 The U.S. Naval War College is a Navy's home of thought. Established in 1884, NWC has become the center of Naval seapower, both strategically and intellectually. The following issues in national security lecture is specifically designed to offer scholarly lectures to all participants. We hope you enjoy this upcoming discussion and future lectures. Good afternoon and welcome to the ninth issues in national security lecture for Academic Year 2223. I'm Commander Gary Ross and I'll serve as your host for today's event. I'm looking forward to hosting you today. To kick this off, I'd like to turn it over to Radma Shashana-Chapville, president of the Naval War College, so that she can offer her greetings. Admiral. Hello. Thank you so much for joining us here at the Naval War College. Whether you're in our sprue and auditorium today, joining us through our hybrid connection or accessing this content at a future time, I'm glad that you've chosen the Naval War College to be exposed to the wonderful concepts and ideas that we have to offer through this lecture series. We hope that you will join us again in the future. Thank you. Thank you, Admiral. For anyone for anyone just joining us, this series was originally conceived as a way to share a portion of the Naval War College's academic experience with the spouses and significant others of our student body. Over the past five years, it has been restructured to include participation by the entire Naval War College extended family to include members of the Naval War College Foundation, international sponsors, civilian employees, and the colleagues throughout Naval Station Newport. We will be offering six additional lectures between now and May 22, spaced about two weeks apart on a wide variety of national security topics and issues. An announcement detailing the topics, dates, and speakers of each lecture will be sent by me, both on email and posted on our website. Our next lecture will be on Tuesday, March 7. We will feature an engaging discussion on China, specifically the Uyghur issue with Naval War College professor Andrew Wilson. For each lecture, speakers will provide remarks for about 45 minutes, and then for the remaining 15 or so minutes, we'll answer questions from you. Okay, on with the main event, please feel free to ask questions using the chat feature on Zoom, and we will address them at the conclusion of the presentation. We'll also offer an opportunity for people in the auditorium to ask questions as well. With that, I'm very pleased to introduce our speaker, Command Master Chief Joseph Farney, who will speak today about the culture of inclusion, where he will discuss the conceptual and practical application of key enablers and the leader's obligation to create a culture of inclusion. Joseph Joseph Farney holds a bachelor's of science in education from Valdosta State University and a master of science in leadership from Roger Williams University. He is a 2010 graduate of National Defense University, a 2015 graduate of the Naval Postgraduate School Navy Senior Leader Seminar, and a 2021 graduate of the Strategic Thinking Seminar at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business Administration. During his 32 years and counting of service, he has served as a Chief, a Command Master Chief in six commands totaling 16 years. He is a certified executive coach and a sexual assault victim advocate. He is currently a doctoral student at Johnson and Wales University, where through significant engagement and networking, he works to share perspectives, exchange ideas, and collaborate to benefit organizations and communities. I am pleased to pass the microphone over to Master Chief Farney. Thank you, Commander Ross. President Ma'am, thank you very much. I appreciate you being here with us today. And thank you, ladies and gentlemen, both in the auditorium and online. I will be pretty direct in my discussion this evening and hope very much that you would be direct in your questions and response. It is very important, from my perspective, to be able to have conversations, particularly around culture in a way that doesn't obfuscate the underlying meaning or the questions that might be asked. And so I would offer that this lecture is no different. I would also offer that I am not a lecturer by business of being a Command Master Chief. I am a facilitator of culture and a facilitator of community. And I would love to facilitate a conversation with you tonight. So there will be a couple of times where I will ask if you have any questions. And if you do, please don't wait till the end. We certainly can answer those questions. When I think about the mission of the Naval War College and I think about the work that I do in culture, one of the things that I would say is absolutely crystal clear in both cases. And that is the need to open up the aperture. It is pretty important for leaders in an organization to be able to dial back and open up the aperture and kind of see it all across the organization. And I think that there is a demand signal both here at the War College, other PME institutions, and in our Department of Defense to drill down and get fascinated with specific problems for short periods of time, declare victory in those short periods of time, check it off of a list and then move on to a broader discussion. And I would ask you to kind of look at this conversation today as the beginning of your journey in a conversation around culture, certainly not the end of your journey. The opinions of the gentlemen on the board to do this college and emphasize intellectual development and academic excellence are very important to the mission of this college. And while my remarks today I think are consistent with law and policy and particularly stuff that you will see in Admiral Gilday's Get Real, Get Better campaign and discussion, my remarks certainly aren't the remarks of the United States Navy. They are my opinions, my observations as a Command Master Chief and Chief of the boat for 16 years, having the opportunity, unique opportunity to serve in flag level organizations and to be able to look across subordinate and assigned units and compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges to figure out what is it that makes a successful command above all else, what is it that makes that command successful. I was a Submarine Chief of the boat and at that point in my career I had about 16 years in the Navy and I was looking really kind