navy leadership case studies

• The Navy Museum Online Store
• International Journal of Naval History
• Naval Documents of the American Revolution

• Stocks, Bonds, and Planned Giving
• Volunteering
• Guidelines for Book Reviews
• Books Available for Review
• David T. Leighton Lecture
• Author Chats with Dr. Dave Winkler
• Directory of Naval Historians
• Oral Histories
• Norman’s Corner
• Upcoming Events
• Rent the Navy Museum
• Featured Videos
• Second Saturday Webinars
• Pull Together
• Thursday Tidings
• Our Partners
• - History
• - Mission
• - Board
• - Staff
• - - Join
• - - Renew
• - - Donate
• - Stocks, Bonds, and Planned Giving
• - Used Books
• - Volunteering
• - - Guidelines for Book Reviews
• - - Books Available for Review
• - David T. Leighton Lecture
• - Author Chats with Dr. Dave Winkler
• - Directory of Naval Historians
• - Oral Histories
• - Naval Documents of the American Revolution
• - Norman's Corner
• - Prizes
• - Upcoming Events
• - Rent the Navy Museum
• - Featured Videos
• - Second Saturday Webinars
• - Pull Together
• - Thursday Tidings

Admiral Jeremy Michael Boorda: A Case Study in Deck-plate Leadership

By CAPT James “Ros” Poplar III, USN (Ret.)

As a thirty-year Surface Warfare Officer from 1974-2004 I had the opportunity to work for numerous leaders but by far one of the best was Admiral “Mike” Boorda where our wakes crossed twice. First during his tenure as Chief of Naval Operations from 1994-1996 and secondly after his death at Arlington National Cemetery where he is buried next to my first wife Helene A Poplar.

Admiral Boorda was born in land locked south Bend Indiana to second generation Jewish parents who traced their roots back to Ukraine. He dropped out of high school to enlist in the Navy at the age of seventeen and found that the Navy provided the structure he at first disliked but came to embrace.

He was selected for potential commissioning under the Integration Program in 1962, by which enlisted sailors were admitted to the Navy’s Officer Candidate School  in  Newport, Rhode Island  and was commissioned as an  Ensign  upon graduating in August 1962. He first served aboard  USS Porterfield  as combat information center officer while a Lieutenant (junior grade).

Then Lieutenant Boorda earned his bachelor’s degree during his first shore tour as a weapons instructor at the then Naval Destroyer School in Newport. In December 1971, Admiral Boorda rose steadily through the ranks to include tours in Vietnam as a General Unrestricted Line Officer (before the designation of Surface Warfare Officer (1110) was created and ultimately commanded  USS Farragut  from 1975-1977.

Although I spent the majority my of career as a WESTPAC Sailor even though I had never met Admiral Boorda his reputation as a leader and Sailor preceded him. Through my shipmates located on the East coast I had heard of his well-earned ability as a naval ship handler. It was not uncommon for him as a DESRON or CRUDESGU Commander to have “Oscar” tossed from his inbound helicopter and then he would critique the respective ship’s ability to conduct a man overboard drill that he initiated. If warranted, he would then demonstrate to the chagrined Commanding Officer how to properly recover Oscar in a timely and seamanlike manner. I knew I had to meet this black shoe legend.

That opportunity came in 1994 when as a fresh caught Captain, I assumed the duties as a Branch Head (N512 Warfare Policy) on the OPNAV Staff and then Admiral Boorda was the Chief of Naval Operations. As a Fleet sailor and a novice in “The Building” I learned quickly that decisions were made via impersonal point papers and decision briefings for consumption by navy leadership. However, I vividly remember the change in leadership style when Admiral Boorda assumed the duty as Chief of Naval Operations.

Whereas before if the CNO had a question on the product the Deputy CNO (Three Star) would be the one responsible to answer CNO’s query. When CNO Boorda assumed the watch, he would frequently call the Action Officer (AO) directly, invite him down to his office to ask questions over a cup of coffee face-to-face, and then provide some friendly mentorship and career advice at the end of the session. To this day I vividly remember these conversations and the impact it had on me as a future Commanding Officer. He not only talked the talk, but he walked the walk – A Sailor’s Sailor.

I took immense pride as a Commanding Officer of two ships and as subsequently as Commander of an Amphibious Squadron of having a number of the Sailors I served with take advantage of the Seaman to Admiral program which Boorda made possible. My “sales pitch” was that if a white hat without an initial college degree could make it to CNO you could as well and to their credit a number of them did.

No one will ever know why Admiral Boorda took his own life, but he left his mark forever on the United States Navy and more importantly he left his mark on the current CNO Gilday and others who served during his watch. I can still vividly remember serving as an usher at the national Cathedral feeling a mixture of shock, grief, and even anger that our Chief of Naval Operations and the Navy’s senior Surface Warfare Officer took his own life.

Unfortunately, my first wife is buried adjacent to Admiral Boorda at Arlington National Cemetery. When I visit her grave, I marvel at the numerous mementos – medals, flowers, notes, and stones (a tradition of the Jewish faith) that are left on his headstone. Even though he is gone it is still obvious that many still pay their respect from the former Fleet Sailor.

