Setting a new course. How to make the RN field a CDS again.

It has been confirmed that the next Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS) will be General Carter, the current Chief of the General Staff (CGS). The decision by the Prime Minister to recommend General Carter to Her Majesty The Queen as a suitable choice for post came after a series of interviews with himself, the Vice Chief (General Messenger) and General James Everard (DSACEUR).  

This appointment marks the culmination of months of briefing and rumours, with there being intense speculation that General Messenger would become the first Royal Marine to act as CDS. The interview process was fascinating in that two of the three candidates have never served as a Single Service chief.

Since the post was created in 1959, there have been a total of 22 Chiefs of the Defence Staff since 1959, of whom 6 have come from the Royal Navy. In practise this total is slightly uneven, with the longest tenure (6yrs) coming from Earl Mountbatten. For the first 30 years of the post, the appointments were strictly tri-service rotational in nature, with each service selecting a suitable individual.  After 1988 when Admiral Fieldhouse stood down as CDS, the post became less rotational and more about the most suitable person for the job. Since that point 30 years ago, only one Royal Navy officer has been CDS – Admiral Boyce from 2001-2003 in one of the shorter tenures in recent years.

In the same time frame there have been 24 Vice Chiefs since 1964 when the post was created, and 16 of those have been since 1978, when the post was increased to being 4*.  In that time 7 RN Officers (three at 3* and four 4*) and 1 RM Officer have held the role. The most recent incumbent prior to Gen Messenger was in 1997.

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

The interesting fact here is that in the last 30 years, the Royal Navy has only managed to generate one CDS and four VCDS (two of whom were in the early 1990s prior to going onto becoming 1SL). This represents a remarkably poor ‘hit rate’ of putting the most competent personnel into tri-service billets when they are competed, and not selected on the principal of service rotation.

For the Royal Navy then the news that it has once again failed to generate a CDS should perhaps provoke some real soul searching about what is it that is going wrong to prevent the exceptional individuals who can be encountered within the Officer corps from reaching for and actively getting the highest level of jobs in the system?  The fact that only one of the last 10 CDS has come from the Naval Service should be a matter of some concern about whether the RN is getting its talent management processes right.

To Humphrey the reasons for this seem to stem to three key areas – attitudes to education, talent management and the tyranny of career structures, all of which play a part in preventing the very best talent make it and stay the course. This view may be controversial to some, but perhaps the time has come to have a frank discussion as to whether the current structure is fit for purpose.

Education

It is a standing joke among some naval attendees on the Advanced Command & Staff Course held at Shrivenham that many distinguished naval speakers often refer to the fact that they didn’t do staff course in their career. This somewhat flippant aside perhaps masks a long held (and hopefully significantly declining) attitude in some parts of the RN that staff training is a terribly vulgar distraction from the core business of going to sea and looking for a damn good fight.

The RN attitude towards the sort of essential staff skills and development work that marks the transition in an officers career from being a front line leader towards the long slog in HQs and Whitehall has always been one of cautious reluctance.

While this is slowly changing, the reality is that the RAF and Army take staff work significantly more seriously – not the business of learning how to do defence writing, but in terms of the educating and career awareness that comes from spending significant periods of time in professional development. RAF officers are exposed to multiple short courses of staff development, whilst the Army send their personnel on what could perhaps be unkindly referred to as a long holiday for a 30 week plus course for their initial staff training.

By contrast, until recently attendance at the Initial Staff course was voluntary and not necessarily a pre-requisite for promotion to SO2 – you could literally become a Staff Officer in the Royal Navy without doing a Staff Course or formal training! This has not helped RN Officers raise their profile and ability to compete for the ‘punchy’ purple jobs in Defence that mark the path to greatness. 

This approach is changing, and there is now a much more structured series of courses and mandatory attendance to help refine and develop staff skills and awareness, which will help the next generation of RN Officers stand on equal ground with their RN and RAF counterparts. For, no matter how strong your professional capabilities in your area of expertise (be it engineering, logistics or warfare), if you are unable to credibly compete with peers to fill purple roles, the chance of the RN doing well diminishes.

Talent Management

The next challenge is that under the current system the RN is arguably looking to spend 35-40 years growing a future 4* who can be the First Sea Lord. This means the bulk of talent management is focused on the warfare branch individuals who will go on to command, which in turn is the path to FLEET Commander and 1SL posts.

The problem is that there are not actually that many warfare officers within the RN. As of late 2017 there were 4990 Officers, of whom Warfare made up 2,460 posts. This group need to be career managed in such a way that pushes many of them down a well-trodden career path of time at sea watchkeeping, followed by PWO course, then ICSC, ACSC, various sea command exams and in due course XO / Command at the Lt Cdr and Cdr level, before going onto shore roles and potentially a command as a Captain.

The pressure is relentless, and you are managing many highly talented and deeply ambitious people who want to get ahead. If you don’t follow the path to get visibility and credibility, your ability to continue to promote reduces. In a Navy with ever reduced promotion opportunities, stepping off the path to focus on developing staff skills and a network early on will penalise, not promote you.

