The Good, the Bad, and the Mandatory
Returning to the US Navy After Two Years Away
Three years ago my life was at a crossroads. I’d already served in the Navy for more than a decade. My original commitments of service as a land-based maritime patrol pilot were almost up. I looked at the world outside of the life I’ve known for this entire century and tried to picture myself in it. I consulted with my wife, friends, mentors and headhunters. I subscribed to Fortune magazine and plowed through business school recommended reading lists. As decision time grew near, I was offered an opportunity.
I could continue in the Navy in name, but a private foundation would sponsor our family’s move to a far-flung place on the other side of the world, ensure we achieve fluency in a foreign language, immerse in an alien culture, travel broadly across an entire continent, and fund my graduate school tuition. The stated goal of the scholarship is “to prepare young officers for future leadership roles as the US faces ever-increasing challenges and complexities in today’s international environment.” The Olmsted Foundation summarizes by saying “dropping you in the deep end of the pool.” For two years you are your own boss, with no uniforms, mandatory trainings, or Chiefs frowning at the length of your sideburns. There is no base, Embassy or even consulate within a day’s drive. You and your family are alone, often afraid and just fluent enough to be dangerous.
We jumped at the opportunity. My first instinct is to call it a gift- learn, travel, test your limits with your family by your side. But a gift requires no payback, and for those two years in Argentina I now owe six back to Uncle Sam. For the past two months, I shaved my beard, put on my flight suit again, and re-acclimated to the Navy. Here is what surprised, disappointed or made me proud about the Navy I’ve returned to compared to the one I left…
Online Mandatory Training.
These. Still. Exist. Without exaggeration it took me three straight working days to complete everything I missed in two years thanks to crashing browsers, buggy-modules and unexplainably slow dial-up connection speeds. And I wasn’t even doing them from a ship. ORM. IA. PII. Sponsorship. As a mid-level leader I should probably say something positive, so: my certificates are now printed and I’m ready to begin all over again next October.
The Navy’s Innovation Culture is real…
I occasionally had one-off innovation ideas prior to 2013. Sometimes I would work on them with inputs from fellow junior officers and route them up the chain of command. Most of the time the ideas would fizzle in the midst of the daily grind and the demands of the flight schedule. Often it was just easier to accept a mediocre or red-taped reality than to invest the effort to fight for and implement lasting positive change. Why complain about using an eight-year-old version of Windows if you can’t do anything about it?
But in the past two months I’ve seen, heard and met more Navy innovators and supportive leaders than in my entire career. I was invited to join the Naval Constellation, a Slack.com-driven “informal, flat, and unofficial” exchange where innovators across the Fleet gather to share ideas, events and reinforce each other when it might feel it is easier to give in to the status quo. The Constellation was founded in part by disruptive thinker and E-2C Naval Flight Officer Roger Misso (twitter: @RogerMisso) and quietly counts more than 200 members that grow on average by 2% a week.
The venerable US Naval Institute isn’t left behind in the innovation craze (despite its members-only pay wall that can be frustrating to the modern national security community.) USNI gave voice in Proceedings to LCDR Benjamin Kohlmann, USNR, who discussed the Defense Entrepreneurs Forum. More importantly for me, Kohlmann highlighted the innovation work of LT Peter Barkley. Barkley, a Cambridge grad, is a fellow P-3 pilot and also happens to be a math and computer science wiz. His self-developed Powered Flight Management software automates intelligent flight scheduling duties and has already saved the Navy hundreds of working hours, $500,000 in costs, and increased training syllabus execution from 51% to 79%. I’m not sure if there are more individual innovators out there then ever before, but they are definitely connecting and helping each other in unprecedented ways.
…but the Innovation Culture lacks speed and agility.
I first read Tim Kane’s disruptive ‘talent management’ article sometime in 2011. The Navy has led the way in the ensuing years with the much-needed “Sailor 2025 Initiatives,” some of which draw from Kane and his contemporaries’ ideas, like the Meritorious Advancement Program, Fleet Education Scholars Program, and the Career Intermission Program. But in my opinion the important changes haven’t come fast enough.
As a clear example, I recently attended our community’s Maritime Patrol Symposium — think Tailhook in Jacksonville instead of Reno, with a bunch of land-based multi-engine pilots instead of all the jet jocks. A brave junior officer asked a visiting BUPERS Admiral about the status of the LinkedIn-style online job forum that would allow transparency in the detailing process. The Admiral said the program is in work, but pleaded for patience because of the sheer complexity of the 50,000 plus officers involved; he said a working prototype might appear in 2019.
I appreciate the challenge involved in such an endeavor- multiple communities, hundreds of bases and schedules, a lack of resources, using NMCI computers, and the ever-present force protection issues. But to put it in perspective, in the same number of years from Kane’s “Military LinkedIn” idea in 2011 to the proposed Navy rollout in 2019, LinkedIn actual went from zero members in 2003 to 120 million in 2011. A company launched in six months back in 2002 now boasts over 433 million worldwide users today.
In contrast, the most powerful and technologically advanced maritime force in the world needs nearly a decade to develop a system that manages almost 1/10,000th of the number of people that LinkedIn connects today. Is our force agile?
Ideas floated to allow direct commission of cyber experts and to create better Silicon Valley/DoD teaming may be steps in the right direction, but in my opinion it will take a relentless effort from top force leaders and grassroots innovators to cut out the blobby, bureaucratic middle that is resistant to change.
Whatever’s thrown at the Navy, the Sailors get it done.
I visited a sister squadron to piggyback on some refresher training, only to find the classroom empty. A compressed version of the Instrument Ground School was rescheduled for later in afternoon due to a “Big Navy” training requirement carving two hours out of the class. Nevertheless, both trainings were completed and dutifully reported up the chain of command.
On a larger scale, I enjoyed a long, laugh-filled lunch with fellow pilot I hadn’t seen in three years. We picked up right where we left off, swapping memories about night alert launches and other colleagues around the globe. He was in town by chance for a few days of leave to say goodbye to his wife and newborn baby. His current tour will take him shipboard for months across the world. He said it was scheduled for more than six months and I optimistically asked, “Seven?” He answered, “Who knows…” After years of working with him, I know his face said nine.
In the Navy I returned to, Sailors still answer the call in small daily adaptations to changing events, or in big ones like saying goodbye for longer than they should.
Colors.
Hearing the ‘Star Spangled Banner’ in Argentina was rare. In the two years away from American soil, the only occasion I heard it was on World Cup broadcasts and Lady Gaga’s goose-bumping rendition prior to the Super Bowl broadcast on ESPN Desportes. I think it was the only time someone with glittery eyeliner and a bedazzled microphone will ever upstage a Blue Angels flyover, even though that was pretty inspiring too.
As I return to my gringo Navy routine, will such sights and sounds still inspire? Can the tin-can loudspeaker rendition I hear every morning now that I’ve returned to work compete, or will slowly become an inconvenience as I’m trudging in?
I hope it will remain an inspiring comfort. On a sunny, muggy morning a couple weeks back I smiled to myself as everyone sharply pivoted on the PT field and turned toward the trees, honoring the distant sound and the ascending ensign. Much like us in Argentina and like countless other Americans around the world who couldn’t see either, the Sailors stood in homage to the country and Navy they knew was out there somewhere — a comforting feeling indeed.
LCDR Jared Wilhelm is currently assigned to Unmanned Patrol Squadron 19 (VUP-19) in Jacksonville, Florida. The views expressed here are solely his own and do not reflect or represent the official positions of VUP-19, the Navy, the DoD or the Olmsted Foundation in any way.
