A521.5.1.RB_HallMike

              It is hard to discuss my values and how they are similar or different from the Navy’s when I have essentially been in the Navy my entire adult life and thus most of what I identify with or what values I want have been influenced by the Navy.  After looking over the list provided, I narrowed down the following 5 values as being important to me, and I plan on comparing these to life in the Navy and the Navy core values of Honor, Courage, and Commitment:

1) Adventure and excitement

            2) Making decisions, having power to decide courses of action

3) Using cutting edge or pioneering technologies or techniques

            4) Integrity and truth

5) Mental challenge/mentally demanding/problem-solving

First off, numbers 1 and 5 are very similar from where I stand.  A job that is exciting and adventurous would tend to be challenging to some degree.  The Navy can be very exciting in that I get to work with some of the most technologically advanced pieces of machinery ever devised, and I get to drive and operate these things into foreign ports to show the flag.  In only 5 years as an officer, I have been to almost every state along the east coast (I haven’t been to Maine or New Hampshire), I’ve been to a little island called Diego Garcia in the middle of the Indian Ocean, I’ve been to Souda Bay, Crete, and I’ve been all over Iraq – if that is not adventure, I am not sure what is.  With the adventure aside, submarining is incredibly challenging from a mental standpoint.  As an officer who has the deck and the conn, I am in control of the ship, i.e. I am responsible for several billion dollars in US government property, not to mention the 150 some odd lives that are inside her.  Driving a ship while maintaining distance from contacts and keeping in communication is always a fun and challenging puzzle that never gets boring.  This is a good thing as I tend to get bored really easy – if I am challenged by something I tend to take an exponentially longer time in getting bored.  None of this really relates to the core values of the Navy and adventure and excitement is almost the nemesis of nuclear power where order and discipline rule, however I think that the Navy specifically and the armed forces in general cater to adventure people who want a challenging career, so it suits me just fine.

Second off, I really do enjoy the challenge of making decisions and being in a leadership role.  It is not like I have to be in charge – I fully respect the chain of command and my subordinates – but I think that leadership is an art form, and it is an art that I am actually rather good at.  When compared to the Navy core values, I think having the desire to make decisions is really embodied in all 3.  You must have honor to be able to make ethical and correct decisions, the courage to want to make the tough ones, and the commitment to follow through with them.

As I alluded to before, our Navy has some technological marvels under its umbrella.  We have a technology – nuclear power – that few countries have, and not only do we have it, but we have plants that can go underwater. I mean come on… does it get any cooler than that?  I have always been a nerd when it comes to technology, even though I never really applied myself in high school and received average grades through my first attempt at college (I went to school on a swim scholarship right out of high school but did not finish my degree).  Working with cutting edge technology is somewhat wrapped into the excitement value and the mental challenge as most technological stuff is both exciting and challenging.  Again, when compared to the core values, I would say that courage is part of it – courage to play with some technology that is both powerful and dangerous at the same time.

Finally, there is integrity.  As I have mentioned in several topics before, integrity is something that I demand from myself as well as my colleagues, both up and down the chain of command.  The nuclear navy would not be where it is today without having people that have impeccable integrity, and as part of that community, I strive to ensure that tradition continues.  The core values really come into play here as all 3 play a part in integrity.  In my opinion, integrity is a semi-synonym of honor.  You must have courage to have integrity – there will be times when it is so much easier to just take the low road and shove something under the carpet, but that mentality is infectious and can ruin both your reputation and your career.  You must have the courage to standup to take the high road when it is required.  Finally, integrity is not something that you dabble in – you either have it or you don’t – you must be committed to it.

In conclusion, even though my values don’t line up exactly with the Navy’s core values, I would say that both my values and the Navy’s values are intertwined in a manner that is compatible.  The Navy allows me to fulfill every one of my 5 values without any doubt.  It is exciting, adventurous, challenging, uses cutting edge technology, and demand integrity.  It is also hard work, which I would say is why not so many people decide to choose the path I am walking, which in the end is better for me – I want to be the one having the fun!

