Doing a Job (1982)
Doing a Job - The Management Philosophy of Adm. Hyman G. Rickover


 
  
  
  
  
   






  
	Admiral Hyman Rickover (1900-1986), the “Father of the Nuclear Navy,” 
        was one of the most successful—and controversial- public managers of the 
        20th Century. His accomplishments are the stuff of legend. For example, 
        in three short years, Rickover’s team designed and built the first 
        nuclear submarine—the Nautilus—an amazing feat of engineering 
        given that it involved the development of the first use of a controlled 
        nuclear reactor. The Nautilus not only transformed submarine 
        warfare, but also laid the groundwork for a whole fleet of nuclear 
        aircraft carriers and cruisers (which was also built by Rickover and his 
        team).
        
        The text below is an excerpt from a speech Rickover delivered at 
        Columbia University in 1982, in which he succinctly outlined his 
        management philosophy. His determination, clarity of purpose, emphasis 
        on developing his people, high standards, and willingness to give his 
        people ownership of their work had to have been very inspiring. He had 
	exceptionally high standards and was 
        known to take some of these same strengths to extremes, however, which 
        no doubt led to his reputation in some circles as being difficult to 
        work for. On that cautionary note, GovLeaders.org is pleased to present 
        Rickover’s own description of his management style. 

       
      Human experience shows that people, not organizations or management 
      systems, get things done. For this reason, subordinates must be given 
      authority and responsibility early in their careers. In this way they 
      develop quickly and can help the manager do his work. The manager, of 
      course, remains ultimately responsible and must accept the blame if 
      subordinates make mistakes.
      
      
      As subordinates develop, work should be constantly added so that no one 
      can finish his job. This serves as a prod and a challenge. It brings out 
      their capabilities and frees the manager to assume added responsibilities. 
      As members of the organization become capable of assuming new and more 
      difficult duties, they develop pride in doing the job well. This attitude 
      soon permeates the entire organization.
      
      
      One must permit his people the freedom to seek added work and greater 
      responsibility. In my organization, there are no formal job descriptions 
      or organizational charts. Responsibilities are defined in a general way, 
      so that people are not circumscribed. All are permitted to do as they 
      think best and to go to anyone and anywhere for help. Each person then is 
      limited only by his own ability.
      
      
      Complex jobs cannot be accomplished effectively with transients. 
      Therefore, a manager must make the work challenging and rewarding so that 
      his people will remain with the organization for many years. This allows 
      it to benefit fully from their knowledge, experience, and corporate 
      memory.
      
      
      The Defense Department does not recognize the need for continuity in 
      important jobs. It rotates officer every few years both at headquarters 
      and in the field. The same applies to their civilian superiors.
      
      
      This system virtually ensures inexperience and nonaccountability. By the 
      time an officer has begun to learn a job, it is time for him to rotate. 
      Under this system, incumbents can blame their problems on predecessors. 
      They are assigned to another job before the results of their work become 
      evident. Subordinates cannot be expected to remain committed to a job and 
      perform effectively when they are continuously adapting to a new job or to 
      a new boss.
      
      
      When doing a job—any job—one must feel that he owns it, and act as 
      though he will remain in the job forever. He must look after his work just 
      as conscientiously, as though it were his own business and his own money. 
      If he feels he is only a temporary custodian, or that the job is just a 
      stepping stone to a higher position, his actions will not take into 
      account the long-term interests of the organization. His lack of 
      commitment to the present job will be perceived by those who work for him, 
      and they, likewise, will tend not to care. Too many spend their entire 
      working lives looking for their next job. When one feels he owns his 
      present job and acts that way, he need have no concern about his next job.
      
      
      In accepting responsibility for a job, a person must get directly 
      involved. Every manager has a personal responsibility not only to find 
      problems but to correct them. This responsibility comes before all other 
      obligations, before personal ambition or comfort.
      
      
      A major flaw in our system of government, and even in industry, is the 
      latitude allowed to do less than is necessary. Too often officials are 
      willing to accept and adapt to situations they know to be wrong. The 
      tendency is to downplay problems instead of actively trying to correct 
      them. Recognizing this, many subordinates give up, contain their views 
      within themselves, and wait for others to take action. When this happens, 
      the manager is deprived of the experience and ideas of subordinates who 
      generally are more knowledgeable than he in their particular areas.
      