of down and in my organization and looking at within the lifelines of the organization the things that I controlled, morale, discipline, good order and discipline, the technical aspects of the ship, the ability to drive the ship, the ability to deliver weapons where we were supposed to, when we were supposed to but I really didn't look much beyond the lifelines of the ship other than perhaps maybe one level up in my organization. It wasn't until I went to carrier strike group five in Japan where I had the opportunity to watch seven destroyers on the waterfront, two cruisers on the waterfront, 11 squadrons in the airfield and look at those organizations and really begin to wonder why some of those organizations despite similar challenges, similar days at sea, similar demographic, similar funding streams, similar leadership at the S3 level, why some of those organizations were so successful in support of their people and other organizations were successful at the expense of their people and that is not an easy thing to ask and it certainly if you are the subject of one of these discussions might not be a certain thing, an easy thing to answer. So I started breaking it down into this conversation about what are my foundational questions, what are the things that I want to look at when I go as an IS-6 CMC and I fly a board a destroyer and I spend a couple of days in the service of the commander on that destroyer, what are the things that I want to be able to deliver when I leave that unit so that the commander has got some value added from Joe Farny when he has this opportunity and these really were the questions that I started to look at. What is going on in our organization and what are we going to do about it? I think that that is probably the most significant question that you could ask yourself, whether you define your organization as your family, your church, your family readiness group, your command support team, your college, your ship, your squadron, what is it in your organization that is going, what is going on in your organization, what are you going to do about it? If you think that things are going well in your organization, I would ask you what are you going to do to keep it that way because I would submit and many of you already know that it quite often is easier to point at a goal post and say, I need to get there and work very hard and diligently to get yourself to that spot. It is quite another thing to get into the end zone and dance in that end zone for a long time without screwing something up. So that's really important to kind of think about. And then the second question that I really started to ask her, what are the pathologies that prevent an organization from an individual level to be able to experience true connectedness with either their commander or their command leadership structure or the individuals that they were responsible to in supervisory element? What is the thing, the pathology and their organization that prevent them from growing beyond the most basic expectations? For young chief petty officers, we spend time initiating them into the system. And then at the end of six weeks for that initiation season, we say, good luck. Here's your nice t-shirt. Here's your coffee mug. Welcome to the mess. And any learning beyond that might be accidental instead of deliberate and purposeful learning. So what are those pathologies that help us with that or prevent us from doing that? And then the bottom set of questions, I think really, really important. If I were to sit back and watch what is going on in an organization, and I listened at the message of the commander or the messenger of the command master chief, and I observed the behaviors on board that ship or unit, would I see a mismatch? And oftentimes the answer is yes. We have great leaders in our organization all across the Department of Defense who believe fundamentally in things and they espouse those things, and they will those things into existence in many cases. But there is some discipleship that might be lost between that senior commander and the individuals to whom he or she serves. What are the most familiar patterns of what we do and say what we do and how we act, say about what we think and believe? For that bottom bullet, I would ask who in your organization finds that out? Who's responsible to know whether your espouse values are different than your actions? For me as a command master chief when I walk on board a ship, I have my intelligence gathering sources. They're very good. I grab a cigar and a cup of coffee and I go to the smoke pit and I say, how are things going? And they will tell. Perfectly good stranger, never met me before. I've got the uniform on, they know I'm a master chief and I'm a new guy, but they will tell. They'll say things like, oh yeah, not so great. It's six days, 12 hours and 13 minutes to the change of command. That's pretty specific. Why is that? Well, I got an app for that. It tells me. And when our CEO leaves, then the XO is going to be the new CEO and the XO is the Messiah and things are going to be good then. That's pretty telling, right? But when I talk to that CEO, that CEO has a very clear understanding of what he wanted in that ship and a clear expectation of what that ship should be doing in order to look right, act right, feel right, behave right. But there was some execution that was missing between his level and the level of those sailors that were in that smoke pit. So those trusted agents are remarkably important. If there was any bumper sticker that I could give you coming out of a conversation about culture of inclusion, it would be this. Diversity without a culture of inclusion is apocryphal, wasteful and dangerous. We can recruit well. This past summer, I was at the Naval Academy and I was watching the new class of plebs enter the Naval Academy and I felt to this sense of pride that we were getting it right, that it felt about right, that we're about the right number of men, women and other. There were about the right number of folks from all different races and walks of life and sexual orientation. It felt about right. I wonder if it will feel right in about 12 years. Will those same demographics be represented in the leadership that they are in? Will those same people from all walks of life and also to economic backgrounds will they be represented in that class in 12 years? And I don't know the answer to that, but I hope so. When I facilitate this