Taming that email beast

Sometimes I wish Cookie Monster would eat all my large attachments. Image courtesy of entrepreneur.com

Email.  It might as well be a four-lettered word.  Email can absolutely consume our professional and personal lives.  You can finish a day and wonder "Wow, I spent all day answering email, and yet I feel like I got nothing done."

Especially if you work on a staff, email is probably the bane of your existence.  And yet, it shouldn't be.  Email should be a great enabler, letting you get in contact with people around the world and quickly share text and other attachments.  Yet the Navy has morphed email into a monster that consumes our time and energy into a never-ending vortex of declining productivity.

How do you tame this monster?  Luckily the good folks at Manager Tools have a few answers in a recent news post:

How to improve team intelligence

Slashdot posted an intriguing article about teamwork and why some teams outperform others:

http://science.slashdot.org/story/15/01/19/0249200/why-some-teams-are-smarter-than-others

The original study is here:

http://www.chabris.com/Woolley2010a.pdf

The basic findings is that intelligence of any individual member doesn't make a team better nearly as much as three other factors:

1. The average social sensitivity of group members, i.e. how well group members could read the feelings of other members.

2. How often each member spoke. Groups where one or two members dominated were not as good as others where speaking turns were evenly distributed.

3. The proportion of females in the group.

This science, assuming it's valid, proves a lot of things that the Navy gets right, and should guide us on what we need to change to improve in the future.

When do you fire someone?

At a job in Bahrain, my office had a civilian computer administrator (let's call her "Jane") who was just awful. Not only was Jane bad at her job, but she also treated the enlisted Sailors like dirt and regularly slacked off on the job.  I had always been told that you could never fire civilian employees, and apparently Jane's last few supervisors believed that. But in 2008 a new boss came in and, within 6 months, Jane was gone.

Despite popular belief, you don't have to live with poor performers in the government. So how do you get rid of them? After the computer administrator was fired, I asked my boss how and why he did it. He told me that while he didn't enjoy firing anyone, he had considered a few points first:

Fraternization guidance for Junior Officers

Fraternization is one of those nasty grey areas in the Navy, especially for officers.  For junior enlisted, it's easy: hang out with E1-E6, avoid anything that is khaki, especially if it has bars or leafs on the collar.  Since there are plenty of enlisted running around a command, there are plenty of people to hang out with, become friends with, and in general enjoy your time in the Navy.

Junior officers don't have this luxury.  They are told to not hang out with junior enlisted because it violates the Navy's fraternization policy.  They can't hang out with their Chief too much (and most Chiefs won't let them anyway).  Senior officers are giving them tasking, so in most cases they avoid them.  That leaves fellow JOs, of which there aren't many.  So if you don't get along with a selection of 2% of the crew, well, it can be very lonely.

The problem here is that there is a lot of bad gouge about fraternization.  So, let's start with an instruction.  The Navy's fraternization policy is in OPNAVINST 5370.2C, which hasn't been updated since 2007, which speaks to its enduring nature.  At only 5 pages long, it's a quick read, and worth the 20 minutes it'll take to read it (you can spare 20 minutes from Facebook, trust me).  What does it say?  In a nutshell:

- Officers and enlisted will not have unduly familiar relationships.
- Chiefs (E7-E9) will not have unduly familiar relationships with E1-E6.
- Obvious examples include cohabitating, sexual relationships, and indebtedness.

What constitutes an unduly familiar relationship?  The 5370.2C doesn't try to list all circumstances, but it gives some guidance.  An unduly relationship is anything that:

(1) call into question a senior's objectivity;
(2) result in actual or apparent preferential treatment;
(3) undermine the authority of a senior; or
(4) compromise the chain of command.

I think these points should be burned into every Junior Officer's lexicon, because if what you are doing doesn't meet these points, you are probably OK.

So, let's do some examples.

Is the Millenial problem much ado about nothing?

