 How do you have any reflections you'd like to offer right off the bat? Yeah, the first I need to see the chief of staff immediately after this, because I'm getting tired of following first Stephen B. Loose, and then these three incredible presenters here today before I make any comments. So George, come see me right after this, please. So at the risk of being known after this as Captain Obvious instead of Admiral Howe, let me offer you a couple of reflections on professional ethics over the course of my career. So about 34 years in uniform if you include the time at the Naval Academy, just under four years as a flag officer and just over a month here as the president here at the Naval War College. And during that time I would offer that a couple of observations that might be interesting to you. First is changes in how I think about trust. And the second would be the relationship between the profession of arms, leadership development, ethical development, and the role of education in that triangle or in that trio. So first let me hit trust. Over the course of my career I have grown increasingly aware of the significance of trust in all we do. I would say that early on it was pretty tactical and it was an understanding of the importance of trust in the effectiveness of small teams. As I grew in responsibility, started to understand too that it wasn't just small teams, it wasn't just interpersonal connections that trust enabled, but rather larger organizations too. And then most recently, out at Special Operations Command Pacific, I came to understand that large organizations within the United States military that trust between those organizations is essential. And beyond that, the trust between partner nations was absolutely a fundamental and key component for effective coalition and multinational operations. So that's trust has grown and is important over time, but it wasn't always that way. Over the course of those years, when I look back now at it, I would offer that there were times when I was not thinking deliberately about trust, that there were times where I had grown to take trust for granted. And I don't know if that was a result of perhaps a good command that I was in or a good organization or some good leadership, but there were definitely times over the course of my career where trust was not a part of my thinking. I was not concerned with it. We were concerned about other things. Most recently, operationally in Afghanistan, I became very acutely aware, like a spike in my awareness of trust, and that was the trust that society places in military leaders. And it was there in Afghanistan when you were faced with really the almost penultimate expression of a trust in a society and an organization, a profession, and that was the trust in that nation's greatest asset, and that is the sons and daughters, the lives of our sons and daughters, and the trust that the nation places in military leadership to employ that national asset with judicious wisdom, balancing cost, potential costs, and gains. As the journey continued, and I show up here at the Naval War College and engage in some discussions on the nature of the profession and with Admiral Klein, I have further advanced kind of that notion of trust, and that is it wasn't just the trust that the society placed in us by giving us this national treasure in order to go out and do our mission, but it was absolutely the trust that the society placed in the profession itself and the necessity of that trust in order for us to be able to do that very thing. That trust, as Dr. Cook mentioned earlier, that trust enables us, and that trust in the profession enables us and gives us that level of autonomy that I would offer is absolutely required for effective military operations in the VUCA environment that everyone has talked about today. So again, over the course of my time in the military, what trust has meant to me has varied over time, but I think I've got a pretty clear focus right now on just how important it is, and I would offer to you if you were able to begin your academic year thinking more explicitly about trust and think more explicitly about trust for the rest of your career, you will be a better officer than I was during those time periods when I was taking trust for granted. One final thought on trust, come to understand trust as something that is always dynamic, never static. Every day in every way, trust between individuals, trust between organizations, trust between nations, it is either increasing or decreasing, and what's happening to that level of trust is a reflection on the interaction between those entities. So please never take trust for granted, think explicitly about it over the course of your career, and know that in every way and in every action that you take across your network, you are either increasing or decreasing trust, and that's going to have an impact on your immediate team, your organization, your service, and later perhaps even the United States. The second, let me just very very quickly, the relationship between the profession of arms, leadership development, and ethical development. It has become so clear in my mind how intrinsically linked all three of those are. If we have any discussions, if you think, and as you approach your own leadership development, perhaps your ethical development over the course of study here, and you do so without thinking about the profession of arms, without linking it to a framework of your obligation to the profession in which we serve, then I've offered you'll be doing it incompletely. The Navy published its Navy Leader Development Strategy just last year. In that strategy, we've called out the four components to develop leaders, enlisted leaders, officer leaders across the continuum of their career from E1 to O10, but we've called out the four components and we highlight the two components that the Navy has historically done very well. An emphasis on training and an emphasis on experience. So two areas in which we have historically done well. More importantly though in that leadership development strategy, we've called out the critical role of education in that in developing leaders. And I would offer that as we think about our mission of developing you as leaders in the future, we want to ensure that your understanding of education, so critical guided reflection, as Dr. Johnson had mentioned, the role of that needs to be combined with this overarching framework of the profession of arms and all that you do in order to emerge on the other end with the full