This html article is produced from an uncorrected text file through optical character recognition. Prior to 1940 articles all text has been corrected, but from 1940 to the present most still remain uncorrected. Artifacts of the scans are misspellings, out-of-context footnotes and sidebars, and other inconsistencies. Adjacent to each text file is a PDF of the article, which accurately and fully conveys the content as it appeared in the issue. The uncorrected text files have been included to enhance the searchability of our content, on our site and in search engines, for our membership, the research community and media organizations. We are working now to provide clean text files for the entire collection.
Largely because of enlisted personnel turbulence, authority is now generally delegated downward only as far as the junior officers. There is very little delegation down to the senior petty officers. And, to make matters worse, when senior petty officers are delegated some authority, they do not further delegate it.
SU(
err
of
sec
ev(
for
ha,
tec
for
Or
of
to
hit
he;
tra
acc
est
ha;
rna
The word "responsibility” is heard frequently throughout the Fleet. Leaders at all levels are constantly reminding juniors that the juniors have been or arc being held responsible for something. In truth, there is very little responsibility-holding going on because, before someone fails to uphold or fulfill his responsibility, there is someone else there, usually his superior, to assume the responsibility for him.
One example will illustrate this point. Prior to material inspections, the executive officer often will touf the ship, issuing many orders and instructions. In his haste to get certain discrepancies corrected before the captain sees them, he often deals directly with people other than heads of departments. Thus, unwittingly, he is relieving the heads of departments of their responsibilities.
Oil
arn
sen
cor
in
to
bef
i
or
roa
Mi
site
gat
Pli,
offi
Oty
reg
Olo
Are we, then, to assume that such a man is a comer—a man whose professional future is extremely bright—because he does not flinch from assuming others’ responsibilities? Hardly. Assuming the responsibilities of juniors is no way to get ahead in the Navy or anywhere. But, assuming the responsibilities—but not the perquisites—of seniors is.
Still, it is not responsibility, but authority that remains the biggest single leadership problem in the Fleet today.* The use and abuse of authority is responsible for a large part of the Navy’s retention problem.
There is yet a third factor; and, if responsibility is the most bandied-about word in the leadership lexicon, accountability is the least. Accountability—acting within one’s authority in the fulfillment of one’s responsibilities, and accepting the consequences, good of bad—is the very cornerstone of leadership.
The "consequences” of accountability may range from commendatory citations to prison sentences. Between these two extremes are the granting or withholding of privileges and recommendations for ad' vancement; the awarding of laudatory or derogatory fitness reports, and other similar bouquets or brickbats
•See B. C. Dean, "Authority: the Weakened Link,” U. S. Naval Institut£ Proceedings, July 1971, pp. 48-52.
such as formal letters of praise or punitive discharges.
ntly
ntly
arc
icre
use,
>on-
ior,
ma-
:ouf
his
the
iple
g*y-
>on- 1S 3
aely
ling
>on-
avy
but
ains
to-
for
yis
:on,
:hin
>on-
or
nge
Be-
ith-
ad-
tory
bats
41
In the Fleet today, with the twin pressures of modern living and personnel turbulence—to say nothing of the pressures of "can do,”—it is not uncommon to see an enlisted man recommended for advancement even though he has been getting "chewed out” weekly for not performing properly. Why? Do today’s leaders have such short memories that, rushing to get their recommendations to the executive officer on time, they forget a man’s poor performance over the long haul? Or do they feel sorry for a man because of the pressures of harassment he is subjected to and, rather than add to his problems, do they attempt instead to reward him? Or are our petty officers, division officers, and heads of departments so inexperienced and/or untrained that they do not understand the concept of accountability?
Accountability is the form by which discipline is established and maintained. But, in today’s Navy, it has deteriorated to the point that discipline is mostly maintained by the executive officer and the commanding officer. They are—because they have to be—the driving forces of the ship. They, the two senior officers, must often compensate for the malaise that prevails among the senior petty officers. Equally as bad as the senior enlisted men’s abdication of authority and accountability is the vapidity of the junior officers who, in their desire to be liked, seem desperately anxious to surrender to the demands of their bluejackets even before the demands are made.
Such a climate creates situations where the executive or commanding officer has to dictate specific actions be made against men for violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). They must take charge in such situations because other leaders in the organization abrogate their responsibilities for the maintenance of discipline.
When are our senior enlisted men and our junior officers going to learn that they are building up their own authority as leaders when they enforce the ship’s regulations calmly and consistently? Until they do, poor morale will prevail throughout the ship.