 

 Mahan as a Midshipman, image and quote from CIMSEC.org

There's an awful lot of writing about Millenials and the military. A recent Proceedings article seemed to lament that today's Sailor is more likely to question authority and not work inside the current Naval system. Matt Hipple has a humorous and spot on response here:

http://cimsec.org/is-there-a-military-millennial-problem-twelve-responses-to-cdr-darcie-cunningham/12481

Some accountability with drinking

Over dinner, my wife relayed an interesting conversation she had with the wife of an Air Force Officer I know from college.  He had volunteered over the weekend to sit on a hotline to drive drunk service members home, and wanted to see if I would volunteer as well.  My wife kindly declined for me, since I had watch, but she was rather irate at being asked in the first place.

In her mind, it was simply enabling bad behavior.  She couldn't understand how Sailors could afford enough alcohol to get drunk, yet then not have enough sense to arrange a ride before or pay for a cab.  She was then further insulted when it was apparently my responsibility to give up my time on the weekend when I already work later than most of the problem children.

At that point, I realized how much brain washing we do in the Navy.  How often do we glorify the guys that sacrifice their time for such endeavors, and never ask whether we are simply enabling the behavior in the first place?  It's similar to our glorification of the guy that spends all his time at work, letting his family life completely deteriorate while destroying his subordinate's initiative. 

Generic Advice Is Dumb

I despise generic advice, and the worst sampling of this is in high school graduation speeches.  Every graduation speech I've heard is full of lot's of worthless phrases.  We hear that we should believe in ourselves, work hard, and above all, "do the right thing," since apparently so many of us set out in life to do the wrong things that we need to constantly hear this.

The Navy is sadly no better.  I tend to be very focused in my advice to people.  When I had new Ensigns check in, I would layout my expectations of them for their first year:

- Complete check in within 2 weeks
- Get qualified on their job within 90 days
- Get qualified Information Warfare Officer in one year
- Send all correspondence (EVALs, awards, chits, etc.) about their Sailors on their Department Head's timeline

Only after they were doing all that should they consider a major collateral duty, a masters degree, or any other significant effort.

Know, don't rage, about the system

 My news feed today gave me an article about how Eric Cantor lost his primary bid to Tea Party upstart Dave Brat. 

This is not the first time this has happened.  I first saw it back in 2010, when Mike Lee defeated Senator Bob Bennett in the Republican Utah primary.  Elected leaders, both Republican and Democrat, have been undermined not in actual elections, but in the primary process.

Putting all politics aside, this is the perfect example of how knowing your environment and the rules can make you a very dangerous opponent.  There have always been calls for an "outsider" to be elected to Congress, but unless you had previous fame (e.g. Arnold Schwarzenegger), you had almost zero chance.  The primary process has its own rules that makes it fairly hard for outsiders to influence.  Thus, most complaints and calls for action were simply ignored by the folks on the inside.

The Tea Party has completely stood the primary system on its head.  Rather than simply complain about how broken the process is, they learned all the rules and then used them to promote their own candidates.  Elected officials that could previously blow off their complaints might find themselves without a job, or at least a very difficult reelection bid.  Using the rules to promote unknown candidates isn't unique or even new.  Abraham Lincoln beat out popular candidates like William Seward in the Republican primaries by manipulating the system, going so far as to deliberately change seating arrangements at the National Convention in Chicago to purposely divide his opponents supporters from each other. 

A CO that doesn't think?

So I saw this gem from CAPT Lambert's blog (http://navycaptain-therealnavy.blogspot.com/2014/05/amusing-anecdote.html)

Some Command Master Chiefs (Senior Chiefs, too) are fairly wise men and women.  I was talking to a retired CMC the other day and he was talking about the TRIAD and their roles in the command.  I asked him to describe their respective roles. He said, "My job is to make sure the CO and XO get to do their jobs.  The Commanding Officer's job is to give speeches and make Sailors feel good.  The XO's role is to think.  My job is to make sure the CO doesn't think and the XO doesn't give any speeches or make the Sailors feel good." 

