 to tune in a little bit later because of the time difference on the West Coast and out in the Pacific. They can't really join us. I understand that, but I hope they do get a chance to tune in and watch. And for those that aren't watching this live or here, if you have a question you want to ask, it's okay to just email it later and we'll deal with it. I won't talk for too long because hopefully there are some questions and I want to keep the conversation going. But when I first took the job, I promised you we'd keep doing these and so this is the second installment. My plan is to do them every three months and to just keep the discussion, like I said, keep it going. And what I wanted to do today was just talk a little bit about some of the things I've learned in this first three months in the job and then sort of where I think I want things to kind of go moving forward. But I do want input on all that stuff. Hey Lisa, good to see you. So one of the things I really wanted to focus on when I took the job was getting to know everybody because you didn't know me and I didn't know many of you, haven't been a joint as long as I was. And I've really tried to make an effort at that. I've been to Newport to Jacks to Norfolk to DMA and Denfos a few times. I had wanted to be able to stand up here today and tell you that I'd also been to San Diego in LA. That trip was canceled at the last minute due to some things that came up. But we do have it back on the schedule for early December. So I will be getting out there very, very soon. And I'm looking forward to that as well. And of course I do have plans to get to Millington here before the end of the year as well. So I am trying to get out and about. It's a little hard in this job. My life is not as much of my own as I thought it would be or hoped it would be. But I am trying to make the effort. What I've seen has been eye-watering. I always knew being on the joint staff and at OSD, I always believed, and it was reinforced every day that Navy Public Affairs truly is the best. I mean, even Leslie Holride was not able to change my mind about that with her lackluster performance. But we really are the best there is. I didn't realize how good until I took this job and got to go around and see. The talent is just amazing. The energy is just overflowing. And I mean, just take a look at some of the things that we've done. As an institution, Navy Public Affairs in just the last three months, there was the contingency ops off of Libya when the Benghazi attack happened. And the Navy swung right into action and Don Cutler out there was moving assets and getting PAOs where they needed to be just in case we needed to know. We didn't, but what she was ready. Hurricane Sandy just a couple of weeks ago. I mean, again, the Navy and the Marine Corps team weren't the biggest players in the relief effort, but we were ready to be and Public Affairs was ready to support. And we still ended up getting pushing a lot of imagery and context out there about what we were and more importantly what we weren't doing to support FEMA. October, War Fighting Month, Alyssa Smith just took that and ran with it. And it was just stellar. And more critically, she spearheaded this CNO All Hands Call, which you guys all remember, broadcast live, webcast live. Huge success. The CNO fell in love with it. And I suspect that we're going to be doing it again next year, thanks to her and her efforts. But it was a team effort and she'd be the first to tell you that. She didn't do it by herself. Everybody pitched in. And it was just remarkable. The Enterprise coming home. Sarah Self-Kyler, my goodness. What a superstar that young lady is and what she did on that deployment in that tour that she's still on. And she's got a big decommissioning coming up, but the ship's homecoming was just flawless, even including sort of the little detour they took down to Jacksonville and taking people on from the Jacksonville and Mayport area and showing them what Enterprise is all about. The Navy Marine Corps Classic just last weekend aboard the Batan. Now it got called at halftime for condensation. I know y'all know that, but it was still a success by every measure. And I have no doubt that we're probably going to be looking at doing another such event next year. Greg Smith was our was our point man on this. Greg Smith. Greg Hicks, I'm sorry. Greg was our point man on this. And again, just led an incredible team effort. And I know everybody participated in that. The Navy app, we're contracting for a Navy app. Chris Madden's leading this. This is going to be very, very exciting. And I think we're looking at early in the next year, right? Being able to bring this online. But this Navy app will be able to do a lot for us that we can't do and reach people we can't reach right now and be interactive. I told you when I first took the job, that's what I want to focus on is interactivity, feedback, being able to communicate directly two way with people. And this app's going to do that for us. I'm real excited about that. And then, and then end paced down in Norfolk Thuray again, just an amazing leader doing an amazing job. And now she's she's got the command in such a way where they're ready, they're reporting their readiness along the same operational lines that everybody else in the Navy does. That's huge. I mean, again, when I when I stood up here three months ago, and I got asked the question and I said that I really do believe public affairs should be considered an operational function of war, operational function of the military. Thuray is leading that effort and making it happen. And just a simple thing like reporting her readiness as a command the same way every other command in the Navy does sends a huge message about how much we do want to play in the operational environment. Okay, that's just a quick summary of just and I know there's a lot more that we've done, but that's just just the last three months alone. And I've had a chance to see it all. And it's just been truly amazing. So let me talk a little bit about what I've wanted to focus on or what I've been trying to focus on in these first three months. In addition to getting to know all of you, I really tried to put a lot of my energy and effort into the community itself. Not