Leadership Lessons from Under the Surface: The Inevitable Crash

Note: This is part 4 of a series on leadership lessons I learned during my time serving on board nuclear submarines in the mid 80's and early 90's. And no, I can't say how deep a submarine can go... you can't believe how many times I'm asked this. The official response is "in excess of 800 feet". Emphasis on "in excess".

Part 1 can be?found here,?2?here, and part 3 here...

We've all had those projects that crashed and burned, that never achieved the market potential we had hoped for, that consumers didn't fall in love with, that ran into the proverbial mountain. The question isn't if this will happen in your career, it's when or how often.

Now just imagine actually running full bore into a mountain. Not metaphorically, but actually running into a mountain. Under water. At 30+ knots. Armed with explosive devices.

This actually happened in 2005 to the USS San Francisco, a Los Angeles Class fast attack submarine. A detailed account of this tragic incident is detailed here. The submarine ran into an underwater mountain while traveling at high speed, injuring the vast majority of the crew and causing the death due to injuries of one of the crew members. The boat survived this collision and managed to make it back to port in Guam, a 52 hour journey.

The military conducted a detailed post action review of this incident and determined the cause of the incident was outdated sea charts. Legacy paper based sea charts. A state-of-the-art submarine, which cost ~$1.6B to build, rammed into an underwater unmovable object due to outdated paper material.

The focus of my post isn't on the sea charts; that's a discussion on legacy "tech" for another time. Instead, let's discuss two valuable leadership lessons from this incident.

1) Shit happens. This is why leaders prepare beforehand.        

Ask anyone in the Navy what they do out at sea; for that matter anyone in the military, and they'll tell you they drill. And drill. And drill. By drill I mean actively train and run through worst case scenarios of situations you'll face in high risk environments. On submarines this means you drill on flooding in the engine room, reactor scrams, a fire in the Missile Compartment, hydraulic fluid leaks, etc. Often situations are created to simulate multiple failures of systems at once. And the reason you drill constantly is the real life equivalent of these drills requires immediate execution by your crew and often creative thinking. And most importantly, life or death decisions.

In the case of the USS San Francisco, the collision resulted in severe flooding of the forward compartments, the bow of the ship crushed. The compartments were immediately sealed and the Officer of the Deck initiated the command for an emergency blow of the ballast tanks in order to surface the ship. An emergency blow forces high-pressure air into the main ballast tanks causing the boat to rise to the surface. The young sailor at the boat's Ballast Control Panel (BCP) repeated the order back (as one does on submarines to ensure the order is understood and executed correctly), stood up to reach the BCP control values, and held them open with both arms extended throughout the duration of the ballast tank blow. He did this without questioning the command and without hesitation. As he had been trained and drilled through time and time again.

And he did this with two broken arms.

Leadership means understanding the importance of planning and being prepared for the inevitable market crash, for an economic downturn caused by a black swan event (Covid), and from new competitors. It is understanding not every project succeeds and knowing when to call it a day and move on. It is comprehending that companies have to survive in both bull and bear markets. It is in constantly working to future proof your organization and ensuring your team embraces this challenge. It is leading in both good times and in bad. And most importantly, it is in building a team you can trust to execute when the going gets tough. In building a team you prepared for these critical points in your company's life-cycle.

He held the BCP values up with both broken arms extended above his head. Let that sink in.

2) Every crisis provides an opportunity to learn.        

The US Navy conducted a thorough investigation of the USS San Francisco collision incident and the out-dated charts were audited and destroyed. The investigative process undertaken is well documented and a continuously improving program known as "Sub Safe" was updated to reflect the investigations findings.

Submariners are accustomed to having detailed analysis conducted on their patrol performance. SSBNs, nuclear ballistic missile submarines known as Boomers and which I served on, package up a wealth of digitized material after each patrol that is then sent to a specialized program at John Hopkins University for analysis and performance feedback for the Captain and crew for example.

After-Action-Reports (AAR) are commonplace in the military and the lessons learned from these situations have more often than not saved the lives of soldiers and sailors alike. Technology has significantly impacted this process and close to real-time AARs are conducted by the Army and Marines via video conferences today in combat to ensure valuable data points and recommendations are collected and distributed.

The process of post-project moratorium?or post project reviews isn't something embraced or emphasized enough in my personal opinion and from what I've witnessed over my 25 years in the tech and financial services space. It is one given more lip service than anything, a program checkbox process more than a significantly important step in client engagement and engineering. And one if not undertaken that can result in missing out on product opportunities.

Back in 2001 McDonald's, the fast food giant, hired a small group of Entrepreneurs-in-Residence to develop a new product offering. This small group conducted a SWOT analysis of the company and as a result determined the company excelled in two specific areas: logistics and in real estate (notice they didn't mention shakes or fries). This small team came up with a new product offering focused on offering basic consumer consumable goods such as milk, bread, peanut butter, etc. that were offered for purchase via vending machine kiosks. They launched a year-long test program by strategically placing these kiosks outside the Washington D.C. Metrorail system and studying consumer purchase patterns. And this group also launched a local media blitz to champion this campaign.

The program fizzled out dramatically after a year. Consumer adoption wasn't anywhere near strong enough and the group's theory was proven a failure.

Except it wasn't. The Entrepreneurs-in-Residence noticed one silver lining in their analysis of the project. Consumers hated purchasing the day-to-day consumer goods via the kiosks; however, they had no issue with acquiring movies via the machines. The red colored kiosks.

Figure it out yet? Yes, McDonalds originated RedBox which it sold to Coinstar in 2009 for ~$200M. Not a bad investment. And now you almost always see a Redbox machine outside a McDonalds.

Even more interesting, one of the original Entrepreneurs-in-Residence of this program is Mark Jamison, who has had a successful career in strategy and innovation at companies such as Fidelity Investments, Charles Schwab, Capital One, BBVA, and now at Visa. And I'll go ahead and guess Mark is a fan of the post project review process.

The bottom line is this. Things break. Bad things happen. Things don't always go as planned. Leaders lead despite the results, despite market conditions, despite of perceived failures.

So lead.

“Crisis does not create character

it reveals it.” - Golden Flower