I'm going to assume that likely the person making the quote was joking.

However, they aren't far off the mark.  From day one in my career, I was told the Chief would run my division and my job was to get qualified.  As a new Ensign, you tend to go with whatever you're told (you don't know any better), so that's what I did.

It was a total disaster.  My chief was an 8 year, 1 sea tour chief, and he managed to nearly kill a few Sailors before I finally got my head out of my butt and started paying more scrutiny to what he was doing.

The tyranny of busy

(From: http://navycaptain-therealnavy.blogspot.com/2014/03/fighting-good-fight.html)

 Busy is never an acceptable reason for anything.

The reality is that at the end of every workday, there is always work left undone.  I have never gotten through every email or every tasker I write in my notepad, and I think most people are likely in the same situation.  We are fooling ourselves if we think we'll wake up one day and literally have nothing to do.

So when we have work and delegate it to our subordinates (or have it delegated to us by our boss), the refrain of "I'm too busy to do it." is simply an excuse.  You're not too busy, you've simply prioritized something else above it.  Maybe that task is higher priority, but often what I find is that there are lots of tasks that suck up our time and aren't worth it.

JO Retention in crisis?

Another whitepaper on JO retention is here.

Some thoughts:

- One factor listed is that Millennials (those born 1981-1995) are different than previous generations and are "placing a greater emphasis on being supported and appreciated."

While on its face this sounds like whining, let's jump into an Ensign's shoes here: you work your butt off to get a four-year engineering degree, work hard through your initial Navy training, then get to your ship and get treated like garbage for 5 years? And the promise of the next 5 years is...more poor treatment? OR...you can get out, get paid more, get treated professionally and not have to move every 3-5 years. Choice is simple. We don't need to baby our JOs, but we could afford to give them some decent respect from time to time.

- "Sailors are bombarded with annual online training, general military training, and safety stand-downs – all in an effort to combat problems that will never be defeated."

YES! Can we please admit that no matter what, our Sailors will occasionally drink to excess, kill themselves, and do other terrible things?  And that no matter what you do, you might actually not be able to prevent that?

- "Sailors continue to cite the over-focus on social issues by senior leadership – above and beyond discussions on warfighting – a fact that demoralizes junior and mid-grade officers alike."

Completely agree.  Why is there no mandatory GMT on Rules of the Road? Or Maritime Law? Or platform tactics? I can get excited about tactics...pregnancy prevention GMT, not so much.

MCPON nails it on Senior Enlisted Academy, and a relook at DIVO leadership

I have to admit, every time I read about the MCPON, it reaffirms that we picked the right Sailor for the job. He nails it again on Senior Enlisted Academy:

http://www.navytimes.com/article/20140210/NEWS/302100006/Senior-enlisted-academy-shakeup

Essentially, he wants it laser-focused on Senior Chiefs, make it mandatory, and reshape the course so that some is done via distance and only a few, intensive weeks of in-resident training. His goal seems to be that every Master Chief not only be a deckplate leader, but also have a toolbox of leadership traits to be able to lead across a large command.

When you make the jump from division to department, it requires a whole new set of tools, and almost all of our leaders are left finding those tools on their own. The Navy in general is more inclined to OJT a lot of training, including leadership training. Why are we surprised then when commands don't get EVALs in on time? Or when we allow bureaucracy to slow down what should be quick processes? A big part of that is our department leadership never gets the tools to lead groups of over 20 people.

There is one piece where I disagree with the MCPON though:

We don't need no leaders!

How many folks have heard this joke:

- A submarine that deploys with just enlisted does the job well, but comes back dirty
- A submarine that deploys with just chiefs comes back clean, but no mission done
- A submarine that deploys with just officers...well, we're still looking for it

I think I heard this about a thousand times as a JO onboard a submarine. The implication was that junior officers and chiefs only cared about the superficial things (like cleanliness) and that the real knowledge was at the enlisted level. You can find more such sentiment here: http://www.goatlocker.org/resources/cpo/humor/humor.htm. This sentiment has been amplified by books talking about "flattening the organization" and "leading horizontally."