that not that there wasn't attention paid to it before by predecessors, of course they have. But I wanted to do that. I wanted to make sure that I was putting as much energy in that as I could, not just focusing on media queries. So I've tried to build relationships here in the building. And I've tried to build relationships with the community. So some of the things that I've decided and we're going to do or have done is we're bringing back all hands magazine, I think you guys all know that this is going to be obviously an online magazine because there's no money and no support to do it in print anymore. And that's okay. I mean, that's many of many magazines themselves Newsweek, the latest one is going online. That's just the way that the market is moving. But it's going to be an online magazine. I want it to be as interactive as possible and informative. I want to get back to the roots of all hands. All hands started in the 1920s as a bulletin by the Bureau then a Bureau of Navigation. Now it's the Bureau of Personnel, but Bureau of Navigation just to put out useful information to sailors on a frequent basis about everything from paying benefits to bonuses and see duty, all that kind of stuff. That's what I want all hands to return to it can still and should include feature stories and great imagery and multimedia presentations. All that's great. But I want to give Navy Times a run for their money. And that's what I want all hands to do for me. I love the guys at Navy Times. I think they do great work. This isn't a slap at them. But I think we can do a better job communicating with our sailors than we are right now on issues that matter to them and put it in words and terms that are easily understood and not the bureaucratic language that we tend to so often use when we describe our own policies and our own decisions. So all hands is going to come back. I'm going to put out an email here, Tim, today or tomorrow about an ombudsman. I think it's time for Chinfo to have an ombudsman, somebody that's specifically looking out for our families. We all, we're all in the military. We all suffer many of the same stresses that everybody else does in the military. And I think I think Chinfo in the PA community deserves an ombudsman that can look after those special needs for our families. So we're going to do that. I'm going to call for volunteers in a team PA. I, for anybody listening, talk to your spouses, please, see if there's anybody interested. We'd love to have somebody who's really energetic, experienced and willing to take on this job. It's a lot of work. We'll make sure that that individual gets the training that they need and set them up for success. But I think it's really important for us as a family and as a community to look after our own families at home and have somebody that can do that for us. We've got dozens of public affairs, professionals and listed civilian and uniformed officers that are deployed right now or either on ships at sea or forward deployed to Afghanistan, to Gitmo. They're all over the world. And I want to make sure that the families that they've left behind are looked after and that somebody is checking in on them and that we know that they're getting what they need. So we're going to do that. Diversity. I talked about this three months ago and I meant what I said. It really matters to me in this community. So the first thing I did week one was join the NNOA. And I'm proud to have done that. I'm actually ashamed that I hadn't done it before now. And then I've talked to Dave Nunnally at length, Greg and I, about the diversity of the community. And Dave's done a great job pulling all the stats. We had a terrific conference call a couple of weeks ago. He showed me where we are. I'm actually surprised at where we are. I thought that we would be, first of all, as a community, officer and enlisted. And those are the stats that we looked at. We looked at officer and enlisted stats, not civilians. But we're healthy. We're basically in line with the rest of the Navy in terms of our diversity makeup. So that's the good news. I was surprised. I thought that on the enlisted side we would be in better shape than we are on the officer side. It's actually the reverse. Now the numbers are slight. But in fact, we've got a little bit more to work to do in the MC community on diversity than we do with the officers. That we are matching or close to the Navy's diversity is nice. I like it. But I want to make sure we can sustain it and to improve it. Because there are areas in each the officer and the enlisted size where we can make it a little bit better. And I want to keep trying to do that. More importantly, I want to make sure that we at least sustain this level of diversity and the focus on it. Because it really is a readiness issue for me. It's not about faces. It's about diversity of thought. It's about perspective. It's about making us better. We are the representatives of the Navy. We need to be able to represent all the views and all the perspectives and all the experiences inside the Navy. And that's so I'm going to be focused on that moving forward. But again, I have put a lot of effort into it in these last three months. The other thing I've talked about three months ago was a mentoring culture. Not a mentoring program. Not a mentoring system. But a mentoring culture. And I've talked to Thorea who's done some terrific work down in Norfolk about this. And she's got something she does called the Career Development Board Program. Where she actively and aggressively reaches out to all her junior officers and helps sit them down every now and then and kind of map out where they are and where they want to go in their career. And so there's some thought given into this. And she's making sure that they're thinking three, four, five years out. I want to adopt that for the whole community. Now she's given me a paper that and she's worked very hard on this with others down there and with Millington. She's given me a paper that I'm digesting right now and trying to figure out how we can do this. It's not going to be a simple plug-and-play. There's a difference here when you try to take something relatively contained and expanded to the whole community. But I think we can do it. And we're going to