I know Admiral Boorda shaped my experience as a future at sea Commanding Officer. In addition, he touched the lives of many Sailors, letting his simple actions as a deck plate leader who had been there speak louder than his words. Admiral Boorda you taught us well Sir and your legacy continues to this very day.

During thirty years as a Surface Warfare Officer (1110), CAPT Poplar, a 1974 University of Mississippi NROTC graduate, commanded two ships and an Amphibious Squadron, He has served on the Joint Staff, the SECNAV Staff, the OPNAV Staff and attended the US Army War College and has taught at both Vanderbilt University and the National War College.

Spread the word. Share this post!

george s litchfield

VIEW OUR PULL TOGETHER NEWSLETTERS

Center for Executive Education

Navy senior leader seminar (nsls) - center for executive education, navy senior leader seminar (nsls).

The Navy Senior Leader Seminar (NSLS) provides senior Navy Officers, Civilians and Command Master Chiefs with an intensive five-day executive education program that focuses on learning best leadership practices in strategic thinking, goal setting, effects-based thinking, risk management, financial management, innovative thinking, strategic communication, and organizational change. The program provides participants with the knowledge and skills necessary to effectively manage and lead increasingly complex Navy and DoD organizations. Learning is enhanced by the use of case studies, seminar-style discussions, small-team exercises, practical applications, and peer-learning. Participants are introduced to subject matter experts from across the U.S. who are well known within DoD and industry and who provide unique insights into how proven business techniques can be used within a Navy and military environment. The course is designed to better prepare senior Navy leaders to meet organizational challenges in their current and future assignments, and to empower them to become more effective change agents and better-informed stewards of the Navy’s resources.

Objectives / Desired End State

To learn directly from subject matter experts about strategies, policies, and resource issues shaping the Navy today and business processes to help achieve organizational goals and mission.

To provide proven leadership tools to meet the challenges posed by today’s dynamic geo-political environment.

To acquire new knowledge and skills that stimulate innovative thinking.

To share expertise with peers, and to learn from and become aware of the broad range of perspectives represented by other communities within the Navy.

To enhance participants’ individual strengths to support desired changes set by senior leadership.

Program Manager

Bob Huddleston, a native of Texas, graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy with a degree in Marine Engineering. He served as a Naval Intelligence Officer, specializing in intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance at the tactical, operational and strategic levels. 

While in the Navy, he served in every major theater of the world, with assignments at the Squadron, Air Wing, Strike Group, Fleet, Joint, National and NATO levels. He conducted eight overseas deployments on numerous aircraft carriers and flagships and was stationed in operational intelligence assignments overseas and in the U.S.  Read full bio...

The Faculty

A diverse mix of leading academics and senior executives from both Navy and the private sector offer participants a range of perspectives through which course objectives are addressed. The NSLS provides participants with the opportunity to engage with Navy's leadership on issues ranging from the strategic to the granular. Private sector thought leaders and academic experts share their insights on established and emerging best practices on a wide range of business issues that are critical to the successful operation of Navy organizations.

The Location

The NSLS is offered both online and in-person at the Center for Executive Education on the campus of the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. Lodging is available on-base at the Navy Gateway Inns & Suites in historic Herrmann Hall.

Who Should Attend?

The NSLS is designed for Navy Captains, high potential Commanders, senior Civilians (GS-15 and equivalent) and Command/Force/Fleet CMCs. Participants are nominated by their Enterprise/Community leadership.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is the policy for class attendance? May I audit the program? What are the Technology requirements for Online iterations? What if I can't fully commit to the Online iterations? For these answers and more, please view FAQs pdf .

Contact: 

Quotas are managed by the NPS CEE Registrar: 831-656-3850 or [email protected]

• Leadership / Military Policy

Eight leadership lessons from the Navy carrier captain’s case

by Charlie Dunlap, J.D. · 27 April 2020

USS Theodore Roosevelt

Last Friday the media reported that Navy leaders are recommending reinstatement for Captain Brett Crozier , the former commanding officer of the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt ( Roosevelt ) who was relieved from command for the way he handled the COVID-19 outbreak aboard his ship.  This post examines a few leadership lessons that should be learned from his case.

CAPT Brett Crozier

Regrettably, the hagiographic narrative surrounding Captain Crozier is creating the very real risk that the wrong leadership lessons will be learned and propagated, irrespective of what does or does not happen to him personally.  If that occurs, the success of future military operations is imperiled, and troops could die.  Some things really can be that simple.

To be clear, everyone agrees military leaders have the responsibility for the health and safety of those entrusted to them.  Accordingly, Captain Crozier is to be rightly commended for being so concerned about the threat of COVID-19 to his crew.  That doesn’t mean, however, that he handled his responsibilities the right way.

In this case, it’s especially important that we remind ourselves that despite all the accolades showered upon Captain Crozier, “no one will ever objectively know,” as a Navy officer notes below, “whether Captain Crozier achieved anything for his crew” by his actions that led to his tumultuous relief.

