training – Crenshaw Consulting Associates

June 3, 2015June 4, 2015

Where is, repeat, where is Task Force Thirty Four?

That WW II message was sent by Admiral Nimitz to Admiral Halsey in support of Admiral Thomas C. Kinkaid, Commander of landing forces seizing the island of Leyte in the Pacific. Admiral Halsey had fallen for the Japanesse ruse, diverting most of his carriers and battleships supporting the invasion to chase the Japanese decoy Northern Force, leaving Admiral Kincaid’s forces in the lurch. Famously, however, when the message was delivered to Halsey, the phrase “the world wonders” was added by mistake. Halsey took it to be an insult, creating bad blood between the two. There are some pretty funny accounts about “Bull” Halsey blowing his top when he read the message. Here is the actual message:

I just returned from the annual American Society of Military Comptrollers (ASMC) Professional Development Institute (PDI) in New Orleans. It was an outstanding opportunity to learn about the state of the art in the DoD budget and accounting. Well done to Executive Director Al Runnels and his staff!!! This year I reckon there was north of 2000 folks from throughout the DoD Financial Management profession….Army, Air Force, Office of the Secretary of Defense, Defense Agencies and even the US Coast Guard. Leadership and rank-and-file throughout DoD, from the Honorable Mike McCord, the Undersecretary of Defense (Comptroller) on down, gathered to consult, confer and otherwise hobnob with their fellow budget wizards. In fact, I dare say that most of the senior Financial Management leadership from the services and defense agencies was there. There was only one thing missing: the Navy.

Yep, that’s right. The Navy chose not to participate. Given that every other service, defense agency, and the OSD staff decided it was important to send their people, I can only assume that either the Navy thought that its people (personnel in DoD speak) didn’t need the training offered at the PDI or that despite the need for training, barring their attendance was the safer or smarter move. So the Navy and USMC financial managers sat on the sidelines while the remainder of their counterparts in DoD heard for Mr. McCord; the Honorable Jamie Morin, Director of CAPE; Mark Reger, the Deputy Comptroller of the United States and numerous other senior officials. They attended required FM certification training, attended workshops, participated in a whole day of service-specific training and conducted community service projects. In the interest of accuracy, there were a handful of Navy folks there, but only if they were actually presenting a workshop or receiving a national-level award.

Why did the Navy choose not to participate? Well, it is true that in recent years “conventions” and other large-scale events have come under scrutiny because of some very bad decisions made by some not-so-good leaders. But checks and balances were put into place to ensure legitimacy and need before approving such meetings. All organizations in DoD went through the same process of evaluation. The PDI was not given “blanket approval” by DoD and thus the leadership in each organization had to make the call on whether or not to send its people to this valuable training. Obviously, Navy leadership uniquely decided this PDI was not in accordance with applicable rules and regulations and thus elected not to send its people. Now those of you who are not familiar with the world of financial management might wonder why a PDI is needed. Here’s the scoop:

Most DoD financial managers are required to receive about 40 hours of continuing professional education annually. Those who have achieved the coveted Certified Defense Financial Manager (your humble author among them) are required to take 40 hours annually to retain their certification. In addition, the DoD recently introduced a financial certification program aimed at increasing the professionalism of the FM workforce. It’s a tiered program with each level requiring specific courses delivered by qualified personnel. Once a certain level of qualification is reached, there is a continuing education requirement similar to those above. The highly specialized training required for the various certification levels is offered at the PDI, along with a variety of accredited courses that count toward annual training requirement. I’m not quite sure how many hours it would be possible to knock out at the PDI, but it’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 20. That’s half the annual requirement!

To make sure people actually attend the training, they are individually scanned in and out of training sessions and only given credit if they attend the entire session. Each day begins at 07:00AM with breakfast and training sessions go on throughout the day until 4:40 PM. Believe me, that’s a long day and I have yet to figure out a way to “beat the system” so I have to sit through the classes all day to get credit. It’s not exactly a cake walk. You can be sure people are actually getting the training.

Enough of that. And now for the gorilla in the room: Yes, it’s in New Orleans, but there’s no escaping the fact that PDI attendees are sequestered (I just had to use that word) for a good nine hours a day….No zooming up and down Bourbon Street, no clowns wandering around, no $26 cupcakes…it’s all business during extended working hours. (This shouldn’t be surprising since it’s basically run by accountants, for accountants). By the way, what’s the difference between an introverted accountant and an extroverted accountant? The extroverted accountant looks at your shoes when he talks to you….Badda-Booom!

