The Devil is in the details, but so is salvation.1
Nearly everyone who has bought or sold a house understands the secret to real estate success—location, location, location. There is an equivalent in good management—focus, focus, focus. Hyman Rickover made a mantra of this secret. And goodness could he execute. He always focused on what was essential. And he knew what tools he needed: capable people and a system that coaxed the best from them.
I have already discussed Rickover’s deep personal investment in the selection of capable people. The admiral was similarly involved in their training. He selected the instructors for all his schools, approved the curriculum, and made periodic visits to the sites. In addition, he paid particular attention to the individuals who filled two specific roles on board his submarines: the engineer and the commanding officer. These individuals were responsible for the technical decisions about the reactor when at sea and frequently operated in radio silence. Rickover insisted on having the final personal approval of any assignment to these two roles, and he required both men to undergo additional testing before they assumed their jobs. To ensure standards didn’t slip, the final testing and interviews were performed at Rickover’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Like all the other training in his program, the testing done at Naval Reactors was a combination of written and oral questions. These weren’t examinations for the weak. Eight hours was allotted for the written and more time was often needed; I did not fully complete either of the two written tests I took. The oral testing followed and was performed by the same engineering staff members who had written the textbooks. Orals were always more difficult. They focused on exploring weaknesses or uncertainties evident in the test taker’s written answers. These orals could drag out to three or more hours. The standards were absolute and relative: relative because officers with more experience were expected to be equivalently more knowable and nuanced; absolute because if the testing exposed knowledge, temperament, or judgment fissures deemed too wide to be quickly bridged, no matter how long the candidates had been in the program, the individuals were diverted to careers not in submarines. Of the test takers, 10 to 30 percent failed the engineer’s examination, and after nearly two decades in the nuclear-power program, some senior officers still stumbled during the commanding officer’s testing.
It is important to note that qualified individuals were not deliberately failed. Instead, the failures, at either the engineer level or the commanding officer level (speaking only for the many cases in which I personally knew the individual), were instances of unqualified individuals who, rather than being pushed along until they reached a level of incompetence, were earlier fairly judged and found wanting. In many cases these individuals were intellectually more than qualified but not emotionally well matched with submarine life, just as Rickover had not been. The numbers of failures were small, but the possibility of not passing tended to peg the angst meters of the group being examined. No matter our outward confidence, many of us secretly fear we will prove not good enough.
The first examination (the engineer’s) was taken by all nuclear-trained officers interested in continuing their career in submarines. The testing took place three or four years after the officer began nuclear training. The officer either prepared himself (the rule in the earlier years) or was assisted in getting ready. The typical successful officer took the commanding officer’s examination ten or twelve years later. This test was reserved for those few individuals who had survived the attrition of time and life’s challenges and were deemed worthy to be afloat commanders.2 This technical assessment was preceded by three months of refresher training at the Naval Reactors headquarters.
Rickover had a good reason for this extra-special attention to the commanding officer, for this individual has always had a particularly unique role in the Navy. In literature, when an author needs to display the impact an absolute despot can have on the minds and souls of others, the narrator often stages his scenes on a ship at sea. The narrative of the story is driven by the captain’s character flaw (Caine Mutiny’s Captain Queeg, Captain Bligh on Bounty, or of course, Captain Ahab on board Pequod). Rickover did his best to ensure he got rid of most of the twisted souls. If the occasional one slipped through, then that egomaniac was going to at least understand the principles of nuclear power.
When I attended my prospective commanding officer course in 1977, the training reviewed each of the engineering areas we had been expected to assimilate during our careers, with seminars and written examinations every couple of weeks. While the size of the class depended on the need in the fleet, most often it consisted of less than a dozen officers. The three months culminated in the normal eight-hour written and four-hour oral examination, followed by a session with Admiral Rickover.3
During our course of training, we were assigned small two-person cubicles for study. I had rented an apartment nearby so I could spend time with my family at nights during the last days of summer before they all went back to school in San Diego. Candidly, I believed I could afford the time as I had much more engineering experience than most of my peers. Possibly some of this impression was based on wishful thinking, as I hadn’t seen Linda or our sons, David and Morgan, much in the previous three years, when I was deployed to the Western Pacific, and I was determined to squeeze in time with them while everyone else in my group was studying. Possibly part of my evaluation was based on watching my cubicle mate’s progress. He had never served in an engineer billet. If he made it through this course, I judged it was going to be by only a razor-thin margin.
I learned that his family was solidly southern—South of Broad Street, if you have ever been in Charleston, South Carolina (or read Pat Conroy). He had graduated from the Citadel in Charleston and married a local belle. He and his wife lived three blocks from both of their ancestral homes, and he had a drawl that could not be cut with a sharp knife. He was on his way to command a ballistic-missile submarine (this assignment had an accompanying lesser opportunity for a “major medal”—nearly essential if one was considered to be in the competition for promotion to admiral—than did an attack submarine but also involved much less stress). He could not have been happier. The ship was homeported in Charleston, and his family wouldn’t have to move. I remember thinking that I did not know when I had met a more iconic southern gentleman.
Soon it was time for our final interview with Admiral Rickover. He had decided to speak with us as a group. Ten study desks had been pushed together, side to side, in a small room. We were all wearing suits and ties, as we did each day at Naval Reactors. I was squeezed into the center, my cubicle mate at my left. Everyone in the room was apprehensive. We all had worked long and hard to be selected for command, and none of us wanted to lose this opportunity on the last day. We also knew the admiral was a high-energy person.