Background  

Before we examine some of leadership lessons that might be learned, let’s take a look at some available information.  The most useful re-capitulation of the series of events is in the timeline found here assembled by Defense One’s deputy editor, Bradley Peniston – and I encourage you to review it.

Secretary Modly

In a nutshell, cases of COVID-19 began to appear on the Roosevelt on March 22.  On March 26, COVID-19 testing began for the entire crew, and Acting Secretary of the Navy (SECNAV), Thomas B. Modly , a Naval Academy graduate and former Navy pilot, reported that the Roosevelt would be docking at Guam, but only those needing treatment would be allowed to leave the pier.

Peniston says that on March 29 th :

“Crozier and his superior officers are “struggling to reach a consensus on a plan of action, according to three people familiar with the discussions,” the Washington Post reported .  “Among them were Rear Adm. Stuart Baker , who was embarked on the ship as its strike group commander, and Adm. John Aquilino , the commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.  Both admirals favored smaller mitigation efforts than Crozier wanted because of concerns about taking the carrier out of action and jeopardizing the mission.”

Peniston relates the events of March 30 this way:

“[The SECNAV’s chief of staff] talks with Crozier by telephone, according to Modly, who said his staffer made it “very clear that if [Crozier] felt that he was not getting the proper response from his chain of command that he had a direct line into [Modly’s] office…The CO [Crozier] told my chief of staff that he was receiving those resources and he was fully aware of the Navy’s response, only asking that he wished the crew could be evacuated faster.”

Moreover, the main addressee, “ Rear Adm. Stuart Baker, the commander of the Roosevelt’s multi-ship strike group and Crozier’s immediate superior ,” evidently was not consulted in advance.   Washington Post columnist David Ignatius says :

“Baker told [Secretary of the Navy] Modly that he pressed Crozier why he hadn’t cleared the sensitive message or wide distribution group in advance. According to Modly, Crozier answered that “he worried Baker would not let him send it to that broad a group.”  Baker affirmed to Modly: “He was right. I wouldn’t.”

Notwithstanding Captain Crozier’s email and memo indicating the Navy wasn’t moving fast enough to suit him, it does seem that the Navy was, in fact, working to move the sailors off the ship, but found there were practical issues to overcome.  The Washington Post reports :

“A senior defense official acknowledged that Crozier wanted to remove sailors more quickly but said his effort wasn’t immediately realistic”.

“The problem was there was no place to put them at that time,” the senior defense official said. “The governor of Guam had started working with the hotel industry to get the hotels reopened. But that doesn’t happen overnight.”

After initially seeming to be tolerant and even approving of Captain Crozier’s actions, Secretary Modly decided to relieve him from command and did so on April 2. .

(Parenthetically, “relief of command” does not expel an officer from the Navy, but rather is simply the characterization of the process when command changes.  When it comes at the end of a normal tour – which was not the case here – it is not considered pejorative.)

“We all understand and cherish our responsibilities, and frankly our love, for all of our people in uniform, but to allow those emotions to color our judgment when communicating the current operational picture can, at best, create unnecessary confusion, and at worst, provide an incomplete picture of American combat readiness to our adversaries.”

Secretary Modly insisted that Captain Crozier “was absolutely correct in raising” his alarm, but took issue with Crozier’s methodology:

“It was the way in which he did this, by not working through and with his Strike Group Commander to develop a strategy to resolve the problems he raised, by not sending the letter to and through his chain of command, by not protecting the sensitive nature of the information contained within the letter appropriately, and lastly by not reaching out to me directly to voice his concerns, after that avenue had been provided to him through my team, that was unacceptable”.

But Secretary Modly was met with a firestorm of criticism from the press, pundits, and anonymous sources within the Navy.  In an effort to assuage at least some of that criticism, Modly visited the carrier to speak to the crew.  Whatever his intentions, the visit went terribly awry, especially when Modly said Crozier was “ too naïve or too stupid to be a commanding officer .”

Secretary Modly later apologized for his comments, but it was too late as influential politicians were already demanding his resignation.  On April 7 th Secretary of Defense Mark Esper accepted Modly’s resignation which Esper said was of Modly’s “own accord” and had been tendered to allow the Roosevelt and “the Navy as an institution” to “move forward.”

In moving forward, are there lessons for military leaders?  I think so.  Although there is still much to learn about this situation, here are some possible lessons you might want to consider:  

The lessons:

1) Senior military leaders should not assume a “peacetime” mindset in the midst of the risks intrinsic to 21 st century “grey zone” conflicts.

The Roosevelt was operating in what most experts consider to be a precarious part of the globe where every action is scrutinized by opportunistic adversaries ready to exploit any apparent weakness on the part of U.S. forces.  It is hard to know the extent to which Captain Crosier might have – or have not – appreciated this reality.

