The Navy's top leaders are advocating fundamental changes in the service's
long-standing business practices. The most important reasons for doing this,
they say, are to cut costs, keep up with advances in technology and make the
Navy more attractive for potential recruits.
These goals fall under the so-called "Revolution in Business Affairs"
(RBA) vision, advocated by Navy Secretary Richard Danzig. His deputy, Undersecretary
of the Navy Jerry M. Hultin, says the RBA is needed to turn the service into
a more efficient organization that not only is focused on war-fighting but also
on how to run its business by world-class standards.
Hultin, however, does not want RBA to join the ranks of trendy Pentagon buzzwords
that come and go with each administration. For that reason, he wants the future
leaders of the Navy-today's captains and civilian middle managers-to adopt RBA
and make it part of their routine decision-making. Last month, Hultin hosted
a conference in Dulles, Va., to inspire these future leaders into becoming RBA
disciples.
"I predict the next team that comes with the new administration may change
the RBA name, but will pursue the same basic principles," Hultin told the
conference. The business mantra known as RBA is about transferring the "agility
and flexibility" that the Navy has on the war-fighting side, over to the
business side.
"We have a business system designed by Robert McNamara in the 1960s, with
long-budget cycles and heavy armaments, designed to defeat the Soviet Union,"
said Hultin. "Now we face the reverse situation: enemies that don't have
budget cycles and don't have heavy armaments." That makes the need for
a new game plan all the more compelling, he said.
Because the Navy was not ready for change in 1989, the service suffered when
its role and mission were questioned, Hultin said. Part of the RBA prescription,
he noted, is to be prepared for unexpected adversity. "The end of the Soviet
Union was a tremendous shock to our system. We are still grappling with it.
We need to be able to cope with adversity."
One way to bring about change is to encourage more RBA-style education into
naval officers' curricula. Hultin mentioned one new business course for one-
and two-star admirals, which involves visits with Silicon Valley executives.
Another new course for junior officers recently was started at the Naval Post-Graduate
School. The program is called "Thirtysomething," said Hultin. It is
designed for lieutenants and commanders and requires them to think like business
leaders. "We give them a clean slate and $80 billion and ask them to design
the Navy and the Marine Corps that they would like to have in 2020."
Turning the lofty, abstract principles of RBA into concrete, practical objectives
is the hard part, however. Hultin split the RBA conference attendees into five
break-out groups, so each could brainstorm and develop specific proposals on
particular subjects. After two days of meetings, the groups were asked to brief
Hultin on their recommendations for change.
The groups focused on the following topics:
- Preparing and manning the force: That is the Navy's "biggest challenge,"
said Hultin, because the service is losing many junior officers who are disenchanted
by Navy life. There also is a recruiting crisis because fewer high-school graduates
nationwide are interested in military service. Hultin challenged the group to
"come up with ways to make the Navy a place where young people want to
work because of the growth opportunities."
- Reducing infrastructure cost: That is a source of frustration for Hultin because
lawmakers on Capitol Hill repeatedly have refused to allow closings of installations
around the country deemed unnecessary by the Navy. "We are loaded with
excess infrastructure," said Hultin. He asked the group to develop potential
courses of action to curb the costs of keeping unwanted facilities.
- Innovation in weapon development: The group was asked to view the Navy's role
in today's global marketplace. Hultin wants to see the Navy's internal fiefdoms,
or stovepipes, come down-so that the service can pursue broader, common goals.
He also challenged the group to think about how the Navy could move into "new
areas ... in order to increase the value that we provide to America." The
idea would be to develop new products and services that, hypothetically, would
persuade Congress to boost Navy funding.
- The Navy-Marine Corps Intranet: This ranks among Danzig's top priorities, because
it would allow the Navy and the Marine Corps to take advantage of information
technology, Hultin said. The group was tasked to figure out how to "capture
the power of the Navy-Marine Corps intranet" and provide evidence of its
worth. Currently, there are concerns that the Corps may withdraw from the project
because of its high price tag. "The Marine Corps now says to us: 'We are
not convinced that we get value for the dollars you are asking us to spend on
the Intranet,'" said Hultin. "So, if someone doesn't come up with
enough value, the Marine Corps will not be a part of it."
- Electronic-commerce solutions: The focus here was how the Navy could bring routine
business processes to the web. "How do we become an e-government?"
Hultin suggested.
Ideas Debated
The leader of one of the groups, Rear Adm. Kathleen K. Paige, the Navy's chief
engineer, summarized what she saw as a basic obstacle on the road to innovation.
"Our problem is not the lack of vision, but our 'lack of traction,'"
which equates to the inability to implement ideas and "move beyond slogans
and speeches," she said.
"We have too much vision," said Paige. The downside to that, she
explained, is that there are "too many isolated visions competing"
with each other. That is OK, she said, as long as only one vision ends up prevailing,
thus ending the "guerilla warfare."