Most of the students there had not spoken to Rickover since he had interviewed them twenty years earlier. We knew, but had not yet internalized, we were about to begin frequently communicating with him. Rickover required periodic letters from his commanding officers and was in the habit of episodically calling each nuclear-ship commanding officer. The worst-case phone call was when one of Rickover’s agents had reported something noteworthy, and the commanding officer, caught flat-footed, tried to think on his feet and improvise an explanation without knowing the details.
Because of my engineer’s tour on board Nautilus and the engineering difficulties we had experienced during the Haddo overhaul in Pascagoula, I had spoken professionally with the Old Man several times over the years, so I already knew the secret (never, never make anything up). As I looked around the room that day, I realized I was probably the exception. Although it was October, the room was hot—perhaps from the sweating students. Capt. Zack Pate, our instructor, didn’t appear particularly nervous.4 Suddenly, Rickover entered, both his hands pushing us back down in our seats as we respectfully rose.
The admiral, hands clasped behind his back, his eyes on the wooden floor, began to slowly pace back and forth in front of the small room. He was short enough that nearly half his body seemed to disappear each time he passed behind the instructor’s desk in the middle of the room. I hadn’t seen him in three or four years, and his body had continued to shrink from what was not a very imposing size at his zenith. He must have just barely been able to pass the Naval Academy entry requirement . . . after fifty-five years of service . . . my thoughts broke off as he finally stopped pacing and looked up.
“If one of you makes a mistake, I’ll understand.” His voice was almost soothing, instead of the high-pitched bark I had heard before. “I know the pressures you are under.”
He clasped his hands back together and returned to his slow pace. We students were pushed so close together, I could feel my cubicle mate actually begin to relax. I glanced over at him and realized that not only was he starting to smile, his lower jaw was moving. He was chewing gum. I had been studying and drinking beer with a man who did not understand the essence of survival in the nuclear world.
First of all, relaxing was a huge mistake. Admiral Rickover never gave a damn about the pressures anyone was under—ever. My cubicle mate should have known that the admiral was making a verbal feint. Rickover was fond of noting that no one goes home to the wrong spouse in the evening. He believed every individual’s responsibility to maintain nuclear safety was much more important than family relationships, so woe be to the person who made an error and then attempted to explain the mistake away by saying he or she was tired or under pressure. The only standard acceptable to Rickover was for everything to be done correctly every time.
Secondly, Rickover hated gum. He thought people who chewed gum were, at best, sociopaths.
Finally, return to rule one: never relax around a badger or an admiral. I respected this man more than anyone except my father, but he was still Admiral Rickover. My eyes went back to the center of the room. Rickover had stopped pacing. He was now standing behind the instructor’s desk looking with fascination at my cubicle mate’s masticating lower jaw. The admiral continued with his metaphor: “If you make a mistake, I’ll understand because I’ve studied genetics.”
I ventured a quick glance around the room. The only one who didn’t have a quizzical look on his face was Zack, and Zack’s eyes were willing me to look back at the admiral—as if we both didn’t know precisely what was coming next. I knew the hole to which this particular badger was returning. The admiral had been delivering versions of this same message for a quarter of a century: You are each personally responsible for reactor safety. There are no exceptions. Hell, I had myself heard him deliver the same message for fifteen years. What did anyone think we were about to hear? There are eight commandments—the Father of the Nuclear Navy has decided to drop a couple?
The admiral smiled as he looked around the room at his charges. Some of them were uncertainly smiling back. He repeated, “I understand genetics. If you make a mistake with my nuclear plant”—his voice began winding up the scale to the slightly unpleasant high pitch that is more normal for him—“it’s because your mother was a street whore who trawled for tricks with a mattress on her back.”
I cast a quick glance to my left. My cubicle mate’s face had turned harsh red, and his gum was now being savaged. I could sense the bottom guy in our class was on the verge of rising to say something in defense of his mother’s Southern Honor. I laughed. It sounded rather loud in the small room.
The admiral was instantly standing on my desk, my tie in his hand, pulling my head up toward his. His face was redder than my study mate’s. His voice elevated even above the high pitch I remembered: “Did you find something I said particularly funny?”
I simultaneously became aware of two things. First, there was a seventy-seven-year-old man who had suffered at least two heart attacks standing on my desk. Second, I was terrified, a bit sad for someone who liked to think of himself as a battle-hardened warrior. However, while Admiral Rickover is standing on your desk, pulling your tie tight around your throat, it is definitely not the time for excessive self-reflection. My life as I knew it was effectively over unless I responded both appropriately and quickly. I gave it a shot.
“Admiral, I have heard you deliver nearly the identical message about personal responsibility toward reactor safety many times, but I have never heard you say it more entertainingly.”
After a long unblinking stare into my eyes, he dropped my tie, jumped directly down from my desk (without touching anything), and walked wordlessly from the room. My classmates politely looked everywhere except at me (did they suspect we were being monitored by some secret camera?). Pate glanced at me for a moment, slightly shook his head, cleared his throat, and announced, “Last day, gentlemen, make sure your cubicles are cleaned out.”
While the room cleared, I estimated the height of my desk. I personally didn’t understand it. Even if I kept my weight down, there was simply no way I would ever be able to make that leap when I was nearly eighty.
How important is the leader of the organization? Do you believe managers subconsciously convey concepts and leadership principles by their every action?
Admiral Rickover had dual mantras: “The devil is in the details” and “Do what is right.” He continually drove all in his organization to accept responsibility and to recognize they were working for a higher purpose.
Do you believe the leader bears absolute responsibility when something goes wrong? When problems occurred in your organization, were the leaders at the top held accountable?