It is absolutely essential for good administration and leadership that discipline be an all-leaders’ responsibility. But, how do we get petty officers re-involved in the maintenance of discipline? First, we must give them the authority they need to carry out their jobs.
They must have this authority before they can become involved in the accountability process. Otherwise they will be held accountable for things over which they do not have adequate control. Or they will be forced to impose accountability on their juniors when they are not empowered to do so.
In 1841, the Secretary of the Navy, the Honorable Abel Parker Upshur, understood this problem and acknowledged that it persisted in the Fleet. Even though he was discussing commanders and their commanding officers, his remarks generally apply today.
"The only safe rule of discipline is, to trust each man fully, in his own peculiar department of duty, holding him strictly responsible for a proper discharge of it. He who has full power to do right cannot complain that he is censured or punished when he does wrong; but where that power is limited or restrained, or controlled, he is not justly responsible at all. Indeed, no one is responsible; for while the subordinate must be excused on the ground that his discretion was taken away from him, the superior can rarely be reached, because the error was not committed in his peculiar department of duty. There is no more reason that the commander- in-chief of a squadron should assufoe the duties of the immediate commander of his flag ship, than that he should assume those of the boatswain or gunner. When he departs from this rule, he sets an example which, if followed by his subordinates, would produce utter confusion and disorder in the details of duty.”
We have been distrusting our petty officers for years. Chief and first class petty officers recommend men for advancement and are often overruled by their division officers, their heads of departments, executive officers,
42 U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings, January 1973
and even by their commanding officers. Quite often the reverse is seen where the petty officers have recommended against advancing a man, but their officers have ignored the recommendation. Authority has thus been stripped from our senior petty officers by our reversing their decisions or by not backing them.
Moreover, we have removed them from their time- honored positions as "wheels” by demanding that young division officers be more aggressive and more involved in their divisional functions. The predictable result is that the junior officers end up doing the petty officer’s jobs. Officers who demand that petty officers take a specified course of action in handling their men demonstrate their distrust of their petty officers. As a result, we are now experiencing the "utter confusion and disorder in the details of duty” that Secretary Upshur foresaw almost 130 years ago.
Much of this alienation is caused by a misapplication of accountability. Officers are exacting accountability from men several echelons below them in the chain of command. Or they are preventing petty officers from exacting accountability from the men who work directly for the petty officers.
To hold our junior officers and petty officers responsible for their men, simply means to hold them accountable for their men’s actions and inactions. This means that when a man gets into trouble, his immediate superior must be held accountable, assuredly to a lesser degree and with due regard for the amount of positive or influential control the leader has had over the man. Obviously, when one man continuously gets into trouble, or when several men in a division repeatedly get into trouble, the seniors responsible must also be held accountable to a greater degree. The problem of rectifying the troublesome person(s) is theirs. By increasing the degree of accountability exacted from them, we are emphasizing their authority to act and are also reminding them of their more urgent responsibility to correct the situation.
The chain of command must be followed! Doing so in all instances enhances the authority of every other leader in the chain of command. Failing to do so will only further alienate or discourage the more junior leaders, the very men we should be trying to retain.
The strong leader exacts accountability from the immediate juniors who are responsible to him for their subordinates’ proper or improper performance or conduct. Everyone, from top to bottom in the chain of command does the same thing. If disciplinary action is required, the culprit’s immediate senior should initiate it. If the accountability imposed on the seniors is real and positive and known to them, then the immediate senior will not delay very long in recommending
formal disciplinary action, if such is warranted. All leaders, experienced or inexperienced, must exact some measure of accountability from their juniors. It is not, however, the prerogative of the superior to dictate the form of accountability which is levied at echelons below his immediate junior. It is, however, the senior’s responsibility to ensure that illegal actions are not taken and that harassment does not result.
The rewards of accountability should be imposed the same way. Praise should also be passed down the chain of command.
It was once customary to hold the immediate superior accountable for his actions or inactions. But those days have yielded to the presently popular pass-the-buck syndrome. Such accountability simply did not set well with the postwar petty officers and junior officers, h began to disappear with the advent of the retention studies during the late 1950s and early 1960s. The stud;' groups received many complaints that this type of responsibility-holding should not occur because the most junior leaders had almost no control over theif men. And this was true.
In all fairness, junior officers and petty officers did not give away this control. It was stolen from them by the advent of the UCMJ. And, to worsen an already bad situation, the Navy was not teaching authority- building to counteract the loss of authority caused bV the UCMJ.