be working hard on that. I think it's important for us to to be able to help our juniors. And this is primarily an officer thing. I got that. But we're going to get to a point where we can do it across the community. But I think it's important to be able to work with juniors and help them become successful and move in the direction they need to move in and that the community needs them to move in in a thoughtful way. So when I do these detailing calls with the Jack Hanslick once a week, I've told Jack and he's done a good job at this. I don't want to just talk about where an officer is going next. I want to know what that officer is going to be doing in the job after that and maybe even the job after that. So the detailing calls are very long now. But that's okay because Jack's doing that homework for me and he's helping me think through where you're going to go two or three jobs out or where we'd like you to go. And anything can happen. I know that. I mean by name calls and people that are you know have unexpected family issues, all that factors in there. But we got to be thinking like that as a community. And you have to be thinking like that as individuals. So we're focusing on that. The symposium. I do intend to do a symposium and I'm going to tell you I had to be, I wouldn't say talked into this, but Bruce Cole has done a good job convincing me that this is the right thing to do. I was negligent the last 10 years. I didn't really go to any of them. And I was able to use the excuse that I was very busy and Admiral Mullen was dragging me all over the world. But the truth is I probably didn't try hard enough to go. And I have a natural bias against conferences and meetings. I just you know I'm not a big fan of that stuff. But I realize that we have a need to do this. And we're going to do it. We'll do it in the spring. We'll put some more information out as we go along. But I've asked Bruce to look at something called appreciative inquiry. Have you ever heard of appreciative inquiry? You have. It's a process that I was introduced to out in Monterey right before taking the job. I went over there for an executive three-day transition course. And I'm not, I wouldn't do it justice trying to explain it to you here. But let me just say that if and there's no guarantee that we're going to use appreciative inquiry to guide this symposium. But that's kind of where I want to go and where I've asked Bruce to take a look. He's going to put together a small team that's going to further study the feasibility of doing appreciative inquiry as a process for the symposium. They'll make a decision much smarter than I would about whether this is feasible or not. And if it is, we'll move forward. But essentially it's where you gather a community together and you center the focus of the time that you are together answering one or two or three very simple questions. And the questions really will get at where do we want to go as a community. Not in the next year, but the next five or ten years. And that's what I want us to do. Eventually we'll get back to doing symposium and conferences the way you're used to seeing them with, you know, plenary sessions and breakout sessions and all that stuff. I got that and I know there's value in the networking there. But for this first one, if I can and if this team decides it's feasible, I want us to all come ready to work. And the great thing about appreciative inquiry is it forces everybody, no matter who they are, in the community and no matter how long they've been in the community, to get a voice, to help make the decisions. And then at the end of the two or three days, and you can go online and look at this, I encourage you to do that. Read up on appreciative inquiry. But at the end of the two or three days, there's basically an action plan for the entire community. There's a list of homework assignments with deadlines of how we're gonna, when we're gonna achieve them and how we're gonna get them done. And everybody has signed up to it. Everybody there. It's not something that I've decided as the chin foe or VIX decided as the reserve chin foe. It's the whole team has decided and we're all gonna do it. So I really want to focus on that. I hope it'll work. And if it does, I think it's gonna be pretty exciting for us. The Merit Awards, you may have seen the team PA we put out about that. We've we're changing the focus of the Merit Awards a little bit. And the big change is the chiefs mess on it. I am a strong believer that the MC chiefs mess has the experience and the talent, the leadership to do this. I want them to run this community. And that was that's what chiefs do. They tell us all how to do our jobs. And they're doing a great job. I want them to continue to do that. They're gonna run this. They're gonna make the selections. They're gonna marshal the program. And as you may know, we've named the Leadership Excellence Award, which will go to a senior enlisted MC. We named it after Russ Agnor. How many people remember who Russ was? Yeah, that's good. A lot of hands up there. Guy's a legend. And he deserves this honor. And I'm really, really proud that we're able to do this. And I'll tell you the name came from the chiefs mess. They're the ones that came up with that. And that again, that's just indicative of how much I want them to run this and they are running it. So I'm very excited about that. And we're taking a look at the Thompson Rabbits Awards as well right now. I've been working with Bruce on that. There may be some changes and tweaks to that as well. We'll have more on that later. And then lastly, you know, I put out a reading list. It's just 15 books. How many of you guys have looked at the reading list? How many of you read any of the books on it? All right, still some work to do here, people. There are 15 books. And I mean, I could have put 1500 on there, but I chose those 15 because of the impact they had on me. Not all of them have to do with this profession. In fact, many of them don't. But there are all books that kind of taught me lessons as I work my way up through there. And I think you'll find that even if you just scan them, you'll you'll you'll find them valuable. But it doesn't just have to be me. If you guys have books that you've read that have made an