A521.4.3.RB_HallMike

There are many things that I would say I am good at in this world, and I can also identify many things I am not good at.  In general, I would say I am not always a good communicator and it is not because of what words I am using, but it is the manner in which I use them/my tone.  I can’t tell you how many times I say something that I think can’t be misconstrued only for my wife to tell me that I was just incredibly rude or came across in a rather unbecoming manner.  I blame this mostly on me lacking many of the skills discussed in this week’s reading.  In particular, I would venture to say my paralanguage skills are lacking and I think that I might use metamessages more often than I think I do, but I also want to discuss congruence and facial gestures.

Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink devoted an entire chapter discussing the science behind facial gestures and the hiding meanings behind them.  What the scientists he talked to in the book determined was that no matter how well you think you can hide your emotions, or no matter how well you think you are hiding an ulterior motive, for a split second your face will show your true colors.  For example, there was an attempted suicide patient that was in the middle of therapy.  During an interview, she was asked how she felt, to which she responded that she felt fantastic – never better.  At face value, it seemed very sincere, however if you slowed down the tape of the interview, a split second before she started to answer, a look of complete despair came over her face.  It was clear that she was still suffering greatly.  What this study showed was that you must be completely sincere with what you are trying to say or else the congruence associated with your talking will be off.  No matter how good you are at manipulating the multiple muscles in your face, there will be an instant where your true colors will show through, and people will subconsciously pick up on that mismatch, thus giving you a feeling of incongruence with a message.   

As I mentioned in the introduction, I would say my paralanguage is by far the weakest area of my communicating skills.  People constantly misinterpret things that I say – something that drives me nuts.  Looking at the 6 things that make up paralanguage, I would say that I have problems with all of them.  Most of this could be attributed to me not taking the split second to calm my mind before speaking (remember that my mind runs faster than my mouth and the reduction gears that connect the 2 aren’t always engaged), however I am not sure if this completely explains my issue with this.  I fully intend on recording myself as the book recommends – I’ll report back with the conclusions later.  Metamessages is something that I have never really thought about, however I am going to start thinking about what I say and why I chose the words that I did when talking with people to see if I am unintentionally inserting metamessages that are not congruent with my message.

To sum it up, I have a very recent example of non-congruence and communication.  We have been car shopping over the past several weeks and have been to several dealerships.  One dealership in particular really got to me because of the inconsistencies within his message.  We were introduced to the guy – he said he was just a common guy not out to get anyone, he was a church goer, and he just liked to make people happy.  After the intro, he started to ask the typical questions, and I started to give the typical answers.  He very quickly completely adjusted his mannerisms but his message remained the same nice words.  He interrupted me on several occasions, started to make more expressive hand gestures, quit making eye contact, and changed his tone (his resonance became deeper, his tempo increased, and his volume increased) – all this while feeding me the same lines of “I’m just here to make you happy,” and, “I’m just a simple church going guy that loves Jesus and my family.”  Notwithstanding the interruptions – which really pissed me off – everything that he was doing was in direct contradiction to everything that was coming out of his mouth.  Instead, had he maintained his body language in the calm manner he had at first, maintained his paralanguage with the non-threating tones he had originally, and did not show me the hidden agendas he was working towards, I might have considered going back there.  In the future, I am going to really think about the lessons learned from this week’s readings as I think it is one area I could drastically improve my ability.

A500.4.3.RB_HallMike

Once again, this is another great video to be exposed to.  Few people ever really sit and think about choices and how choices, no matter how trivial, can affect their daily lives.  Within the video, I like how she broke down choice making and the benefits of doing so and specifically how there must be assumptions associated with choice in order for choice to be viewed in a positive light.  The 3 assumptions of Make your own choices, More options lead to better choices, and never say no to choice are all three very important assumptions that are present within our daily lives, even though I am just now realizing it.