service treatment and better at the end of the car wash than at the beginning. Education versus training, final thought, the the these two terms were all not not quite synonymous for me as I showed up here at the college but close to being synonymous. Been able to crystallize in my own mind, I believe a difference between the two, but I would just offer one final kind of analogy as you as you approach education not training over the course of your time here at the Naval War College and as you engage in your own professional development. And that is I'd like to draw or extend a little bit of analogy of the psychologist Carl White who talks about why a compass is more important for the operational environment that we face today than a map. Training prepares us well to be able to execute known tasks. Training helps us prepare for effective operations in a known environment known tasks are going to help you execute in a known environment. Education on the other hand is different education is going to help you prepare for the unknown environment so the VUCA environment that we talked about a little while ago and Carl White will talk about the compass and the and the map and training is more like giving you a map and that is charted terrain it's terrain that you know it helps you find your way in in known terrain training will help you in such an environment. In an unknown environment though a compass and education is what will give you a a compass and I would hope that at the course of this at the end of this year that you will leave the education with a compass and a compass which is kind of headed towards that profession of arm so in an uncertain environment when you when you're heading into uncharted territory you don't know exactly where you are to help you find your way in such an environment. You've got a compass that instead of headed towards north it's going to head you towards that which we hold true in our profession and that compass will prepare you for that uncertain and ambiguous future that we face. So again thanks for the opportunity just provide those comments and Dr. Cook I'll turn it back over to you for moderation. Thank you sir. Let me just start with one question for Admiral Klein because I have this really strong interest in Jonathan Haidt's work too. I'm just rereading his other book The Righteous Mind which is I think one of the most interesting books I've read in the last 10 years but I was really struck by the point you made that he are so strongly that what he calls the intuitionist elephant is the way we normally make moral decisions and that the the reason the monkey on the back of the elephant the re-creator is only a marginal influence when the elephants were really willing to listen to it. And then you made the point that in whenever we address ethical training or education in a military we we're almost always talking to the monkey we're talking to the rider. What would it mean to talk to the elephant how would we do it? So the path that we create is something that the sergeant staff Sergeant Diem and Justin Watt were the two presenters at the army conference a couple weeks ago and it was really amazing. Sergeant Diem who's now recruiting for the army so you should get some good people wherever he's recruiting he was able to link something as simple as why inside of a squad or a bulletin why it's important to do something as basic as blouse your boots blouse your trousers right is that going to make you more combat effective? He would argue yes because if you start with okay blouse your trousers right he would he said as he walked as he walks around and kind of talks to people this is a staff sergeant all right he walks around and and organizations he's been associated with where there's no uniform discipline no this kind of uniform discipline if you're not getting the small things right chances are you're not getting the big things right and so that is that's one of the really basic ways to start creating the path for the elephant but as Admiral Howe just talked about right so there's time for your education in the next 10 months but as Dr. Johnson talked about guided reflection guided reflection is another way to help create that path right you're not going to start with guided reflection you're going to start with really basic things keeping your shoes shined you know marching in formation correctly these are all really things that help you assimilate as a group and know they're you you don't by themselves they don't make you a better person but the fact that you know that everybody else in the group upholds standards no matter small or large they uphold the standards and and so one of the things one of the problems that the Blackhearts that the Blackhearts book talks about is the fact that there was this there were some of the leaders inside the organization who kind of compared their organization and how cool they were by violating all these rules against the bureaucracy that was the army and and people fell for it and and you could see the contrast between organizations that paid attention to even the small standards against an organization that threw all that out the window and said no I have a much better way so that's getting Dan Ariely's t-shirt working for you yeah okay we have about half an hour Admiral Howe has a hard constraint at 1530 so you'll need to and at that point I know it's the first day but please don't be shy as Admiral Kelly says you have microphones on the seats behind you so please we have some time well they're thinking of a question I want to pee back with two statistics for the U.S. students that talk about trust we are a trust-based organization within ourselves there is a study a survey done in 2010 for the Department of Defense that also did statistics across the U.S. and the an indicator of trust what one of the indicate one of the questions they asked was would you report misconduct and and 29% of the DOD the U.S. Department of Defense respondents said they feared reprisal and they would not report misconduct 29% and so you're like okay you know this is the first week of class what does 29% mean well I don't know what 29% means but in my public math mind it's about a third the other public math I was able to do when I saw the statistics was the average across the U.S. was 14% so in 2010 the level of trust that people could report misconduct was twice as bad as the national average and so that tells me we have work to do because one of the first questions the secretary said is you know after a lot of senior leader misconduct