      
      A manager must instill in his people an attitude of personal 
      responsibility for seeing a job properly accomplished. Unfortunately, this 
      seems to be declining, particularly in large organizations where 
      responsibility is broadly distributed. To complaints of a job poorly done, 
      one often hears the excuse, “I am not responsible.” I believe that is 
      literally correct. The man who takes such a stand in fact is not 
      responsible; he is irresponsible. While he may not be legally liable, or 
      the work may not have been specifically assigned to him, no one involved 
      in a job can divest himself of responsibility for its successful 
      completion.
      
      
      Unless the individual truly responsible can be identified when something 
      goes wrong, no one has really been responsible. With the advent of modern 
      management theories it is becoming common for organizations to deal with 
      problems in a collective manner, by dividing programs into subprograms, 
      with no one left responsible for the entire effort. There is also the 
      tendency to establish more and more levels of management, on the theory 
      that this gives better control. These are but different forms of shared 
      responsibility, which easily lead to no one being responsible—a problems 
      that often inheres in large corporations as well as in the Defense 
      Department.
      
      
      When I came to Washington before World War II to head the electrical 
      section of the Bureau of Ships, I found that one man was in charge of 
      design, another of production, a third handled maintenance, while a fourth 
      dealt with fiscal matters. The entire bureau operated that way. It didn’t 
      make sense to me. Design problems showed up in production, production 
      errors showed up in maintenance, and financial matters reached into all 
      areas. I changed the system. I made one man responsible for his entire 
      area of equipment—for design, production, maintenance, and contracting. If 
      anything went wrong, I knew exactly at whom to point. I run my present 
      organization on the same principle.
      
      
      A good manager must have unshakeable determination and tenacity. Deciding 
      what needs to be done is easy, getting it done is more difficult. Good 
      ideas are not adopted automatically. They must be driven into practice 
      with courageous impatience. Once implemented they can be easily overturned 
      or subverted through apathy or lack of follow-up, so a continuous effort 
      is required. Too often, important problems are recognized but no one is 
      willing to sustain the effort needed to solve them.
      
      
      Nothing worthwhile 
      can be accomplished without determination. In the early days of nuclear 
      power, for example, getting approval to build the first nuclear 
      submarine—the Nautilus—was almost as difficult as designing and 
      building it. Many in the Navy opposed building a nuclear submarine.
      
      
      In the same way, the Navy once viewed nuclear-powered aircraft carriers 
      and cruisers as too expensive, despite their obvious advantages of 
      unlimited cruising range and ability to remain at sea without vulnerable 
      support ships. Yet today our nuclear submarine fleet is widely recognized 
      as our nation’s most effective deterrent to nuclear war. Our 
      nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and cruisers have proven their worth by 
      defending our interests all over the world—even in remote trouble spots 
      such as the Indian Ocean, where the capability of oil-fired ships would be 
      severely limited by their dependence on fuel supplies.
      
      
      The man in charge must concern himself with details. If he does not 
      consider them important, neither will his subordinates. Yet “the devil is 
      in the details.” It is hard and monotonous to pay attention to seemingly 
      minor matters. In my work, I probably spend about ninety-nine percent of 
      my time on what others may call petty details. Most managers would rather 
      focus on lofty policy matters. But when the details are ignored, the 
      project fails. No infusion of policy or lofty ideals can then correct the 
      situation. 
      
      
      To maintain proper control one must have simple and direct means to find 
      out what is going on. There are many ways of doing this; all involve 
      constant drudgery. For this reason those in charge often create 
      “management information systems” designed to extract from the operation 
      the details a busy executive needs to know. Often the process is carried 
      too far. The top official then loses touch with his people and with the 
      work that is actually going on.
      
      
      Attention to detail does not require a manager to do everything himself. 
      No one can work more than twenty-four hours each day. Therefore to 
      multiply his efforts, he must create an environment where his subordinates 
      can work to their maximum ability. Some management experts advocate strict 
      limits to the number of people reporting to a common superior—generally 
      five to seven. But if one has capable people who require but a few moments 
      of his time during the day, there is no reason to set such arbitrary 
      constraints. Some forty key people report frequently and directly to me. 
      This enables me to keep up with what is going on and makes it possible for 
      them to get fast action. The latter aspect is particularly important. 
      Capable people will not work for long where they cannot get prompt 
      decisions and actions from their superior.
      