Despite the brevity of his email and letter, Captain Crozier repeatedly contended in them that it was “peacetime” and that “we are not at war” – in a way that almost made it seem like he was trying to convince himself.  Inexplicably, he never even acknowledges any of the serious threats to what he calls “peacetime” in the Pacific despite the fact that they should have provided context for his decision-making that affected the readiness of the  Roosevelt .  His civilian superior, Secretary Modly, saw it differently than he did. Modly explained:

“[T]here is a larger strategic context, one full of national security imperatives, of which all our commanders must all be aware today.  While we may not be at war in a traditional sense, neither are we truly at peace. Authoritarian regimes are on the rise. Many nations are reaching, in many ways, to reduce our capacity to accomplish our national goals.  This is actively happening every day.”

Although the U.S. hasn’t had a formal declaration of war since 1942, it nevertheless finds itself in a dangerous world that includes “ grey zone conflicts ” with near-peer powers like Russia and, especially, China.

In fact, the Pacific is something of a powder keg.  In early January, the Council on Foreign Relations said “foreign policy experts ranked an armed confrontation over disputed maritime areas in the South China Sea between China and one or more claimants as a top conflict to watch in 2020.”

“While most countries in the Indo-Pacific region are battling the coronavirus pandemic, China has been active in the South China Sea, taking aggressive action against Indonesia and Vietnam. China’s belligerent behavior, including military maneuvers and large-scale deployment of military assets to the region, have caught many of its neighbors and the United States off-guard, understandable considering their preoccupation with the pandemic in their respective countries .”

Some experts connect such initaitives rather directly to Captain Crozier’s actions.  Andrea Widburg contended in the American Thinker that: “[b]y going public with his complaints, Crozier essentially sent a giant banner up into the sky announcing to America’s enemies that one of the primary weapons in America’s arsenal might be out of commission. ”

And it’s not just China.  Russia has been involved in several incidents recently in the Pacific area.  Military.com reported on April 22 that “Russia is testing whether the U.S. military has developed any weaknesses during the novel coronavirus crisis” and notes that:

“Air Force F-22 Raptor fighter jets intercepted two Russian maritime patrol planes earlier this month approximately 50 miles from Alaska’s Aleutian Islands.  About a month earlier, a pair of Russian reconnaissance aircraft were intercepted by U.S. and Canadian jets 50 miles from the state’s coast over the Beaufort Sea.”

Since the Roosevelt incident. Russia has shown its readiness to challenge the Navy elsewhere as well.  On April 20, CNN reported that:

“US Naval Forces Europe-Africa/US 6th Fleet said in a statement Sunday the Russian aircraft, a SU-35 jet, “flew in an unsafe and unprofessional manner” while intercepting the US Navy P-8A Maritime Patrol and Reconnaissance Aircraft. The US Navy it said was the second time in four day s that Russian pilots made unsafe maneuvers while intercepting US aircraft.”

In truth, the Pacific is a tough neighborhood where adversaries are taking advantage of a major American weapons system like the Roosevelt being stuck in port.

Over-reliance on legalistic notions of what constitutes “war” can breed an alarming complacency and a diminished focus on the purpose for which the Roosevelt exists.  Even if it is technically “peace,” it is a peace fraught with the risk of violence arising at almost any time, COVID-19 or not.

Military leaders who dismiss or downplay the risks grey zone conflicts present because they occur during a period officially characterized as “peace” put national security at great peril.  They should never forget the axiom that the “enemy gets a vote.”

2) Military leaders need to maintain situational awareness in a crisis.

Situational awareness (SA) has been described as “the ability to see what’s in the vicinity and anticipate what’s not — knowledge that can mean the difference between surviving or being killed in action.”  In its most basic military form, “it is knowing what is going on around you” so as to avoid the many perils that inevitably present themselves to those in the armed forces.

SA is a principle every military member needs to nurture, but especially those in command.  It is a challenge to maintain it when one’s own emotions are high.  Unfortunately, that may have been the case when Captain Crozier exited his ship after being relieved of his command by the Secretary of the Navy.

Notably, none of his officers or enlisted leaders appeared to try to break up the crowd even though they had the authority to do so if they wanted (and even if not in command, Crozier himself retained the authority to “quell…disorders ” ).

A former Navy warship commander described the situation in the Wall Street Journal this way:

We’ll never know how many (or, in fairness, if any) sailors might have been infected at the ill-disciplined event, but what we do know is that since that day an additional 700 members of the crew (including Crozier himself) have tested positive for the virus .

Again, maybe it was the emotion of the moment that clouded Crozier’s SA, but it is at exactly such times when a senior military leader needs to stay vigilant and attentive even if his subordinates don’t – or can’t – do so.

3) In crises especially, military leaders need to be careful about the example they set in their civil-military relations.  

Civilian control of the military was once thought to be so ingrained in the American psyche that few thought much about it .   In this instance we may never know whether the way Captain Crozier handled his dispute with the Navy’s civilian leadership actually helped or hurt the well-being of his crew, but we do know his disagreement with that leadership set in motion events that led to the forced resignation of the Navy’s senior civilian.

Some may say the Secretary got justice for the unquestionably ham-handed way he handled his visit to the Roosevelt to explain Captain Crozier’s relief from command.  Maybe so, but we need to be concerned about the example – and precedent – the actions by Captain Crozier set for others.