is is there a crisis and I said well no the the level of misconduct while not good is indicative of our flawed human condition and not statistically relevant against historical norms but when you have it when you know that people fear reprisal they fear reporting misconduct due to reprisal at twice the national average it's a cause for concern so okay this is your time please sir good afternoon Paul Russell from the UK we were given an example the earlier in the afternoon about the lawyer who demonstrated good professional ethics by representing a crime he knew to be guilty and I'd like to ask the panel that well I think from a personal perspective on the human level you could argue that that was unethical so what's the panel think has primacy professional or personal? first of all I really appreciate the question because it goes to a very central topic I hope all of us will think about this year if professional ethics is different than personal ethics as I argued pretty strongly that they are then the potential that they'll conflict with each other is significant right and that raises a kind of upper level ethical question for every individual to what degree am I willing to sub subordinate my personal ethics to what the requirements of the profession are the fancy philosopher word for what these professional ethics are role specific obligations obligations that you have by virtue of the role that you're in right and there's always room for discussion whether the existing expectations of professional ethics actually are required by the profession or not that's that's an open discussion we should always be having because organizations are inherently conservative some so some of the rules may just be there because they've been there a long time and we're used to doing it that way but I think the very real possibility for any thoughtful individual that at some point your personal ethics are too out of whack with what are the existing professional standards is always a real requirement I think we saw it in a large way in there in the US military recently with the repeal of don't ask don't tell there were certainly plenty of individuals who had felt very strongly about including openly homosexual people in the services but the the short answer was if that really bothers you to a deep extent then there's the door right this is where the profession has now moved and if you can't not only tolerate this but lead diverse units in terms of of gender orientation then you probably don't belong in the service any longer and that's that's a real possibility for you hold the button down Manuel Martínez from the Spanish Navy my question I would like to go further in that question do you think really think that there is there are private ethics inside one person and professional ethics can you difference inside your brain or shall you behave your from professional and personal it's not possible you you have to behave in in one line in all your life so I think that difference between professional and familiar and you know a sport if ethics is wrong this one ethics is a common behavior in all your life you can't difference you can't be a half an ethic in your professional work or your another in your family or in your personal duties I take the point I respectfully have to disagree with you though I mean the example we just got I mean if you you cannot be an attorney in the United States under the US system if you're not willing to understand that your job is to defend your client to the maximum extent of your ability and are there occasions where that's going to make you morally very uncomfortable as an individual because of what you know about your client sure but if you can't do it you can't do the profession and if that if that tension becomes too palpable for you then it's time to look for another line of work I would add to that I certainly don't think Dr. Cook is arguing that you should have personal ethics separate from professional ethics but I believe what he is pointing out is in terms of the naval profession or in terms of the profession of arms personal ethics is sometimes not enough that there is a further obligation over and above and beyond whatever a personal ethics might be that those of you who wear the uniform or are a member of the profession of arms are called to do so if we use the other example that he used not the lawyer example but the military example as a member of the profession of arms you are given the authority to kill now my personal ethics may be killing is absolutely wrong does not fit in with my 10 commandments or whatever my faith base may be but as a part of my personal responsibility and duty that is my professional ethical obligation to uphold that role so I don't think the argument is suggesting that there are two different things that one certainly your your personal ethics as a foundation is extraordinarily important as a member of a profession but I think what he is also saying on top of that in terms of being a member of the profession of arms there are ethical obligations and duties that must be attended to as well ma'am I'd like to revisit excuse me the idea of maintaining the public trust what happens when an organization or an agency loses that public trust and how do you gain that back short-term medium-term long-term because I think at a certain point it it it also goes up and down if you've lost public trust at you know a congressional level or at a at an agency level or in the media it can permeate all the way through the organization from the top levels down I'm just wondering what would be your prescription for trying to get that back thanks I I would offer that at the end of the day trust is personal and that it is it is inherently a it is a a it's a it's a piece of an attribute of human relationships and so what without a specific incident in mind I think if I had overlying principles to try to reestablish trust it would be to make it personal and then make it persistent you can probably operate you know depending on the organization or the issue at the time you'd be able to operationalize those two broad principles in a variety of fashions but I would just offer that at the at the core it comes down to people it needs to be personal and persistent I will add to that just for reference I'm a business school professor by background so I tend to think of these issues from an organizational perspective as well and I am probably going to tell my age here in sharing this analogy Tylenol poisonings Johnson and Johnson maybe you read about it in