Making our own choices is something that is an inherent right within our country.  How else could you have “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” without being able to choose how you do this?  But this mindset can be extremely foreign to people that are not accustomed to choice.  In the video, Dr. Iyengar discussed how eastern Europeans are often uncomfortable with choice due to them not having it under the Soviet regime.  This is similar to what is occurring right now in the Middle East.  Multiple dictatorships have fallen within the past 10 years and now the countries are exposed to choice.  In the case of Iraq, I can tell you first hand that choosing something can be very scary for someone that has never had the ability to choose on their own.  These people are now able to choose all sorts of things, none-the-less their government, and a result, these countries are seeing a drastic change in the make-up of their society.  You can also see the resistance against this change by “old-timers” – they don’t want you to have the ability to choose – they want you to live your life according to their interpretations.  You can also see how scary choice can be when given the ability to do it within the military.  I am all about empowering by subordinates to make decisions at their levels.  Often this is somewhat foreign to them and as a result, it takes them many months for them to start making decisions in a timely manner.

The second point of more choices means better decisions is something I already know to be a false assumption – something that she Dr. Iyengar discusses within the video.  While standing watch as the Officer of the Deck, you can quickly become flooded with information when decisions must be made.  All this information leads to different options springing up left and right.  As a result, what was originally a rather simple question with distinct choices grows until you have an almost infinite number of options, all of which you wish you could analyze (if you had time), but in the end you must make a decision and make it fast.  I think what is crucial to prevent this choice overload is appropriate screening of choices at lower level in the chain of command.  If done correctly, there should only be a handful of options on the table and these options represent the best possible solutions to the problems.  In reality, this is already somewhat done – policies and procedures place restrictions for you to operate within.

The final assumption of never saying no to choice is one that I have a hard time thinking about due to my inability to separate my thought processes from my upbringing.  As discussed within the video, as Americans, we are taught that choice is always a good thing; however as the video also showed, having a choice is not always a good thing.  The specific example from the video – do you take your baby off of life support in a hopeless situation – is an example of a choice that would be heartbreaking to make, but one that I would rather have than not.  I could not imagine being in the situation, but again, I also could not imagine being in a position where I didn’t have the final say in what happens, and this is purely a cultural way of thinking.  You can show me the graphs that say I will have mental issues down the road due to having to make this choice, but it is one that I want to make.

When it comes to leadership, making choices is something that you are essentially paid to do.  You are the guy that decides what option the company goes with and it is your duty to see that the decision is fully implemented.   I think all 3 assumptions as discussed above can have the same context when applied within a business setting, i.e. that it is good to make your own choices (again, that is your job as a leader), that having too many choices can be a bad thing (too many options leads to the inability to clearly differentiate between the different options and compounds the difficulty of the problem), and that you should never say no to choice (again, you should always be looking to make the decisions).  Again, this was a great video that opens up your mind to how we view choices.  Finally, I completely agree with her final comment that a rose with any other name will probably look and smell different.  How we perceive the reality around us, including the different senses, are all unquestionably linked together; thus the phrase: if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck, it’s a duck.

A500.3.4.RB_HallMike

When I think about libraries and their content, I find it hard to not think about growing up and the time I spent in libraries in the past.  I grew up during the infancy of the internet and before it became the dominant method of data exchange – in English, I grew up when libraries were the main source of information when you needed it.  It is funny how the internet has changed this to the degree that it has.  I spent countless hours in a library growing up but spent a grand total of maybe 10 hours in NC State’s library while getting my degree in the middle part of the last decade.  With that being said, libraries do have 2 things that the internet does not necessarily have: credibility and concentration of information.