impact on your life, share them. Where's Paul there? Paul's run in a book club, which I didn't. I just found out about it accidentally the other day. But it's a great idea. And I encourage everybody to spend time with with a book. And if you have the opportunity, those who aren't here to stand up your own book club, do that at your command. I mean, it doesn't take that much time and effort. And it just gets you a little bit out of the flow for a while. I mean, there's nothing like sitting down with a good book and there's nothing more fun than discussing that with with colleagues and friends that have read the same book. So I encourage you to take a little time and and read and it doesn't just have to be some media book or public relations textbook. Okay, you can learn to be a good writer simply by reading well. I know I beat that drum a little bit three months ago and I'll keep doing it. But I do encourage you to do that. Okay, so the last part of this talk is sort of where just some housekeeping items and where I want to start thinking about for the future. One, in the realm of housekeeping, the elections over. President Obama was reelected. It's over. I have to tell you that I was disappointed by some of the social media, Facebook, paste postings and Twitter comments that I saw from some people in our community. Reserve active civilian officer and enlisted everybody. Now there wasn't a lot. I regret that the great majority of us stayed a political and nonpartisan and out of it and I appreciate that but there's still the few that took it upon themselves to voice publicly and in sometimes very strident language, their political views. Look, I can't take away that right. You're all are American citizens. Hopefully you had the chance to vote. I can't take away your right to express your opinion. What I am asking though, is that before you do that, you consider your responsibilities as a military officer and a spokesman. We have a higher responsibility. Yes, I have the right to make those comments on Facebook if I want to. But I consider more important the responsibility I have to be a completely a political officer in the United States Navy supportive of whomever the American people decide to elect as their commander in chief. That's my job. So I stay out of it. I would ask you to all to consider the same thing. It's over now. It needs to be over and we just need to all move on. But moving forward, I'd ask you to please consider that because people do look at your stuff and maybe your cousin will only think of you as you. But there are other people out there reading that that will think of you as spokesmen for the United States Navy or spokesman for LSD or wherever you happen to be joint staff. So it does matter. So please just I just ask you to think about that. The holidays are coming up. I actually also think about safety and I know this everybody says this but but it really does matter. We're there's a lot of people are going to be traveling. First of all, take the time you deserve it. Take the time off, enjoy your families and enjoy a little bit of downtime. But please do so safely. If you're going to travel, give yourself plenty of time. Make sure you're watching the weather. Don't take any risks because we're going to need everybody back on board at the beginning of the new year. What I'm going to be doing over the holidays is trying to produce for you a two or three page memo of what I think our communities priorities need to be for at least the next year. This isn't my personal won't be my personal priorities. It'll be what I believe the communities priorities are going to be. And what I want us to focus on. I promise you that I will write it clearly and I will also keep it short. I'm not talking about a, you know, a beautiful pamphlet and program that's got 20 pages of glossy photos on it. That's just going to be a short memo from me to you, letting you know where I think we need to go as a community. I can tell you already that three things I know are going to be high on my list of things that we need to be focusing on from a communications strategy perspective. One is the budget. Now, you all know sequestration is out there. It's the great unknown. I don't know where this is going to go. I don't know how it's going to affect the budget we're we're trying to live within now. You know, we're on a continuing resolution or the budget that we're going to try to live in as we submit to the hill here in the winter time. I don't know. Nobody knows right now what the effects going to be. But I can tell you that as public affairs officers, particularly those of us here in Washington, our main function is to defend that Navy budget. And I mentioned this three months ago. I'll say it again, but every story we tell and they should be compelling stories as the Master Chief constantly reminds me. But every story we tell really in essence should and will get back to every dollar we're asking the American people to invest in us. So it's really about defending the Navy's budget and making sure that the Secretary and the CNO are getting our full support in our public communications for the things they believe they need to man train and equip the United States Navy. Number two is the Central Command AOR. It's not getting any easier. It's not getting any less tense. And it is a high op-to-op tempo environment. And we need to focus on that very, very hard. And we are. We have great communications every day with the joint staff, with OSD, with CENTCOM and with Fifth Fleet. I expect those to continue. I also expect to continue the certain incidents of tension and newsworthy kind of incidents that we're going to have to deal with. So I want and the defense strategy that we're all operating under made it very clear that Central Command is not going to be an area where we divert any attention or focus from that we're going to maintain that. We are getting ready to discuss here publicly. I think today, right, Chris? Some recent decisions that the Secretary of Defense just made to move some mind-countermeasure capabilities into that area. Additional mind-countermeasure capabilities into the area, as well as extending the presence of the extra four MCM ships. Now, there's details all inside of that. You'll see that coming out