5 Years Since the USS Fitzgerald Collision: How to Avoid Standing Into Danger

This month marks five years since the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Fitzgerald and the cargo carrier ACX Crystal collided south of the approaches to Tokyo, Japan. Seven Sailors lost their lives - at the time, the U.S. Navy’s worst maritime accident in more than 40 years.?

The collision was absolutely preventable. I know. I led the U.S. Navy’s investigation.?

Almost unfathomable is that only two months after the Fitzgerald collision, another destroyer USS John S. McCain and the tanker Alnic MC collided in the Singapore Strait, resulting in the loss of ten more Sailors.

Few days have gone by since the summer of 2017 that I haven’t thought of the Fitzgerald and her Sailors. My own personal journey over the past five years will never compare to the journey of the families who lost their Sailor, nor can it compare to the journey of the Sailors and families who survived. Rest assured each member of the investigation team, like me, has had their own unique journey - the task, then and still now, requires it. The collision and the subsequent investigations still warrant it, so that the Navy never forgets and never repeats. ?

My leadership question for you, to help you, like the Navy of 2017 – is your organization “standing into danger?”

“Standing into danger” is an expression known to all mariners.?It’s a warning that without action a ship is in danger of running aground or colliding. Short of combat or some form of existential crisis, there is never an excuse for running aground or colliding with another vessel - never. Yet in 2017, three U.S. Navy ships collided and one grounded – 17 lives lost. Never.

Much has been written about 2017. I read reference to it somewhere almost every month. At the five-year mark, I expect there to be more. Weeks ago, the publication Navy Times even went so far as to universally solicit fleet feedback on how the U.S. Navy has done implementing changes since 2017. ?

Rather than take that approach or respond to that solicitation, I offer three keys to help you and your organization avoid “standing into danger” in the first place.

1. Your Leadership Matters. If you are the leader of your organization and your team can’t describe your approach to leadership and you don’t personally lead training on leadership…you are standing into danger. This is implicit in your leadership role and by personally training on leadership you are forging and developing your successors and making everyone on your team better for the future. Do not take this for granted. You own the culture of your organization; how those in your organization think and act rests on your shoulders. Own it. Lastly, if your leadership brand isn’t anchored in integrity, if you aren’t making bold decisions for your team, if you aren’t communicating with your organization - everyday, and don’t take care of your team - everyday, you aren’t even achieving the minimum benchmark for good leadership.??

?2. Your Culture Matters. If the culture of your organization doesn’t include critical self-assessment…you are standing into danger. This is not new! Critical self-assessment is part of the culture of every great sports team, great businesses, great artisanry, and it’s been at the core of the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program since its inception (I know; I was a Navy nuke for more than 30 years). Yet, 5 years after 2017, the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) still had to say this in a speech at the 2022 Surface Navy Association annual meeting:

“The solution lies in focusing on how we can be more self-assessing and self-correcting so that we identify problems before they grow into larger, more systemic issues…Every Navy leader must be ruthlessly honest in how they self-assess and understand their unit’s performance…They have to act boldly and embrace professional risk. They need to elevate problems, welcome transparency, clearly articulate their challenges and leave their egos at the door. If our performance is not as good as we thought, we do not hide our assessment or keep it inside the lifelines…The critical imperative here is that the self-assessment culture and tools must be widely adopted across the Navy.”

Wow!?I couldn’t agree more with the CNO! But how many leaders are actually trained in root cause analysis and critical self-assessment??Culture doesn’t change by will or good intention alone.?Culture isn’t changed by a Plan of Action and Milestones. Culture is only changed by challenging and changing the beliefs of the organization and that will not happen without a sustained and continuing period of positive experiences and positive accountability.

The CNO also said:

“The gap between our most and least capable performers is too large.” ?

I applaud the CNO’s public, critical self-assessment, but it’s been five years since the crises of 2017.?How is it even possible to still have this delta, to have Navy leaders who are not rising to the challenge??The difference between good and great??Great leaders minimize crises by critically self-assessing their performance at every opportunity, and they always rise to the challenge when a crisis does occur. It’s part of their culture. It’s how they prevent themselves and their teams from standing into danger in the first place.

3. Your Vanity Matters. Critical self-assessment has an underpinning in what I have always termed the Fundamental Theorem of Standards: The ability to meet a standard always decreases over time. In other words, when graphed vs. time, a standard would be represented by a straight line on the vertical axis and the ability to meet that standard would be represented by an exponential decay curve over time below that straight line. What usually happens is the ability to meet a standard decreases to a clearly identifiable and unacceptable level or comes into leadership attention because of a failed inspection, unsatisfactory performance report, or significant incident. When that occurs, leadership steps in to immediately fix the problem, and the exponential decay curve jumps right back up to the standard. Holding true to the theorem though, the ability to maintain that standard starts to decrement right away. The goal then is to decrease the rate of exponential decay and prevent the prompt jumps back to the standard. This is where your leadership and ability to critically self-assess your organization at every opportunity are key.?

In the wake of 2017, the Secretary of the Navy’s Strategic Readiness Review termed this as “normalization-of-deviation.” I agree here too, but it didn’t call out a key component, because there is a much darker side to the Fundamental Theorem of Standards. It’s part of what happened in 2017, and it’s the one word missing from the Strategic Readiness Review - vanity. When vanity creeps in, organizations and teams perceive themselves as better than they truly are, and without the requisite inspections, assessments, and certifications, the actual standard line itself falsely drops down.?Organizations lose sight of the actual standard.?Nothing about the theorem changes though. ?

The ability to even meet the lower, false standard exponentially decays.?This time, however, the triggering event is something tragic, a serious injury or major equipment damage, or in the worst case, loss of life.

As the leader of your organization, if you do not respect your vulnerability to your own vanity…you are standing into danger. Vanity chips away daily at integrity, often quite slowly. Good leaders transition into great leaders; they demonstrate tremendous crisis leadership and might even start to master critical self-assessment. Their communication and decision-making skills amaze their followers every day, and then something happens, again usually quite slowly.?They fail to respect their vulnerability to their own vanity. Success is a great hiding place for vanity, and it’s easier than you might think for leaders to blindly stand into danger. As a leader, truly respecting your vulnerability to your own vanity is rarified air. Few achieve it. These leaders represent the difference between great and illustrious leadership – rarified air indeed.

Nothing of the above is new. These 7 Charges of Leadership:

Good: (1) Lead with integrity, (2) Make bold decisions, (3) Communicate with those you serve everyday, (4) Take care of those you serve everyday,

Great: (5) Critically self-assess your performance at every opportunity, (6) Rise to the challenge in a crisis, and

Illustrious: (7) Respect your vulnerability to your own vanity

have been shared with every Navy commander I ever led, they were part of my transition interviews and proposal process, and they have filled my LinkedIn page for almost a decade. They represent my personal leadership brand.

Remember the Fitzgerald and McCain so we never forget and never repeat.

Thank you for reading and feel free to share….leadership, culture, vanity…is your organization standing into danger?