, while acknowledging educated and successful officers such as Admiral Michael Mullen, who received his MS in Operations Research from the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS). Was Admiral Mullen’s success because of the advanced degree on his Fitness Report, or because of the skills he gained throughout his education and career experience? Admiral Mullen answered that question himself during a 2010 interview in which he recounted the “worst advice he ever received”:
I actually got in [to NPS] very senior. I was a commander. I was very anxious to get a master’s degree. … In fact, I was specifically advised [by my assignment officer] against taking the tour in Monterey because it would end my career. Well, he didn’t quite have that right.
Admiral Mullen addresses NPS personnel on the challenges facing the United States today and our way forward during a lecture on 23 January 2018.[7]
Another counterargument challenges the assumption that education creates innovative thinking. Experts agree that innovation emerges from “playing” and experience, citing U.S. innovation dominance over near-peers such as China, despite China’s demanding academic aptitude. This (albeit arguable) dominance stems from weaving playtime and recreation into US curricula. In many ways, experience is more valuable than education for cultivating creative thinking.[9] Let us apply this knowledge to our military.
The Services love their operators, which allows officers plenty of experiencing-building time. This experience cultivates individuals prime for creative thinking. Now, complement these officers with the knowledge of advanced tools and techniques to face emerging threats, and you have fine-tuned the innovation by giving them access to more resources from which they will gain experience.
“Access” is a critical factor in the “experience” discussion. Author Malcolm Gladwell’s famous “10,000-Hour Rule” from Outliers: The Story of Success, claims that success in any field requires enormous amounts of time, practice, and experience. Gladwell also emphasizes the need for “access” to necessary resources in order to succeed. He refers to the pre-famous Beatles playing five- to eight-hour gigs for 270 nights in a year-and-a-half period at customer-starved strip clubs in Hamburg. The Beatles rapidly approached their 10,000 hours because they had access to venues. Microsoft founder Bill Gates tells Gladwell that his uncommon access to computers helped him gain the enormous amount of programming experience he needed to succeed. Likewise, by educating our officers, we are granting them access to unique skill sets that they otherwise would not have had.[10]
Beatles-Platz in Hamburg, Germany commemorates Hamburg’s importance in The Beatles’ history.
Navy vs. Other Service Attitudes
The Navy tends to “jam in” education while keeping officers on their community career “golden paths.” Imagine instead a force management system that benefits from intellectually talented officers who fail to meet command-path career milestones. The Navy offers plenty of education opportunities, but not necessarily incentive, while maintaining a “neutral to agnostic at best” cultural attitude towards advanced technical education opportunities such as the Federal Executive Fellow (FEF) Program.
Let’s be clear:
The Navy is neutral to agnostic towards experience and specialized knowledge of counter – unmanned armored vehicle tactics, AI, and autonomy, often in the context of near-peer adversaries such as China and Russia, while interacting with industry and think tanks! Officers who manage to balance Navy success and advanced education are considered to be “unicorns,” as in mythical and not likely to be found.[11] This runs counter to Modly’s memorandum stating, “Nothing will be more important than the investment that we make in knowledge—and on creating a force made up of people who thirst for it.”