here. We'll get everybody the talking points. But you're going to start seeing that come out today. I'm going to put a blog up on this today. So MCM is just one of those capabilities that we're going to have to sustain in that area of the world. So it's going to be a focus force. And then the third piece is the Asia Pacific. Again, no surprise to any of you. But the defense strategy also made it very clear that we're rebalancing towards the Asia Pacific region. And there's a lot of water there. It is a Navy theater. It's about us. Make no mistake. And we have a huge responsibility there. Again, we've got a great P.A. team out there at the Paycom and PAC Fleet and CNFJ and Seven Fleet. I mean, they're terrific, but they're going to need our support. And I've pledged to them, and I'll remind you that I've pledged to them, they're going to have that 100% complete support from us back here in Chenville, because that really is where the future is, I think, from a national security perspective. And that's where I want us to be aligned. Okay, I'm going to stop talking for a while and hopefully there's some questions. Chris? Can you talk a little bit about timing in terms of it used to be, hey, just make sure that folks knew what you're going to do as you're doing it. Sorry, I wondered if you could talk a little bit about timing. It used to be, hey, make sure that nobody's surprised. You know, make sure that other commands or that, you know, one up, one down knew what you're going to do. You sort of take, for those of us that work with you every day, you take a little bit different approach to that. And we've talked about this before in terms of sort of wanting to have that conversation a little bit early together as a community and those that are affected to be a part of it. And then at the end, can you talk a little bit about the CNO's sort of view on that and the role that the public affairs community plays in his version of timing? That's a great question. Thanks, Chris. I meant to talk about that. One of the things, you know, they, and Vickle will know this, when you go to inflex this, when they, when you first become a flag officer, you go to this week long course that basically teach you how to be a flag officer. And it's not something that anybody, you know, it's not, I don't know about Vick, but I certainly didn't, I didn't anticipate this. And so it's not something I was actively thinking about until you sit down here for this week. And one of the things that the CNO said on the first night was, you know, all of a sudden when you become a flag officer, you're more interesting. And your jokes are funnier and you're smarter and you're in better shape. And, you know, the point is that, that people want to bring you stuff that's already cooked, mostly good news and already cooked and they want to please you. And that's, that's natural. I mean, I've been a staff officer. I know what that's like. One of the things that I've noticed a little bit here in taking the job is that that in our world and public affairs, that kind of mentality can be dangerous. It certainly can be unhelpful at times. And so the guidance I've given to to the staff here, particularly my personal staff, but also the folks on the news desk is, I'm okay with you bringing to me and all of us in public affairs and leadership position should be okay with people bringing you a half baked solution, a 50, 60% take on whatever the issue is. I don't want and I don't think it's useful or helpful for stuff to come to me that's already completely cooked. Like here it is. We've staffed it. It's all good to go, sir. All you gotta do is sign right here. Most of the time that'll work but there have been a few occasions in the not so distant past just here while I've been in the job where I've had a different view. So by the time it gets to me, it's fully staffed. I don't have the time anymore because of the constraints of whatever the deadline is to make changes. And that's not fair to me but it's also not fair to us as a community and to the institution, to the Navy to not be able to have time to think things through. So I've encouraged and urged them here to bring me into the discussion earlier when we know there's something brewing. Whether it's a story that we think somebody's about to break or a discipline issue somewhere around the world. I wanna know early. Not so I can micromanage and I know that that's sometimes the fear that oh, you tell CI, he's gonna get right in there and become the action officer. I have a tendency to do that and I'm trying very hard. I'm on medication now to see if I can fix that. But I recognize that and I know I gotta work on that. But it's really about me just becoming aware so that my gears can start to turn and I can try to be part of the eventual solution. I don't want people to, and this is for me personally, I don't want them to say, well, it's not ready for him to look at. That's not ready for him to hear about. That's not ready for him to see. I'd rather know about it early and then let's work on it as a team. And I think the same would go and I'd ask the same for those of us out in the fleet who aren't here in DC to please follow that same model for me. Don't just let me know. And I know one of the fears when you, because I've been out there in the fleet, one of the fears is, oh my, if we tell Chinfo too soon, they're gonna rocket it up the chain of command. And then my boss is gonna be left out hanging or he's gonna get a scorcher of an email from somebody here in the Pentagon in the E-ring and how come you didn't know and why am I finding out from the PAO, blah, blah, blah. I'm telling you, I'm not gonna do that. I haven't done it since I've been in the job and I'm not gonna do that for two reasons. One, I don't believe that's the right way to do business. I've been in the fleet. I know what it's like. And number two, the CNO doesn't believe that's the way to do business. He's made it very clear that he wants to find out about these things early and often as well and he wants to find out from his operational commanders. That's the right way. So even if I do know something before he does, I mean, I'm not gonna go run and write to him to be the guy to deliver the news. That's not what I'm trying to do. I'm simply