{"id":14489,"date":"2019-02-12T19:26:56","date_gmt":"2019-02-12T19:26:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/uncategorized\/2019\/02\/12\/mcpons-marching-orders\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T18:47:48","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T18:47:48","slug":"mcpons-marching-orders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/news\/your-navy\/2019\/02\/12\/mcpons-marching-orders\/","title":{"rendered":"MCPON\u2019s marching orders"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It was six days before Christmas and the 15th Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy<\/a> glanced around an office nestled into the outermost E-Ring of the Pentagon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were a few photos taped to the wall. Several boxes of memorabilia collected over his three decades in the Navy were neatly stacked but mostly unopened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a work in progress,\u201d exhaled Smith, shortly before one of the pictures broke loose from the frame and hit the deck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But you can\u2019t blame him for not settling in after four months as the MCPON.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He never expected to take the post. He was dragooned to serve as the interim MCPON on June 22, a day after Steven Giordano suddenly resigned <\/a>following allegations that he fostered a hostile work environment there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It wasn\u2019t until Aug. 29 that Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson<\/a> named Smith as the Navy\u2019s top enlisted sailor. Instead of setting up a bureaucratic beachhead inside the Pentagon, Smith immediately launched into a flurry of flights across the globe on behalf of his boss, their service and our nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

South Korea. Italy. Boston and Philadelphia. A tour with CNO of hurricane-ravaged Panama City, Florida, a powwow with recruits and top training officials at Great Lakes, a visit to the 7th Fleet\u2019s flagship Blue Ridge in Japan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He served Thanksgiving mashed potatoes to the crew of the aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman as it sailed the Mediterranean Sea. He jetted to the other side of the planet to convene a Naval Station North Island meeting to find more ways to support sailors and their families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTravel is going to be something we do because you don\u2019t get a second chance to make a first impression,\u201d Smith said, before adding that he might \u201cneed to slow that a bit.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy Russell Smith poses for a photo while serving Thanksgiving meals on board the aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman. (Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Sarah Villegas\/Navy)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Living out of a seabag isn\u2019t unusual for Smith, who served on board the aircraft carriers Enterprise, Carl Vinson and Abraham Lincoln and the guided-missile destroyer Momsen, plus time inside SEAL Team 4.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the fleet master chief to the Navy\u2019s top personnel officer, he logged about 245 days on the road or at sea annually, he figures, but it\u2019s all part of a process of finding out what\u2019s happening on the piers, reporting the impressions of sailors to admirals in Washington, D.C. and then advising CNO on crafting policies that make sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGetting out and hearing firsthand what they have to say and seeing firsthand what they\u2019re going through and finding out what\u2019s on their minds is critical,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe other side of this job is where you need to bring those fleet comments and opinions into meetings where admirals are going to consider what enlisted people need and want, and then move the rocks that change the enlisted experience.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And now that he\u2019s semi-situated in the Pentagon, here\u2019s what he wants to change: cutting red tape and pointlessly difficult procedures that keep enlisted personnel from mastering their craft, especially the art of war at sea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He vows to end the distractions that block sailors from learning their trades and getting ahead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He demands ethical petty officers and chiefs who are trained to be leaders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And he\u2019s pushing for objective ways to measure performance across the entire fleet so that commanders can advance people on merit, judging them for their brains, grit and competence and not collateral duties or meaningless qualifications that won\u2019t help them do their jobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI want to avoid this becoming a bumper sticker, because it can if we\u2019re not careful, but it\u2019s critical that sailors get the sense of urgency that today\u2019s world situation brings to the table,\u201d he said. \u201cThe idea that we can just sail anywhere in the world that we want to without concern and then execute combat operations when and where we want to isn\u2019t going to be our future and we know that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson, left, congratulates Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy Russ Smith after announcing his selection as the 15th MCPON on Aug. 29. (Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Sarah Villegas\/Navy)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Smith wants sailors to \u201cbe more practiced\u201d in seamanship, their weapons and other skills that atrophied during two decades of ground warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He\u2019s helping to prod the Navy to \u201ctake away the things that won\u2019t help them\u201d survive combat at sea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe need to prepare more urgently than we have from a damage control, firefighting and readiness perspective,\u201d Smith said. \u201cThat muscle memory that gets built by skill and repetition and not focusing on collateral duties and warfare pins that are not in your skill discipline \u2014 things that are superfluous to what you do in your technical specialty, that distract you from being good at your job.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a swing back from a Navy that lurched too far into expanding warfare qualification so that more sailors could pursue them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reforming that is just another step toward ditching training and credentialing that won\u2019t \u201chelp them in their job directly and only distracts them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Smith also pointed to reforms he and other senior leaders are exploring to unburden sailor taking heavy loads of college courses just to get ahead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDon\u2019t get me wrong. College is incredibly important,\u201d said Smith.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt teaches you critical thinking and we need to emphasize taking college courses when available. But when you have sailors who are taking excessive amounts of college course while balancing sea duty at the same time they\u2019re trying to learn a technical specialty, that\u2019s not a good recipe for a ship \u2026 trying to get after the high-end fight.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy Russ Smith mugs with recruits at Recruit Training Command on Oct. 9 in Great Lakes, Illinois. (Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Spencer Fling\/Navy)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

While sailors relearn their reemphasized ratings, Smith wants the Navy to get better at evaluating how much they know and how well they perform their jobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He called the old ways of grading performance \u201csubjective\u201d and the push for new evals \u201ca revolutionary step.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It calls for stack up against a Navy-wide standard, not just against shipmates at their commands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are some glitches in the new eval system, like figuring out how to document qualifications and milestones that are part of the current write up section. Those records help advancement boards deliberate on selections but Smith expects it to get fixed over the next few months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re still working out some bugs and are going to have to figure out some things,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think when you ask for an honest opinion from a group of people, especially a group of master chiefs, on who likes the old eval system, about half of them will raise their hands,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s not because we necessarily like it. It\u2019s because we know how to manipulate it with tribal code and through reverse engineering to get most people to where they need to be. \u201c<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy Russell Smith, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson, Secretary of the Navy Richard V. Spencer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph F. Dunford, Jr., and Secretary of Defense James N. Mattis at Army-Navy football game on Dec. 8. (Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Sarah Villegas\/Navy)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To Smith, chiefs at heart are teachers, prepping young sailors for waging war at sea and then leading them through the fight. But the Navy has struggled for the past decade at developing enlisted leaders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The sea service once boasted commands dedicated to teaching leadership techniques and the courses were required for advancement, but units groused about losing sailors to the programs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fleets took on the training themselves and Big Navy shuttered many of the schools. But funding never flowed fully to the fleet efforts and trained shipboard teachers also didn\u2019t always materialize, Smith said, and the subjects and quality of the courses varied widely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSome were taught in three days like they were supposed to,\u201d Smith said. \u201cBut some were perhaps taught in a little less time. But now, they\u2019ll be taught with the same consistency all across the fleet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a top priority for the MCPON, who urges the Navy to \u201cdo more and step on the gas with deliberately developing leaders of character and sound ethical judgement.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He pointed to master training teams from the Naval Leadership and Ethics Center in Newport, Rhode Island, with detachments in Norfolk and San Diego, that will target junior petty officers and chiefs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTheir job is to travel and get out and train the messes around the world and ensure those foundational courses we teach are top notch, consistently delivered,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And he wants to make sure the Goat Locker isn\u2019t left out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe realized and recognized that if you become a master chief in 15 or 16 years and you don\u2019t become a CMC, you have no further professional touch points of education in your career,\u201d he said \u201cThat\u2019s not helpful or useful to you, so we\u2019re developing that course.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\t