                Credibility is something that a source must have when you use it within your own works.  In the case of the internet, this is often in doubt due to the nature of the internet itself.  Any person at random can blog to their hearts content about any subject that suits them (see this blog).  As a result, I would say that almost 95% of the information available to you on the internet is of questionable credibility or outright wrong in some situations.  The library on the other hand does not have the credibility issue.  Now I am not saying that anything written on paper is the Gospel, but if it is published by a credible publishing company I would tend to believe that the author is someone worthy of citing.  Sure, there are many different books with conflicting opinions that are almost blogs in their appearance, but again, the fact that they are published makes them infinitely more useful when trying to cite than someone trying to cite my blog.  Even Wikipedia, the encyclopedia of the internet, is a collection of user submitted facts.  Most of the facts on the site are substantiated and proved by the staff of Wikipedia, however there is still plenty of information on that site that has not been proved and is essentially the opinion of the user that submitted that “fact”.  I love Wikipedia for getting the quick skinny on random information, however I will never use the site as a source (this is also due to my degree – my instructors never allowed wiki as a source).

                Concentration of information is the other reason that I grew up loving libraries and still am fond of them today.  One of the things that drives me nuts about the internet is when you Google something, you come up with a bazillion hits, most of which are in no way associated with your query.  I compare trying to get information off the net to looking at the night sky – there are nuggets of information out there (stars) that are great to get but you have to wade through mountains of irrelevancy (empty space) to get to them.  This is not so in the library.  If you want to find information on the civil war, go find a book on the civil war.  It can be that easy (especially when the libraries have really good cataloging).

A521.3.4.RB_HallMike

Looking back on my life, it is hard to pinpoint turning points that led to life altering behaviors as this requires a ton of self-reflection and thinking about what I am today.  With that being said, there are a few events that come to mind rather quickly, and all had direct impacts in how I operate daily.  In chronological order, they were the baseball incident, my parent’s divorce, and my first real experience as a leader.

 
            This first memory was probably the easiest to identify as its ramifications played a part in almost every day of my life between when it happened until I was 19.  Without getting into too many details (that is saved for the GA), I was hit in the face by a line drive that resulted in me not being allowed to play contact sports for a year.  At first I was pretty bummed about the having to sit out, but I quickly started to look for other things to do.  My parents offered to take me down to the pool and try swimming.  Needless to say I loved it and quickly devoted my life to it.  As I have discussed in previous topics, I credit swimming with giving me endurance (mental endurance lasted, the physical endurance long ago dried up), competitiveness, and a drive to succeed.
   
            Next was my parent’s divorce.  Prior to it, I had held my dad and very high esteem, however when details started to come out around the divorce, I learned that he was one of the most cowardly, untrustworthy, and unfaithful men on the planet.  From this experience I learned that being truthful is a quality that you must have – not should – in order for you to be truly respected.  Also, I learned about honor – when you give your word that is your word.  To this day my wife still gets a little irritated with me when I insist on following through when I say I am going to do something.  A quick example just to clarify – today there was supposed to be decent surf but when I woke up and checked the reports I knew the surf was going to be crummy; with that being said I had told a guy I would be down at the beach at 0645 - my wife said why bother but I had to go since I told him I would be there.
      
            Finally, my first real experience with leadership taught me many things about being a leader.  I was tossed into a leadership position in my first assignment out of boot camp.  To this day I would argue that having to be in charge of a group of your peers is one of the most challenging assignments that can be given to a potential leader.  At first I was incredibly uneasy with the assignment however I also quickly learned to enjoy the challenge of it.  I strongly believe that this event directly led to me getting picked up for a commissioning program which resulted in where I am today.  To this day I probably have more experience with leadership than most of my peers because I spent the first year of my leadership training doing so in a peer environment.  I learned how to motivate people (specifically that different motivational techniques must be applied on different people), how to censor someone in a manner that is not confrontational, and how to lead by setting the example – all things that I still utilize today.

            In closing, there are probably a hundred events that played their parts in developing me into what I am today.  My wife has had probably the largest impact on my life; however her impact has been over the course of many years vice the venerable fork in the road type of situation.  The 3 above events were all events that resulted in a drastic change in my life and were events that continue to have an impact on me today.  

A521.2.3.RB_HallMike

My first thought after watching the video was, “what a wonderful and powerful message.”  In just 18 minutes she managed to explain how stereotypes evolve and how hurtful they can be yet she also managed to explain how to overcome them.  There were 3 things that especially resonated with me that I will discuss further.

