Category: Uncategorized

FY13 Information Warfare Officer Captain Selection Board

RDML Sean R. Filipowski, Captain Steve L. Parode and Captain Tim White represented the IW community as members on the recent FY13 IWO Captain Selection Board.
Key experiences in the Competitive Category: Information Warfare (181X)
1. Cyber Operations and Planning
2. Joint Experience

Information Warfare Community Considerations:  Demonstrated expertise in one or more of the core missions of electronic warfare, computer network operations and signals intelligence is the foundation of Navy Information Warfare.  Information Warfare officers should have balanced professional experience, to include demonstrated leadership, Navy and Joint operational proficiency and qualifications, and technical expertise.  Proven and sustained superior performance in documented positions of leadership and in  difficult, challenging and arduous operational assignments is the ultimate test of readiness for promotion.

Treasures

Over a 30 year Navy career one collects a number of meaningful momentos. I suspect that hundreds of Sailors have CNO, MCPON, and assorted other command coins. 
Less than 20 Sailors have a “Sutton”. I only know one Sailor who has more than one “Sutton”. I was fortunate to get my own “Sutton” in 2003 when I completed my assignment as Director of Training at the Center for Naval Cryptology at Corry Station in Pensacola, Florida. Dick Sutton did this commemorative cartoon for me and it’s a real treasure. 
If you have a “Sutton”, let me know.

Overmanaged – Under Led.

The problem with many commands, particularly the ones that are failing, is that they tend to be overmanaged and underled.  They may excel in the ability to handle the daily routine, yet never question whether the routine should be done at all. There is a profound difference between leadership and management, and both are important. Good leadership is what makes the difference between a command that just “gets by,” and one that excels.
Even the definitions speak volumes—to manage means to “bring about, to accomplish, to have charge of or responsibility for, to conduct.” Leading is “influencing, guiding in direction, course, action, opinion.” The distinction is crucial. Leadership is what gives an organization its vision, its focus, and its ability to translate that vision into reality.

As the commanding officer, you stand at the helm of the leadership agenda.


Slightly reworded extract from Lt Col. Jeffrey F. Smith’s excellent book on command.

Do The Right Thing

Mike Mullen in GQ Mag

“Can you be courteous in the face of an insult? Will you be harsh when your own treatment’s, unkind? Can you be compassionate when cruelty finds you? And will you be upright, when you or those you love are victimized? That is when you have to reach deep and take full measure of the content of your character. That is when you have to rely on your honor, your courage, your commitment, – core values that guide us in the Navy – and resolutely, persistently do the right thing.”

Admiral Mike Mullen
while Chief of Naval Operations in 2007

For Ensign Justin Rogers and Master Chief Hughes

My boat back in 1978 – Black Panther of the Fleet
“In each submarine there are men who, in the hour of emergency or peril at sea, can turn to each other. These men are ultimately responsible to themselves and each other for all aspects of operation of their submarine. They are the crew. They are the ship.”
The Submariner’s Creed (Excerpt)
Ensign Rogers 
May you become the kind of submariner that MCPO Hughes was.  Our Navy always needs such men.  I salute you both for your service and for your dialog on this blog.  We are all still learning.  Admiral Vern Clark used to tell us that when we stop learning, we stop living.  Keep learning.

Being effective in the world

To be effective in the world, it is not sufficient to be well-read. One must also write clearly and succinctly. It is not easy to write well. It means studying to gain a good vocabulary, and practicing to learn how to use it. Joseph Conrad compared writing to carrying heavy bails under a low rope on a hot day. It has been said that good writing is inherently subversive; I agree. Good writing can last for years, stimulating, and inspiring those who read it, and causing them to reassess their views of the world and its institutions. But then, of course, we have gone full circle to the importance of reading books.
Admiral H. Rickover

You must be willing to speak out.

The deepest joy in life is to be creative. To find an undeveloped situation, to see the possibilities, to decide upon a course of action, and then devote the whole of one’s resources to carrying it out, even if it means battling against the stream of contemporary opinion, is a satisfaction in comparison with which superficial pleasures are trivial. But to create, you must care. 

You must be willing to speak out.

Admiral H. Rickover

And I would add, you must be willing to write.  You must be willing to own your opinion, to state it and to claim it as your own.