conversation that commands in many cases, the command will call me and say, hey, I'm interested in getting great. I'm good, but I'm interested in getting great. So I'll spend some time working with the commander, the executive officer and the command master chief to spend some time thinking about what would it take to have conversations around race and gender? What would it take to have conversations around the pathologies that get after good organizational culture? And these are the things that I have found seem to work well. First of all, in our business, there are no token when you're talking about culture. If you are a black male in this organization, you don't represent all black men. If you are a white male in this organization, you don't represent all white males. My lived experiences will be different than the chief of staff's experiences, which are also different than the president's experiences. So there are no tokens and no obligation to be a token. You don't have an obligation to contribute. Making sure that people understand that there is a concept called psychological safety. And that psychological safety is important to consider when you're talking. And if you don't feel safe in an environment, whether it's your first level supervisors or supervisory element, then you may not be willing to come forward with all of your complaints and grievances. So it's important that they have the option not to contribute. I have no obligation to pay for the sins of my predecessor. Whoever that predecessor might be. If I had a quarter for every time I heard, well, the old master chief did it this way or did it that way or the old captain did it this way or that way or the old XO wouldn't have tolerated that one. But the new XO does, I would be much, much well off, more well off than I am right now. It is not my obligation to pay for my sins of my predecessor. It is my obligation to recognize that I carry the mantle now moving forward. And if we've had issues in an organization around culture that I am responsible to that issue. And I'm responsible to the president in this case or the commander to work on those issues. And then the last two also very important, there's no expectation that anyone should ever apologize for their race, their gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic background. I have had people come out of culture of inclusion seminars, workshops that feel like, gee, I feel a way. I'm not sure what that looks like, but I feel a way like I should feel bad for having some privileges afforded to me that other people don't. And I would say if we are ever to get the bottom of real organizational culture and learning cultures that we've got to get after that idea that it's not your obligation to apologize for anything that you bring to the table. In fact, I would say we celebrate those things, not the other way around. Sino Gilday not long after his, he took office. I was in Norfolk having a conversation with him during a particularly tough time in our Navy. And he said something to me that resonated just loud and it rings in my ears every single day. He said, nobody can compel me to share my opinion, but my statements are a public record. And I hadn't really never thought about it that way. I have been asked in my business, for my opinion, a lot while recognizing that sometimes my opinion might be in conflict with policy or procedure, right? And I had not really thought about that. So I think it is perfectly reasonable when we have a conversation around culture. If your culture, if you're deeply held beliefs, if your family construct, if your socioeconomic background has painted you in a way that that is okay to continue to hold that. And it is also okay to suspend disbelief long enough to rent somebody else's idea. To think differently when you leave the facility or the conversation that when you came, I think that that is also okay. So I would ask you to consider that as you have discussions with these young men and women around culture. I think that the most significant effort in the commander's list of objectives is setting the conditions for healthy, developmental, growing cultures and climate is the ability to establish a learning culture. Why is it so hard to establish a learning culture? Why is that so difficult? Does anyone have any fundamental objection to anything that's on that list? I don't either. I show this list and people go, well, of course, of course, learning is a learning culture is disruptive. Of course, we should be publicly principled. Of course, we should have a sense of urgency. And then I watch and again their behavior and find that they do the same thing in a very similar fashion that they did the day before and they expect a different result. Organizations that do not have the ability to fall forward when failing. Organizations that do not have the ability to recognize how disruptive learning can be. Organizations that are not willing to get outside of their comfort zone. Organizations that recognize that the leader of that organization may have a very small period of time. Let's say 18 months in command. Well, everybody else on that unit is on that unit for 48 to 60 months. Right. So they're running a marathon while the commander is running a sprint. So that's really important to understand. But the learning culture piece is remarkable. And that bottom bullet I would ask you to consider when we talk about, you know, sailors that I check into the organization or discussions that I have with other people, I would say that you have to control your learning. You have to take deliberate processes to make sure that whatever you learn is not an accident, that it's deliberate and purposeful and willing and that you're a partner in that learning. Any questions on learning cultures or this slide? Anything from the gallery? Two problem statements that I would like to share with you and I call these my dilemma. And again, these are not necessarily the Navy's dilemma. Maybe not the war college's dilemma. Maybe not my submarine's dilemma, but certainly my dilemma. I'll share both of these with you and then ask you to consider a couple of assumptions. Anybody ever been to Daven Buster's arcade where you play whack-a-mole? Like the little thing pops up and you take the mallet and you hit it. Right. That was my experience as a chief of the boat on board my first submarine as a command machine. Right. I would walk into Sonar. There would be a bad