Honored to have received this from the Skipper and crew of NIOC Bahrain

How unethical behavior starts…from Harvard Business Review

“The safest road to Hell is the gradual one — the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts,” wrote C. S. Lewis. Our research backs up both Lewis’s intuition and the anecdotal evidence: People often start their misconduct with small transgressions and then slide down a slippery slope.

The rest is herehttps://hbr.org/2014/09/how-unethical-behavior-becomes-habit/.

Principle

“Always stand on principle….even if you stand alone.”

John Adams

Loss of one of our legendary Cryptologic Technicians

LAKEWOOD, NJ – Alexander Myroslav Motruk died peacefully Sunday, November 9, 2014 at home. He was 71. Born in Long Island City, Queens, NY, he resided in Annapolis, MD for 36 years before settling in Lakewood earlier this year, and prior to that on Naval bases around the globe, serving his country that he so loved and dedicated his work and life to defending.

Alexander was a 20-year U.S. Navy veteran, active in military service from 1961-1980, where he served as an enlisted sailor, serving on aircraft carriers and on submarines through the Vietnam War, with stations around the globe from the French Riviera to Egypt and the Middle East, to Germany, Turkey, and to the far reaches of the Pacific Ocean. With his family, he traveled to stations in Shirley, Massachusetts, Winter Harbor Maine, Rota, Spain, and to his final active post in Fort Meade, MD. He achieved the rank of Chief Petty Officer prior to his first retirement in 1980, and continued on to serve his country working for the U.S. Navy as a Cryptoanalyst and Naval Intelligence Officer for another 33 years, until his final retirement in April 2013 from Navy Cyber Warfare Development Group in Suitland, Maryland. During his service he received numerous accolades and awards, he went on international special assignments, he debriefed Vice Presidents, worked tirelessly to support the efforts of our military and the Naval Intelligence Agency, and into death, he held true to his oath to defend and protect the United States, never revealing the details of his work.

Interment will be held at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, VA at a later date.

Go Make A Ruckus

We owe it to our community to be incredibly generous and connected and to do the hard work.

Seth Godin video is HERE

Leaders and ethical behavior

Leaders receive much of the credit for success and also shoulder most of the blame for ethical failures in organizations. Given their visible positions of authority, responsibility for shaping formal organizational policies, ongoing interactions with employees, and control over important rewards and punishments, leaders should play an important role in influencing employees’ ethical and unethical conduct. In this chapter, we have proposed that leaders influence such conduct primarily by way of social learning and social exchange processes. Through modeling, leaders influence followers by demonstrating high ethical standards in their own conduct and by using the reward system to teach employees vicariously about the outcomes of ethical and unethical behavior in the organization. Furthermore, admired lead- ers who are seen as trustworthy, and who treat employees fairly and considerately, will develop social exchange relationships that result in employees reciprocating in positive ways.

Masters or Jacks? – VADM Branch Response

Proceedings Magazine – November 2014… by Vice Admiral Ted N. Branch, U.S. Navy, Director of Naval Intelligence/Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Information Dominance

(See Masters or Jacks? by H. Stephenson, pp. 58–63, October 2014 Proceedings)

I want to thank Commander Stephenson for his recent article, which outlined his views on aspects of the Navy’s approach to developing information dominance (ID) as a fourth warfighting pillar, alongside air, surface, and undersea warfare. I welcome the continued dialogue in Proceedings on these issues that I think are important to the Information Dominance Corps (IDC) and to the Navy as a whole.

Commander Stephenson is concerned that cross-detailing officers in the IDC might somehow diminish the specialized skills and abilities these officers possess and currently provide. I see cross-detailing as quite the opposite—an opportunity to capitalize on their specialized knowledge while at the same time broadening their portfolio by exposing them to the full range of ID capabilities and perspectives in order to maximize operational advantages and warfighting efforts. My intent in cross-detailing officers (i.e., detailing them to billets traditionally filled by officers from other IDC disciplines) is to more deeply professionalize the IDC by developing an acute awareness of all IDC capabilities among professionals who are already master practitioners of their respective disciplines.

This approach is not unique to the IDC; it is used by other communities to develop a similarly broadened perspective in their officers. Strengthening the interdisciplinary nature of the IDC is vital to adapting successfully to the evolving complexity of the future warfighting environment. Our Navy would be ill-served by perpetuating single-discipline solutions to increasingly complex information dominance/warfare problem sets. This approach is supported by years of academic research that points to the value of interdisciplinary education and research.

With respect to the role of ID within the existing Composite Warfare Commander construct, it is still a moving target. While we are working with the Fleet to help define the optimum organizational construct for ID afloat, that structure will ultimately be determined by the Fleet, not the Chief of Naval Operations staff in the Pentagon. It will evolve over time, through trial and error and operational stress, much as the current construct has evolved and continues to evolve today.

Commander Stephenson’s concern that the maturing role of ID afloat will distance intelligence officers from their commanders is unfounded. Having served as a warfighting commander, I’m confident that no commander will allow any organizational construct, particularly one under his or her direct control, to keep them from the intelligence (or any other discipline’s information) they might need to make critical warfighting decisions. Commanders are hungry for interdisciplinary perspectives that shape and deliver a wide range of kinetic and non-kinetic options.

One additional point: Commander Stephenson unduly constrains the impact of ID capabilities by asserting that their effects are limited to the non-kinetic realm. In fact, they contribute to or directly provide effects that go far beyond the electromagnetic spectrum. Navy Integrated Fire Control-Counter Air (NIFC-CA) is a prime example.

The Navy needs its IDC leaders to possess both a great depth of expertise in a specific discipline and a wide breadth of experience across ID and the other warfighting disciplines. This is all about warfighting. The complexity of today’s threats demands us to be both masters and jacks, and that is what we in the IDC will deliver to the Navy.

(Note: The Masters or Jacks article was reproduced in the Monday, 10 November 2014 Information Dominance News Clips)

A. J. HAWK on Character – at work and at home

“I think what a guy does on the field and what he does off the field are inseparable. You have to be able to trust a guy to do his job on the field and he has to take care of his family off the field.”

And this from Jake Plummer, “To me beauty is living life to higher standards, stronger morals and ethics and believing in them, whether people tell you you’re right or wrong.”