Cyber

Get Digital Now

The current Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), Admiral John M. Richardson, has emphatically set the sailing directions for the U.S. Navy, stating: “The Navy must get to work now to both build more ships, and to think forward—innovate—as we go. To remain competitive, we must start today and we must improve faster.”[1]

The CNO has cited GE as an example of a manufacturing company that is innovating and has gone digital. GE is a great American example. For 125 years, they have made stuff. The company’s TV ad, in which a 20-something son visits his parents and announces he was hired by GE, is revealing. In the ad, upon hearing the news, the father passes down “grandpappy’s” sledgehammer to his son, only to realize his son was hired as a software developer.

The tagline at the end of the video proclaims:

“The digital company. That is also an industrial company.”[2]

To truly innovate and improve faster, the U.S. Navy needs to get digital. I proffer three essentials to get underway now:

  1. Go Cloud Now. The Navy is still hung up on a numbers game, focused on reducing the number of data centers and servers. It needs to focus its effort into moving to the cloud with corporations that can provide industrial-grade digital services. There are two principal blockers slowing progress right now: (1) the time it takes to certify the DISA data levels as specified in the Security Requirements Guide (SRG) for Cloud Computing; and (2) the DISA-mandated Cloud Access Point or CAP. [3] Leadership needs to refocus their efforts on these two aspects to move forward at full speed and leverage digital capabilities in support of the Navy’s global mission.
  2. Recruit Software Developers. Over the past couple of years, GE has hired more than 400 software developers; organizations that are interested in getting digital should sit up and take notice. In the summer of 2016, the CNO visited GE Digital and has briefed his flag officers on GE’s digital transformation journey. Once information technology (IT) infrastructure and platforms are being delivered from the cloud (IaaS and PaaS respectively), organizations can focus on delivering capability (via applications) from the cloud (SaaS). Commands need software developers—coders—to develop apps that deliver real capability in support of the mission. While writing code has gotten simpler, doing it correctly at scale takes experience and expertise, which is why the Navy needs to have direct relationship with software developers either to develop the apps or to advise the Navy on setting up software development teams. Rapidly rolling out (software) capability will digitally transformation the Navy. (And while not necessarily mission-critical, I would start with NAVFIT-98).
  3. Adopt Mindfulness Leadership. Naval leaders need to nuance the strict authoritative approach to command and adopt a growth mind-set philosophy based on an always learning viewpoint advanced by Dr. Carol Dweck.[4] With a vast sea of data available and real-time updates, leaders need to collaboratively work with their people to analyze the data and explore the options to improve mission performance. All too often, military staffs manage to a “stop light” chart, and a red indicator typically results in an unconstructive judgement by seniors. Failure is a part of learning and leaders need to encourage their teams through these temporary setbacks. This will promote a learning organization and the team quickly will figure out solutions to yellow issues and even perform what-if analysis on green issues so they never reach yellow status, let alone the infamous red condition.

As a collective maritime force, let’s get digital.

Endnotes

[1] Future Navy, ADM John Richardson, USN, http://www.navy.mil/navydata/people/cno/Richardson/Resource/Future_Navy.pdf

[2] General Electric television ad, https://www.ispot.tv/ad/AVhu/general-electric-whats-the-matter-with-owen-hammer

[3] Department of Defense Cloud Computing Security Requirements Guide, Version 1, Release 2, 18 March, 2016, https://iasecontent.disa.mil/cloud/Downloads/Cloud_Computing_SRG_v1r2.pdf

[4] Mindset, The New Psychology of Success, 26 December 2007 by Carol Dweck, Ph.D., http://www.mindsetonline.com/index.html

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