thing. I'd whack-a-mole. I'd walk back to engineering. There'd be a thing. I'd whack-a-mole. Right. My captain had walked into the torpedo room. He'd see a thing. He'd whack-a-mole. We spent a lot of time putting band-aids on problems that were in that organization, trying to shore up bleeding and trying to fix things using our experience as super human individuals, which you all know, Command Master Chiefs and COSR. Right. Spent a lot of time doing that. Unfortunately, given enough time, eventually the commander and the Command Master Chief will be overcome. Right. Whether it is the flow of the war or the nature of the operating environment or situations that are beyond the control of the leadership in that organization, they will in fact be overcome. And what's left is the legacy. What's left is what the ability of the commander and the Command Master Chief did to develop division officers and department heads, chiefs, senior chiefs and master chiefs. Right. And in my case, I didn't do a very good job there. So when things became very difficult and I became very taxed and my commander was overwhelmed by things beyond his control, what was left were a bunch of people that were perfectly fine getting small course corrections many times over. Right. And when those course corrections didn't come, we quite figuratively drove into shore water. So it's important to recognize, at least from my perspective, don't get together and solve problems without understanding what the issues are. Right. I would guess for our online group and the group that's here in the auditorium, that most of you have had some experience with someone that wants answers, that wants to fix a thing without necessarily understanding what the thing to fix is. But bring me some solutions by 0800 or heads will roll. And that can be a dangerous place because what is the commander going to get solutions. There'll be some. They may be the answers to the wrong questions, but they will certainly be solutions. So that's really important to think about that. In that first bullet, I would ask you to consider and this is not unique to the navy, not unique to department of defense or academic institutions. It is true for every organization that I have been able to work myself into or to spend some time doing consulting for, whether it's the CEO, the chairperson, the boss, supervisor, element, the commander, the president does not matter. Right. They cannot be insufficiently fascinated with culture. They cannot be insufficiently fascinated with culture. I have seen and observed individuals at the heads of their organizations know that they have a problem, hire a DE and I professional to come into their organization with all of the credentials that requires to do that. And then marginalize those individuals by sticking them on the other side of campus in a basement, no funding stream, no real mission, no real purpose, but I have that DEI professional. So I fixed that problem. And my estimation, one of the problems that we can have here is if it is my obligation to share with you and your obligation to share with others, that gets really difficult when we're talking about scaling this to 500,000 people in the Navy. The only way you scale it is by making sure that your supervisory element at whatever level of that organization is paired with people that have a deep study in culture and organizations. I think that that's the only way you correct this. The principal must do the hard work, have suitable trusted agents and be intolerant of individuals that lack discipleship. I talk about discipleship a lot. I talk about it in every venue that I have. I think in the Navy context, it is important to recognize that senior NCOs and mid-grade officers have an obligation to be disciples for their commanders. I cannot tell you the number of times that I've talked with commanders that believe deeply in their heart that they are communicating on all channels, all of the stuff that is right. But somewhere between that person and the deck plate, the message is not making it through. If the chief is in the work center laughing at what the commanding officer says over the PA system, that's an indicator of this kind of discipleship that I'm talking about. If your trusted agents are all direct reports to you and you write paper on them, are they really your trusted agents? Or are there other people in your organization that maybe you interact with for two or three minutes each day or with some regularity and that you have an opportunity to spend some time with to find out what's really going on in the organization? I think it would be important to consider, who are your trusted agents? Do they know that they're your trusted agents and how do you work that battle space after them? The second thing that I would call my dilemma is that hierarchical structures in an organization like this may not be as effective as they once were. I gave a similar presentation earlier this morning and there was somebody in particular took some exception to that. Well, you know, we run off of hierarchy. I am not suggesting for a second that we ditch our hierarchy. I feel pretty good about where I'm at. What I am suggesting is that people that are coming into our organization, when they start to look at their future and they start to look at what leadership opportunities they may have and they don't see themselves represented in that structure, then they're going to leave. They're going to find a place that they can find themselves. They're going to find a place that they can visualize themselves by being mentored and guided to a place that looks right for them. I spend a lot of time thinking about how our hierarchies work and what is the appropriate use of a hierarchy. From an organizational perspective, from a bureaucratic perspective and from a communication perspective, hierarchies are phenomenal, particularly if you believe in transmitting on all frequencies. That is important to have, but it's also important to be able to perhaps transcend the wardrobe, transcend the cheese mess, get out and kind of understand what does your landscape look like and how do you communicate with individuals? One of the beautiful things about our leadership here is that I often get the, hey, Master Chief, did you know that so-and-so needs a thing? And I'm like, Dag, I mean, you've been out talking to the troops again, huh? It's a good problem to have. I mentioned the inability to suspend the