your elementary school history course well I remember it distinctly because I was at a particular business school where the president where the CEO of Johnson and Johnson at that time actually came and speak during the height of that for those of you who may not know um hard is it as believe once uh once upon a time it used to be you could buy a bottle of astramen and it didn't have that plastic thing around it it didn't have the hard top with the uh triangles you had to line up and all that had was a bottle of cotton and somebody in the Chicago area was injecting those bottles with cyanide I believe it was and several people died consequently people became afraid of all things Tylenol and all things Johnson and Johnson arguably the public trust was completely broken between this firm and society the way Johnson and Johnson succeeded in rebuilding that trust was showing that as an organization it puts the society's best interests ahead of its own organizational interests and I remember this you know um sharing a story at the time when it was hard it was just a crazy thing no one knew where was happening no one knew whether or not their bottle was going to be tainted etc and he said he was having a dinner party and uh he had a splitting headache and so he went upstairs to his medicine cabinet and he grabbed the bottle of Tylenol out of the cabinet and just as he was about to put the Tylenol in his mouth he stopped and he realized this bottle could be tainted and so immediately the next day he called all of his general managers so essentially his two stars and said take every Tylenol product not just the ones that have been tainted every Tylenol product off every shelf dump everything that is in production this the public's interest is way too important so if we align this with what dr cook described in terms of professions that police themselves and our granted autonomy the way you rebuild that trust is showing that you are putting the public's interest ahead of your organizations and certainly by having someone like Admiral Klein who has now been appointed to have that responsibility at the Secretary of Defense's level to say this is important society we hear you is a huge step in all the actions that are going behind that to show that as an organization we are taking responsibility to rebuild that trust because society we think your interests are more important than our interests. One last thing I have to say it's a really excellent question is the essence of being able to be a profession is that you are self-policing and you're perceived as doing it. So if you think about the way military organizations typically go wrong and it was related to Admiral Klein's example of fear of reprisal and reporting it is that they rate loyalty over other values and loyalty is a great value but you know military organizations can overdo it and so part of the education about being a member of the profession is to understand if you understand yourself really as a professional then you understand it's not about loyalty to this individual who may have messed up because they're ruining my t-shirt to use Ariely's term. They're reflecting badly on me and on the organization I care about and so the core value would be to maintain we make sure our central values to maintain the health of that and not to protect individuals who might be acting badly in it. Yes please. Thank you doctor. Captain Duck Howell College of Naval Warfare. Most of our discussion has been perhaps about the internal the interior parts of ethical discussions those things that we ourselves can do and talk about with our peers. Admiral Klein with you here today man perhaps external factors whether it's transparency public interest and specific issues with DOD what is your office seeing as trends or changes and external factors that might affect how we look at ethical discussions inside a DOD lifeline? Sure thanks so some of the things that we're doing is first of all we're trying to find out what programs we already have in place that address character development professional development ethics and and the conversation about the profession because some of these some of these things the army as an example has a really elegant balance of education training and practical experience that where they talk about the profession and where they talk about character development but I think that General Odeirno would tell you that over the past 12 years not everybody has had that opportunity so perhaps a more consistent application of that system across the force as the army you know assuming the army returns to garrison will be an opportunity for them so so that would be one thing one of the other things we're looking at is is best practices how do you how do you how do you show transparency how why how are you transparent and one of the issues that is a symptom I think of of poor leadership is toxic climates or hostile hostile environments and so the navy the air force the army and the marine corps all have different command climate surveys and I'm not sure which one is the most effective but we're going to kind of line them up against each other and figure out between command climate surveys and 360s how much do we know about the environments that are out there working right so a couple weeks ago or I guess it's now a couple months ago we fired the co of the cow pens right and and the navy is very public when we fire a co we're very public we announce it we feed it to the press and navy times always takes they always take it they don't always tell the story the way we would but but there is a degree of recognition that that transparency is helpful it's not helpful when you're the co who who had a minor not an ethical issue but maybe a performance issue where you're kind of painted with the same brush you know here's another co relief for cause but but overall that is a measure that is appreciated by the hill it's appreciated by some of our civilian leadership and and while the other services are grappling with how do they show folks that they hold folks accountable senior folks accountable one of the one of the as as dr. Cook just mentioned a characteristic of professions is that they are self-regulating well we like to think that we hold we hold ourselves accountable to a very high degree and the services will each talk about the number of article 15 captains massed whatever your lexicon is about the number of people that we hold accountable I'm not sure the number of people that we hold accountable is as important as the fact that we are