 Good afternoon and welcome to another edition of Conversation with a Shipmate. I'm MC1 Sony Chambers and I'm here in Millington, Tennessee. Joining me today is the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Jonathan Greenert, and MASH Chief Petty Officer of the Navy, Mike Stevens. Gentlemen, thank you for joining us. Great to be here. Thank you. Thank you, guys. Chambers. CNO, in your last conversation, you shared the stage with CMP to talk training and talent management. Today, alongside McPon, we'd like to dig a little deeper on personnel initiatives. So let's jump right in. Since we're here today at kind of the heart of the Navy personnel headquarters here in Millington, can we get your view on manning? How do you think we're doing? Well, first, before I will comment on that, let me give a shout out to Naval personnel command who's been doing a remarkable job. Manning is good and it is getting better and it's through the dedicated effort, diligent effort of the people that work down here and have worked down here over the last few years. I'll give you just two numbers. First, we had gaps at sea greater than 10,000 and I'll turn to the McPon. He always has more detail than I have. We're down in the single digit, 2,500 or so. So you mentioned manning. Manning is doing well. We have two measurements we kind of use for manning. One is called fill. And that means do you have the right number of people on your unit, your vessel, whatever? We're very good in fill. The other one is fit. Do you have the right skill set in the right timing in the Navy, the right seniority? We're improving greatly in that and we're pretty much there at sea. Next match, NEC, Navy Unlisted Classification Code. But perhaps more importantly, the question is so what is the health of the force? So you know, what do you see and what do you hear about how we're doing overall? I would put that in good, all right? It's not poor. It can be better. We should be very good. I mean that would be our goal, right? But we're good. We have the basics right, but we have more to do. That's why we have this initiative, talent management. We have to do better with our personnel, with our training and really with our systems that support that. So we're good. We can do better. Right. Are there any areas that you think need additional focus? Well, yes, IT, and what I mean by information technology. In other words, the systems that are people here at Millington and around really the Navy to manage people that they use. So let me give you an example. If you say, hey, how are we doing re-enlistments last year? Or how are we doing on re-enlistments, the SRB and all? One should be able to pull up a report fairly quickly. Businesses do it all the time. We manage people here at Navy Personnel Command. Businesses manage money or widgets or whatever it is. You need to know what it is that you're operating with quickly so you can adjust. We're too antiquated in that. It takes weeks for folks down here to get a report. And frankly, you start shooting behind the rabbit, as they say. So that's number one. Two, our training systems need to be more modern. We talked about that at our last conversation with a sailor. So we're going to diligently spend some time on this and get this right. We have a period of opportunity. Our secretary of the Navy, our secretary of defense, very, very focused on this area. So that's our next, that's what we need to do better. McPom, what advice would you offer to sailors in overman ratings? Well, the first thing you've got to ask yourself is, do I want to be a particular rate or do I want to be a sailor? Because unfortunately, there's times when rates become overman for various reasons. If a sailor is in that rating and they see that their opportunity for advancement is going to be very, very difficult, limited. But in some cases, if no opportunity, then they have to take a look around and say, OK, what do I want to do? Find out if they get with their career counselor and their command leadership. Find out what they're qualified to do. Because you can't just go and do anything you want. You have to meet all the requirements for that particular rate. If you're qualified for a job that you want to do, then my advice to them would be to go forth and do it. I was on a submarine in San Diego not too long ago. And I was talking with a first-class petty officer and the chief of the boat was sharing with me what a wonderful job this first class was doing. In my mind, I thought he was a career submarineer because he spoke submarine. He looked submarine, whatever that means. But he looked submarine. I'm a submarine. I look like a submarine. You do, see, you know? And so in this conversation, I asked him how long he'd been on board. And he said about 18 months he had his dolphins, his warfare quals. And I said, where was you at before that? And he named off a surface ship. And then he named off a different rate. And here we are, the first class. And I said, you mean to tell me that just under two years ago, you were this rate on a surface ship and now you're a new rate on a submarine. You're warfare qualified and you're already a part of this crew. And you're acting like you've been doing this your whole career. And he said, Mick Paughan, it's just a matter of attitude, recognizing what's in front of you and then meeting the challenge. And he said, the best thing he ever did is make the decision to be a sailor and not let that overcome his desire to stay in his older rate, the former rate, I should say. Because if he'd have made that decision, because he was a first class, he made first class as a submarineer, he would have high-year tenured out as a second class and never had the opportunity to continue to serve. I don't mean to belabor that, but I share that with all of our sailors so that they think about that. Do I want to be a sailor or do I want to be a rate? And where does my loyalty lie? And I hope their loyalties lie with it being a sailor in the Navy first. That's common in industry, that people would shift skills or with a company go into a different area. So we're not a company. We're the Navy. But I'd say, as you