One must create the ability in this staff to generate clear forceful arguments for opposing viewpoints as well as for their own. Open discussions and disagreements must be encouraged.1
When Rickover and his acolytes finally achieved control of the submarine force in the early 1970s, nuclear submarines began to be managed differently. Rickover was open about the concepts he practiced in the nuclear reactors program. He was also extremely vocal and public in critiquing the errors he observed in the traditional Navy techniques. The distinctions he drew produced tension within the Navy. Rickover welcomed it. He was convinced good management was a serious subject and open disagreement was the way to reach a decision.
Rickover and the submariners he had trained also believed the stakes were nothing less than the lives of the men who went to sea in nuclear submarines. Real-world events underscored his view. Public and preventable losses included the 1963 sinking of the nuclear submarine Thresher with all hands, and this was followed by the terrible grounding (and near sinking) of Seawolf in early 1968 followed a few months later the loss of USS Scorpion and her entire crew.
Yet the larger Navy strongly resisted the changes Rickover advocated. Most of the Navy officers as well as the presidentially appointed civilians in the Defense Department believed Rickover’s approach both unnecessary and too costly. In fact, those who sailed on surface ships even accused Rickover of espousing the adoption of bad management practices.
Both sides were sincere but working from two completely different premises. When surface-ship engines stop, the ships merely slow down until someone is available to come on board to fix them or until a tow can be arranged. Submarines spend their lives far from possible assistance. When their motors stop working, submarines slide inexorably deeper until the pressure crushes the hull or they surface to face destruction or capture. These basic facts of physics and environment understandably lead to different priorities. As with the proverbial chicken and pig attending a charity ham and egg breakfast, one is mildly interested in the outcome, while the other is involved.
As both the Vietnam and Cold Wars were ongoing at the time, all in the Navy had a lot on their individual plates. The air and surface communities were fighting a completely different war than were submariners (who bore the brunt of the work in countering the Soviets but were only peripherally involved in Vietnam2). Nonsubmariners were not spending much time worrying about the smallest Navy organization—especially one so little involved in the Vietnam War. However, since submariners’ valid concerns were continually ignored, we came to a conclusion (that was maybe not logical intellectually but emotionally felt consistent at the time). We decided the non-nuclear-trained officers in the Bureau of Ships were either (1) trying to kill all the submariners or (2) simply stupid. Neither answer contributed much toward good fellowship within the larger corps of officers.
At the same time, under the strain of the war in Southeast Asia, ignorant of what submarines were accomplishing in the Cold War, the larger Navy began to resent the submarine force (submarine officers made up less than 5 percent of the officer corps but commanded nearly a quarter of the Navy’s warships). This professional disagreement quickly turned personal in the Vietnam War years. Most of the Navy was convinced the nuclear submariners were
1. Deliberately destroying the diesel-boat culture (and thus unfairly increasing the competition for command in surface ships),
2. Receiving more than a fair share of the money devoted to ship and aircraft construction,
3. Individually receiving more pay than their peers (submariners received the same danger pay as aviators, but it was evident to all who read the daily papers that the aviators were earning their money in Vietnam),
4. Acting like prima donnas too good to be more than peripherally involved in Vietnam, and
5. Being promoted faster and to higher positions and receiving a disproportionate and undeserved number of prestigious awards.
Of these, points 1 through 3, as well as 5, were accurate (promotion often follows from having a command, but of course, I would dispute “undeserved”). As for the prima donna issue, no submariner was permitted to hint, even to his spouse, about the top-secret work keeping him out of Vietnam.3 The kindest words used by some in the Navy in belittling the men in the nuclear submarines were “robots and functionaries.” Those critics on the sidelines who desired to appear more balanced, but who were equally ignorant, tended to refer to nuclear submariners as “unimaginative” and “process bound.”
In the midst of this personal acrimony, sailors on both sides had overlooked that—driven by the crushing workload on board each nuclear submarine, the high operating tempo (submarine time away from home port was much more extreme than that for any other community), and Rickover’s rigid insistence on safety—the nuclear force had been forced to develop a method of simultaneously accommodating innovation and process. The nuclear force had adopted a policy of ruthlessly discriminating between operations that should be treated as ordinary and other work. If the work to be done was judged routine, then it was completed in accordance with precise procedures. These rigid procedures were written to require only a moderate level of talent, training, and supervision to achieve the proper degree of safety. By this careful differentiation between tasks, submarine leadership attention could be redirected and prioritized to those nonroutine management functions that required special attention, intellect, or innovation.