disbelief and idea. That can be a barrier to this conversation, particularly as it comes around culture. There are folks that are so firmly planted in their belief and so committed to that belief that they may not have the ability to just open up a little bit and learn that there is a shoe that somebody else wears that's worn differently, that we all have biases, that those biases can help us, they can hinder us, they can save our lives, but they can also drive a wedge between us and other individuals if we don't recognize that those biases are doing damage. So in this facilitated conversation around culture, spend a lot of time thinking about what bias looks like in an organization. Spend a lot of time thinking about what biases each of you bring to the table by virtue of being a civilian, a PhD, an EdD, a surface warfare officer, helicopter pilot, a submarine officer, an international student, a domestic student. You all bring different biases to the table because of those things. What would it look like if we could celebrate those? I think it'd be a pretty decent place. If we continue to marginalize the best and fully qualified among us, then I think we will not win the next war. And what I mean by that is we have long held as a national policy that our asymmetric advantage is our people, that if our people are marginalized or minoritized because of their socioeconomic background, their race, gender, sexual orientation, by the way they believe in terms of being either particularly conservative or particularly liberal, if they continue to be marginalized because of those behaviors, then you will not get the best and fully qualified in your seats, in your organizations. It's important to recognize that. Organizational leadership not keeping pace with the quality of individuals entering the workforce. I have a great opportunity to see many, many young people that come through our doors, both here at the War College and out in our community, whether it be at civilian institutions or our educational, our community, community's educational institutions, and what I would offer, as many of you already know, our young people are brilliant. They are brilliant, talented, knowledgeable, energized, excited, they're driven to do things. They know things differently than I did when I joined the Navy at 1990, but they are brilliant. I am a 52 year old man. If I had a nickel, for every time I'd heard, well, this generation, or the next generation, or the younger generation, or sometimes we use a euphemism to describe young people because we don't want to offend anybody, right? Oh, they just don't do it the way we did it. They're not as tough as we were. I would beg to differ. I watched the sailors come off of the USS Fitzgerald after that collision, many of whom were not wearing their own uniforms and were absent rank and signia, or were wearing the rank and signia of somebody either way senior or way junior. And all I saw were a bunch of war fighters, brilliant young men and women that wanted to serve, that wanted to fight that ship back to port, that wanted to do the right kinds of things. As leaders in this organization, we can't forget that they are that way. We can't forget that they are ready to fight. We can't forget that they're ready to commit as long as you give them that space. In 2006, I made Master Sheet and went to be the chief of the boat that October on the Henry M. Jackson. Between the time I was selected to go to the Henry M. Jackson and the time I arrived, I was required by then the Command Leadership School to write a leadership philosophy. And it was wonderful. It was three and a half pages. It was articulate. It was well staffed. Lots of people took a chop on it. I even had signature box at the end of it that said, Hey, why don't you sign acknowledgement for this in six months from now when we'll come back and look at your midterm counseling, we're going to come back and look at this and see how well you're doing. Three and a half pages. My son who is also serving happened to find my leadership philosophy online a couple of weeks ago and told me just how garbage it was. But in 2006, I thought I was the business, right? Here's my leadership philosophy today. And I would consider you to see how this fits in your life. Connecting people to purpose to deep meaningful work. That's it. One sentence. If I can't do that, I can't be in this business. That's it. And if I'm conducting behaviors or if I'm behaving in a way that doesn't support that kind of thing, that might be okay. Right. As long as all parties understand, maybe there is a mission that I need to be doing that doesn't necessarily support that. But that's it. Three and a half pages over 16 years dwindled down to that sentence. And no, I did not use chat GPT to get there. Although it would do it. A couple of assumptions that I make when I talk about culture. First, there is no doubt, at least in the circles that I run and operate and spend time in and that's everything from high schoolers all the way up to flag officers and presidents of universities, both military and civilian. There is no doubt that over the past two and a half years, there has been a further division of haves and have nots. The real question is so what now what? What does that really mean? And what do I really do about it? And I would argue that the only way you get after that is trust in relationships. And if you can't be transparent, vulnerable and get rid of the behaviors that I will call lie, hide and fake LHF, then you cannot have the full bandwidth at your disposal to connect with people in your organization. If 20% of what I'm doing every day is looking over my shoulder wondering what people think about me. That gives me at best only 80% in the service of the folks in this institution as a representative of the president and the chief of staff. I would argue that in 2006 as a young master chief headed to a vote that I easily 50% of my time was trying to figure out what being a good command mass chief looked like and worrying like oh my god, I'll just lie, hide and fake my way through this and hopefully eventually you'll get there. We're not talking about presence and your ability to have presence as a leader. We're talking about your ability to say, hey, I don't know. I don't know, but we'll find out. I don't know, but I've got a team. I don't know, but there's a place that I can go to get that. That's how you earn trust in relationships and