      
      I require frequent reports, both oral and written, from many key people in 
      the nuclear program. These include the commanding officers of our nuclear 
      ships, those in charge of our schools and laboratories, and 
      representatives at manufacturers’ plants and commercial shipyards. I 
      insist they report the problems they have found directly to me—and in 
      plain English. This provides them unlimited flexibility in subject 
      matter—something that often is not accommodated in highly structured 
      management systems—and a way to communicate their problems and 
      recommendations to me without having them filtered through others. The 
      Defense Department, with its excessive layers of management, suffers 
      because those at the top who make decisions are generally isolated from 
      their subordinates, who have the first-hand knowledge.
      
      
      To do a job effectively, one must set priorities. Too many people let 
      their “in” basket set the priorities. On any given day, unimportant but 
      interesting trivia pass through an office; one must not permit these to 
      monopolize his time. The human tendency is to while away time with 
      unimportant matters that do not require mental effort or energy. Since 
      they can be easily resolved, they give a false sense of accomplishment. 
      The manager must exert self-discipline to ensure that his energy is 
      focused where it is truly needed.
      
      
      All work should be checked through an independent and impartial review. In 
      engineering and manufacturing, industry spends large sums on quality 
      control. But the concept of impartial reviews and oversight is important 
      in other areas also. Even the most dedicated individual makes mistakes—and 
      many workers are less than dedicated. I have seen much poor work and sheer 
      nonsense generated in government and in industry because it was not 
      checked properly. 
      
      
      One must create the ability in his staff to generate clear, forceful 
      arguments for opposing viewpoints as well as for their own. Open 
      discussions and disagreements must be encouraged, so that all sides of an 
      issue will be fully explored. Further, important issues should be 
      presented in writing. Nothing so sharpens the thought process as writing 
      down one’s arguments. Weaknesses overlooked in oral discussion become 
      painfully obvious on the written page.
      
      
      When important decisions are not documented, one becomes dependent on 
      individual memory, which is quickly lost as people leave or move to other 
      jobs. In my work, it is important to be able to go back a number of years 
      to determine the facts that were considered in arriving at a decision. 
      This makes it easier to resolve new problems by putting them into proper 
      perspective. It also minimizes the risk of repeating past mistakes. 
      Moreover if important communications and actions are not documented 
      clearly, one can never be sure they were understood or even executed.
      
      
      It is a human inclination to hope things will work out, despite evidence 
      or doubt to the contrary. A successful manager must resist this 
      temptation. This is particularly hard if one has invested much time and 
      energy on a project and thus has come to feel possessive about it. 
      Although it is not easy to admit what a person once thought correct now 
      appears to be wrong, one must discipline himself to face the facts 
      objectively and make the necessary changes—regardless of the consequences 
      to himself. The man in charge must personally set the example in this 
      respect. He must be able, in effect, to “kill his own child” if necessary 
      and must require his subordinates to do likewise. I have had to go to 
      Congress and, because of technical problems, recommended terminating a 
      project that had been funded largely on my say-so. It is not a pleasant 
      task, but one must be brutally objective in his work.
      
      
      No management system can substitute for hard work. A manager who does not 
      work hard or devote extra effort cannot expect his people to do so. He 
      must set the example. The manager may not be the smartest or the most 
      knowledgeable person, but if he dedicates himself to the job and devotes 
      the required effort, his people will follow his lead.
      
      
      The ideas I have mentioned are not new—previous generations recognized the 
      value of hard work, attention to detail, personal responsibility, and 
      determination. And these, rather than the highly-touted modern management 
      techniques, are still the most important in doing a job. Together they 
      embody a common-sense approach to management, one that cannot be taught by 
      professors of management in a classroom.
      
      
      I am not against business education. A knowledge of accounting, finance, 
      business law, and the like can be of value in a business environment. What 
      I do believe is harmful is the impression often created by those who teach 
      management that one will be able to manage any job by applying certain 
      management techniques together with some simple academic rules of how to 
      manage people and situations.
      
      
  
  
 


 
 
 



 ©1982 H.G. Rickover

    