Even with the limited number of truly superior individuals in the pool, Admiral Rickover had recruited—by using this deliberate division of labor—senior managers subliminally encouraged to work on the most challenging problem sets, while the much larger group of officers and enlisted focused on following established processes. As a result, the submarine force not only thrived over the years but, more important, continually improved. Throughout Rickover’s life and beyond, each day the nuclear submarine became safer and more effective. Continual improvement eventually became the hallmark of the submarine force.4
However, strict procedures, training, and processes were neither popular nor generally accepted by the rest of the Navy. Having two such different approaches in the same organization created the perception that one of the methods was wrong. Consequently, individuals chose sides—normally along community lines. The much more numerous surface and aviation communities, rather than acknowledging the enormous platform and mission differences and accepting a “different strokes for different folks” philosophy, popularly considered the nuclear submariners to be out of step, like a marcher being off the drum cadence. This out-of-sync condition just doesn’t happen unless it’s deliberate. It did not take long before the majority of officers in all services viewed nuclear submariners as “bubbleheads” or automatons who blindly followed Rickover’s lead.
This view gained credence over time. The public ignored the safety record and listened to those who had been let go for failing to meet the standards (or those who had not even made the initial cut). Since Rickover never explained himself or replied to individuals who had not been accepted for his program or who had been involuntarily released, many in the public came to believe that his process was unfairly punishing otherwise good sailors who failed to “follow the book.”5 Rickover did not answer his critics—so they felt free to write more. His name guaranteed them a headline. But what if Admiral Rickover and his followers were the ones more attentively listening to the beat of modern life?
Driven by the needs of modern manufacturing, commercial organizations in the United States were discovering increased success by establishing and following processes. Whatever the popular jargon of the moment (e.g., “total quality management,” “zero defects,” “lean manufacturing”), successful industrial managers today are convinced of the importance of capturing individual knowledge (best practices) in processes (written or software documents). Researching the business origin of this concept will lead one back to another Naval Academy graduate, Bill Smith, who, after completing his service commitment, was hired by Motorola. Smith was soon building computer chips for the first mass-produced small calculator and needed his silicon components to have a low probability of failure. He found he could get what was necessary only by rigidly controlling each step of the manufacturing process. His efforts to do so subsequently were documented in the concept known as Six Sigma. A second key figure in this manufacturing revolution was W. Edwards Deming, the American electrical engineer generally credited with starting the quality revolution (Kaizen) that so improved Japan’s automobile industry (and consequently nearly destroyed the American “Big Three,” until Ford hired Deming back from Japan). The third person you will inevitably encounter in your research is Adm. Hyman G. Rickover.
Each of these three was faced with complex engineering projects (calculators for Smith, manufacturing millions of automobiles for Deming, reactors for the third guy). Each realized that a necessary step in achieving his particular goal was to have the supporting industries adopt more exacting engineering standards than had previously been conceived possible. This was possible only through the establishment of demanding standards and a process of continuous improvement. Each man achieved values their peer practitioners had heretofore believed unachievable.
At the same time, both Deming and Rickover recognized the need for innovation.6 In business this is often characterized as out-of-the-box thinking. Innovation in business is what develops the new product that will someday employ a new industry. In the military, innovation is a way to save lives or win a battle with a new concept. For example, the marriage of the tank and an installed radio enabled the German Wehrmacht to quickly sweep around the Maginot line.7
Of course, the people who appreciate the need to follow process may not be the same individuals who embrace innovation. A successful organization needs people with both personality types to coexist and excel. The critical management question is, How in the world should talent be parsed to accomplish both goals?
We have discussed how the nuclear-submarine forces approached this problem. They determined what was routine, established a process to control that action, assigned the routine processes to the junior personnel, and tasked senior managers (expected to be more capable) with innovation. But what happened when a bad process was inadvertently installed and accepted?
An event that occurred while I was in command of a San Diego–based submarine demonstrates how Rickover balanced process and innovation. Around that time Admiral Rickover’s staff introduced a new method to check the proper operation of electrical equipment that directly affected the safety of the reactor. The test was termed Operating Instruction 62 (O/I 62). A form of this test had been in place since the beginning of the nuclear-power program, but recently, the process had been changed to make it more comprehensive. Now the procedure routinely checked the integrity of the electrical sensing systems within the reactor plant as well as the supporting electrical plant, including the huge air-cooled breakers Rickover had been personally responsible for designing and installing to prevent battle-shock damage during World War II.8 Naval Reactors’ new test required that all of the major power sources be disconnected and reconnected multiple times.