trying to help find the right solution and the answer through. And that has to be through the fleet and through their input and through their guidance because they're the ones out there. So for those of you watching out in the fleet, if you have my word that that's the way I'm gonna continue to do business. Again, not just because I believe in it but the CNO believes in it. And then for those of you here, again, please don't be bashful about bringing things up your chain of command when you start to see them bubble because sometimes the best way to quash a story or shape a story is before it becomes a story. And if we wait a little too long, we lose that flexibility. So great question. Thank you. Anything else? Pat? I thought the assembled mass would benefit from your experience as a, just wanted to get your perspective as a public affairs officer on a senior staff, kind of the guidance that you give to leadership, whether it was with Admiral Mullen, SecDef or General Allen, your time out there to just kind of the public affairs officer's role as a senior advisor to a four star. Yeah, well, as I've said before, I think that's the number one thing we do is advise and counsel. And I don't just mean the PAO, the, although that is oftentimes who we're talking about. But I met yesterday with senior enlisted communicators from across the services that were going through the senior course there at DINFOs and I told them the same thing that regardless of where you are in the chain, whether you're active reserve, enlisted officer, civilian, doesn't matter. We all have an obligation in this community to advise and counsel. Maybe you won't be advising and counseling the guy wearing stars, but maybe you will be advising and counseling the person who is gonna be delivering that advice. We all have that obligation. And developing that skill, it's certainly doable. Anybody can do this. You just have to focus on it. You have to start developing good instincts. I got asked yesterday, well, how do you do that? I think you develop good instincts by having good relationships. By not just listening to yourself and the voice in your head, but being able to reach wide and deep and listen to other people. Talk to reporters, find out what's on their mind and how they're thinking about certain stories and news of the day. Read all the news of the day. Take a look at what's going on out there. As I said, read books, read different perspectives. Meet different people. Take a look at who's in your contact list. Go back to your desk and look at your outlook context and see who you got there. See how many people are sort of like you or in your world and how many people are outside your world. And I venture to say most of us probably have many more in our little world and not outside. And go get a little chalk on your cleats. Go find out what other people are thinking that aren't anything like you and aren't working in anywhere near the world you're working in. And you can do that. This is, particularly those of us in DC, this is a great town to do that. To broaden your horizons. Go meet some people over at the State Department. They'll have a completely different world view than you and that's okay. You'll learn from that. So a lot of it is building that sense of the environment. And then the second thing is having the courage, the moral courage to speak truth to power. And that can be difficult to gain, particularly because so many of us are either the only ones at the command we're at or we're very junior in rank. And sometimes you're just gonna have to stiffen your spine, raise your hand and say, hey boss, I don't think this is the right thing. I was struck by, I'm not gonna pontificate about what's going on with General Petraeus. I don't know anything about those circumstances. But I was struck in reading some of the news clippings over the weekend by some of his advisors who some were quoted, some were on background. But a couple of them were quoted as saying that they had had qualms about the way things were moving between the general and this individual. And they had sort of doubts in their mind and they didn't bring it forward to the general. So regardless of the nature of that relationship and that's none of my concern, what I find striking is that those individuals now regret that they didn't speak up. Don't be that person. If you've got a little bit of something ringing in your ear there, you got a little hair standing up on the back of your neck, react to it, say something. You might be wrong. I can't tell you how many times and Pat knows it. I was wrong, but I never was afraid to tell Admiral Mullen or anybody else on the Joint Staff what I was thinking or feeling about a certain incident or event or policy or decision that he was about to make. And eventually the more you do it, the better you'll get at it. And the more valuable you will be to the command and to your boss. And remember, going back to what I said three months ago, your loyalties to the institution. I know that may sound hypocritical coming from a guy I was with an individual for 11 years, but Mullen wouldn't have had it any other way. That's where he wanted my loyalties to, not to him, to the institution, wherever we were, whatever he was serving. And that's where I stayed and that's where we all need to be. There's another sort of, if you look in the clips today, there's some people that are, there's a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking going on over this whole scandal. And one of them is, the cult surrounding the senior leader and the, they, the press didn't use this phrase, but I'll use it, the blind loyalty of staff officers to their bosses. Nothing can be more dangerous than blind loyalty. Loyalty can never be blind. And that's our job as counselors to be the one to be able to say, look, I mean, I know in your cubicle, in your world, your corner, you think, boss, that this is the right way to do this. Let me tell you how it's gonna lay. Let me tell you how that's gonna, how you're gonna get the reaction from here or there or over here. You've gotta be the one to do that. And you can't do that if you aren't constantly out and about, that you don't have tentacles outside your own little world too. If you become insular, your advice