So I mentioned earlier that maybe the reason the Navy leaders chose not to send Navy and Marine Corps people to this training is that they don’t need it. Well, you would be wrong if you made that assumption. I attended a session where the current numbers of people certified by service was presented and the Navy was just a sliver in the pie chart while all other services were big, fat pie slices just like your grandmother would serve. So the Navy needs the training above all and they are obviously not getting it elsewhere. In fact, given the workload of Financial Managers these days, it is really hard to find the time to take on-line courses. Oh sure, there are on-line courses….and they are good for filling some portion of the requirement, but no matter what you say, nothing beats real-time, classroom training to allow for substantial interchange between students and instructors. Would you rather have your dentist fulfill his annual professional training staring at the PC at home while drinking a martini or attending a gathering of dental professionals with an opportunity to talk to pioneers of the latest in the dental art and exchange views and techniques with his/her peers? When he/she says “Good thing I saw how to put in this implant on You Tube”, how would you feel?? or how about this: “Oh yeah…..since you have to put in a 10 hour day at the office, just do that training in your spare time”……Right! Here’s an idea: Why not do your training the next time we furlough you? What’s the big deal? We have posted classroom material in all the heads…..do some training while you do your business!!! It’s all about being efficient!” Seriously folks, I do remember aircraft checklists being posted above the urinals and on the backs of the stall doors in the squadron head in order to make use of “spare time”!!!

I know I don’t have the right to criticize and I apparently don’t have all the facts, so I recommend the reader of this tome (It’s longer than I wanted) consider these thoughts to be from an unqualified, uninformed source. And if you were the decision maker, please don’t get all spun up. The decision was yours to make and I respect your decision. I just hope your staff did you the courtesy of making sure you had all the facts before you decided. (You only know what they want you to know.) I am confident that the Navy leadership can give you a much better reason for why they stayed away. That not withstanding, I hope the Navy decides to participate next year so they can be a part of the team. I know I was embarrassed that so few from my beloved Navy were there. And just because the rest of the Services, OSD, Coast Guard, and Defense Agencies took just a little risk and sent their people to PDI, doesn’t mean the Navy had to send its people to PDI(sigh, I can see my Mother saying that right now). Maybe they didn’t have the money to send their people (even though everyone else did). Maybe it wasn’t that important. Maybe there was another budget drill going on. Maybe they elected to spend the money on local training for the hundreds (if not thousands) of Navy FMers around the world. I just don’t know. But this I do know: when next year’s PDI rolls around I sure hope we don’t have to again ask, “Where is TASK FORCE THIRTY FOUR the FM world wonders?”

June 25, 2014June 25, 2014

What to do, or what not to do. That is the question!

I received several comments after I published my last article on “Leadership in the 21st Century” and I appreciate all the comments. In that article I commented on the recent case involving a former Commanding Officer of the Navy’s elite flight demonstration team, the Blue Angels. After consulting, conferring and otherwise hobnobbing with my fellow former Wizards, I thought I might offer up just a few more comments on the subject before forever holding my peace on the subject of Capt. McWherter and the Blue Angels. There was a lot going on there besides just the failure of judgement of the CO, including limited oversight by the Navy and the absence of an Executive Officer senior enough to step in and provide some advice and counsel. More on that later.

I was struck by a recent Gallup Poll which once again found the Navy as the least prestigious of the Services. I’m not sure what that means since most of what Mr. and Mrs. America think about the Services is a product of their own (the Services’) PR machines. Wasn’t it the Navy that successfully extracted the Captain of the Maersk Alabama? Wasn’t it the NAVY SEALS that terminated Mr. B. Laden? Wasn’t it the Navy that was first on the scene providing relief during Hurricane Katrina, and Indonesia and Japan? Doesn’t the President always ask “Where are the carriers?” whenever something goes wrong in the world? Doesn’t the Navy run the White House mess? Isn’t it CAPTAIN Kirk, not Colonel Kirk? Jeez , what do you have to do to become the most prestigious Service around here? I know……..Sponsor a race car that wins the Daytona 500! Or make a cool commercial about killing dragons and rescuing damsels! Or lose track of a couple of nukes!

The notion struck me that part of the problem is that the Navy is too transparent. We not only advertise when we relieve Commanding Officers (don’t think that the other Services don’t relieve their share of Commanders) but we also come clean when we relieve senior enlisted advisors. You just don’t hear much about that from the other Services. Of course it’s a big news item these days and I liken the problem the Navy finds itself in with regards to negative publicity to the problem I have on the golf course…..Once I’m in the woods, it’s almost impossible to get out. Either I schwack another tree in my current thicket, foolishly trying to thread the needle between a couple of obstructing trunks, or I wind up in the woods on the other side of the fairway because I gooned up my attempt to pitch out. Why I don’t just pick it up and take a “Snow Man” when I wind up in the woods I’ll never know. That’s where the Navy is right now, in the trees and trying to pitch out.

This openness puts us behind the eight ball in my humble opinion….On the other hand, I think being open about our problems is not all bad. At least it shows we are aware of the problem and attempting to deal with it. But what exactly is The Problem? Is it that the Navy has a crisis in leadership? I don’t think so……in fact I know that’s not the problem. With close to 300 ships, 50 or so aviation squadrons and probably at least 100 shore commands, we actually have very few COs that break the event threshold. In fact, you could write 100 good stories for every bad one…but that doesn’t sell papers.