Why we hate the Admin-O

A while back, I was working TDY for NAVCENT when the commander decided to put us 24/7 operations.  Our office split up the rotation, as did every other office...except admin.  When my Sailors had admin issues, we had to move their shifts around in order to accommodate admin's restrictive hours.

As I was checking out, the guy in front of me was a bit rude with the YN, and after he left and I was finishing my check out sheet, the YN complained about him.  While there isn't an excuse to be rude, I did mention to the YN that they had left the command hanging while we were on shiftwork.

"Well sir, we don't need to go on shiftwork.  We're not in operations."

It's rare that I want to hit someone, but that notion did cross my mind.

Urgent vs. Actual Priorities

Seth Godin has a great post here about managing tantrums. The part that really stuck with me was this paragraph:

Engaging in the middle of a tantrum does two things: it rewards the tantrum by giving it your attention, and it makes it likely that you'll get caught up, and say or do something that, in the mind of the tantrum-thrower, justifies the tantrum. That's the fuel the tantrum is looking for--we throw tantrums, hoping people will throw them back.

The first image of a tantrum is probably a small child writhing in a fit of rage at the commissary checkout counter. But the reality is that we see tantrums every day in the Navy in the form of URGENT tasking. Urgent tasking is something last minute that requires immediate action. It always appears at inconvenient times, and trumps everything else.

The problem here is not that urgent tasking appears. Sometimes things do come up last minute, and we must deal with them. But what I see all too often is that we operate from day-to-day, and while we may set goals, we struggle to achieve them. Don't believe me?

Fail your way to success

Some great thoughts by Scott Adams on how to fail into success.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304626104579121813075903866.html

An excerpt:

Nietzsche famously said, "What doesn't kill us makes us stronger." It sounds clever, but it's a loser philosophy. I don't want my failures to simply make me stronger, which I interpret as making me better able to survive future challenges. (To be fair to Nietzsche, he probably meant the word "stronger" to include anything that makes you more capable. I'd ask him to clarify, but ironically he ran out of things that didn't kill him.)

It's the constant progress that gets things done

I ran Cross Country in high school. During our 3.1 mile races, I would see three types of runners:
- Ones that started off really strong, only to fizzle by mile 2
- Ones that kept a constant pace the entire three miles, never speeding up or slowing down
- Ones that started in the middle of the pack and slowly picked up speed over the course

Most winners came from the last group. The key lesson I learned from that was that while you may have a great strong showing in the start, what really matters is when you cross the finish line.

Phase III of Navy RAD

So I haven't been on RAD for a while (too busy at work doing administrative things...), but it's not in Phase III, and looking for input on reservist issues and what the future should look like:

http://navyrad.ideascale.com/

RAD has identified 80 items for action. A LOT of the items assigned to N2/N6 were mine, or ones I helped flesh out. Good to know that I can assign work to my bosses :)

http://www.navytimes.com/article/20130919/NEWS/309190027/Navy-identifies-80-problems-service-plan-fixing-them

Electronic routing through eKM

We're beginning to test a system called eKM (Enterprise Knowledge Management) for electronically routing and maintaining paperwork, as well as managing a command calendar. You can create a login with your CAC here: https://ekm.nmci.navy.mil/. So far, what I've initially seen is quite positive, and I would love to never see a blue folder with paper to sign ever again.

If anyone has experience with eKM (good/bad/indifferent), please drop a comment below.

A CPO/LT success story

So today the Navy pins selected First Classes to Chiefs. While I wrote about this process last year, and this year, I realized that I never wrote about a CPO/DIVO success story. The more I think about it, the more I realize that it needs to be written.