It's Your Ship: Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy

by D. Michael Abrashoff

Well, this was an open-and-shut case—if you are asleep on watch, you are guilty. There was no need to bother with the facts. So I sent the sailor to the captain for punishment, without any further investigation. To my utter surprise, the captain asked the sailor why he had fallen asleep on watch. The sailor said he had been up all night cleaning a dirty workspace. Why did he have to stay up to clean it? Because the chief told him it had to be done by 8 A.M. “Chief, why didn’t you give him more time to get it done?” “Because the division officer told me it had to be done.” I immediately saw where this was heading and started to sweat. The captain turned to the division officer, who turned to the department head (by this time, I was standing in a puddle), who turned to me and said, “The XO told me to get it done by 8 A.M.” How in the world could I have known that they were so short-handed that they would have to keep somebody up all night to get it finished? But in fact I should have known or at least been approachable enough for the officers to feel safe explaining to me why it was a problematic order. I didn’t get all the facts, I didn’t realize that there were not enough resources to get the job done in the time I had allowed. The captain dismissed the case and I felt like a complete, uncaring idiot. Never again, I promised myself, would I give an order without clearly articulating the goal, providing the time and resources to get it done, and ensuring that my crew had th...