 Weaknesses. My wife had a much longer list than I do, but I put it in sort of 3Ds, details, dollars and delegating. Details. Somebody told me the other day, I think it was you Greg, you know, you're telling me that I'm known for being a detail guy. I went home and I told Don of that and she spit her milk out laughing because I'm terrible at details. Why I think people think I'm the detail guy is because I know I'm really not good at it and I have to force myself and work to pay very close attention to things. So it comes across that way but it's really because I'm playing to my weaknesses. On dollars, I'm terrible with money. I'm terrible with money at home and I'm terrible with money figuring it out here. I mean one of the nice things about being on the joint staff and being Admiral Mullins guy there was, you know, we didn't deal with the program so much. That was really the services. So it took a little bit of the pressure off but when he was the CNO, I had to work really, really hard to understand the Navy's budget and I'm really going to try hard in this job to do that. In fact, when I was out in Monterey going through this transition training, I asked for several briefings from professors. Three of them had to do, three of them, that's four, three, had to do with budget and acquisition because I know it's a weakness for me and I tried to spend a lot of time on it. And then delegating, again if you were at Thursday's ceremony, you probably saw Admiral Mullins talk about how bad I am at letting go and I know that. I got to work on it. I am a bit of a control freak. It's not about micromanaging or not trusting people. It's just my nature and I've got to work on that and I will. So that's me in a nutshell and I'm happy to engage any questions when we get to the end if you have more about me and my greyhound or anything like that. But the second thing I want to talk about was this information environment. I give this little talk and it really was born out of my joint staff experience which really opened my eyes up to a whole world I wasn't familiar with, army and particularly army and even to some degree the Marine Corps. We went to Pakistan 26 times, Afghanistan almost as much. I went to Iraq a lot of times. I really got to learn a lot about the other services and how they do things. I also got exposed to the national and international media in ways I had never been before. When you're the CNO's PAO, the opportunities aren't always there given the issues to deal with reporters and press of that nature in terms of the scope of the things they cover. So I think we all agree we're in a new world here in terms of communication. The way I put it is we're actually in four new worlds because essentially there are four stakeholders in the communication process. There's the principal, there's the public, there's the media and there's the public affairs officer. I think each of those four stakeholders and I know I'm generalizing it but each of those are in a new world. So what I tell the general officers and the flag officers I speak to is that they're living in what I call a post-interview world. And that world is, it's very flat, kind of like Tom Friedman wrote about. It's not, it used to be that you could communicate, you could do the business of public affairs kind of like I'm doing it here today. You get up, you come up with your themes and messages, you disseminate them, maybe you take a question or two, exit stage left, done. I've communicated. Kind of like a college lecture. Now the communication environment is much more like a college keg party. Everybody's in a room, everybody wants to talk, everybody wants to be heard, they all, you know, you're just in your chatter and you got to find a way to get through that clatter and get your messages out. But more importantly to get them out is getting them understood. I was very specific in my speech on Friday at the end. I think if we view our job as telling the Navy's story, we're only doing half the work we're supposed to be doing. It's a nice tagline, but frankly folks it's not enough today to just tell your story. You have to explain it. We have an obligation to explain ourselves to the American people, to the international public as well. And we have an obligation to engage in a conversation with them because people don't just want access to information anymore, they want access to conversation. They want to be heard. They want to know that at least you're recognizing they've got an opinion. Every news article on every major news outlet's website has a feedback mechanism. There's a reason for that. And that certainly explains why, you know, Twitter and Facebook and other social media have become so popular. People want to have a conversation with each other. I want you to remember that word conversation because I'm going to come back to it. So that's the principle. That's in the nutshell. And what I tell them is what that means for them is that they've got to find other ways to engage. The public and the press. It's not enough to just say you're going to do an interview or an ed board or give a speech at the Navy League. All of those are very good and important. They've got to find other ways to have an engagement. And we were very active, Admiral Mullen and I, over the last decade or so in terms of keeping him engaged, letting him find other ways to speak to people, people of diverse opinion and also to the press, whether that's off the records, backgrounders, taking them on barge cruises, lunches, dinners at his house, building relationships with these guys. Because the press themselves live in what I call the post, what do I call that? Post. Oh man, I can't believe I forgot my own little tagline. Post message world. That's what it is. Post message world. They know that we write themes and messages. They know that we write talking points. And they are very wary of this thing we call strategic communications. Because to them it kind of just seems like propaganda. They don't want to be messaged. In fact, I hate it when we use the word message as a verb. It's not a verb. It's a noun. You deliver messages, but you don't message somebody. And when you think that's your job to be messaging people, I think you need to take stock of that and see if that's really where we want to be. Our job is to have this conversation. It's to provide context. So the next word I want you to remember is context. Our job is to give them context, to help them understand an issue better so that their reporting is more accurate and perhaps more balanced. There's no such thing folks as a positive story or a negative story. I can't stand it when people couch news articles like that. They just are. They're going to be good. There's some good. There's some bad. There may be some that are not as balanced as others. We can have all kinds of debates about what's good or what's not good about an article. But there's no such thing as positive or negative. And all you should be worried about is giving them the level of understanding that they need to do a good job reporting it. Some of that understanding will be given to them on the record. Some will be on background. Some will be off the record. I get that. But that's your job. Because the consumers of those news, the public, they live in what I call the post audience world. And we've already talked a little bit about that. There's two thoughts on this post audience. One is they don't want to be the kind of audience that I'm making you be today, where you're just in a receive mode right now. Like I said, they want to feed back. The other piece of this is, and you guys know this better than I do, it's very, very difficult today to parcel out audiences the way we used