I began my career as a nuclear engineering officer in the United States Navy submarine fleet. Towards the end of my time in the US Navy, I served as the officer in charge of the ship (the Officer of the Deck or OOD). In that role, I got to “drive the boat.” During my six-hour watch (shift), I led the team that charted course, controlled direction and depth, coordinated ship atmospheric controls, and a number of other activities.
One of the interesting things about a submarine at sea is that it never sleeps. There is always someone on watch. When I took the watch, I took it from someone else. At the end of my watch, I passed it to yet another person. This process runs in a continuous cycle from the time the ship leaves port until it returns weeks or months later.
When I took the watch, I reviewed logs of what had happened since I last had the watch, looked at current instrument settings, and discussed with my predecessor what happened during his watch. We then looked over the Captain’s Night Orders (written instructions from the Captain to the OOD) to see what the Captain wanted my team to accomplish during my watch.
During my watch, I consulted with the Quartermaster (the person tracking ship position and course), the Diving Officer (the person controlling direction and depth), the Chief of the Watch (the person controlling various ship systems), and other members of the ship control team. It was exciting, tiring, interesting, frustrating, scary, and fun. It also taught me a great deal about how to work with a team.
The Quartermaster and I spoke about our position and our intended course. We used a chart that showed where we had been, where we were, and where we were going.
The Diving Officer told me what he observed in the way the submarine was handling on that day. We talked about trimming the boat (adjusting various water tank levels to balance the ship) and course and depth corrections.
The Chief of the Watch told me what he saw in the systems he monitored. With his help, I made decisions and gave instructions about announcements to the crew, changes in system settings, and other watch management issues.
At the end of my watch, I had a conversation with the person relieving me that was similar to one I had with the person I had relieved earlier.
In reflecting on those many conversations that led to hundreds of decisions, I see a common thread running through all of them that illustrates a powerful concept for leaders in all organizations.
Once you know where you are, plan for where you want to go and keep moving forward.
While we might take a moment to figure out how we got where we were, what problems we had overcome to get there, and what we learned from that experience, we did not focus on what had already happened. Every conversation quickly turned to the future: where we were going, what we wanted to accomplish, etc.
The members of the ship control party were all different: college boys, college dropouts, farm boys, inner city boys, high school honor students, and high school troublemakers. We were a team of people from nearly every part of the country, all sorts of educational backgrounds, different family experiences, and different cultural backgrounds.
We did not care where we had been or what led us to where we were. We only cared where we were going – together. That common focus on our shared future drove us together so that we could get past our many differences and work together productively.
As we approach the end of one year and plan for the next, remember to learn from where you have been with your team without focusing on it. Look ahead to where you want to go and invite your team to join you in creating that shared future.
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