describe, there are different ways to reach your goal. So what is your number one priority? This sailor will be, I'm sure, one day a chief petty officer, senior chief and master chief. And just look at that period of time as something that happened. So what are your thoughts on the Navy maintaining or improving retention and recruiting? We're doing a great job maintaining recruiting. We are bringing in the numbers that we need. This morning, we rang the bell, which means we celebrate the fact that, in this case, 96 months in a row, we have met our goals. That's the good news. We need to continue to look ahead and stay ahead and shoot ahead of the rabbit, as they like to say. In my time in the Navy, we've had situations where we weren't meeting recruiting goals and it's awful. If you can't assess the right numbers, then you're in trouble. With regard to retention, it's a similar situation. You have to look ahead and see what is it that causes people to stay in and how do they make their decision? What kind of generation are you dealing with? In this case, millennials, as we call them. What do they think about the Navy and what do they think about their future? How do they make career decisions? So my thoughts are we have to stay with them, listen to them and make the Navy a career choice for them. Help them to make that choice. McBun, how do you think the Navy will continue to attract the best and brightest? And what can we do to bring in that top-notch talent? Well, we have to be like we've been for 239, getting ready to be 240 years, a cutting-edge fighting force that has the ability to recognize talent, recruit talent, as the CNO just mentioned, and then provide them with the education and the training and the equipment to be effective at what we're asking them to do. I believe the young men and women that raise their right hand today recognize that that is the force that we are. So our challenge is to remain relevant to ensure that we understand what it means to change and why we need to change so that we continue to progress forward and attract the best and brightest. They wanna be a part of not just any organization, they wanna be a part of the best organization. So that's leadership's challenge and our responsibility to ensure that they have that organization to be a part of. CNO, along the same lines of keeping talented people, Sectef recently talked about efforts to keep our best troops, making changes to the promotion system and even promoting people quicker. What are your thoughts on these promotion initiatives? Well, I think they're needed. Would be my easy, simple answer on the bottom line, but we spoke just a little bit about retention and what is it that people are looking for in a career today? Some folks say, listen, I'd like to start a family. I wanna get a degree. I have this aspiration to go out and do something. Can I interrupt my career a little bit here and go on and do that and then come back? So we have a career intermission program. That's what the Secretary of Defense is talking about as an example, to be able to provide options for our people, to live the life that they feel they really need and maintain that career. Industry is doing it today. We need to become a part of it. Secondarily, as we go through the Navy, we've heard this term up or out. And so it's a very much, I jokingly call it a conga line. And we talked about this the last time we had conversation with a sailor, but it's really about year group. When it becomes your time notionally within your year group to go up to select for promotion or not, have you had the opportunity to get the skill sets to go through the key elements of a career and accomplishments and will you compete well? Well, if you've been away at graduate school, if you're an officer or doing something else, if you're enlisted, maybe you've been off doing anything from recruiting to a special program. Are you ready and have we given you that opportunity? We need the flex to move people through so that they compete when they're ready based on milestone, based on merit, not based on, if you will, the kind of cookie cutter, conveyor belt, whatever you wanna call it, conga line. And so we're asking for that authority. And these are the things that the Secretary of Defense is talking about. He's talking about being able to reach out to industry and pull people in from cyber warriors to experts in logistics, you name it. And can we do that if we can't? Why can't we? What are the hurdles, if you will, or things that are in our way? And do we need the authorities from the Congress within ourself to do that? This is what we'll be researching on his behalf. Sieno, can you tell us how the Navy is using technology and personnel systems? Well, we're using technology and personnel systems not all that well. If you think about it, people are what I call our asymmetric advantage, because our Navy people are dedicated, they're smart, they're resilient, and they're patriots. So they will do mission first. We have to make sure that, I mean, if you had any weapon that could do that, it would be unbelievable. And that's what makes us different from any other Navy actually in history. Well, how are we doing to enable that think of it as a weapon system? It's old. The IT systems, the information technology systems are too old, the processes are sort of antiquated, and we don't train as quickly or as efficiently or as effectively as we need. So technology has brought to us the ability to provide virtual reality, 3D training systems, responsive training systems, interactive training systems, bring those into the classroom, and then bring them in a manner to study in our people. How do they resonate with that? Do they learn faster? So it's marrying up that technology. There was a time when we were ready to jump into technology, but technology wasn't ready for us in training. Now the technology is there, we need to reach out and marry it up with our training systems. How will these measures really help sailors and save time and money? It will save time and money because we won't waste time in perhaps a classroom where we're not getting the knowledge, if you