As a result of the complaints—most of which came from officers and petty officers who were leaving [because of the UCMJ, they said] the Navy—we began bypassing the immediate superiors in favor of exacting the accountability from the culprit himself. The practice of the commanding officer and the executive officer, alone, to maintain UCMJ discipline, and of the division officers to prepare evaluations on lower enlisted and non-rated men, with meritorious mast nominations being made by very high seniors, became the accepted manner of doing things.
In this way the junior leaders in the Fleet passed the buck upstairs to their seniors. Concomitantly, they’ passed their authority away without being aware of h- Hence, today an "authority gap” exists among out junior leaders.
The Benny Sugg Syndrome [named after the Beneficial Suggestion Program] is another manifestation of the type of poor leadership which resulted from retention studies.f A common complaint in the late 1950s was that juniors never got credit for their ideas. The complaint was made that, if a junior got a good ide? [a Benny Sugg], then his immediate senior would
tSee F. E. Sollic, "Benny Suggs—An Incentive Program,” U. S. Naval Inst*' rute Proceedings, August 1970, pp. 103-104.
Accountablility: The Crumbling Keystone 43
simply implement it and take all of the credit for it. No recognition was ever given, so the complaints went, to the originator of the idea. Another complaint was that, if the immediate senior did not implement the idea, he would refuse to submit the Benny Sugg to higher authority for fear that it might seem that one of his juniors knew more than he did about his own shop or ship.
Nowadays such complaints are rarely heard. The Beneficial Suggestion Program, itself, has been instrumental in changing this. But what is more important, deviation from the chain of command and passing the buck upstairs have changed it even more regarding simple suggestions.
Most suggestions that arise are not of sufficient caliber to warrant the paperwork involved with the Beneficial Suggestion Program. They are just the everyday, run-of-the-mill suggestions which we have learned to live with: e.g., "let firemen stand the lower level watch instead of the petty officers we have always used.” Because we have heeded the retention study results, because we have followed the spirit of "can do,” because we, out of simple fairness, want to give credit where it is due, we go out of our way and especially out of the chain of command in order to give all suggestions a very fair appraisal. This very fair appraisal usually amounts to submitting it to a level higher than it ought to be. In this way the Benny Sugg submitter receives upper echelon recognition—even for poor suggestions.
Here, too, good intentions have been nullified by bad execution. What we have done is pass the buck up the line for someone else to approve or disapprove. And, in so doing, we have usurped the authority of the man who should pass final judgment on a particular suggestion and failed to hold accountable the man who was responsible for accepting or rejecting the suggestion. Years ago we failed in our leadership when we presumed that the only way to solve the problem was to give originators credit or recognition directly from "on high” rather than from their immediate seniors. This was the simple and expedient thing to do. It also quieted the complaints that the retention study groups were getting and showed a definite response to the complaints of the men. It clearly showed a concern for the anxieties of the average Navyman. But it also destroyed some of the psychic income of the immediate superiors because they lost some responsibility, could not exercise their authority fully, and were not the recipients of the praise which was their due as a result of the positive suggestions of their men.
Nowadays on board ship, it is not uncommon for a petty officer to make suggestions to the executive officer or even the commanding officer. Also, nonrated
men often approach other officers with suggestions and recommendations. This may provide a measure of psychic income to the originators. It may also develop a measure of rapport between the originator and the officer. It may even be considered good management in the mistaken belief that greater control is achieved. But it is inherently poor leadership. It does not develop any psychic income for the intermediate leaders, where it is sorely needed today. And it develops a rapport which is not nearly so important as the rapport necessary between the leaders and their immediate subordinates.
What is needed is a return to a more authoritarian form of leadership at a time when our country is tending further toward democratic leadership. The answer lies in three areas: personnel stability, chain of command, and span of control.
Personnel stability is one of the most pressing problems confronting the Fleet today. I served on the precommissioning detail of a DEG and enjoyed one year of the closest thing the Navy has to personnel stability, because the personnel distribution policy at that time was to not transfer anyone from a newly commissioned ship for one year after commissioning. It was a different kind of Navy. Responsibilities could be assigned and reaffirmed in day-to-day operations over many months. Authority could be delegated and reinforced. In this way it was enlarged and became a function of office or position rather than a function of personality as so often happens during personnel turbulence. And those who worked for you were on board long enough to receive both the rewards and the reprimands that were their due without having to rely on short-term evaluations. Shipboard and school training were not just another administrative burden because they did not have to be repeated constantly for new arrivals. Rather, the training paid dividends which were immediate and which improved readiness to a marked degree.
