Posted on 06/14/2012 7:01:58 AM PDT by pabianice
The June 4 instruction makes command leadership school mandatory and sets servicewide standards for command qualifications that had been left up to the myriad officer communities within the Navy.
The directive comes in the wake of dozens of dismissals of commanding officers in recent years. Ten commanding officers have been relieved this year for problems ranging from mishandling classified materials to extramarital affairs and personal misconduct. Another 23 commandersw were relieved in 2011.
The biggest change comes within the Navy’s surface warfare community, where department heads will be subject to a 360-degree evaluation pilot program beginning no later than June 2013, according to the instruction. Although details of the program have not yet been announced, 360-degree evaluations typically include input from subordinates and peers, as well as supervisors.
(Excerpt) Read more at military.com ...
The “360” is commonplace in industry.
The participants are usually peers, not subordinates, however.
The government incessantly copycats private sector business ideas.
For the military, almost all of that is wrong.
The military is the military, business is business.
The 360 degree review is the latest idiotic buzzword.
I was initimately involved with an HR project that was later abandoned when key players left the company. The key players were simply bolstering their own resumes.
After their departure, their successors already knew the thing was a waste so it was shelved.
Reading the comments on the story at the link it looks as is this setting of new standards is just another long series of eff ups the Navy leadership is implementing to degrade its fighting effectiveness.
It’s time to go back to what worked by stripping all the p.c. crap out and raising the standards back to where they were.
It only makes sense to me that in order to assess the qualities of a leader, one must talk to those he's actually led.
That's not to say it should be strictly a popularity contest as their superiors certainly also need to assess the individual's ability to accomplish the missions they've been assigned.
ROGER THAT!!!
"Goodnight, Mister Roberts."
“It’s time to go back to what worked by stripping all the p.c. crap out and raising the standards back to where they were.”
_____
I agree fully with that.
The problem for the military is that while in war leaders are required, in peacetime, managers are rewarded ahead of leaders. No one has yet solved this problem.
TQM, Six Sigma, 360 review... all BS. All fabrications attempting to institutionalize and create natural ability.
Leadership, you have it or you don’t. You can only cultivate what is there.
Ability, attention to detail, pride in work, you have them or you don’t.
Best OJT guidance I ever got is, “See that guy? He is the best hand on the rig. Go out and do what he does.”
From what I have seen the best leaders are respected by their subordinates and reliable to their superiors. The superiors are the same and they still remember what their subordinates have to do.
The attitude of staff is a reflection of the attitude of their management. Like hires and promotes like. You develop a bad culture start correcting it from the top sinc ethat is usually who is responsible for the FU. Letting the top develop another initiative such as TQL, TQM etc. will just get you more of the same crap you had to start with.
it's usually solved in the first 12-18 months of war. Our country is shielded by two large oceans can wait for the darwinian process to occur. The ones that suffer are the troops/sailors on the line.
We used to use subordinates. Although those with an axe to grind were clearly culled out after a quick look.
Bingo. When I was an ROTC cadet, virtually everything we did was a study of leadership with the prevailing philosophy that "management" was but one tool under the broader umbrella of effective leadership. That is, in order to be a good leader, one needed to be able to exercise some management skills. As a new Lieutenant in the active force, that seemed to invert itself with the emphasis on "management", recognizing that a few good leadership qualities were probably necessary for one to be a good manager. It wasn't exactly what I'd signed up for :-)
In any case, over my career I distilled things down to the conclusion that leadership was essentially the ability to get people to do things they generally would not do of their own accord. Even if somebody was passionate about being a soldier and soldiering, that enthusiasm would need to be channeled and directed to make them part of an effective unit.
I observed that there were about as many leadership styles as there were leaders, and the only "wrong" style was the phony style. A quiet, deliberative person can in fact be an effective leader, but not if he puts on a false facade of brashness. Troops will see right through that.
There are a million variations on the stick and carrot approaches, but I always noted those to be external motivations. The very best leaders, and the kind I always aspired to be, were those that sold a vision and made the troops embrace and internalize the higher mission. The leader's goal and the unit's objective became the passion of every soldier.
That's leadership...
Chinese missiles have as of late closed that crossing time significantly.
Just great, that will solve all the problems. The problem with adding more programs is that it takes time away from the rest of the an officers career path. Of any of the warfare in communities, SWO already spends the most time on post grad, JPME, and "career development." Maybe the problem with the community is the time that takes away from a sea shore rotation that builds the skills these officer need to run their ships.
The aviation community suffers on both ends. Officers have troubles meeting the wickets to make command. The officers that do make all the wickets do so by giving up at least one flying assignment so they aren't as experienced in their primary warfare specialty.
No training program will fix a CO like Graf, or screen her out of the selection process. She was picked for political reasons. In her wake she left a a pile of subordinates whose careers were scuttled while she played CAPT Queeg.
Promotion in the Navy enlisted ranks is by means of fleetwide exams with longevity as a tiebreaker.* It is certainly reasonable that candidates for command all meet a common standard, as those they command are required to do.
*As of my time in service, 1961-1964; if anything’s changed let me know.
Those chosen for a 360 were almost always picked for advancement within the company. Sometimes it was a trial by fire...
The old boy’s club of ignorant, incompetent, brittle, arrogant, prissy prima donnas is not constructive to good discipline nor patriotism.
Getting input from those under the leaders should have been included a long time ago—with good sampling and iron-clad confidentiality.
There are wonderful officer and non-com leaders in the Navy. They can be incredibly self-less and faithful to the Constitution and the Republic.
And, as in any large group, there are some real dorks with more power than they should have ever been remotely allowed close to.
I do wonder . . . in terms of Ship CO’s . . . has the job been made almost impossible with all the constraints and requiremtns that may have little to do with running a ship well?
Some perfectionism re life/death, safety, survivability issues are vital. Some perfectionism stuff is silly to counterproductive to . . . in some contexts, unnecessarily potentially deadly, imho.
That wouldn't be fair to women and homos.
How is America supposed to wage a pillow fight without women and homos?
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