organizations is your ability to do that. When I came in in 1990, I would say that there was a heck of a lot of fitting in going on. I went to boot camp, I graduated boot camp, I went to my command, they gave me a ball cap. I subjugated parts of myself to be part of the organization. I did a fairly decent job of fitting in, but just imagine what it would be like when people come to work every single day and know what they belong, that they don't have to subjugate parts of themselves, that they don't have to behave in a way that is less them so that they can be part of a group or an identity. I have friends of mine that have never gone to a command social function because they have same sex partners and they do not feel like they would be well held in that space. Think about what that would look like if they knew they belong, all of them belong. So anytime you hear people fitting in, that ought to, I would ask you to raise your spidey senses and think about why that is. Why are we using that word as opposed to belonging? There's a piece of this conversation about competency and I've spent a lot of time thinking about competency. The problem sometimes with competency is it's relatively easy to measure. I have plenty of folks that have said something to the effect of I don't have time to do leader development because X. I have my next certification, I have my next milestone that I've got to get done. I've got 100 things on my preventative maintenance schedule. I've got things that are broken that I've got to go correct. I just can't do it and what I would offer is that there are commands out there today, high functioning organizations that are fixing and doing preventative maintenance and making the days that they're supposed to be underway and doing the things that they're supposed to do and they are doing it with high degrees of competency and a heck of a lot of character and connections. They are not mutually exclusive and in Admiral Gilday's estimation that we have people that are on opposite ends of the spectrum where high functioning teams and low functioning teams are this really wide chasm. I would argue that this is part of that reason. If we get better at this, we get better at drawing this conversation back closer. Great power competition, very important to understand again kind of this competency piece. Competency is easy to buy. If you want a thing and you have enough money, you can go get it or steal it. Character and connections on the other hand are really much, much more difficult to scale and they're even more difficult to measure. How do you know you have an organization with high degrees of character? How do you know that you have an organization with high degrees of connectedness? What does that look like for you? What would you do if you received that information from a visiting command master chief that said, sir, I've spent a couple of days in your command and I've done this thing and I have good news. Your wardrobe and your chief's mess have high degrees of character. Most leaders that I have experienced would nod up and down and say, of course, yes, we sure do. I'm very proud of that. Unfortunately, when I go to those same leaders and I say, ma'am, your organization, your chief's mess and your wardrobe, they got some character issues. Almost 100% of the time I will get something to the effect of prove it and that's really tough. Sometimes that's just a felt sense of like getting around, understanding what's going on in the organization and what you might do to fix it. I started out with 147 attributes over a long period of time as a master chief at looking at what I thought successful organizations were doing and to some degree what unsuccessful organizations were doing and I started about four years ago with the help of a colleague at Roger Williams University to start to bend kind of what these attributes looked like and I came up with this list of key enablers and what I would offer is that these key enablers, the absence of or the success of these key enablers really can be a good predictor of what's going on in an organization and I wouldn't suggest that everybody could spend all those plates at one time but if you did try to spend those plates I would ask you to consider doing it in the padded room, right? Figure out how to mitigate when something falls but there are organizations out there that really do not have an identity and without an identity it's really tough to subscribe and to commit to something. So this list of key enablers to include culture of inclusion are those key enablers that I found most often in organizations with high functioning teams and when I defined what those high functioning teams were doing for example in culture of inclusion I found high degrees of respect. I found connectedness at every pay grade in those organizations. I found in those organizations that the us versus them line between people in that organizational hierarchy was really really low. In fact it was so low that it generally was the new person that came to the command that only been there for 24 hours. They might be on the us on the opposite side of the us line but everybody else knew we were in the same canoe we were peddling hard so those were very important. Those commands not only talked about inclusion but actively participated in the conversation around diversity what were they absent and how did they get it? What should that be? Those commands were just and fair I could look at their unit punishment logs and I could tell in those unit punishment logs that there was an equitable and fair distribution of punishment and that that punishment was communicated to people in the organization in a meaningful way and then finally that the leaders in that organization to include anybody I'm talking any leader above a pediopser were humble and proud to serve in those organizations. This list of key enablers is not the way it is a way and I would argue that if I gave you this list you'd have some some different and some of you would pull an attribute up to a key enabler and vice versa but this may be a good way to go back into your organization and assess what you've got going on. Final slide here the so what now what I struggle every day with kind of thinking about how do I bring measures of effectiveness to character and connections how do I bring measures of effectiveness to culture and an organization what would that look like if I were to go in and provide a unit