Decide for yourself: did Captain Crozier know (or reasonably should have known) that his unclassified email and memo deriding the Navy’s efforts to address the situation aboard his ship would reach the public?  If so, is that the way we want senior leaders to handle disagreement with civilian superiors? 

In any event, the cascading effect of Crozier’s actions was to deny the Navy the opportunity to manage the crisis as its civilian leader thought best for the service writ large .  Here’s how retired Navy Captain Kevin Eyer analyzed the the situation on the U.S. Naval Institute’s blog :

“ Captain Crozier precipitated the removal of one of the Navy’s few, most powerful strategic assets from the playing board. This hole cannot be filled without machinations that leave other holes and drag thousands of sailors back to long deployments early. The Navy was not allowed to work to a strategic “soft-fall,” and our potential enemies were given a wrong signal. That, if nothing else, cannot be forgiven .”

In his statement at the time of Captain Crozier’s relief, Secretary Modly was clearly bothered by the seeds of doubt about the Navy and its leadership Captain Crozier’s missive seemed to plant in the minds of the public, not to mention those in uniform:

“It was sent outside the chain of command, at the same time the rest of the Navy was fully responding.  Worse, the Captain’s actions made his Sailors, their families, and many in the public believe that his letter was the only reason help from our larger Navy family was forthcoming, which was hardly the case.”

It is simply wrong to imply that Captain Crozier’s seniors were any less concerned about the health and safety of his crew than he was.  Yes, Crozier was directly responsible for his 4,800-person crew, but Navy senior leaders are accountable for more than 347,000 sailors.

This incident could make civilian leaders understandably doubt whether they can still trust military leaders, particularly when they come to conclusions at odds with those of their uniformed subordinates.  Conversely, as my friend retired Brig Gen. Russ Kilpatrick pointed out to me,  the equal danger is the episode’s potential to foster military distrust of civilian leadership.

Such doubts and mutual distrust can damage the kind of civil-military relations America needs to face the multiple threats we see today.  We can’t forget General Jim Mattis’ astute observation that military operations occur at the “ speed of trust .”

Captain Crozier seemed to believe he was entitled to circumvent the staffing procedures the Navy employs for emergencies.  Consider that in the 1983 case of Chappell v. Wallace the Supreme Court warned:

“The inescapable demands of military discipline and obedience to orders cannot be taught on battlefields; the habit of immediate compliance with military procedures and orders must be virtually reflex, with no time for debate or reflection.”

Again, many may revel in Captain Crozier’s supposed “victory” over his civilian leader, but the way he handled this incident cannot help but to erode the trust and mutual confidence that underpins effective military-civilian relations.  This is no doubt a reminder to civilian leaders that a shrewd military officer might be able to leverage the public’s affection and trust for those in the armed forces against them.  Civilian leaders just don’t enjoy the same popularity with the citizenry.

Indeed, it very well could be that the public adulation Crozier accrued will serve to entice – or, perhaps worse, pressure – other military officers to do something similar.  In fact, if other commanders don’t publicly speak out demanding special treatment for their units in the face of lawful direction with which he or she disagrees, it might seem to subordinates that their commander doesn’t care about them.  That consequence has serious implications for military morale and discipline.

To reiterate, appropriate and productive civil- military relations won’t exist in a democracy if military officers begin to assume Captain Crozier’s methodology is the clever way of addressing differences with civilian leaders as to how to deal with a complex problem.  We should not want a system where civilian leaders come to expect that military subordinates will seek to circumvent them by appealing to the public when they dislike the direction the civilian leadership has determined is best.

4) In crisis situations, leaders need to think inclusively in terms of the organization as whole and not about particular career fields.  

The now-famous memo Captain Crozier wrote complaining that the Navy’s response to the COVID-19 outbreak on his ship was, in his view, inadequate, was itself curiously unaddressed.

To civilians this may not mean much, but within the Navy it has real significance.  The Navy has long been divided into a “brown shoe” culture of aviation officers and a “black shoe” culture of surface officers .  Increasingly, this divide is not serving the Navy well.  Reflecting on the “surface navy’s catastrophes in 2017,” two Navy lieutenants wrote :

“ We’ve had enough of the “brown shoe,” “black shoe” cultural conflict in our navy, and it’s not just a surface – aviation divide. The real travesty is that the Navy’s community culture has created silos of knowledge, and in fact, overt hostility to those who are nominally our brothers and sisters in arms.  It is this culture that ultimately led to a surface community searching for answers after a terrible 2017, when in fact the answers sat literally across the street in the Navy’s own aviation community. It is a moral travesty that it took the death of seventeen Sailors to force a reckoning in the SWO [surface warfare officer] community, but were there. “

At that time, the lieutenants were criticizing the SWO community for excluding the aviation community in the search for answers to a crisis manifested by a troubling series of ship collisions.  Crozier seems to have made the same mistake, but in reverse, that is, addressing the issue as if only “Fellow Naval Aviators” would be concerned about the lives of sailors and embarked Marines, and only aviators could provide answers.