Consequently, during the five or six hours the procedure required, no electronic equipment could be used throughout the ship (unless one wanted to risk the sensitive equipment being damaged by a dramatic power surge). Since the air-conditioning plants would thus be off for some time and a nuclear submarine is nearly insufferable without air conditioning, it became common practice to do O/I 62 late at night, after the sun had set, the regular workday had finished, and most of the crew had returned safely home. Of course, late at night fewer supervisors were on board, and by that time the men performing O/I 62 had already done a full day’s work.
A year or more after the new procedure had been introduced, I heard through the grapevine that while conducting the test on board a ship on the other coast, an electrician had been electrocuted. I wrangled a copy of the investigation. The report was brief and straight-forward. It said that the procedure had been precisely followed, with proper safety supervision present, but the electrician conducting the operation had been careless and permitted his arm to brush against a powered 450-volt copper bus bar. He was killed instantly.
Now, the nuclear-submarine business was particularly dangerous in the early years, and I had by this time already seen several men die on board and around boats. But you know what? No men had ever died when they were being properly supervised. In fact, this is a rule you can wrap up and take to work with you: People don’t die when they are being properly supervised. I knew the investigation report was wrong, but there are many problems in the world. This one was not mine and was furthermore greater than three thousand miles removed. I cast the report into a locker over my bunk.
Six months later, standing in the San Diego submarine officers’ bar, I overheard someone gossiping. Another electrician had been lost while conducting O/I 62. I made an inquiring telephone call and was informed that both the latest death and its subsequent investigation were believed to be none of my business. Nevertheless, the submarine force is small. Within a week an unmarked envelope containing a copy of the official report appeared in my in-box. Surprise, surprise, the account ran along the lines of the earlier one. In short, the junior electrician was properly supervised and everything was in order. All of a sudden the ex-soul foolishly leaned the wrong way and killed himself. Conclusion: no one at fault but the dead guy. Recommended changes: none. None to the procedure. None to the equipment. None to the training. Nobody at fault. Nobody to be held accountable. No one responsible for someone dying.
I remember standing with the latest report in my hand reflecting on my own responsibility. The deaths had occurred someplace else on board other ships (i.e., the accidents were definitely not in my chain of command, or “lane,” as civilian organizations might say). I was not even officially aware of the accidents, and furthermore, some officials with the proper responsibility had already decided the deaths had resulted from the deceased’s own failures. However, my gut told me both investigations were as flawed as their senior reviewers.
I was in command of a submarine, so I essentially had my own test platform available. And since I was in command of a submarine, unless I checked the procedure myself before the next scheduled O/I 62, I might very well end up shipping the body of one of my young electricians home. I have a personal management rule: People may not be prepared for the situation in which they find themselves in life. The good leader recognizes this and reassigns them to a place or position where they can be successful. If there is no appropriate role in which they can flourish, the best course of action for all is to sever the relationship. The only clearly wrong decision is to demand that an unprepared person face a challenging climb alone.
The night I read the second investigation, I walked down to the Goat Locker to ask the senior chief electrician to lend me a hand.9 I informed him the two of us were going to do O/I 62 that evening. He was going to read the procedure and record results while I took the actual readings. Taking the readings had been the role performed by the two junior electricians who had died.
Within an hour we had laid out rubber safety mats on the submarine steel deck, put up warning signs for the passersby, and commenced. The process moved along about as quickly as expected; it had been years since I had operated the test equipment, and there are always tricks to any trade. The procedure was lengthy and required the removal of heavy steel protective panels to expose live 450-volt bus bars. The latter contained enough voltage to kill anyone, and while the copper was exposed, we took readings from the live bus bars. We repeated the measurements twice more: once after the breakers were tripped open and then again after the bright shiny bars were reenergized. The chief and I then hoisted the heavy steel panel covers back in place and screwed the threaded retainers semitight (we knew the procedure would have us double back to this same location once more) before we moved our safety mats and barriers to a new location. Then we would again establish the prescribed electrical conditions in order to take a new set of readings.
Of course, we were working in one of the main passageways of a submarine, and anyone walking fore or aft might try to squeeze by on the other side of us from the electrically live (charged) network rather than choosing a longer path. But it was late at night, and there was not a great deal of foot traffic. In addition, two people had died, so the chief and I were particularly alert for dangerous situations. The senior chief was one of my best supervisors; in fact, he had monitored this particular evolution every quarter for a couple of years.