First, she was completely correct in stating that as people, we are products of our environments and are incredibly impressionable.  I have firsthand experience with this subject when dealing with homosexuality.  Coming from a small town in central Florida, our high school had barely heard of being gay other than the jokes of “you’re gay” and the like.  Additionally, my entire concept of being gay was that you probably had AIDS and were a person of questionable character/morality - this was the early/mid 90’s when the direct link between homosexuality and AIDS was becoming the hot medical problem in the news.  In the end, I couldn’t have been further from the truth and to date I am still ashamed of how I acted in the past.  I was exposed to the other side of the story by my future wife, whose sister happens to be gay.  My early viewpoints drove my wife to conceal the fact that her sister was gay and it only came to light when it slipped out at a dinner one night.  In a somewhat humorous yet very sad reaction, I paused in mid-motion with my spoon suspended in the air and my mouth wide open when it came out.  I was shocked that I was sitting at the table with a gay person, when in reality I had no reason to be.  As I spent more time with my wife and her sister, and was exposed to more and more of her friends, I came to realize that they were normal people like the rest of us “normal” people that just wanted to live their own lives in the manner in which they choose.  Luckily, as I have changes, so has society – now I think that homosexuality is much less taboo than it was 15 years ago, and hopefully it will continue to do so as the mystique surrounding the life style is further explained.

In a somewhat related manner, her quote of, “The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete.  They make one story become the only story” is the real gem to take away from the video.  I don’t know if the real issue with stereotyping can be put more eloquently.  Stereotypes are developed when you only have one version of a story coming at you.  For example, when I went to Iraq, I was expecting a completely lawless country full of American hating people.  And why shouldn’t I have felt this way?  The news only reports on the negative aspects coming out of different countries so it is the only opinion I am exposed to.  Sure enough, the news was about as far from the truth as possible.  Iraqis love American’s and our culture – some don’t necessarily agree with our government and its tactics, however as a people, they truly envy us and our freedoms.  In fact, a big issue towards the end of my time there was “emo” Iraqis being murdered by hardliners within the country – they were murdered for replicating a style that began in the US.  Another example is Bahrain – the news would have you believe that the country is a step away from anarchy but in reality, the protests there last year involved all of a couple hundred people. 

Finally, she implies an idea that I truly wish this country would get on board with.  As a person, you must be able to recognize that whatever you are reading might not be a true representation of what is actually happening, or that it might not be the only version of the story.  If you really want to be informed on a subject, you must get informed by using multiple different sources so that you can formulate your own opinion.  If you do not think for yourself, you will quickly find yourself becoming a victim to a single story.

A500.2.3.RB_HallMike

As I sit here and think about standards that are most important in my life, a few come directly to mind.  I know that not everyone operates under a given set of standards, and I myself haven’t ever really sat and thought specifically about how I operate daily, however now that I do I would say that I do hold myself to a set, just one that I have never specifically defined.  I would say that I have set standards like honor, humility, perseverance, and dedication for myself to live by daily.

                First off is honor.  Growing up, my brother and I watched many war movies and classics where the main central character almost always embodied this trait so I knew from an early age that as a man, honor was one of the most important things for me to have.  This strong belief was strengthened when I joined the Navy, where honor is one of our core values.  According to dictionary.com, honor is, “honesty, fairness, or integrity in one’s beliefs and actions.”  I always tell the truth, regardless of the ramifications of it.  Something else that somewhat falls under this is living under the statement of Matthew 7:12, “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.”  Treating people with respect and fairness is something that I take pride in in today’s offensive world.