Contrast this situation with that of other ships in the Fleet today. Responsible personnel are being received and transferred so often that their responsibilities must, of necessity, be passed to someone else during the interregnum which usually occurs because of gapping of the billet or training of the relief. Total reassignment of these responsibilities to a new incumbent fails to transpire as it should, especially if a senior assumed the responsibilities.
Largely because of enlisted personnel turbulence, authority is now generally delegated downward only as far as the junior officers. There is very little delegation down to the senior petty officers, at least in destroyer-size ships. And, as frequently happens, when senior petty officers are delegated some authority, they
in turn do not see fit to delegate it further.
It is not unusual to see a chief petty officer transferred before he has had 90 days on board. Invariably, junior officers will submit his detachment evaluation as "not observed” rather than marking for whatever service he has performed while on board. Of course, it can be argued that a fair evaluation cannot be made in less than 90 days and therefore he should be marked "not observed.” But the main concern is that a chief petty officer should contribute positively to shipboard life and discipline in far less than 90 days and therefore should be held accountable for his actions or inactions. Secondarily, his immediate superior should be trained in leadership techniques so that he holds a chief petty officer accountable even for a very short tour of duty.
Still, if general personnel instability and turbulence demands such quick transfers that he has not been directly assigned many clear-cut responsibilities or delegated much authority, then "not observed” is appropriate. And this is the condition which prevails so often in the Fleet today.
If, instead, personnel stability prevailed throughout the Fleet, we could commence working on the problems of chain of command and span of control more effectively. For these are also essential to a more democratic form of leadership within our authoritarian organization.
The Span-of-Control Syndrome manifests itself in the propensity we all seem to have for directing everyone within sight or sound of us. In the interests of management, expediency, or efficiency, or as a result of inexperience or lack of training, we often direct the actions of personnel who do not work for us. For example, executive officers tell chief petty officers what or how to do something. Perhaps this propensity has its roots in management training. Captain Hubert Glenzer, Jr., U. S. Navy, has this to say in a speech he gave about Operations Research, a tool of management:
"The way to judge success is by the amounts of control the manager in question has over the situation which he did not have before.”
This aptly describes the situation we have in the Fleet today. We judge our leaders by the amount of control they have over the situation in the mistaken belief that maximum control will provide the optimum solutions. From a management standpoint this may be true, but from a leadership standpoint it is not. Because, in order to get maximum control (as interpreted by many of our officers) one must violate the chain of command and perforce enlarge the span of control which he has. Both of these results are undesir-
l
able. For example, we demand that our officers of the deck underway have complete control over their bridge watch. The officer of the deck who rebukes a lookoui for not reporting a ship or object in the water is considered to be demonstrating aggressive and proptf behavior. He even has maximum control in this one instance. But his span of control is wider than it ough> to be, he has broken the chain of command since tht boatswain’s mate-of-the-watch is responsible for th< bridge watch enlisted men, he has thereby usurped tht responsibility of a junior, he has weakened the authority of the boatswain’s mate-of-the-watch, he has exacted accountability against a man who does not work directly for him, he has failed to hold the boatswain’s mate-of-the-watch accountable for the actions of his watch, and he has shown every other enlisted man ofl the bridge that the boatswain’s mate-of-the-watch position is not such an exalted position since the officer of the deck can run the ship without him.
Shipboard organization usually provides that each leader have from one to six men working for him. H he adheres to the chain of command thus provided he can operate at his approximate optimum, provided he has the capabilities to handle as many men as he is assigned by the organizational structure. If, however- he attempts to direct the actions of others on anything but a temporary or one-time basis (such as the quarterdeck watch officer controlling the quarterdeck), he has exceeded the optimum span of control and probably has broken the chain of command.
A good example of this is the division officer- division personnel relationship. Too often, division officers are held directly responsible for the appearand (for example) of their men. They react far too often to this responsibility by correcting the men themselves Thus, they completely bypass their senior petty officers and exercise too large a span of control. The usual result is a division marked either with serious morale problems or with a poor appearance. There are man)' reasons for this, not the least of which is an "identity’ problem between the men and the officer. Another vef)' real problem is that the petty officers have been relieve^ of their responsibilities.