to be able to do in our comp plans. When we, when we used to write PA plans when I came in, it was, you know, page three was all the audiences. And here's, here's who they are. We're going to list them. It's not so easy to do that anymore. And I'm not suggesting you don't think about your audience when you're in the business of communicating. Of course you need to do that. But recognize that in today's information environment, when you put it out there, it's out there. It's gone. You put it on navy.mil and somebody in New Delhi is reading it. And they're going to have a different perception of it than a sailor aboard the USS Enterprise. That's just the way it is. So don't get so hung up on parceling out your audiences. Make sure that the messages you're writing, the themes you're crafting, are applicable. They provide the context that's necessary. And they're told in an honest, direct way. And then the rest will take care of itself. I just think we do a lot of hand wringing over that. And then there's you and me and everybody in the public affairs community. And I think we're living in the post clandestine world. And why I say that to commanders is because some of them, not all, but some of them still hold public affairs a little bit at arm's length. And some of them, not all of them, consider public affairs to be a tangential concern. Something to be thought about after a decision is made or after an operation begins or after a policy is executed. And I've told them and I urge them not to do that, to have the public affairs officer in the room when decisions are being made, whether they're operational or budgetary. And that's why number two on my list of 13 rules is be skeptical. Used to be number one. Where's Lauren Dempsey? She's the one who talked me into putting family first. But number one used to be be skeptical. You got to be the gut check. And you can't be that gut check for your boss or your command. If you're not there, because you are living in a post clandestine world, there's very little that will go on in the world, particularly operationally, that isn't going to get found out by the news media very, very quickly. And you're just going to have to be I was stunned. You could knock me over with a feather when I joined the joint staff and realize how much information just gets out. And I'm not going to, you know, some of it is by leak. Some of it is not by leak, but it gets out. I mean, sometimes it's just, you know, things go boom in Afghanistan. Local Afghans find out about it and they report it and it goes up and you're out already. I mean, look at the Quran burning, how fast word got out about that. Why? Because local Afghans reported it to Afghan authorities and media. It's not right or wrong, it just is. So unless you are really tied at the hip to your boss and to your command's leadership, you're going to miss out on being able to stay abreast of that stuff and trying to get ahead of it. And it's this post clandestine world that is really going to demand the most of you in terms of your instincts. We would all love to have time to write a thoughtful PA plan or a comms engagement or lay it all out there. And there's going to be issues, particularly where's Kathy? Yeah, in the manpower world where you've got the luxury of that, you know, to get ahead of a major policy or program that's getting rolled out there. But when you're in an operational billet, and Franklin, a lot of billets here in the building, you just don't. And Pat, you remember that from the joint staff, I mean, stuff just happens and you got to rely a little bit on your own instincts. So if you don't think your instincts are very good, look for opportunities to try to develop that. And I would urge you to, one of the things I want to do, kind of getting ahead of myself now, is I want to figure out how we do mentoring. I don't know what the right answer is, but I don't think we're doing it quite as good as we should. I don't believe in a formal top-down structure, you know, where every 06 is assigned a certain number of junior officers and we off we go. Because a good mentor, you've got to have a, there has to be a basis for a relationship there. It has to be somebody you trust and that trusts you. It has to be kind of natural. And I think maybe the way to get at this is to have it arranged by issues. In other words, if you're working an issue, maybe you reach out to another PAO and it doesn't have to be senior. It could be somebody you're paying great or even junior to you that has experience with that. And you just kind of, just do a gut check. Yeah, it's kind of like I said in the speech on Friday when we would ask ourselves down in Norfolk, you know, what would Denny do? Well, that wasn't a lie. We actually did do that. So I'm getting ahead of myself and I don't know where the right answer is on that, but that's something I'm going to ask Bruce to take a look at too. How do we, how do we develop a mentoring culture? And that gets me to the last part I wanted to talk about and what my, what my priorities are going into this. And these are simply, as I said, mine just as I look at things coming in, because it is a fantastic organization and a great community. So I want you to know where I'm going to be put in my time, at least in these first three months. One is on the growth and development of all of you. I want to make sure that we are factoring in all the things we need to do to make you successful at your job now and at your jobs in the future. So we talked about mentoring. I'm going to be trying to spend as much time as I can on DINFO's issues. I've asked to go up there next week, if I can, to get a little smarter on the curriculum up there, many curricula up there and spend time with the students. Because I want to make sure that they aren't just learning the technical skills that are required of public affairs officers. And there are technical skills that are required, video editing and writing and all that good stuff. But that's only part of it. What we all ought to be trying to be as public affairs professionals is a good advisor. Your job, and this is the last C of my talk, is to be a good consultant. To be that person that can go to your boss or your boss can go to to get good solid straight advice. And not just advice about communications. If the PAO is seen, even if the PAO is close, but only seen as somebody that I talk about on communication issues, then we need to take a look at that. Either you're not doing your job well enough or your boss doesn't have enough visibility as to what a PAO can do. I never ever tried to restrict my advice to Admiral Mullen to just communication issues or media things. If I felt strongly about something he was about to do or about not to do, regardless of the public affairs dimension, I told him. I talked to him. And that's what I want all of you to be able to do too. So I want to take a look at our training and education and just see the degree to which we're working on that and how we can make sure that it's inculcated into our thinking as we come up. Family support, I did put family first and it was the right thing to do. And I could tell you from personal experience I didn't always do that. I'm not proud of it, but there it is. It's the truth. And my family, although small, sacrificed an awful lot as I have stayed in the Navy. And I don't want to see anybody else make those same mistakes. We can't do anything without our families. We don't think about it a lot and they certainly won't ask for it, but we owe it to them to find ways to better support them. I asked a question today about an ombudsman for the PA community and we're going to take a look at that and see if it makes sense and how to do that.