commander with a real assessment of what's going on in their organization from a culture perspective how might I do that and I think I have to continue to work with the the folks here at this institution to figure out how we need to do that so I'm working hard to think about that idea. I mentioned this idea of balancing academic theory and experiential learning it is important that I'm able to be patient zero in the mentorship of another leader that I have some connective tissue with that leader but eventually I will move on and if that leader doesn't do his or her diligence to produce those lessons for somebody else it can die from right out from underneath us so having a well balanced team of individuals that have deep academic study and knowledge in a place with practitioners that have walked that walk is going to be important particularly if we want to scale this message of culture across our institution. All right with that I will take any questions as long as they're not hard questions. If you could yes please use the microphone thank you. So one of the concepts that you mentioned was the idea of disruption and in the sense that you're talking about it it's a welcome concept that change in learning is a factor of disruption. What is a way to communicate to leadership and those around you that may come in with an assumption that disruption kind of has a negative connotation and you don't want to be a disruptor in an organization you are not taught to be a disruptor in military service those are things that you do not want to be so how do you more adequately and articulate communicate the idea of disruption as part of a positive process in this this whole idea. Yeah that's a fantastic question. I would offer a couple things and I've mentioned it a couple times in terms of transmitting on all signals I think a leader in an organization not only has to say that that is acceptable for their organization but they have to prove that it is acceptable right they have to be able to take as many lessons learned that they can when people make mistakes even their own mistakes and be able to recognize how they might take that and and essentially prove that they are willing to fall forward that we can fail that we can make mistakes that we can fall forward in those spaces. Unfortunately there are lots of examples out there of situations where people followed the policy or the procedure and bad things still happen and that sometimes what was needed in hindsight in retrospect is for somebody to be disruptive and to not do the thing or not behave in the way that they had been wired a program to do it to critically assess what was going on around them and to say that in these circumstances given these conditions at this moment in time I have to do something different. I would argue that that's how we war one war how we won World War two was we brought disruptors from off the sidelines people that we had arguably said were out there is that a fair right and we brought those folks into the fight as disruptors that helped them any other questions in the audience go ahead could you please use your microphone so that the people on zoom can hear yes please good evening master chief jason macarthur borough service warfare officer I was fascinated with the other concept of earlier you mentioned the negative aspects of subjugating parts of yourself to fit in and then right a little bit before that you mentioned the idea of acknowledging the evolving perspectives on new assessions and specifically hierarchy I know how that could be seen by different groups of people and I was wondering if you could share you know maybe anonymized if you want to save somebody's yeah if you just want to share the response you get when you mentioned hierarchy and ways that we should be addressing it and then kind of what your thoughts are or maybe the responses you gave to those people and absolutely appreciate that first of all I would offer that I believe in the idea that we are responsible for manipulating our battle space I would submit that if you were to drop troops into a landing zone you would not do so without having good intel right and understand what the weather was going to be where the nearest troop formations might be you know whatever you could do to gain the advantage of that I don't think culture is any different I think we are obligated to manipulate our battle space when it comes to culture in a very positive and an influential way I think part of that is to recognize that in a 600,000 person Navy active duty that we could do things in very hierarchical ways and if you did not conform it was relatively easy to get rid of you we could be dismissive of people like oh you don't want to do the thing or oh you want to wear a tattoo okay you're not qualified for this particular job or if you you know want to do a particular you know go down a particular path and you're not going to be qualified for that job or if you want to go and and perhaps you want to see a counselor about something well you can't be qualified for this kind of job I think that that was relatively easy to do in 1991 we had 600,000 sailors I don't think that's a Navy we're in today right so we've already begun as a Navy to manipulate our battle space and to recognize that what our sessions are demanding are sometimes incongruent what we're willing to live to give I think it is important to very carefully and deliberately think about what is our policy on tattoo and why right and how do I you know look at a young sailor who would be the best and fully qualified in this particular job but because he or she has tattoos in a place that we haven't traditionally let happen why would I tell that person no thank you so that's kind of where I'm going with that I'm not suggesting that we should get rid of hierarchies right I love the chain of command I love my chain of command I love being in the chain of command but I also recognize that there have to be times where you see your chief more than once a month which is about how often I saw my chief in 1990 that you see your ex or your co more often than every six months which is about how often I saw mine even on a submarine right because I was terrified to go up you know forward right so that's kind of where I'm headed yeah thank you we do have one question on zoom what are some characteristics of a command that demonstrate that it's a learning organization and it is one of those characteristics communication