The Other Services
Regarding incentivized advanced education, the Navy can learn from the U.S. Marine Corps, Air Force, and the Army. Marine Corps officers still expect a career of wickets and War College degrees in National Securities Studies, with advanced technical degrees perceived as “nice to have,” at best, but the Corps culture is shifting towards incentivized education. For example, the Marine Corps’ Doctor of Philosophy for Technical Leaders (PHDP-T) Program, approved by Commandant of the Marine Corps (CMC) General Robert Neller in 2016, balances operational experience and education while satisfying the USMC’s desire for meaningfully billeted uniformed PhD personnel. The USMC Graduate Education Program is seeing upwards trends in O5 (and higher) promotion rates and command opportunities.[12]
Air Force officers, particularly those in the technical fields, are encouraged to advance their education. The competitive Education with Industry (EWI) and the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) programs have been deliberately developing officers, and in 2015, Air Force career field managers focused on EWI and AFIT outplacement. In this, “average” officers can be considered “high performing,” or as strong contenders for below-zone promotion.[13]
The Army switched from a “dual-track model” that enabled operational and specialized education tracks prioritizing operational experience, to an “off-ramp” into specialized subspecialties model, in which officers can compete, and have been enjoying high promotion rates. The Navy’s attempt at the Specialty Career Path program failed because it tried to revitalize officers in their original career designators, unlike the Army model that places officers on new career paths.[14]
Recommendations
The Navy requires top-down codification that incentivizes education so that community chiefs and detailers change their attitudes that pursuit of advanced degrees means that you are “dropping the pack.” There are programs that set a precedence for upward mobility coincident with higher-education[15]:
- Permanent Military Professor (PMP) Program. Expanding PMP scope beyond USNA, Naval War College, or other military institutions, as the only destinations for program officers will provide “viable opportunities for naval officers with doctoral degrees,” since PMP officers and students are all members of the competitive category.
- Career Intermission Program (CIP) provides temporary Individual Ready Reserve (IRR) transition for external professional growth, and an active duty return mechanism that retains valuable Service member experience and training. The CIP is a model framework for offering prioritized “intelligence over brute strength” opportunities to officers with recognized critical skills.[16]
- The FEF Program develops naval strategists who understand the national security decision-making process through assignment with leading policy and academic institutions. The Bureau of Naval Personnel (BUPERS) does not always see the inherent value in the expertise and talent gained from the FEF, but top-down adjustment could allow the Navy to see the FEF program as a good investment in its officers.
- The Fleet Scholars Education Program (FSEP) recognizes education as the Navy’s “strategic investment to enhance the warfighting effectiveness and critical-thinking skills of career officers.” FSEP provides education opportunities for unrestricted line and information warfare community officers, while simultaneously providing community sponsors reward incentives to retain top performing, career-minded officers. The FSEP approaches the necessary culture shift in that it extends its language beyond recognizing education opportunities for the officer and recognizes the positive impact on the Services.
Slight modifications to these programs so that they offer incentives, such as promotion opportunities for talented candidates, and “aligning talents with strategically focused major staff billets,” would increase critical-thinking and next-generation warfighting effectiveness. Since the Navy recognizes talent through the statutory promotion and administrative screening board systems (with the detailing system tied into their outcomes), these systems must be modified to recognize the value of advanced degrees to any innovation-nurturing programs.[17] Alternative management models could combine aforementioned program logistics with USMC, USAF, and USA specialist management models. For instance, the CMC-approved PHDP-T path details educational, utilization, and operational tours that benefit both the service member and the Service.
Conclusion
“Knowledge is good.”
-Emil Faber (1904)[18]
Higher education must be incentivized. It should be seen as more than simply an opportunity for which you owe service time. Higher education is an investment in our forces to embiggen innovative readiness while providing personal and professional fulfillment for the Service member.
The Navy’s need to rethink higher-education is evidenced by the DON-wide initiatives to explore advanced graduate education. The other Services have their own ways to encourage education in recognition of valuable, critical-thinking skills. Educating our officers provides them with personal opportunity, yes, but their value to the Navy must drive a deliberate, incentivized approach to accelerating their education. Gladwell (2008) connects the Bill Gates success story to societal benefits, providing a nice model for empowering Service members with education opportunities.
Our world only allowed one thirteen-year-old unlimited access to a timesharing terminal in 1968. If a million teenagers had been given the same opportunity, how many more Microsofts would we have today? To build a better world we need to replace the patchwork of lucky breaks and arbitrary advantages that today determine success—the fortunate birth dates and the happy accidents of history—with a society that provides opportunities for all.
