020- Deadlines

An  army marches on its stomach and a Navy sails on its paperwork. With  that said, I don't think the average author of the 100+ publications  that govern submarining (or modern navying in general) really ever stops  to consider the compounded burden that their publications are placing  on a command.  

It is a good idea to make it very clear what is and what isn't allowed  when it comes to the complex machines we sail on. Poor guidance and  publications can (and will) result in re-work, mishaps, and injury to  either the machine or the people who work with it. This is true for both  technical guidance (RPMs/SEPMs/QA/etc) and process guidance  (EDM/EDOM/Nuke Notes). So, it makes sense that we should remove as much  ambiguity as possible about what the right answer is when such questions  arise.

  However, an exacting need to eliminate ambiguity in all cases places an  unhealthy burden on commands to make everything into a rigid  process. Quals move from being a means of ensuring a sailor learns what  they need to do their job and morphs into a pseudo-legal document where  every mistake in the past must be covered, every possible evolution  should be a perform-only prac-fac, and every checkout should have a  rigid guide for what it will and won't cover. Memorandums meant to  provide a frank assessment of a division's performance become a  Draconian exercise in following the Naval Correspondence Manual. Binders  exist just to retain ancient paperwork that was made when your Chief's  Chief was in quals and no one dares to remove it from its holy place in  the limited locker space. 

 This says nothing about the sheer amount of man-power that goes into  meeting admin requirements. If you're lucky, the paper only has to up to  some JO or the Department Head for approval. But, more often than not,  the paper has to go to the Old Man himself. Assuming every level of  review takes 5 minutes per page (and another 5 for corrections), every  single piece of paper we route takes nearly a full man-hour of time to  route. 

 That's incredibly inefficient.   

Instead of spending time trying to make training more robust, seeking  the input of their subordinates, mentoring junior sailors, or improving  their own skills, leadership is forced to spend their time hurriedly  rushing to review an endless mountain of paperwork with arbitrary  requirements and deadlines. It runs departments, and entire ships, into  the ground. 

 -Wayne