Transforming to Fight Tonight...

 

It is a common phenomenon for people to say ‘the Navy is going to the dogs’ – or variations on this theme. It is also common to hear people bemoaning ‘health and safety gone mad’ or other complaints about the state of the Service or the nation. It is less common to see these complaints given physical form in the context of a ‘haul down letter’ by the outgoing Second Sea Lord.

In a letter which gained national media attention, Vice Admiral Nick Hine noted his concerns on a range of fronts about the state of the RN today, from its lack of ambition to its unwillingness to change. He expressed concern about whether a failure to embrace change and transformation would in turn be responsible for causing the RN to lose a war.

These comments are at the heart of the debate on the issue of change, risk management and ambition and the state of the Royal Navy today and are worth further analysis.

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

The curious paradox of the armed forces is that they are both simultaneously an organisation that is constantly embracing change, and one that is change resistant, and that these effects can be occurring simultaneously in the same part of the organisation.

At an operational and strategic level, the RN is an organisation which is constantly evolving, bringing in new equipment, sensors, training and different tactics and ways of operating, and constantly having to prepare to do new operations in new locations. The Royal Navy of today is vastly different to that of 2010, 1998, 1991 or 1980 (all dates of key Defence Reviews).

On a daily basis there is a plethora of work underway to bring about change, ranging from work to develop new ships and weapon systems, through to new ways of training or working. The system is constantly adapting and looking at ways of doing things differently – one only has to look for example at the training syllabus at BRNC Dartmouth to realise that practically every year for the last decade, a subtly different way of training has been tried out, each of which is designed with the best of intentions to make things better. In this sense the RN is constantly evolving and looking to do things differently, and across a complex range of outputs.

At the same time the people themselves are constantly in a state of near flux. In a workforce of 30,000 full time uniformed personnel, practically none of them will serve more than 3 years in their role. There is constant churn as people move roles, settle in, and move on, and very little stability. It is extremely rare to find military personnel who have spent more than 3 years in a post.

This posting plot instability drives a sense of turmoil and change as people turn up, try to make their mark in a limited time, and then move on. How better to get OJAR glory and improve promotion than do something which marks you out as willing to try to ‘improve things’.

This natural desire to change and improve perhaps explains too why there is often a deep reluctance to really tackle the difficult cultural issues that could need changing. There is no doubt that much of what the RN does is rooted in deep seated tradition, history and legacy of previous post holders acting in a way that made sense at the time.

Trying to drive deeper change through which can fundamentally alter how an organisation does business is difficult when you know you are unlikely to be in post to see it through, and neither will your team. What value is there in trying to force major change, if you do not have the tenure to deliver it?

This does not necessarily mean that you and your team are not willing to see change through, but that for the big major projects that may take some years to realise the benefits, the people that began the programme will no longer be around to see the results – by which time a new team may have identified a very different need, and the work is stopped. Meanwhile the old ways of working have been reverted to, or persist, because the corporate memory that exists knows that this works.

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

Add to this a sense of ‘change exhaustion’ that many feel in belonging to a Navy that is constantly evolving. If you look at the sheer range of change projects, different transformation programmes, new ways of working and other programmes that have been brought in over the last 10-15 years, and people can just feel utterly worn out by the experience.

It isn’t that the workforce is change averse, or that they don’t want to change – ask any matelot what the problem is that needs fixing, and you’ll get half a dozen answers that need to be addressed. People want to see things done differently, but when they’re working in units or projects that are themselves changing at a local level due to new things happening, its perhaps hard to keep up with the wider organisational and corporate change that is going on.

A common reaction when confronted with being told ‘we’re going to transform / change / evolve’ is to roll eyes, hunker down and wait for it all to be over again. A lot of people are exhausted by being told there is another change programme coming, and its hard for them to buy into it, or to take it seriously when they know that it won’t be fully implemented, and that a follow on programme will arrive instead.

