What a week

So big Navy watched Tiger King and thought, "you know what, we could do better than this." The foundation is already there. The Navy is rife with substance abuse issues, weird sex stuff, and leadership that is questionable at best making life changing decisions on a whim. It's almost too easy to compare the two things.

Well, the Navy took the drama and turned it up to 11 this last week. We're all dealing with it now right? The crushing isolation and the fact that going outside might mean major illness. It really brings you down. Maybe so much so that Acting SECNAV Modly jumped on the opportunity to get out of his house to fly all the way to Guam to deal with a CO's letter going public about COVID-19 spreading through his crew. Sure, is that a little extreme? Maybe. I don't think anyone was ready for what happened next though. Let's have a listen shall we?




So there's a lot to unpack here and I don't really have the time for that. One thing is for certain, you gotta respect the confidence. Imagine Steve Balmer getting on the PA at Microsoft campus and berating their employees for liking Bill Gates and shitting all over they guy that took the company into the Fortune 500... Obviously, this didn't end well for Modly.

So where does that leave us? The ship's crew could get they're old CO back but we all know that's quite a pipe dream. That would mean Big Navy would have to admit the whole thing was a mistake, but we're living in a new reality so anything could happen...

Rinse, dry, repeat until nobody remembers

So I do this thing every month of two where I end up on Ebay and I search for trinkets related to old ships I've been on. Most of it is always the same stuff; just cheap stickers that can be printed on demand or ball caps that have, and probably will continue to, sat in a warehouse until they dissolve into dust. The only people who buy this kind of tchotchke are retirees who want to wear something to the store or slap a "I served" type of sticker on their truck. So I scroll through these things, it never changes much so I can scroll through a whole page in a few seconds, just looking for anything new.

So that's what I was doing the other night and something caught my eye. It was a coffee mug, which isn't uncommon to see on there. This one is unique though. It is used and old. Most of these things are reproductions, again just something for old vets to reminisce over. This mug is different. It has a few small chips in it, the ship's logo is faded, and it has a Master Chief emblem on one side. Which is interesting because you have to understand a bit about the Navy to really grasp how much a Master Chief, especially 20+ years ago, cherished their mug. They had a special hook on the wall in the mess for them. You couldn't wash them with soap and water. Just touching it for a junior sailor felt like you were doing something wrong and you would get yelled at.

Here it is now, scrubbed of the immortal coffee stain. At one time it meant so much to the owner and was symbolic to hundreds if not thousands of Sailors who saw the owner ducking through the passageways on the ship, not spilling a single drop of coffee. It would have been there on the desk while someone was getting yelled at, complimented, or maybe topped up and offered to someone else during a confidential conversation where someone was seeking advice with a real-life serious problem like a marriage falling apart. It would have been stolen during chief's initiation and held hostage in jest. When this nameless Master Chief finally left the command, it would have been the last thing to leave the ship. Picked up off it's specific hook in the mess and carried off the ship. It would have been kept in a cabinet at home, maybe with a few more mugs that carried so much history.
To me this mug also symbolizes the "Old" Navy, and reminds me how much I looked up to leaders and salty old chiefs. So maybe a time of innocence, for me. Maybe it's that people don't drink as much coffee, or we're genuinely too busy to carry a mug every where... maybe Chiefs still have these mugs, I just can't remember the last time I said "Hey, that's chief's mug. I wouldn't touch that if I were you."

Elon Musk, destroyer of meetings

I love Elon Musk. He's one beard away from becoming every-man CEO/Evil Genius Hank Scorpio. In 2018 he sent a letter to Tesla employees laying out 6 ways for his business to be more productive. Elon being Elon, this wasn't just some business mumbo-jumbo like streamlining vertical integration. It's something that, as a lifer, I hold near and dear to my heart; driving a stake through the heart of the business meeting. Sitting in a PB4T, budget report, or really any meeting with more than 4 people is the equivalent of going to a funeral where nobody knows the person who died but everyone has to give a speech. There are coffee and donuts but nobody is saying what the really want to say: "WHY ARE WE ALL HERE DOING THIS?!"

Elon Musk's golden truths about meetings:
1. Nix big meetings
2. Ditch frequent meetings too
3. Leave a meeting if you’re not contributing
4. Drop jargon
5. Communicate directly, irrespective of hierarchy
6. Follow logic, not rules

I feel personally targeted by his obliteration of ~40% of my time spent in the military. All of these ideas are grounds for court-martial in practice. Could you imagine any meeting with department heads and the COC where a JO fly-on-the-wall just gets up and walks out because they didn't have anything to contribute? I'm pretty sure any chief in the room would spear him to the deck, put him in a sleeper hold and prop his lifeless body back up in a chair. Every meeting that started in the Navy would just involve the COC taking seats then half the room walking out. Anarchy and chaos.

I'm not even going to get acknowledge the jargon bit, I'll just let this 400+ page dictionary speak for itself.

The Navy has long been touting how great it is to be run like a business. Maybe it's time to really embrace that principle and follow the example set by the greatest businessman alive? Maybe go electric to space?