equitable and how we apply those standards of accountability and I'm not sure we know how to do that it's probably easier on an individual unit but take that I'm not sure how that scales so that's something that we're trying to grapple with to figure out how do we figure out if we are uniform and how we hold ourselves accountable and that doesn't mean that an e1 and an o5 have the same standard right the DUI example I would argue that if there's no harm an e1 could recover from a DUI an o5 at the other end of the spectrum should have known better is more responsible if they were in a command position they absolutely should know better so there is a different punishment and sometimes it's less and sometimes it's more so it's not it's not something you can just lay out your slide ruler or lay out a program and kind of crunch the numbers it's something that requires a little human input to understand there was one here in the front and then back there commander celiacs german navy and we have we have been talking about trust a long time and I agree totally trust is very important and I think Germany was always very grateful for the support we gained from America however at the moment trust is a little bit um well it's quite a topic at the moment in Germany because n is a and cia and things like that so I'm looking forward to see how united states are going to be able to rebuild this trust again I think it's an important topic at the moment um and now maybe to the question while you have been talking about we should strive to be a better leader I think we have different leadership experiences with different ages too but what is a better leader that was my big question I would argue that a better leader better would be self-defined because as you've already articulated everyone in this room is a leader I would think it is important though to also think about the context in which you are going to moving into you might be an absolutely exceptional leader in your current context but your future context may require something different particularly for talking about the VUCA context volatile in certain complex and ambiguous that requires a different set of skills a different way of thinking perhaps a different way of approaching decisions so maybe the way that you currently make decisions may not be the best approach for the environments that you're going to be entering into I think the biggest challenge is recognizing whether or not you're willing to challenge yourself to be a better leader I certainly can't define that for you you can define better leader for yourself but are you do you recognize the need to continue to evolve and grow do you recognize that your future environments may require a different type of leadership from which you currently have a strength which is why this year is so great right because you have an opportunity to really build upon your existing leadership strengths and take them to the next level one of the things that we have discovered in our research in the college of operational strategic leadership and we work with the research group of students is there's a definite difference between leading at this tactical level and then for the navy at the operational level which for the other services is probably strategic level and it has been pretty poignant in our interaction with flag officers in particular who will note that the way the navy system is designed that they thought they were prepared to lead at the operational level of war and then got there and realized that it was a totally different thing than what they had been trained to do so there's always room for improvement thank you when I mentioned the navy leadership development strategy there were four components and as I think I only got the third one trying to emphasize that education piece but so training and experience historically the navy's done very well now more explicitly than ever the before the navy is emphasizing the role of education deep thinking guided reflection that structured white space to truly advance your thinking I didn't address the fourth component and that's personal development so a recognition that to develop as a leader to be a better leader tomorrow than today part of it is that self-awareness piece part of it is an understanding of constantly assessing where you are at relative to the environment the challenges potential shortfalls and being better so I think it comes back to your your point of being self-defined based on your own capabilities and the environment that you're operating in and I'll give you one more practical application because I agree with everything that was said but it was very interesting there was a Dr. Allison Frigale from the University of North Carolina who gives presentations to senior leaders in the army in the air force and as part of the presentation week or two Dr. Frigale gives a couple hour session on ethics the consequences of power so I would say that one tangible way you can think about yourself improving yourself as a leader because it is very personal is how you look at your subordinates how your subordinates view you power is a very insidious thing and and very impactful so you can have the best intentions and through a little bit of creep you can let power go to your head and it can be very subtle so I would take and flip that though and say how do you evaluate your subordinates think about how you evaluate subordinates Dr. Frigale when in her discussions of power says a lot of times we are very focused on results I'm sure nobody else is impacted by that but we are very results oriented and when we document performance whatever form you use when we document performance we seldom pay any attention to the process associated with getting those results so I would tell you that I take I have taken this non-tile-and-all pill myself to say how I think I know my subordinates and I think I know but I will tell you that I pay a lot more attention as I talk about people that I make sure it's not just the results I'm talking about but that we hold people accountable for the process they use to get results I don't want to dodge your question about the trust between Germany for example in the United States I think it's very important I mean I want to tee it up as a as an important strategic question for you all to think about this year actually and I think it's clear the United States did a number of things that were out of its traditional character and in some cases out of its traditional legal standards over the course of the last 10 years and change