Similarly, anyone who is not fortunate enough to belong to the so-called ‘master race’ (as other weary non Warfare types call them) has from their first day in the RN accepted that they will never be permitted the opportunities to reach the very top of the system by dint of not being a warfare officer. The utterly different career paths means that while they may excel as leaders, managers, project directors and so on, and be in possession of arguably a far more valuable set of business skills to lead large organisations, all non-warfare officers are essentially capped in filling a tiny number of jobs – for instance there are over 1500 engineering officers, but one, possibly two 2* jobs that Engineers fill.

What this means is that the Royal Navy talent management system intentionally closes off half of its workforce for competing for the very highest levels. What other organisation operates an HR structure that turns around and prevents talented people from going as far as possible?

If, for example, a young supply officer said to their appointer that they wished to be CDS, there would be laughter, coughing, spluttering and a note in the file marked ‘dreamer, send to South Georgia ASAP’. There is no means or ability to take the best people in a branch agnostic manner and develop them to reach the top. By contrast the Civil Service Fast Stream exists to take the very best talent in the Civil Service, nurture and develop it and get people into senior roles as quickly as possible regardless of background.

Career Structures

The final part of the problem seems to be the career structure that actively disincentivises good people to stay the distance. Of the 2,460 warfare officers out there, the bulk will be relatively junior, with only a small proportion reaching beyond Lt Commander. There are currently 880 Commanders, and 350 Captains & above in the Royal Navy, of whom a reasonable proportion are Warfare.

The challenge is finding ways to encourage these people to stay in and fight the good fight. Of the pool of officers, the future of the Admiralty Board is essentially going to be comprised at any one time of the Commanding Officers of the escort force and submarine service, most of whom will be highly ambitious Commanders keen to make their mark.

The problem is that with refits and ships alongside, as well as the small number of ‘Captains drives’ at anyone time there are probably less than 20 sea going Commanders. This talent pool represents many years of investment by the Royal Navy in individuals who are in their early 40s. They will all be acutely conscious that with only 5-6 ships commanded by Captains, their prospects to go to sea again are limited. Once their tour is over, and return of service completed, why stay in the Navy if you will never go to sea again?

Because the RN insists on direct entry recruitment at BRNC Dartmouth, good people can leave and not return because the system will not permit it (Humphrey has heard of many ex-naval officers who have passed out of BRNC, even commanded Minor War Vessels and who left for good personal reasons express an interest in returning, only to be told they had to do AIB and BRNC again).

The pinch point seems to be in the mid 40s as ‘post drive blues’ settle in and the realisation comes about that the future ahead is pretty bleak. If you’ve spent 20 years training to be at sea, knowing that it will not realistically happen again is a natural blow – particularly if promotion prospects are so difficult (only 1 in 4 Commanders will make Captain).

How many potential CDS left in their 40s because they were disillusioned with life post Command? Unlike the RAF and Army, which offer good command opportunities at up to 1* level, the RN has developed a system where you peak as an SO1 and then arguably its downhill from there. Something has to be done to keep people in or facilitate a seamless transfer in and out of the Service as career opportunities change. The risk is otherwise that if most of the 20 Commanding Officers leave quickly, there is no way that replacements can easily be generated for another 20 years with the same level of experience and knowledge that they have.

Similarly, the instability of life as a 1* and above is also unsettling – it is not a job for life, it is a job that exists on a post to post basis, with no guarantee of another job. This means many senior officers constantly have to balance the question about whether to stay in the Service, or if they’ll find themselves out of a job at the end of their current tour. Given this, is it worth their while to stay or instead take the appealing offer from industry?

The difficulty for the RN is that in not being able to generate consistently good ‘Purple Warriors’ who can credibly fight for tri-service billets the opportunities to retain good staff is lost because there are no posts to put them in. Again, how many budding RN CDS Vice Admirals were lost because there was no 3* job for them to go to because another General got it instead at the wrong time?

The RN needs to be better at working out how to keep people, but also how to bring back the ones that need time away and recognising their skills, experience and expertise. This is not an easy job, but it can be done – just look to the RAF model as a way of doing it, where ex-engineers are being brought back in with promotion and pay increases based on their civilian experiences.

Bringing this all together the challenge for the RN seems to be that to succeed and grow credible future CDS candidates there is a need to be far more open about how people are appointed, and show a willingness to grow the right talent, regardless of branch specialisation. There needs to be a strong emphasis on education, getting into training and focusing on purple posts as a credible operator. Finally there needs to be real change to the ways that careers are managed, making it possible for the best Commanders to leave for a time, acquire valuable commercial or public sector experience and then return a few years later without detriment to their careers in order to then compete for the top jobs.

The final suggestion is to copy the model of Denmark, who invited anyone who wished to do so to apply to become their CDS. Their succesful applicant was a Colonel who went overnight from OF5 to 4*! (Full details in the blog Humphrey did about it HERE).

The path to 4* starts at BRNC Dartmouth. But until we reach the point where the RN regards anyone who joins, regardless of branch, as a potential 1SL and then runs effective career and talent management to nurture, grow and develop the exceptional raw material in the Officer Corps, then perhaps it is inevitable that there will not be another RN CDS for many decades to come. In this, the RN has no one to blame but themselves.