It is not necessarily that people don’t think things need to change, but deep down a lot of people are probably sick and tired of slick management consultants turning up, charging an enormous amount of money to tell people things that they already knew, and then come up with the latest ‘numberwang’ management structure of the day, which is often hugely inappropriate for military life.

The armed forces are not the private sector. It is much easier for a company to every few years undergo some form of change or transformation project to try to better understand its role and position itself effectively against its competitors and rivals. In a low turnover workforce, change is something they may see rarely, and is given the time to bed in, be reviewed and then properly deliver benefits.

By contrast the military is not a business with a single aim. If you consider the range of responsibilities that the RN has right now, this includes running nuclear powerplants, operating multiple airfields, acting as a complex engineering organisation, managing multiple stockpiles of highly explosive material, running its own small army, owning multiple fleets of aircraft, having responsibility for a large land and maritime infrastructure estate based around the world – oh and its also in the business of sending ships to sea too.

This means that unlike Company X, which may sell a single product to one market, its much harder for the RN to easily adapt and change when it has to balance so much off. Its also more difficult to refocus and deliver change when you cannot ‘turn the Royal Navy off and on again’. The RN cannot fail, it cannot have a day off and it cannot stop what it is doing and try again differently – any change programme has to be done while it is delivering at pace in its normal way of working.

The result is people can feel overwhelmed by change intruding on their lives, and which can seem an irritant to doing their job. To get buy in for change from a workforce which is essentially living in an era of constant change is hard – it perhaps explains why there seems reluctance at times to embrace change – because people are tired of constantly being told they need to change, and would quite like time to focus on just keeping things as they are long enough to see what actually works or not.

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

Vice Admiral Hine also suggests that the RN is both ‘self censoring’ and ‘risk averse’. The former is an interesting question around how do you deliver bad news in a system where promotion is linked to delivery?

The staffing process can be good at filtering raw difficult news out, but it is also about practicality of time. When asking senior officers to take decisions, where does the data come from – is it bad news at the tactical end (e.g. this specific engine is broken, the ship is screwed’), is it at the operational point (e.g. ‘this ship cannot go to sea for X days, we have a short term gap to deliver but can recover by this date’) or is it strategic (e.g. “Overall ship platform availability remains high, some isolated defects but easily fixable and only limited impact on overall seaday availability for the class of ship).

The same single story of ‘engine broken’ can be transmitted in several entirely different ways, and what may be a ‘bad news’ story at a tactical level is at the grand strategic level, a minor footnote. This then raises the question of information transmission – does the RN have a culture of ‘self-censoring’ bad news, or is it better at determining what it thinks its seniors need to know to make the right decisions at their level?

There is little value in the Admiralty Board knowing that HMS NONSUCH has three OPDEFFS and cannot go to sea for 3 days in terms of both what they can personally do to fix this, and in changing the outcome. There is value in their knowing when support services across the fleet are not delivering as intended, and looking for ways to improve overall fleet wide availability – the challenge is getting the balance right between information for seniors and being too ‘in the weeds’ to deliver a strategic hand on a tactical problem – every time an Admiral is involved in fixing an ‘in the weeds’ issue, they are not doing the job the public pay them to do.

The phrase ‘risk averse’ is a wonderful phrase to imply negative culture. It brings to mind pencil-pushers unwilling to let people ‘use their common sense’ and ‘it’s health and safety gone mad’ or other such phrases beloved of the tabloid press. Is the RN really ‘risk averse’ though?

Part of the question here is what does a risk taking organisation look like, particularly given the complex set of operations carried out by the RN are? It is wise to talk of empowerment and giving people locally the ability to facilitate change and do things differently if it makes sense, but how does that fit into what is at heart a disciplined and highly regulated organisation?