The Navy has long sought to counter such a divisive approach by advocating a “ one team, one fight ” attitude, but the Crozier email indicates that at best, he did not internalize that mindset.  Actually, in times of complex crises involving diverse persons especially, leaders need to be inclusive in their thinking as solutions may come from beyond their own discrete career field.

It is unknowable if this episode would have come to a better end if, for example, Captain Crozier had sought to address his concerns through his commander at 7 th Fleet instead of omitting him in favor of a collection of “Fellow Naval Aviators.”  Still, putting aside the specific issues as to the propriety of Captain Crozier’s actions in the first place, it is well worth remembering that siloed advice is almost by definition going to be inferior to that produced by a process that brings to bear a range expertise on complicated problems.

5) In crisis situations, leaders need to put aside concerns about their own careers.

Captain Crozier concluded his email to his “Fellow Naval Aviators” by telling them that he was taking his action “regardless of the impact on [his] career.”  In point of fact, it was hardly necessary to tell experienced senior officers to whom he addressed his email with its incendiary attachment about the potential career fallout from the way he elected to deal with the crisis.

Circumventing what Captain Crozier derided as mere “normal staffing processes” (that would have included his immediate commander at 7 th Fleet) in what was a sensitive and high-profile matter being personally worked by the SECNAV rather obviously could have highly-adverse personal consequences for any officer in almost any situation.

Captain Crozier’s exact motivation for including a reference to his own career isn’t clear.  Was he hoping to prompt his “Fellow Naval Aviators” into protecting him from the wrath of the Navy’s non-aviator leadership?  Did he have a sense that the COVID-19 infection came from his ”Fellow Naval Aviators” as the Wall Street Journal would later indicate and wanted to cast his community as the solvers of the problem and not the source of it?  Was he anticipating his email would eventually reach the public, and wanted to ennoble himself in their eyes?

Regardless, when leaders allow themselves to articulate fears about their own career prospects in the midst of a crisis where other lives are at stake, it undermines the altruism of the message they ought to be seeking to convey.

6) Senior leaders, especially in complex emergencies, need to communicate in an effective way, and understand their options if they believe their concerns are being wrongly ignored.

According to a thoughtful and rather detailed analysis of Captain Crozier’s memo by Navy Captain Anthony Cowden, “there are effective ways of ‘speaking truth to power'” but Crozier’s memo “was not one of them.”  Cowden concludes his examination by saying:

Moreover, the popular narrative seems to suggest that Crozier was left with no other options to lodge his complaints.  Cowden suggests some in his analysis, but there are others.

For example, Crozier could have framed his complaint under the Military Whistleblower Act and made a “protected disclosure.”  In addition, Crosier could have made a complaint under Article 138 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice ( 10 U.S.C. § 938 ).  Crozier’s embarked staff judge advocate could also have conveyed his concerns directly to the Navy’s Judge Advocate General per 10 U.S. Code § 806 (b) .

7) Commanders (as well as the media and the public) shouldn’t confuse popularity with good leadership.

As noted above, the media has been quick to point out that after being relieved Captain Crozier was cheered by hundreds of fawning sailors as he left the ship and as they themselves were making their way to being ensconced in Guam’s tourist resorts and spas for quarantine.  (In contrast, the Army quarantined troops returning from Afghanistan in field conditions . )

Regardless, it’s axiomatic that great leadership is not a popularity contest .   For example, during the Civil War both sides suffered from commanders who were well-liked by their subordinates but terrible as military leaders.  Union general George McClellan was popular with his troops but is rated as one of the worst generals in history .

Writing in the New York Times in 2011, Professor Terry L Jones said that Confederate general Leonidas Polk’s military career was marked with “poor performance.”  In fact, Jones charges him with making “one of the greatest military blunders of the war” by occupying Columbus, Kentucky.  Jones explained how Polk nevertheless managed to keep his command:

“Part of his staying power is attributable to his popularity among rank-and-file soldiers. Regal and elegant, he looked like a successful general and was always affable and caring of his soldiers.”

Most people welcome popularity, but an Army officer gave this caution in 2017:

“[A]nyone who has been in command or who has been in charge of something knows how difficult it can be to get things done. The timeless phrase of “leadership is not a popularity contest” is constantly extolled as a guideline. Leaders should look after their people, their property, and accomplish the mission — sometimes that means doing things the followers do not like or understand.”

ADM Rickover

Interestingly, distinctly un popular leaders can still be enormously effective.  Admiral Hyman Rickover, who was characterized during his life as one of the “ most unpopular admirals in the Navy ,” nevertheless achieved greatness by introducing nuclear power to the Navy, which transformed it into the global force it is today.

In another fabulous leadership book, Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead , General Jim Mattis makes this observation worth pondering in assessing the current case:

“Building trust and affection in units is not the same thing as chasing popularity, which relies on favoritism, nor does it replace the priority of accomplishing the mission.  For this reason I came down hard on anyone who said, “Sir, my mission is to bring all of my men home safely.”  That is a laudable and necessary goal, but the primary mission was to defeat the enemy, even as we did everything possible to keep our young men and women alive.”