                Humility is something else that I learned was a good attribute to have at an early age.  I was a competitive swimmer growing up here in Florida, and a rather successful one.  The problem was that when the success started, I started to recognize it and it went to my head.  I quickly became an arrogant little punk.  Luckily, this was fixed very quickly my freshman year of high school – I alienated myself due to my arrogance.  It was only when one of my close friends let me know how much of a punk I was that I realized the errors of my way and I checked my attitude.  It took the remainder of my high school years to mend some of the bridges I burnt that first year.  After that experience, I have strived to ensure that my confidence never grew into arrogance.  In the end I am very fortunate to have learned this so early – in my line of work, confidence is a must however knowing your limitations is also very important: many a submariner has lost their life due to the arrogance of their superiors.

                Perseverance is also something I learned from swimming.  I can still remember my first summer in the water and hating the fact that everyone was faster than me.  I soon developed the method of finding the next fastest person in the pool and doing everything in my power to keep up with them in practice.  When I was able to beat them, I moved on to the next swimmer.  At times, the gap between me and the next fastest guy was significant, however that did not deter me – over the course of the next several years, I became the fastest swimmer on our team.  This has transferred to my professional life now.  My CO always gave me the toughest assignments because he knew that I would not stop until I had the work done correctly.  Some would argue that I am a bit over competitive, but I would say I just really like to persevere in all aspects of my life…

                Finally there is dedication.  I think this one, along with honor, is something that everyone should strive to achieve in their lives.  If everyone would be dedicated to whatever it was they were doing at the time, things would be better in this world.  When I was younger, I dedicated my life to swimming – I swam 20K yards a day (except for Saturdays that only had 1 practice and Sundays) for almost 4 straight years.  I dedicated my life to my wife once I realized she was going to be the one – we have now been married for 11 years and 11 months and there is no end in sight.  Of course my wife would argue that she doesn’t completely have me since I also dedicated a part of me to the Navy and the defense of our country.  When I think about where this dedication came from, I am not sure exactly.  My parents always said that if I was going to do something, I was going to do it fully and give it 100% of my effort.  As I said above, I gave swimming all the effort I had, and giving max effort in my daily life has pretty much been the norm since then, so I guess my parents get the thanks for the dedication in my life.

                In summary, my early teenage years molded me into the person I am today.  Swimming taught me so much more about life than just how to properly perform the 4 different strokes.  It taught me that humility, perseverance, and dedication are all important thing to possess in life.  Honor came from reading history and watching movies about men that embodied what it was to have honor.  With these 4 traits, I have put myself into a position where I might have the opportunity to command a nuclear power submarine one day, and hopefully they will help me to achieve that goal.

A500.1.5.RB_HallMike

As I read the definition of intellectual perseverance, I can’t help but see many facets that are applicable in one’s daily life.  From Critical Thinking Community, the definition of intellectual perseverance, “Having a consciousness of the need to use intellectual insights and truths in spite of difficulties, obstacles, and frustrations; firm adherence to rational principles despite the irrational opposition of others; a sense of the need to struggle with confusion and unsettled questions over an extended period of time to achieve a deeper understand or insight.”  How I interpret this is having the desire to learn things at levels other than face value even when it is not convenient to do so. 

When thinking about how this applies as a student, I would say it applies to life in general and not just a student.  One of my favorite quotes is from Eric Hoffer: “In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.”  The earth is constantly changing and as a result you should be constantly learning – learning about yourself, your job, your life in general – it doesn’t matter really what you are learning as long as you are actively pursuing it.  At times this mentality can be incredibly challenging - Lord knows I have learned many things down several hundred feet below the waterline or while getting rocketed in downtown Baghdad, but the point is you must always be actively pursuing your baseline level of knowledge. And these obstacles are not just physical ones.  Some questions can be very hard to just define not even including an attempt at answering them.  However if you are truly committed to learning about the subject, you will bear down, determine what the problem is and truly learn about the solution.  Think about the art of philosophy in general: many of the problems are so hard to even attempt to answer due to all of the ethical/moral considerations that play into the problem.  I would compare many good philosophy questions to a Pandora’s box – one solution opens the door to many more questions.  Couple this with every possible answer having multiple pros and cons, and you can find yourself falling quickly into a quagmire of scattered thoughts and disjointed outcomes.  If you push through these problems however, you will learn that even though many questions in philosophy have no right answer, just knowing the multiple different responses make you a better person.