Each time the operator in the maneuvering room remotely switched an air-cooled breaker to change the electrical conditions, I would take measurements with a voltmeter to ensure the proper thick copper bars were fully charged or dead. Sometimes the big bars on the right were live, and sometimes it was those on the left, and every now and then it was the ones up high and toward the back of the cabinet. To get the latter readings, I had to stand on my toes and reach deep into the gray steel enclosure.
It was warm on the submarine without any air conditioning, so the senior chief and I both were sweating a bit. We had taken off our long-sleeved uniform shirts and were down to our T-shirts. Four hours into the process, I was convinced the procedure was not particularly complicated, and I was thinking maybe this was a wild goose chase. Perhaps my gut was wrong, and the two investigation reports had been correct. Maybe the men who died were simply careless.
We were now well into the rhythm of things, and I was wondering when might be a good time for a cigarette break. The men in maneuvering reset another group of breakers. The senior chief read me the instructions for the next step. I repeated the guidance to him verbatim, picked up the voltmeter, began to swing back toward the open cabinet, and stopped. For some reason my hips had started to rotate but my arms had not yet moved, and as I looked down, I could see the sweaty hairs of my bare left arm actually reaching straight out for the live bus bar immediately to my left. The high voltage copper and my arm were separated by less than a quarter of an inch. I carefully swayed right and abruptly sat down. The chief wordlessly lit a cigarette, bent over, and stuck it between my teeth. Then he lit one for himself. His hands were shaking. I was sitting on mine. When we finished our cigarettes, the senior chief and I wordlessly lifted the heavy steel panels back into place and screwed them tightly shut. We then went in search of a sheaf of electrical system drawings and a couple of pencils.
Two weeks later, after drilling some holes and installing a couple of hundred dollars’ worth of equipment obtained at a local hardware store, we had modified the cabinets. With our slight changes one could read the main bus voltages without removing the safety covers. Our connection design maintained the watertight integrity of the enclosure. Once we had made the alterations, the senior chief and I redid the test to demonstrate that O/I 62 would produce identical results if performed our way. We then removed our changes and did the test the old way (with exceptional care) so that the ship was back to normal.
I submitted our recommended change (a two-and-a-half-inch stack of new processes, procedures, and drawings) via the chain of command. My boss, who would the following year be selected for the rank of admiral, soon called me up to his sea cabin. His lair was on the fifth deck of the large repair ship moored just across the pier from my submarine.
As soon as I was standing at attention in front of his desk, he used the tips of his fingers to slowly push our document across his desk toward me. He accompanied his disdainful gesture with comments that frankly seemed mildly discouraging: “We all know Admiral Rickover is the most renowned electrical engineer in the bureau. We all know he personally designed these breakers being tested and is particularly proud of that achievement. If he says an electrical procedure is safe and correct, I, for one, am not going to challenge him!”
My wife always cautions me that my every emotion is clearly evident in my face. With that in mind, I focused my gaze above the commodore’s head. The interior of all Navy surface ships is a mixture of gray, blue, and green. The old Navy adage is “If it doesn’t move, paint it.” The only pipes not specifically painted on a Navy ship are those formed from copper, for copper doesn’t rust. Navy copper pipes are shined. In the commodore’s cabin even the wiring cabling was painted gray.
He spoke again, his voice rising, “How dare you make a change to your engineering plant to attempt to prove that something unauthorized would work? Who do you think you are?”
I could see that someone perhaps weary of the penetrating smell of brass polish in an enclosed space, an odor I also have always found offensive, had painted the copper pipes that ran along the overhead of the commodore’s office. I wondered if I should inform my commodore that each day he sat down in his big leather chair, he was positioned smack dab beneath an express violation of the Bureau of Ships manual, specifically a footnote contained somewhere in volume 26. I parsed my recollection. I might be wrong; it could be volume 24. In my mind I leafed through the chapters trying to recall.
The commodore abruptly stood. I sensed he was trying to look down on me. I was a wee bit taller, but he was now nearly interrupting my line of sight to the painted copper pipes. Now I was also looking down on a thinning spot beginning to form near the back of the crown of his head. “I am going to forget this, but don’t ever do it again!” He sat back down, his right hand swooping his hair back to cover the balding area, his left hand again pushing our pile of papers away from him. The recommended change teetered between the desk edge and the floor.
I decided he didn’t want to know about the copper pipe. Besides, I knew how to go about getting a waiver for copper that had already been painted . . . but if I brought that up he would probably just suggest retiring to the officers’ club to discuss, over a friendly beer or two, obtaining said permission . . . and I had pressing matters I needed to accomplish that afternoon.