I’ve commented before on abusive leaders, so I won’t beat that dead horse. The Navy and DoD have reacted to lost nukes, out-of-control Commanding Officers and other misdeeds by increasing ethics training, establishing an ethics Czar ( and a very capably one I might add), and adding ethics courses to Prospective CO schools and Senior Enlisted schools. But in the end, by then what is there to train? Someone is going to stand up in front of a class of prospective Commanding Officers and say……Don’t have sex with your XO, don’t use counterfeit casino chips, don’t fake your death to escape from your bad marriage, etc etc? I don’t think this will have much of an impact. It’s focusing on what not to do…….not what to do. The striking thing about almost all the heinous infractions that appear in the news is that none of them are questions on the margin. They are about personal failures by people who should know better. No amount of training will fix that. What we can do is:

Focus training efforts of prospective COs and Senior Enlisted Advisors on how to be successful, not how to stay out of trouble. Be positive, proactive and practical in training COs.
Provide support to leaders. Conduct regular checkups of commanders by mentors who have successfully navigated the waters of command. (Not IG-like, but as a sanity check)
Improve the fitness report system to allow for a more honest appraisal of performance and potential for command (I don’t know what the number is now, but it used to be that 70% of officers were in the top 10%…..similar to the current VA flap which found that all SES’s in VA we rated in the top 2 performance categories)
Revamp the command selection process to take advantage of improved fitness reports and include 360 reviews as part of the process
Continue to set the bar high for performance in command

The bottom line: Let’s spend more time on how to succeed in command,instead of how not to fail. There’s a big difference.

March 7, 2014March 7, 2014

Top Shoe! General Powell was Right!

I was very pleased to see a piece in San Diego Union-Tribune this morning about the establishment a Top Gun-type school for our Surface Warriors. VADM Tom Copeland, Commander of Naval Surface Forces established “Top Shoe” (my term, not his) to foster a generation of young surface warriors who really know their craft, not just their weapons systems. For those outside of the Navy, there are a few terms which you should probably know. Aviators are know as “Brown Shoes” because they wore brown shoes with their working uniforms and their aviation green dress uniform (which was reserved for aviation only). Aviators commonly referred to the Surface Warfare community as “Black Shoes” because they wore the traditional black shoes with everything, including their pajamas. They also seemed to have penchant for wearing those thick plastic, black-framed eye glasses that no self-respecting Brown Shoe would be caught dead in. Over the years, aviators tended to drop the Black from the equation and generally used the term “Shoes” to describe their beloved surface counterparts. I don’t know what’s happened in the last few years with aviator uniforms, but I know the Aviation Greens are gone and thankfully, so are the black glasses.

When I was on the Joint Staff during the time that General Powell was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, I remember receiving bits of wisdom on the occasions that I happened to be in a meeting with him. There are the famous 13 rules for leaders ( in any position, military or otherwise) that General Powell is known for and worth repeating here:

It ain’t as bad as you think. It will look better tomorrow.
Get mad, then get over it. (my personal favorite)
Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position fails, your ego goes with it.
It can be done.
Be careful what you choose: you may get it.
Don’t let adverse facts stand in the way of a good decision.
You can’t make someone else’s decisions. You shouldn’t let someone else make yours.
Check the small things.
Share credit.
Remain calm. Be kind.
Have a vision. Be demanding.
Don’t take counsel of your fears or naysayers.
Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.

I also seem to recall a few others that didn’t get so well publicized. I can’t vouch for their authenticity, but with all due respect to one of my greatest role models, I have always attributed these two to the good General as well.

There are no rumors in the Pentagon. Sooner or later everything comes true.
There’s nothing new in the Pentagon. It’s all been seen before.

The establishment of the “Top Shoe” school reminds me of the second unofficial rule. As a young lad I was very lucky to be assigned to a “Black Shoe” staff as one of the few aviators aboard (back then it was called a Cruisier-Destroyer Group) and part of my training was to attend the dreaded Tactical Action Officer School (TAO). It was the most intense six weeks of training I have ever experienced. But when I graduated, I knew just about everything about operating the combat systems, the threat, tactics and the logistics of running combat operations. In my mind it was a “Top Gun” for Surface Warriors. Over the years I think that TAO training was scaled back in favor of more technical subjects. With the establishment of the new school it appears the emphasis is back and I think it’s a great idea. Let’s hope it doesn’t fall prey to the budget axe.

But remember…with all due respect to my surface buddies……..there’s nothing like launching from a carrier, zipping around at Mach 1, turning and burning against a worthy adversary, and winning the fight (Fox 2, You’re Dead!). And after all that, you still have to come back and land your 20 ton machine of death on a pitching and rolling deck before you can brag about your victory in the ready room. That’s Top Gun!!!!!