in the belief that they were they were necessary for national security not all of us agree about that but that was the judgment made by our leaders but clearly one of the costs of that especially has become revealed is eroding trust with close allies such as Germany and other places and so how to balance you know making those kind of unilateral decisions about security versus the maintenance the importance of the maintenance of alliances the maintenance of trust among the allies is a very difficult strategic question and I don't think we'll answer it in 30 seconds from the stage here but I hope it's one you'll explore there was one in the back please that's probably the last one good afternoon Colonel Bob Mathers army college of naval warfare man your comments about subordinates and assessing them is a great segue into my question which was about professionalism and how we spot assess recruit and promote within our own and the criteria we use for that within a profession we have as a military we're probably the closest thing organization we have to a true meritocracy in our country at least we like to think that we are and we assess these forms and and boards and criteria for spotting assessment recruiting promoting the next generation of leaders at the same time I've been told by several more than one assignments or detailing officer that you know everybody looks pretty much the same on paper but reputation always precede you and those of us who have been in small communities like aviators special operations know that your reputation precede you before you arrive at a place and yet the problem is that when one of us signs off on a nomination packet for something you know if I don't know the person but I know someone who does and they can tell me whether they want this person to be on their team and their foxhole or whatever so I'd like your thoughts on how we as an organization maintain that role of a meritocracy based on those objective criteria and those things that we can quantify assess receive versus becoming a good old boy network where I just want the people who I can trust and I like but that runs the risk of prejudice bias preconceived notions and all types of abuses as as that ties in with you said press or cook the self-policing organization so there's a so there's a couple different things woven into what you say first of all I think that when we document performance we fail to do as thorough a job documenting character some would call it moral competence when we talk about competence we're usually thinking tactical and technical competence we don't think about moral competence and I think since about General Schwartzkopf we've stopped calling it moral competence we call it character and General Dempsey has done that for the last couple years he's talked about tactical and technical competence and then character there's a couple ways that we're in conversations with the services to to crack the nut that you talk about because part of it has been brought about by our zero defect mentality we are very concerned to document we're very concerned to document any slight aberration because we want our person to be promoted on the same level with the other person right with with people we don't know which is a very human reaction we all so if we're ducks we we like the ducks that we see and we promote other ducks which is why it's very important to have a diverse set of personalities not just gender not just color not just religion but look for diversity at every turn and I don't say that just because I've been joined for the last three years because that's another level of diversity all all itself but so we can I think we have to deal with the zero defect mentality because I think the symptoms we're seeing are that we don't document reality we document what we really want people to know about us and about our subordinates so I think we start with what is right look like what is correct what is good really look like and I think we've got down to a science tactical and technical but I I think we have to develop a language and a lexicon and a standard for what good character looks like and that's that's where I'd start and there's lots of other things to your question but but I I think I don't know if anybody else has anything to say on that but I think that's where you start and there's a there's a whole series of steps in between that are that are some roll up your sleeves hard work to do how do we select I think the processes that we use to select people are about right I think it really the army as an example right redrafted recrafted their evaluation system went into effect on the first of April you added blocks to talk about character the navy has blocks on their fitness their fitness report to talk about character now it's time to have the conversation lots more to say but I promised Admiral how we'd get him out of here at 1530 and I think we'd need to quit thank you I don't know if you were getting me that the handoff I was going to mention about the the selection process there at naval special warfare so I just very very quickly I think Admiral Klein was hitting on the the conversation is really just beginning to get after that point and how do we it will ultimately always be subjectively but more objectively than today how do we assess character as part of selection assessment there is some work and I don't know if there's other frogmen in the audience that know more about it than I do and actually Admiral Klein I believe you've got more situational awareness on it than I do but I know my own personal community right now at our basic training course is working very heavily on gaining inputs from other classmates and instructors and really looking at at assessing what has predominantly been a very physical assessment process and turning it into one that while there's still a very physical piece of it it is one that is very deliberately and explicitly addressing characteristics of a good teammate as part of that selection process so there is no easy answer to it but I believe that the the discussion has begun there is good thinking about it soon I hope there will be good movement on it also and then across across the Navy and across the services so yeah doctor thanks again first epic symposium I would imagine when we get around again for the for the next ones we'll have even a more informed conversation based on your own discussions thoughts exchanges in your lectures and in your seminars and I look forward to seeing you there thanks again have a great academic year