I went back to my ship and asked the yeoman for a mailing box. I dropped the procedure inside, addressed the box to Admiral Rickover at his home, and included a short personal note:
If you want to stop killing people, read this.
Very respectfully,
Dave Oliver
Captain, US Navy
Once off the base on the way to watch my sons play soccer, I mailed the box. I paid for the postage out of my own pocket. I wasn’t sure the commodore would support an expense claim.
I was later informed by my brother, Tim, who was on Rickover’s staff at the time, that the day after the mail system delivered my box, Rickover simply brought it in from home and handed it to the head of his electrical section. Rickover asked that it be evaluated—and directed that no one in the electrical section leave work until the assessment was completed (a standard Rickover practice greatly appreciated by those of us who had difficulty getting any of our letters answered by other Navy functional organizations). When the head of the electrical section reported to Rickover that the recommended change was correct, Rickover took several actions, one of which caused me a bit of career grief. The admiral first directed that the change be issued immediately, precisely as the senior chief and I had written.10 Second, Rickover fired the head of his electrical department. Two men had died, and his electrical head should have picked up on the problems in the investigation reports long before I did. Rickover’s sense of personal responsibility was almost always at a perfect pitch. When I later heard about his action, I mentally applauded. Finally, Rickover picked up the telephone and called my commodore.
I later found out that my boss had not been completely honest with me. My commodore had not really “forgotten” what he considered my insubordination. Instead, he had reported my “challenge of Rickover” to his superiors (this word of course had immediately reached Rickover’s ears). I fear my commodore might have been firing blindly in the hope that someone really senior in the Navy, preferably the seventy-eight-year-old Admiral Rickover himself, would decide to hammer me for not “following process.” Unfortunately for my commodore, Admiral Rickover didn’t consider my action a transgression. Instead, the four-star admiral made an alternate “suggestion” to my boss.
I don’t recall what I was working on that day when the commodore unexpectedly called my executive officer and requested that all my officers and crew fall in at attention on the pier between our two ships. The commodore said he wanted to speak to everyone. This was an unusual order. In fact, it had never happened before, and he had bypassed the chain of command by calling my exec. Violating a military convention like this was just not his style.
The buzz was big, and everyone moved with alacrity. I don’t recall linking this strange occurrence with the cardboard box I had mailed three or four days earlier. I know we had not yet received the new O/I 62 message from Naval Reactors. It was only when the commodore began addressing the crew by saying he wanted everyone to hear his “sincere apologies to their commanding officer” that I sensed the day was not going smoothly.
You see, the hero of our story, Admiral Rickover, was one of those unique individuals who could simply accept that he (or one of his closest advisers) was wrong—even if the issue involved a personal accomplishment in which he had previously taken great pride. When it was determined he was in error, Rickover always looked anew at the evidence, chose a better path, and never looked back. He was the best I have ever seen at accepting correction.
However, Rickover had a different flaw. He accepted direct criticism, and he expected others to be equally grown-up. Unfortunately, most supervisors in the world, including my commodore that day, are not nearly as mature and magnanimous. Few people behave as Rickover did. Most of the time, if the boss or one of his close associates is wrong, the error must be disguised in some costume and called a unicorn—or something equally fanciful—in order for the person who identified the error to survive.
Partially because of this incident, my commodore and I subsequently had a relatively strained relationship. Consequently, I never shared with him my observation about his improperly painted copper piping. Possibly because I failed to offer to buy him an accompanying beer, he subsequently wrote the worst fitness report I received during my thirty-six years in the Navy.11 Still, I never did ship one of my submariners home in a casket, and no one else in the submarine force subsequently died during O/I 62. It may all have turned out for the best.
Earlier in the chapter it was noted that
the nuclear force had adopted a policy of ruthlessly discriminating between operations that should be treated as ordinary and other work. If the work to be done was judged routine, then it was completed in accordance with precise procedures. These rigid procedures were written to require only a moderate level of talent, training, and supervision to achieve the proper degree of safety. By this careful differentiation between tasks, submarine leadership attention could be redirected and prioritized to those nonroutine management functions that required special attention, intellect, or innovation.
. . . Throughout Rickover’s life and beyond, each day the nuclear submarine became safer and more effective. Continual improvement eventually became the hallmark of the submarine force.
What do you think about this approach to management? Have you seen organizations that manage differently? How do they create an organizational culture that fosters innovation? How do they develop the proper balance between quality and innovation?