Would you, for example feel comfortable if a ships PWO decided to take some risk and change procedures slightly to help suit his or he way of working – it would make them more efficient but means the Ops Room isn’t working as intended – could this be a problem? Alternatively, should the people responsible for the paperwork around missile maintenance look to cut down on the bookwork locally and stop keeping track of some work, to free up time – the risk to them is low and the time gain is significant – but what is the impact on the understanding of the materiel state of the missile, and work it needs to have done to it?

Alternatively, what if a nuclear engineering team on a submarine came up with a way of working that raised their efficiency, but was at odds with agreed operating procedures by the regulators?

These are all good examples of tactical level risks where we need to balance off empowerment versus wider risk. In an organisation that regularly handles high explosives, nuclear warheads, aviation operations and all manner of highly dangerous and potentially life threatening work, is ‘taking risk’ the right thing to do?

What happens if something goes wrong – who is liable in these circumstances if an incident occurs that in turn costs human life? Is it the person who took the risk, or should they say ‘I was following direction to be less risk averse’?

Trying to work out where the RN is ‘risk averse’ is a challenge – at the front line people can and do take extraordinary risk in certain circumstances where it is necessary to achieve the mission at hand. Read any set of operational honours citations and you’ll see examples of people taking an individual risk decision to do something incredibly dangerous – but this should rightly be the exception, not the norm.

‘Risk Averse’ is perhaps a lazy way of saying ‘works to agreed processes to prevent things going wrong’ – and this is the challenge. Do you want ships or bases to start deviating from agreed processes and procedures, in isolation, and if so, how do you ensure that this is done in a way that is properly recorded and understood – because we live in an age where families reasonably expect that their loved ones won’t be killed in a routine work accident because people decided to locally take a shortcut to make life easier or quicker.

There are plenty of walks of life where a more open attitude to risk is welcome, but is it something that sits comfortably with an organisation with responsibilities like the RN? This is not to say that in wartime things change – part of the bargain of membership of the club is that you agree that at times, you will be expected to go and do incredibly dangerous things that may well see you injured or killed – but that should be very much the exception, and not the normal way of working in home waters.

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

The final charge is that the Royal Navy has lost its ambition – an easy and bold statement to say, but does it stand up to scrutiny? However you define the metric of the RN, you can see an organisation that is bold in its thinking and vision for what it wants to deliver, and how it wishes to deliver this.

It is an organisation that has a clear view of its role in the world, and which clearly understands what it wants to be in 20-30 years time. Few companies have the luxury of knowing they will exist in that timeframe, whereas the RN has the certainty of tenure to know that it will still exist – this gives it the luxury of time to plot and think in generational terms as to its aspirations and ambition.

When you look at the vision of the RN in the future, as a globally focused force, operating some of the most advanced military technology on the planet on, above and below the water, and being able to work in partnership with friends and allies to maintain global stability – that’s a pretty hefty ambition right there.  Frankly, in this day and age the ambition to maintain peace, in a time of instability, is laudable and challenging.

The RN has strategic ambition and vision, but it has to balance off the blue sky thinking and opportunities posed by new technology and ways of working in years to come (e.g. remotely operated vessels, new ways of doing mine warfare, new technology to fight with and the like) with the practical realities of delivering operations now.

This calls for difficult decisions that don’t always deliver what people want to see. If you believe that the answer is to move to a different operating model, and to embrace new technology in this way, that’s great, but how do you do that within a finite budget and currently limited technology? Short of a Fisheresque revolution (e.g. paying off the Reserve fleet and building anew), it is hard to see how aspiration versus current delivery can be comfortably balanced off.

The letter states ‘if we don’t transform, we will fail and we will lose’, which is a strong statement to make. There is no doubt that the RN needs to be ready to fight tonight, next year and in 10 years time, and this will call for very different ways of doing business.

The challenge is trying to not just be ready to fight in 10 years with the technology we think will be available, but in also ensuring that we are ‘ready to fight tonight’ too, which requires a different approach. Balancing the two off, to ensure that the current RN and the future RN are equally capable of getting the right outcome is the challenge facing everyone in the Service from Able Seaman to Admiral.