um I yes I think communication is valuable in any organization learning or otherwise um I would make a distinction between the fact that I would make a distinction between the fact that you can have good communication in an organization and not be a learning organization right I like I said I think the Center for Naval Analysis the the Naval War College the Naval Postgraduate School I think those are all learning organizations learning cultures but I would not say that every command is set up that way I would say every command needs communication what is indicative of learning organizations as respect with respect to communication is that earning learning cultures demand direct unambiguous language and feedback and in too many cases I know that I have failed to give feedback to an individual because I did not want to hurt their feelings or because I thought that they were fundamentally a good person or that if I were to give them that feedback that boy that'd just be you know that might be the kiss of death for that particular individual and in learning cultures I think that feedback is absolutely necessary and it's got to be crystal clear are there any more questions in the audience sure go ahead doing the from Sri Lanka I just want to know further about this the last point the deliberate about every movement there's no accidental learning so can you further explain about that yeah absolutely so the the last bullet deliberate about every moment there is no accident learning really what I took away from my experience as a young chief petty officer so this was back in the 1900s we had a really good initiation season and there was a really good effort to make sure that we could transition from young E6 young first-class petty officers and to khakis as chief petty officers and then beyond that almost every other lesson that I learned was because I screwed something up and I got beat up about it right and that became part of my scar tissue and I would offer that we are in a place today where that is not how we teach chiefs today right that our learning has to be deliberate that there ought to be a well thought out professional military education piece for all members of the service right whether they are civilians or uniform persons doesn't matter to me that that learning is deliberate that it's purposeful that we understand what that looks like that it doesn't just happen sometimes when you make mistakes and you learn a thing because what I believe to be true is that if we are not okay with the idea of deliberate learning that there will be some people in some organizations that have never really screwed something up never really learned a hard lesson and they're leading from a position of almost in the in the glass palace right and I think that that's probably a dangerous place to be so our learning has got to be deliberate and that starts with me as a leader in an organization talking about my experience as a chief petty officer and sharing that with other chief petty officers so that they understand what that looks like I want people to make mistakes I just don't want them to make my mistakes to make sense I want them to be new and creative mistakes like doing what I did is not helpful you know so if I can share my mistakes maybe they can go make some unique mistakes and learn something different in a different way is that helpful thank you for the question sir good evening I'm charver to Marco I uh I'm looking forward to a command tour and and the short duration concerns me right now there's only so long to make course course changes and I have a question about how you identify problems quickly so marginalized people typically aren't the ones to speak up so how how do you quickly ascertain you know who who isn't connected to the mission or the organization and how to fix it sir when you are ready to take command much like when I became a command master chief they're going to give you a special pin and inside that special pin there's a lot of memory that just zips into your head and you'll figure it all out by the time you get there I promise um one of the things that again just through my own lesson when I went to Henry M Jackson I would say that it took me eight year eight months or so to genuinely build the kind of rapport with my commander that I needed to and that eight months was time that I lost in the advocacy of the sailors in that organization and it was time lost in the development of that ward room that I could have been in a space that I wasn't right it was time lost in being able to understand what kind of cross my commander bear right and and and what his everyday look like what his reality of command look like that I fundamentally didn't have an understanding of so as an instructor and a facilitator at the naval leadership and ethic center when I talked to command perspective commanding officers executive officers and command master chiefs to tell him that story eight to ten months isn't going to cut it and I would submit that eight to ten days is not going to cut it I think it's got to be something like eight to ten hours like being able to come in an organization be fully transparent fully vulnerable and to say hey this is you know warts and all this is kind of what we've got and be able to do some actionable things on that I think is pretty important I don't know what time that takes but I know it doesn't take eight to ten months I know that that's the wrong end of that scale so going into an organization you know I would ask you to consider what is your first day with your command master chiefs look like my first day I was in dress blue standing outside my co's state room and standing standing standing that was not the way subsequent co's and commanders treated me but that's the way the first one did right so that paints that kind of picture in my mind of what you know what that should look like every commander I've had since then has been vulnerable transparent and open really really early on in the relationship and we got to the business of working on that command pretty quickly so if that's not your experience I'll give you my business card you call me okay thank you any other questions in the audience all right well we've gone one minute over master chief Barney so thank you for for giving us that extra minute thank you very much for an excellent lecture with that and we will close for this evening everyone thank you for attending and have a wonderful night