                Also in the definition is firm adherence to rational principle.  If Americans in general took this line and applied it to their everyday lives, our country would be in a much better place.  Most of modern politics play solely towards ones emotions.  If you kept a rational mind and asked questions like “does this really make sense” when the typical rhetoric started, you would find that often politician’s statements are greatly exaggerated and make little sense.  For example, take tax and spending cuts.  Every politician from now till the world’s end will say they want to increase funding in certain programs while cutting spending in others and do this all while cutting taxes.  Sounds great until you stop and think about the statement.  How are they going to increase spending without raising taxes none-the-less cutting them?  Sounds like they want you to have your cake and eat it to.  These people play to your emotions in order to get the vote – if one stops and thinks about their comments, you can quickly see through the smoke and mirrors that they try to pull over you.  These emotional points also cause people to get quite irrational about their political beliefs.  It just so happens that there is a Family Guy episode dealing with this.  Brian meets Rush Limbaugh and first yells at him for his right wing beliefs.  When questioned as to why Brian felt that way, it ended up that he was going off what he had heard from other people who had heard things from other people vice formulating his own opinion based upon his own thought processes and fact finding.  I am a strongly opinionated person but only on topics that I have knowledge on – opinions I have developed using my own thought process and my own research.  How I wish more Americans would do the same.

                When thinking about how intellectual perseverance applies to a good leader, I would fall back and restate my original idea.  As a leader, you must always be looking towards the future and predicting change.  In order to formulate an appropriate response to this change, you must learn about it, its outcomes, and then formulate the best way for you to deal with the change.  If a leader does not do this, he will be a purely reactive manager traveling to put out fires vice driving the company in a unified direction.  Again, the world is always changing therefor you must always be learning to deal with the change.  A great example of this is Kodak – had they anticipated the digital revolution in photography (after inventing it), they very well could have paved the way for Kodak to remain at the forefront of photography sector.  Instead, they did little as the world changed around them; now they are a much smaller company catering to a small niche within a much larger market. 

A521.1.4.RB_HallMike

When I think of stories in the Navy and how they are used to change a culture, the first one that comes to mind is the story of the death of the USS THRESHER back in 1963 – what is still the deadliest submarine loss for the USN.  Prior to her sinking, the quality control methods for materials and maintenance done on submarines was lacking at times.  As a result, often there was poor work performed on key systems or there was improper or bad materials used to perform the maintenance.  In some systems, this lack of control is ok (if it ever is ok) however on systems like the seawater systems where watertight integrity is a must or the emergency blow system that is literally your last line to get you back to the surface, it can’t happen.  It did happen however during a maintenance period and during the follow on sea trials, she sprung a leak back aft in the engineroom which cut propulsion.  When she attempted to emergency blow, condensation in the compressed air system froze, resulting in a partial blow of the main ballast tanks.  Unable to fully empty her ballast tanks and without propulsion, she sank with a loss of all hands and multiple shipyard workers.

                So how does this story promote the ideals of the submarine community?  Directly following this incident, the investigation revealed that the poor maintenance practices and lack of control on materials was a direct contributor to her loss.  As a result, the powers that be decided to implement a new program called SUBSAFE.  This program placed strict controls on materials and maintenance procedures performed on key systems of the ship that deal with water tight integrity and emergency systems.  To this day, I do not think many submariners can talk about the SUBSAFE program without thinking about the USS THRESHER.  Due to the constant training we receive on the program, all crewmembers are completely versed on the program and all procedures relating to it are performed with the utmost levels of concentration and formality.  The program itself is definitely is a great representative for what the submarine force stands for.  As a force, we are supremely confident in our both our machines and the manner in which we operate them.  We are known throughout the world as quite professionals that demand and expect nothing but your best effort while on board the ship.  It is sad that we had to lose a submarine for this change in policy to take place, however as are most things in the services, the policy is written in blood.