During my last command tour I pondered this f°( many hours—together with the related problems ft getting the petty officers more involved in the responsibility for their men. A possible solution came to m£ after an unsatisfactory personnel inspection. For thc next inspection I changed the usual routine of having the division officer accompany me on the inspection of his division which was in ranks according to height- Instead, one week before the inspection, I had directed that the divisions were to be grouped by their rating5 or work groups and the senior petty officer in thn1
Accountablility: The Crumbling Keystone 45
r the 'idg(
koui
sr is
•ope!
on<
ught
: the the 1 the hot .cted : di- ain's his
a on posi- fficei
each n. If
ded.
ided
s he even hing irter- : has
>ably
icer-
sion
ance
>ften
Ives-
icers
isual
arale
ian;'
tity”
very
eved
» foe s of pon- > me the ving tiofl ght. •cted
ings
that
group would present his group and announce each man by rate and name as I inspected him. (There were usually three groups per division.) Even though the division officer was adjacent, I directed my remarks to the petty officer alone. After all, the responsibility was his. The results were startling. It looked like a different crew. The only way to account for the remarkable change was that the petty officers had used their influence (authority) because they knew that the men were going to be a direct reflection on them.
To compensate for the apparent breaking of the chain of command, I made general comments afterward on the divisions’ appearance to the executive officer and heads of departments. Also, I made it clear to them that I was not directing their petty officers and did not intend to concern myself with whether the petty officers took any action as a result of my comments. The problem of improving the appearance of the men still rested with the executive officer and the heads of departments, so far as I was concerned.
Not surprisingly, the greatest improvements were in the groups of men led by quiet, unassuming, but firm and steadfast petty officers. The younger, more authoritarian petty officers, even though they were immaculately dressed themselves, were not representative of their groups. The "nice guy” leaders made up the third, familiar category. And, just as Leo Durocher had said they would, those petty officers who were "nice guys” finished last.
If personnel stability can be achieved, if the chain of command is adhered to, if span of control is optimized even more than it already is, personalities could adjust to each other. Responsibilities could be clearly defined and refined from day to day. Authority could also be delegated and reinforced from each leader to his subordinates. And the subordinates, in a stable environment, could work to improve their own authority. And the reckoning, the accountability, could be imposed over an evaluation period of, hopefully, years instead of months or weeks as we now have it. Numerous groups of from two to five or six people, each headed by a leader, could work out their problems without being pressured by time. They could work closely together depending upon each other for support and authority. And they could work without being confronted with the insuperable problem of dealing with and handling a large number of personalities in the manner that a division officer tries to do.
In this kind of environment, authoritarianism can be suppressed by the trained leader. And with guidance and training, autocratic leadership can be virtually eliminated. Personality clashes and stubbornness both dictate that firm authoritarianism be used in order to maintain order and discipline within a group. But the
authoritarianism need not expand to other groups unless our training is inadequate. In such a situation, the leader must still be the dominant person and direct the group. And the juniors must follow. If, however, the juniors keep their seniors advised of what they are doing, they can get his inputs—his policies, his ideas, and his desires—before they make their decisions. In this way, authoritarianism is further diminished, at least psychologically, in the eyes of the juniors.
The "utter confusion and disorder in the details of duty” foreseen by the Secretary of the Navy in 1841 are with us today on board ship. Seniors are usurping the responsibilities of their juniors. They are negating the authority of their juniors. And they are exacting the accountability that should be the prerogative of their juniors. In short, decisions are not being made at the lowest level possible. Often, in the interests of management, better control, efficiency, and expediency, very senior people are getting involved in decisionmaking that should transpire several links below them in the chain of command. The result of all this is alienation of our petty officers, poor retention, and poor morale, and the personnel distribution problems.
We must give our leaders, especially our petty officers, more authority. And we must get them in the habit of holding men accountable for their actions and inactions. We must get them more re-involved in discipline. This, of course, was what Admiral Elmo Zum- walt was saying when he addressed the graduating class of the Naval Academy back in June 1971:
"You are personally accountable for every act, official or unofficial, which may bring either credit or discredit to the uniform we share.
"You owe the American people and yourself nothing less. Those who would command ships or men should hold indelibly in their conscience these words from out of the past: 'Accountability is not for the intentions but for the deed.’
"It is in the absolute nature of this challenge that the true rewards and situations of a naval career can be found.”
It is up to us, then, to make it so.
Commander Dean enlisted in the Navy in January 1951 and entered Officer Candidate School in 1957 after six-and-one-half years as a machine accountant. After graduation from OCS, he served in the USS Richard E. Kraus (DD-849), the USS Engage (MSO-433), and the USS Limpkin (MSC- 195). After duty in the Plans Division of BuPers, he attended the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, and received a B.A. in International Relations. Following this, he served on the precommissioning detail of the USS Talbot (DEG-4), serving as Executive Officer until March 1969, when he assumed command of the USS Courtney (DE-1021). He attended the Naval War College 1970-1971 and served on the staff there in 1971- 1972. In July 1972, he established a new NROTC Unit at the University of Florida.