will become insular and therefore completely useless to the institution. So again, I wanna go back to where I started was build those relationships, get away from your desk, walk around, go talk to people and, and go meet people, go have experiences outside your realm. Does that make sense? Did I answer your question? Yeah, thanks. Good one. Sir, we have a question from Mike Randozo at NSA Mechanicsburg. He asked, what opportunities are planned for advanced graduate level education for civilians? Good question. To which I don't have a good answer. But we are taking a look at that. We know that we, that we've got a gap here in the growth and development of our civilian professionals and we are gonna take a look at that. And so I'll have more on that as we start coming to grips with it. But I do believe we need to take a harder look at that, that the civilians also need to get certain growth and development opportunities. Any more? Any more there? Sir, there's a question from Captain Mary Hansen. She's from DHS S&T. She wants to know, do you plan to review or change the reserve community in any significant way? Are we Vic? No. No, I don't, that was the other thing. And I still have a lot of learning to do and Vic's been great about this, but I didn't really understand the way the reserve component factored in. I mean, I've worked with reservists my whole career. I mean, I got the basic gist of how they work and contribute, but I'd never taken it as a community perspective. And I'm starting to get a much better feel again, thanks to Vic and his education. But I don't see any major holes in the way we're constructed and the way that the reserves perform, the way they're resourced or the way that they're ordered. And I think that's all moving along. And I'll tell you, and this isn't a throwaway comment, I don't think we could do what we do without them. I know we couldn't. I mean, take a look at those individual augmentees I talked about. A large portion of them are reservists. They're out there every day doing things all over the world in some very dangerous places and they're doing a remarkable, magnificent job. We couldn't do it without them. So I'm very grateful for that, but I don't foresee any major changes in process. Do you? No, I mean, we did do a review of the officer billets six months ago. And that's one Z2Z moves. Yeah. I guess that's the bottom. About six months ago, we did do an officer review and we moved a few billets. So we've had more at special warfare, but just one Z2Z and at the time, we realized that that's probably something that any VCI should do once in their tenure. And really just a business efficiency review of the way I look at it, but that's it. And we do have a problem in the enlisted manning side of the house. We need more bodies, but we're just undermanned. But no wholesale changes at all. Okay. That's what I thought too. Thanks. Can you talk one or two examples of what we did really good with the recent response to the hurricane and one or two where we can do it better because we're gonna have another HADR coming up. Yeah, a great question. What we did really well was once we were in place, the pushing of product, the gathering of content, and then the delivery of it was very good. We were, well, let me get to that in a second. What I think we could have done a little bit better was get there. And it took us a little longer to get a board wasp than I would have liked. And I understand that there were real logistical concerns there, but I guess what I probably would like to see if we do this in the future is that our assets are embedded as soon as those units are loading up to go, that we sort of had to catch up to the relief effort. And it cost us a couple of days, I think, that we could have taken advantage of earlier. So that's what I think we could have done a little bit better. We had great support out there on the ships. I mean, what I'm told anyway, the chains of command on all of them were very supportive of public affairs and allowing us to be in places to get the imagery. So I think once we got on board, I think we did great. I know we had some bandwidth issues. That's always gonna be a problem. I mean, there's nothing we can do about that. This was a different humanitarian assistance mission than we've seen in the past domestically because there were sensitivities with local city, county, even in some cases, state government about the degree to which the federal government was assisting. That's not right or wrong. I'm not criticizing it, it just is. And so we had to be delicate in the manner in which we communicated what we were doing. And I think we were. I don't think we didn't overdo it. It was accurate. We conveyed imagery of what we were doing for direct support to the people in those areas and not much else than that. And that's okay. That has to be okay. I think we were very balanced and nuanced. And I never heard a single complaint about the manner in which Navy Public Affairs conducted itself. I didn't hear a complaint from anybody, sure. And of course, the locals were very grateful as we saw time and time again for the help that they did get. From Navy and Marines. But I do think we could do a little bit better job. I mean, I think getting embedded there early on and becoming part of that process right from the get-go, right from when the whistle blows and the ship gets underway. Is that, Andrew, do you have a different view? No, sir. Overall, I think it's always gonna be a little bit of a challenge for us. Didn't know if there was some interesting insight. You talked to the political side of it. I didn't know if it was more sensitivities with Northcom. Traditionally, with these disc omissions, gotta remember in support of, in support of, in support of, but the political side was... No, though, I don't... From my perch, I didn't sense any issues with Northcom. General Kobe was very grateful for the help that we were giving the assets there. But he, likewise, needed to make sure that the focus remained on our subservient role here, support to FEMA and to state authorities. And I think that's just, one of those things you've got to, you have to balance. The old adage, just because you can doesn't mean you should. And I think that's where we were with Hurricane