Endnotes
[1]Undersecretary of the Navy Thomas Modly Memo, DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY EDUCATION FOR SEAPOWER (E4S) STUDY (19 APR 2018). In his memo, Modly references the Secretary of Defense’s acknowledgement of the diminished U.S. competitive edge.
[2] Jim Garamone, “Dunford to NDU Grads: Embrace Change and Innovation.” Defense.gov, June 9 2016, https://www.defense.gov/News/Article/Article/795572/dunford-to-ndu-grads-embrace-change-and-innovation/
[3] The Princess Bride (1987). Dir. Rob Reiner. Perf. Cary Elwes, Mandy Patinkin, Robin Wright.
[4] http://www.secnav.navy.mil/innovation/. Accessed May 2018. Characteristics of an innovative organization are comfort with risk and uncertainty, diversity of thought, measuring what matters, cultivating intrinsic motivation, emphasizing information sharing, and agile decision-making.
[5] Dale Moore, “Leadership in the 21st Century: A Proposed Framework.” Innovation Essays. 2015. http://www.secnav.navy.mil/innovation/Documents/2015/09/InnovationEssays.pdf
[6] Alexander Kott, David Alberts, Amy Zalman, Paulo Shakarian, Fernando Maymi, Cliff Wang, and Gang Qu. “The 2015 US Army Research Laboratory (ARL) workshop report, Visualizing the Tactical Ground Battlefield in the Year 2050.” 2015. This report lists augmented humans, autonomous decisions, weaponized misinformation, micro-targeting, self-organization, and contested information environments as emerging threats to national security and US superiority
[7] Image used with permission from NPS Public Affairs Office (nps.edu/public-affairs-office)
[8] “Q&A – Admiral Mike Mullen: Armed with Analytics.” Analytics. 2010. http://analytics-magazine.org/q-a-a-admiral-mike-mullen/
[9] From May 2018 interview with Lt Col Troy Chevalier, USAF, Innovative Solutions Chief.
[10] Malcolm Gladwell, “Outliers : The Story of Success.” New York :Little, Brown and Co., 2008.
[11] From May 2018 interviews with Commander Dan Keeler, USN, a Federal Executive Fellow (FEF) at the Brookings Institution and CAPT (name withheld by request), USN, FEF, Washington D.C – based Think Tank
[12] From May 2018 interviews with Dr. Paul Nicholas, PhD (USMCR) and LtCol Shaun Doheney, USMC, PHDP-T Program Planner, and October 2016 PHDP-T brief to General Robert Neller, CMC.
[13] This according to May 2018 interview with Dr. Darryl Ahner, AFIT Professor, and a May 2018 interview with AF career field manager / AF polling data.
[14] From May 2018 interviews with Dr. Darryl Ahner and CAPT Brian Morgan, USN, OR Program Officer and Senior Lecturer at NPS. According to CAPT Morgan, Army FA-49 (OR Systems Analysts, aka ORSA) officers are experiencing the aforementioned high promotion rates.
[15]OPNAVINST 1520.40B, OPNAVINST 1330.2C, NAVADMIN 170/16, OPNAVINST 1500.78 are the underlying instructions for PMP, CIP, FEF, and FSEP, respectively.
[16] Scott Maucione, “Why DoD thinks the Career Intermission Program Can Help Solve its Personnel Problem.” Federal News Radio. April 3, 2018. https://federalnewsradio.com/defense-main/2018/04/taking-a-break-why-dod-thinks-the-career-intermission-program-can-help-solve-its-personnel-problem/
[17] From May 2018 interviews with Rear Admiral Andrew Loiselle, USN, Deputy Director for Future Joint Force Development (FJFD), J7, Joint Staff, Commander Dan Keeler, USN, FEF, and CAPT (name withheld by request), USN, FEF, Washington D.C – based Think Tank
[18] Animal House (1978). Dir. John Landis. Perf. John Belushi, Karen Allen, Tom Hulce.