Captain Crozier’s concern about his crew is likewise laudable and resonated with his juniors as well as with many other audiences but – again – the point is that popularity with subordinates (or, for that matter, with the public) is not necessarily the right barometer with which to measure effective military leadership.

8) Don’t trivialize potential civilian casualties as a mere “political” problem.  

In his email, Captain Crozier declared that “at this point [his] only priority is the continued well-being of the crew and the embarked staff.”  However, when civilian lives are also at risk, the well-being of his own unit can never be a military commander’s “only priority.”

Is the potential of civilian casualties really simply a matter of “politics”?  In his campaign to get his crew into civilian tourist hotels, Crozier variously dismissed the challenges involved as merely a “political concern” or simply something requiring a “political solution.”  On April 1, a local elected official wrote Guam’s governor saying :

“I am disturbed by the reckless double-standard of potentially placing potentially exposed military personnel in local hotels…If sailors are placed in our hotels, we will be exposing lower-wage employees to greater risk, many of whom are older and have limited or no health benefits for themselves and their families.”

The Navy did eventually make arrangements where local workers would not have direct contact with the quarantined sailors, but health concerns remained , even as many Guamanians did support lodging the sailors.  For example, the Diplomat reported on April 13 th that Guam “has underlying health issues and a history of economic and political challenges that make fighting the coronavirus difficult.”  It then said:

“Dr. Lisalinda Natividad, a social work professor at the University of Guam, points to the island’s elevated rates of n oncommunicable diseases like diabetes, cancer, and heart disease as complicating factors. She says many are already living close to the poverty line, and the healthcare system is ‘insanely fragile’ and fragmented.”

These underlying health conditions put many Guamanians in the high-risk category for COVID-19.  In contrast, Captain Crozier’s crew – being young and healthy – was mostly in the very low risk category.  Although tragically one crewman did pass away from the virus (the Navy had removed him from the ship prior to Crozier’s letter), of the 17% who did test positive, 60% of them suffered no symptoms , and of those who did, almost all of the symptoms were mild (as of this writing only four are hospitalized, and none are in intensive care).

That Captain Crozier’s crew seems to have suffered a relatively low death rate from COVID-19 fits with Department of Defense statistics from across the services.  They show the virus’s lethality rate for those serving being substantially lower than that for civilians.

Specifically,  MilitaryTimes.com reports that “DoD’s death rate is at 0.4 percent versus the overall U.S. rate of 5 percent.”  (Of course, those figures for both DoD and the U.S. are fluctuating – and the overall death rate on Covid-19 is expected to be much lower, and will only be correctly judged once compared against all those who apparently had the illness but have not yet been tested.)

Diamond Princess

The markedly lower threat of COVID-19 to Captain Crozier’s young, healthy crew, undercuts his repeated comparison of his warship to the civilian cruise ship, the Diamond Princess .   The Diamond Princess –with 3,700 passengers and crew aboard – had many more people than the Roosevelt in the high-risk category (older passengers with underlying health conditions).  The median age of those hospitalized from the Diamond Princess with the virus was 75 .  Nine died.

Sure, the Diamond Princess ’ passengers (but not crew) were able to quarantine in their cabins – something few of the Roosevelt’s crew could do as Captain Crozier pointed out.  However, the Diamond Princess suffered only a slightly higher infection rate (19% v. 17%) than did the Roosevelt , so it’s not clear what advantage – if any – the cabins provided.

A sailor tests a gas mask during a Chemical, Biological and Radiological equipment test aboard the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt in 2008.

Moreover, Crozier’s warship, unlike the cruise ship, was organized, trained, and equipped to function in a chemical, biological, or radiological environment .   Furthermore, the Roosevelt had real-world experience with infections having dealt with a virus outbreak in 2002 that struck hundreds of sailors .

In short, no commander in the 21 st century ought to dismiss the potential of civilian casualties in any kind of operation as just being something needing a “political solution.”

Concluding observations:  

On Saturday the media reported that the Pentagon was still grappling with the question as to whether or not Captain Crozier ought to be reinstated as Navy officials are recommending.  Apparently, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley wants “a ‘full-blown investigation’ into the events leading up to the Crozier’s ouster” before making his recommendation.

That would seem wise.  The Navy has had a number of issues over the last few years that raise questions of morale, discipline and readiness (see, e.g ., here , here , and here ).  Both General Milley and Secretary Esper need to determine if this incident is a “one off” or yet another manifestation of deeper problems.  The $4.5 billion Roosevelt and its nearly 5,000 person crew are simply too vital to the nation not to be absolutely confident about its leadership.

Of course, it cannot – and should not – be an easy decision when it involves an officer with what we can presume to be an otherwise fine record.  In Call Sign Chaos  General Mattis recounts when he had to relieve a commander who was advancing against the enemy at a too slow and cautious pace.  When Mattis asked why he wasn’t pressing harder, the commander’s answer surprised him.

Mattis said the officer “expressed his heartfelt reluctance to lose any of his men by pushing at what might seem to be a reckless pace.”  Mattis was “torn by his answer” and explained:

What did Mattis do?

