Author: captain1610

Officers and Chiefs – a distinction

Serving as a commissioned officer differs from other forms of Navy leadership by the quality and breadth of expert knowledge required, in the measure of responsibility attached, and in the magnitude of the consequences of inaction or ineffectiveness.

A Navy Chief swears an oath of obedience to lawful orders, while the Naval officer promises to, “well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office.”

This distinction establishes a different expectation for discretionary initiative. Officers should be driven to maintain the momentum of operations, possess courage to deviate from standing orders within the commander’s intent when required, and be willing to accept the responsibility and accountability for doing so.

While Naval officers depend on the counsel, technical skill, maturity, and experience of the Chief to translate their orders into action, the ultimate responsibility for mission success or failure resides with the Naval officer.

Anyway

People are unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered, love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives, do good anyway.

If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies, succeed anyway.

The good you do will be forgotten tomorrow, do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable, be honest and frank anyway.

What you spent years building may be destroyed overnight, build anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you help them, help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you may get kicked in the teeth, give the world the best you have anyway.

It is not the anonymous critic who counts

“It is not the anonymous critic who counts; not the man who points out how the Blogger stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again.

Who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause. Who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat on the INTERNETs.”

Theodore Roosevelt, The Man on the Internet

Respect for juniors’ time

There is always plenty of room for humor in the Navy.  Jeff Bacon illustrates one of those moments of humor with his latest cartoon to capture a very real problem.
We’ve all had that boss who didn’t respect our time and viewed his/her time as more valuable/important than ours.  There are times when one can’t avoid being late.  The CO/XO/DH DIVOFF who is perpetually late for his own meetings needs to change the time of the meeting. 

When nearly all of us can relate to this problem, there really is a problem.  12 officers waiting 15 minutes for the CO have wasted 4 hours of the Navy’s time.  Who can afford it?  The Navy, the command and those officers can’t.

Time is one of the more valuable things we have.  No respect for our time = no respect for us.

More of Jeff Bacon’s humor is HERE.

Note to a parent

One of many notes and letters I wrote to the parents of our many fine Sailors at the Center for Naval Cryptology (now the Center for Information Dominance) Corry Station.  I recently got a note from a parent that she still had my letter from 1997.  I guess a few of them are “keepers”.

NIOC San Diego Change of Command

Commander Rachel Velasco-Lind will relieve Commander Murry Carter as Commanding Officer, Navy Information Operations Command San Diego, California at 11 a.m. aboard USS MIDWAY.
Navy Information Operations Command (NIOC) San Diego Mission:  Provide unequaled Cyber, Information Operations, and Electronic Warfare support, personnel and equipment to Fleet and Joint forces in support of operations, training, and exercises. 
NIOC San Diego Vision: NIOC San Diego is the preeminent Information Operations, Electronic Warfare, and Network Security command in TENTH Fleet.