will, within the sailor's head as quickly as an interactive training process that people are used to today because of what they have at home or how they're used to taking things aboard, if you will, training aboard. We'll save money by maybe being able to change a same training process within the same trainer. So let's say within this room these curtains are screens and they're interactive screens. We could put perhaps in here a diesel engine and you could be touching those screens and doing anything from moving fuel valves to ventilation lineup. Then you shift to a torpedo room on a submarine and now you're launching or loading a torpedo. You shift to, you get my point, a CIC room on board a ship and you're working a tactical problem. So that's the kind of, that's out there and available. That's what we need to reach out for and that's what technology can do for us. McPond, speaking of modernizing the personnel for systems for the 21st century, how is the Navy ensuring we continue to recruit and retain women to fill those tough jobs at sea? Well, let me start by saying this. I believe that what makes us the greatest Navy in the world is, so certainly we have wonderful equipment, platforms to operate on and we have wonderful people. But within those wonderful people we have diversity and that's what makes the difference. When you look at organizations around the world, whether they be military or civilian, the more diverse the organization, and I mean diversity in every respect, whether it be gender, ethnicity, religion, color, you pick it, the more diversity you have, the more different thought processes you have. So when you go to tackle a problem, you don't have group think. I'm from a small town in Montana and if I was to speak with someone of a different ethnicity in, let's say, Brooklyn, New York and you put us in a room together and give us a problem, we're gonna have different approaches to that problem. But it's our collective thought, the combination of the approach that we take that'll probably get us to the best possible outcome. So it's our diversity and women bring a tremendous diversity piece to our Navy. Without them, we cannot be successful and we cannot become a better force because that's the goal is to always get better. So to get better, we have to have more women. To bring more women in, we have to establish and maintain the conditions that will provide all of our sailors to include our women with an opportunity to be successful and do that in an environment where we treat everybody with dignity and respect. So I've personally gone out and started talking to focus groups of women in particular, the more senior women. So I'm concerned because we recruit 23%, we retain about 18%, but only about 10% of our force are E-7, 8, and 9s. Did you know that women at the E-7, 8, and 9 level leave the Navy at twice the rate that men do? That concerns me, so the question is why? And that's what I'm going out and asking them. It's not what I think, it's what they know and they're telling me so that I can bring that back to the Chief of Naval Operations, to Chief of Naval Personnel and start getting after some of these issues because we have to do better, not just at recruiting, that's, we're getting better at that. It's the retention of our women that we have to work on. I believe that it's essential to do if we're gonna become the fighting force that we need to be throughout the 21st century and beyond. So that's the change we spoke of. A couple of questions ago, the Secretary of Defense is looking for, that's within the talent management, to align our processes and our policies with what our people are looking for. I'd love to stay past the E-7, accept. What is that accept? And what do we do to make you, the individual, say, that's good for me, I can do that. And that satisfies what I really believe I need to do. That's what we gotta go out there and get. So you know, what impressed you the most about your visit here today? Two things. One, the combination of teamwork that I see here with the military and the civilian personnel. Our military sailors, if you will, and our civilian sailors working together as one team. And number two, I was really impressed by the work that they have done over the last three years. And we commemorated it today. We had 17,500 gaps at sea, out there on our seagulling units just a matter of three years ago. Today we have less than 2,500 and that's the work of, if you will, this institution here at the Navy Personnel Command. So we were honored to present them with the Meritorious Unit Citation today on behalf of the Secretary of the Navy for the work that they've done in that regard. Gentlemen, before we close, is there anything else you'd like to say to the sailors out there? McPaw. Sure, well, it should go without saying, but I'll say it anyways. I wanted to thank them and just as importantly, their families. And sometimes when we say families, we thank husbands, wives, and children, but I mean all of their families, their extended families, for providing them with the support and the care and the encouragement that they need to be successful in this wonderful organization we call the United States Navy. So on behalf of my wife, Teresa and I, I say thank you, thank you for all that you do. Well, this is a pretty unstable world and we are where it matters, from the South China Sea, the Arabian Gulf, the Gulf of Aden, the Eastern Mediterranean, I could go on, the Caribbean. And it is the sailors out there getting it done, that asymmetric advantage that we have because the challenges keep changing. A year ago, we never knew what an ISIS was, there was no discussion of Ebola, I mean it goes on. And our sailors, they adjust to all of that, so we need to adjust to them. So like the McPaw and I say, thanks for that. And we're gonna make some changes here that I think will make the management of our talent and our talent feel that we're for them and we're the career choice for them. Thanks for joining us. I'm MC1 Sonia Chambers and this has been Conversation with the Shipmate. Check out the latest editions of our program on the CNO's leadership page at Navy.mil.