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

by D. Michael Abrashoff

People seem to think that if you send somebody a compliment online, it’s as good as the human touch. It is not. It’s easier, but much less effective.

Social interaction is getting lost in a digital world that trades more in abstractions than in face-to-face relations. It’s more than a shame—it’s a bottom-line mistake.

Do your people (and yourself) a favor. Say it in person, if you can. Press the flesh. Open yourself. Coldness congeals. Warmth heals. Little things make big successes.

Breaking out of our stratified systems to trust the people who work for us, especially those at or near the low end of the hierarchy, was a useful, progressive change. It let us unleash people with talent and let them rise to levels that no one had expected, simply by challenging them: Make Benfold the readiest ship afloat.

But you can’t “order” an outstanding performance. You have to plan, enable, nurture, and focus on

Think about the welcome-aboard program in your company. Do newcomers arrive for the first day of work and find that no computer awaits them, their pay and benefits are delayed by red tape, and the only employee available to answer their questions is second-rate because the best people are too busy? If so, it isn’t surprising that they become discontented with their jobs and disparage the organization. It’s the end of their idealism.

I needed to glean as much influence as possible so that I could shortstop stupid policies in their infancy.

I wanted him to look good, and, most important, I wanted to be able to influence his decisions.

Had I acted intrusively or as though I had a personal agenda, I would have been shut out.

How much brainpower does the Navy—or any organization, for that matter—waste because those in charge don’t recognize the full potential hiding at the low end of the hierarchy?

It is also the way leaders in every kind of organization can achieve new levels of success—by encouraging the people working for them to express themselves on both a personal and a professional level.

I know business is tough, and bosses don’t have the time or resources to play guidance counselor to troubled or underprivileged employees. Every manager and every company has limits on what it can and will do. But please consider my experience carefully. A lot of it is organizational attitude and mind-set. Anything you can do to understand your people, support them in tough times, and nurture their

What worked best for me was to continuously counsel the people I was going to evaluate.

My advice is to remove the guesswork and let people know what the criteria are going to be, so they won’t be surprised. Skipping this preparation

only leads to heartache and discontent. For my mid-level managers, my officers

I expected them to be experts in their own fields and that

they were expected to take on a project or two that would improve the ship’s quality of life, or a military process that affected the entire organization. My

If you want to climb the ladder, you have to do more than your specific job; you have to do things that affect the lives of others in the organization.

If they’re surprised, then clearly you have not done a good job of setting their expectations and providing feedback throughout the entire

All managers must be ready to shed poor performers, but only after you have given them a chance; you must be open and honest with them, clarify their deficiencies and how they can overcome them. And finally, you must spell out the stick: what will happen if they don’t address those problems in a timely manner.

The task of the leader is to assemble the best team possible, train it, then figure out the best way to get the members to work together for the good of the organization.

But it’s been my experience in management that while good news makes you feel warm inside, it’s the negative news that makes you learn and helps improve your performance at your job.

If you surround yourself with people exactly like yourself, you run the dangerous risk of groupthink, and no one

has the creativity to come up with new ideas.

And though we all want to win at whatever we do, the important point was how we won—whether we did it in a way that made us proud or ashamed, bigger or smaller.

People need to know that their interests are being represented at the top. More important, people need positive role models,

diversity training had merely made people more aware of their differences. Our unity training focused on common interests and positive reasons to value others instead of a top-down prohibition against devaluing them.

The best skippers blend fairness and strength, and they learn from life, not just from a book.

two valuable lessons. The first was the importance of taking people’s background and circumstances into consideration before passing judgment on them. Not everyone starts out at the same place, but with half a chance and some direction, most people left behind will catch up fairly quickly. The second was the significance of helping wrongdoers become better citizens, instead of discarding them, as our society too often does. The effort we’re putting into building prisons should be used instead to redeem people.

In excess, it eats away at the inner reservoir of spirit that people need to draw on when life gets tough.

When times get tough, the body may be willing but the spirit will be out to lunch.

We tried to instill fun in everything we did, especially mundane, repetitive jobs such as loading food aboard the ship.

The point was that having fun with your friends creates infinitely more social glue for any organization than stock

options and bonuses will ever provide.

All this shows what you can accomplish when you throw formality to the winds and free your people to have a life on your time, which soon becomes the time of their lives.

Lead by example; listen aggressively; communicate purpose and meaning; create a climate of trust; look for results, not salutes; take calculated risks; go beyond standard procedure; build up your people; generate unity; and improve your people’s quality of life.

I believe that a leader’s final evaluation should not be written until six months or a year after he or she leaves the organization.

The true measure of how well you did on your watch is the legacy you hand your successors.

And don’t wish them ill so you can look good by contrast. Think bigger: Their success is actually your reward for leaving you...

We all feel satisfaction in a job well done, but the greatest satisfaction transcends personal achievement—it comes from helping others reach their potential. That’s probably what keeps teachers going.

After all, top performance was what everyone was supposedly trying to achieve. That was one area where I failed to put myself in other people’s shoes and see things their way. You might say I was arrogantly naive.

In hindsight, I could have been much more supportive of my colleagues—for

Being compared unfavorably to Benfold—time after time—must have caused the wrong kind of competition. In

If you decide to go the Benfold route in your own organization, be warned: By doing new and innovative things, you may create jealousy and animosity. Try to be sensitive to that.

On the other hand, don’t pull your punches just to avoid hurting your colleagues’ feelings. Getting an entire group to excel is worth any number of offended peers.

In all sorts of thriving business, the managerial role has changed from order-giver to people-developer, from authoritarian boss to talent cultivator. Nowadays, the most effective managers work hard at showing people how to find their own solutions, and then get out of their way.

Victory will go, as it did then, to the forces with the greatest horizontal leadership, the ones imbued with small-unit daring and initiative.

leader’s first principle: Optimism rules. And the corollary: Opportunities never cease. The bottom line: It’s your ship. Make it the best.

create something better—leadership that truly earns its keep by taking full responsibility for solving killer problems.