Sandy. There were a lot of things we could have done, but they weren't the right things to do, given the situation at hand. And the bottom line is, the people still got the help that they needed. And the Navy Marine Corps team had a chance to be a part of that. And again, I think we pushed out as much responsibly as much product as we could. And I was very proud of that once we got going. But again, I would like to see us be a little bit quicker to the ball on that. Yeah, thanks. Anything else? Okay. Yeah. I'm gonna get my diamonds worth here, sir. Can you talk strategic communication? No. No, I think it's important. I think it's, but can you articulate that? Because, I mean, can you expand on that? Because I think, again, we get the benefit of hearing that. But I'll send you something this weekend. Now, often you'll see good public affairs officers adding that title to their job, that public affairs officer head of strategic communication. Yeah, well, I can't do anything about people's titles or how they're billed at wherever they are. I mean, my issue with strategic communications, and I talked about this at the first all hands call is how we got to where we are. I think, and this is not just Navy, I think military public affairs about 10, 12 years ago, we sort of, we dropped the ball. We got very comfortable with our own little world of our three-legged stool, internal communications, external communications and community relations. This is what we do, that's all we're gonna do. That's what we learned at Denfos, have a nice day. And commanders are like, well, you know what? Not good enough for me. That's not what I expect out of my communications department. I want somebody who thinks broader. I want somebody who's looking at the implications of the decisions we're making and how they're playing with various groups of people out there and how communications can make me a better operator or make this command's mission easier to accomplish. And we just, we let it roll over us. And so they went out and they looked for a new definition of this thing called strategic communications. We wrote doctrine to it and they started hiring people. And since we weren't willing to do it for them, they hired civilians and contractors to go do it. And they stood up these little strategic communication offices and they're all over the military right now. And I know there are some of my friends, friends I've known a long time who are doing this. And I know that I will be in trouble for what I'm about to say, but I don't think we need them. I don't think we need those directorates. We shouldn't need those directorates. If strategic communications is what we, I think we've all commonly come to consider sort of the collective message that's delivered by every decision you make. If that's true, then the strategic communicator for you pick the command is the commander. Because that's the individual who's making those decisions. How am I gonna spend my money? When am I gonna deploy my forces? What am I gonna do with all the resources I have at my disposal? That all sends a message. There's a, the former secretary of the Navy and deputy secretary of defense Gordon England had a great line and he used to say we are what we buy. His point was that when we put a budget on the hill in February, that is in essence a strategy. The American people should be able to look at that budget going back to what I said as our number one priority is communicators, right? Defend the budget. The American people, my mom should be able to go look at the Navy budget and be able to determine what kind of Navy this country was gonna have based on what we have asked the American people to fund. And that's it. So that's your strategic communications plan and it should be. Now, public affairs role is to do the public communications of those decisions, whatever that is. There's a hill piece usually for policy and resource decisions. There's often times in the operational world like out in Afghanistan, they've got their own, they call it traditional communications but it's basically comrail. There's a role for that and there's a role for traditional public communications and whatever, however you wanna define traditional. We have a piece of that but if we are the advisors and counselors, I think we ought to be and what we need to get back to being, the commanders will naturally gravitate back towards us for strategic communication advice. I said it three months ago, again I'll say it again today. If the advice you're giving your bosses only about what message to deliver in a speech or what the talking points are for a query or how we're gonna handle this reporter or this embed, then you are only doing a third, maybe even only a third of your job. You should be advising your boss and your commanders and your senior leaders on everything they're doing, all their decisions. That's why I want you to reach out, get smart, read, build relationships. You've got to be in on everything and if you're not, I think we're once again falling down and that is what we did 12 years ago. We just shrunk our little world up into what we learned at school and we're okay with that because it was comfortable, it was what we knew. It's not good enough, it wasn't good enough 12 years ago and it sure as hell isn't good enough today with the speed, with the much faster speed with which information travels and decisions have to get made. Ben, answer your question. I'm sorry, I get a little bit passionate about that one. Anything else? All right, listen, I won't keep you any longer. I'm getting you out a little bit early. I appreciate everybody coming. I know again, I know your lives are busy, you've got lots to do but I appreciate this and I'm gonna keep doing these every three months even if only five people come, I'm coming because I think it's important for us to continue to have this dialogue and the discussion and you have the ability to talk directly to me. If I didn't get to something or you didn't want to raise your hand or you didn't want to submit a question and you want to do so later, you've got our email addresses, Tamara and Rebecca will take care of making sure I get those questions and we'll get answers back to you. Thanks very much, have a great day. Please carry on.