In the weapon system engineering field, for example, Paige would like to see
the Navy move away from "buying boxes and [stand-alone] products toward
buying mission capabilities." That would allow Navy planners to make sound
budget decisions.
That does not mean, however, that the Navy should be run like a Fortune 500
corporation because, Paige said, "we are not like a commercial business."
Corporate executives, for example, do not sleep with their ordnance, as sailors
do on ships.
Paige and her group offered some suggestions on how to make the Navy more forward-thinking:
- Attract more industry participation in Navy projects by providing financial
incentives such as venture capital funds.
- Break away from the current culture that rewards risk avoidance, promotes fear
of failure and results in "paralysis by analysis."
Among the group's "big, hairy, audacious ideas" was to consolidate
program offices such as ships and aircraft and various research organizations.
The members of the group also asked for more "job stability in key positions."
The group tasked to deal with infrastructure problems, meanwhile, suggested
standing up a centralized office focused on installation management. The Navy,
the group said, should "get serious" about developing a long-term
strategy to tackle the growing costs of maintaining facilities.
The members of the e-commerce group primarily discussed how the Navy should
take advantage of e-commerce to provide better service to the department's internal
and external customers.
As examples of useful e-commerce applications, they cited one-stop on-line
shopping and single-point data entry. To enhance sailors' quality of life, they
suggested giving every service member his or her own website and access to "tailored"
information rather than unprocessed data that require analysis. They also recommended
offering sailors services such as house hunting on-line, to help reduce the
anxiety associated with relocations.
E-commerce also can be used to improve recruiting, the group said. That would
entail real-time interaction, via the Internet, between potential recruits,
current service members and retired ones.
With regard to the current retention crisis-resulting from the faster-than-expected
exodus of young officers-one of the groups at the conference concluded that
much could be done by the Navy to change cultural and policy matters that appear
to be driving junior officers out of the Navy.
One significant source of grumbling by the young officers is the naval culture
that makes is difficult to disagree with a superior officer unless one wants
to jeopardize future promotions. Such practices discourage debate and risk-taking,
officials said at the conference. The Navy, proposed one official, should "protect
people when they take the right risks and fail." Other suggestions were
to "institutionalize informality and approachability" and to "change
business practices" in order to create a more worker-friendly environment.
Sailors also believe they would stay in the Navy longer if they were better
compensated and recognized for their contributions, participants noted. They
also believe there should be more emphasis on maintaining talent within the
Naval Reserve. "Love them when they leave, and they will come back,"
said one of the participants.
The notion that the Navy should be more explicit about its commitment to the
sailors had been brought up earlier in the conference by the keynote speaker,
Watts Wacker. He is a consultant who advises companies on how to plan for the
future.
Wacker said one important reason why people stay with an organization is the
idea that being part of that organization is like belonging to a "tribe."
A tribe inspires loyalty because its members share similar goals.
A tribe equals commitment, said Wacker. The Navy, therefore, should "create
a tribe culture where everyone has a logo shirt that other people will look
at with envy." Not paying adequate wages, for example, means lack of commitment
to that tribe.
The group tasked to develop suggestions on how to improve retention rates picked
up on Wacker's tribe theme and recommended that the Navy placed more emphasis
on "what it means to be a member of the tribe." The upshot would be
promoting the Navy/Marine Corps organization as an "employer of choice
... Emphasize joint civilian/enlisted/officer tribal identity as sailors and
Marines."
That group also suggested the Navy eliminate gender-related barriers. And,
to make sailors' life at sea less burdensome, they suggested offering "adventure
vacations" to civilians to come aboard ships and perform chores such as
chipping paint.
The bottom line, said Wacker, is for the Navy to decide what it wants for its
future. "If you don't create your vision of the future, the future gets
dictated to you. You can't incrementally gain your way to the future,"
he said. "Re-engineering without a new vision only means getting more efficient
at doing the wrong things."
Running Ships With Fewer Sailors
One of the most heated debates surrounding the Navy's future surface combatant,
the DD-21, is how it will operate with a sparse crew. According to service plans,
this crew could be as small as 95. Current destroyers and cruisers carry more
than 300 sailors on board.
The implications of such drastic cuts are significant, not only for the operation
of the ship but also for how the Navy will reorganize itself around those cuts.
"We need an infrastructure set up ashore to support DD-21 to make up for
the low manning," said Rear Adm. Paul S. Schultz, deputy director for surface
warfare.
But it is not clear how the Navy plans to make this work. "Don't ask me
about 95 people," said Capt. Tom Bush, the DD-21 program manager. During
a recent symposium sponsored by the Surface Navy Association, Bush cautioned
the audience that there is no need to panic yet about the 95-crew goal. "We'll
figure it out," he said. The two industry teams designing DD-21 are working
on the issue, but ultimately, said Bush, this should be a Navy decision.