“On the spot, I relieved the…commander, a noble and capable officer who in past posts had performed superbly.  But when the zeal of a commander flags, you must make a change.”

It would appear that Captain Crozier had zeal, but the questions for General Milley and, ultimately, Secretary Esper, are: was the zeal the right kind, and was it properly vectored?  Or was Secretary Modly correct that Captain Crozier lacked sufficient appreciation for the “larger strategic context” and competing “national security imperatives”?  Did emotion make Captain Crozier too impatient about the pace of the Navy’s action and the leadership of civilian superiors?  Did he allow adversaries to seize the initiative in grey zone conflicts?  Did he overestimate the risk to his crew, and underestimate the risk to civilians?

Overall, did Captain Crozier make the right decisions for the Navy and, more importantly, the nation?  To be clear, Captain Crozier insisted that he was ready to take his ship into combat and fight adversaries if the nation was at “war”, but to what extent is he prepared to take risks to wage grey zone “war” when that’s the mission in our complicated world?

The stakes are high as our adversaries are closely watching how the U.S. military deals with the pandemic.  Retired special forces colone l David Maxwell , now a senior fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, shared this sober and unvarnished observation:

Col. Maxwell

“[W]e need to learn how to “fight through” this pandemic just as if it is a biological attack.  Our adversaries are observing and analyzing our actions and assessing the potential efficacy of using biological weapons against us, especially in the “gray zone” of great power competition.  If they assess this pandemic kicks our 4th point of contact they will be more likely to use bio weapons in the future.”

It’s hard to know what Captain Crozier himself thinks as he reflects on what’s transpired.  When Secretary Modly botched his visit to the Roosevelt , he concluded that his resignation would best serve the Roosevelt and the larger interests of the institutional Navy.  Evidently, Captain Crozier has drawn no such conclusions about himself, or the value of his continued service.

Regardless of the disposition of Captain Crozier’s case, it’s imperative that the entire incident be evaluated to see what lessons can be learned.  This post suggests some, but there are certainly more.  If we can distill this episode to build better leaders in the future, it will serve to further strengthen the Navy, the Armed Forces, and our national security, particularly in times of crisis.

Still, remember our Lawfire ® mantra: gather the facts, examine the law, evaluate the arguments – and then decide for yourself !

Tags: Captain Brett Crozier USS Theodore Roosevelt

You may also like...

Can a tweet be a lawful order yes, but not always….

24 November 2019

Don’t conflate issues of “proxy war” with contemporary U.S. security assistance programs for allies and partners

17 May 2020

Podcast: Brig. Gen. Gail Crawford on international & operational law challenges, leadership, and much more!

20 April 2022

• Next story  LENS Essay Series: “All’s Fair in Love and Wars of Self-Defense: In Support of the ‘Conservative Approach’ to Jus ad Bellum”
• Previous story  Podcast: A conversation with Gen. Martin Dempsey about the “Military and Coronavirus”

About Maj. Gen. Charles J. Dunlap, Jr., USAF (Ret.)

DISCLAIMER Please read

Duke University Privacy Statement

Recent Posts

• Podcast: “Business and American National Security: A Conversation with SEC Commissioner Caroline Crenshaw”
• Guest Post: Prof Pete Pedrozo on “Military Operations in International Airspace”
• LENS Essay Series: “Uploading Culture: Navigating the International Humanitarian Legal Framework Governing Cultural Property in the Metaverse”
• Guest post: “Resource Extraction in Outer Space – Pathways for the Future”
• Podcast: BG David Mendelson on “LOAC in 21st Century Battlespaces”

Subscribe to Lawfire

Your email:

• February 2024
• January 2024
• December 2023
• November 2023
• October 2023
• September 2023
• August 2023
• February 2023
• January 2023
• December 2022
• November 2022
• October 2022
• September 2022
• August 2022
• February 2022
• January 2022
• December 2021
• November 2021
• October 2021
• September 2021
• August 2021
• February 2021
• January 2021
• December 2020
• November 2020
• October 2020
• September 2020
• August 2020
• February 2020
• January 2020
• December 2019
• November 2019
• October 2019
• September 2019
• August 2019
• February 2019
• January 2019
• December 2018
• November 2018
• October 2018
• September 2018
• August 2018
• February 2018
• January 2018
• December 2017
• November 2017
• October 2017
• September 2017
• August 2017
• February 2017
• January 2017
• December 2016
• November 2016
• October 2016
• September 2016
• August 2016
• February 2016
• January 2016
• December 2015
• November 2015

Subscribe to Lawfire RSS

• Northeastern University
• College of Professional Studies
• School of Education
• Education Theses and Dissertations
• Education Doctoral Theses

An intrinsic case study of the experiences of naval officers' leadership development

Your file is being processed

Return to Education Doctoral Theses

• Access search

College of Leadership and Ethics

The College of Leadership and Ethics (CLE) works through three lines of effort: education, research and outreach. The leadership and ethics area of study in the electives program and core curriculum is the key focus of CLE education. CLE’s leadership research, assessment, and analysis helps develop various leader development course curricula. CLE outreach includes support for leader development in various U.S. Navy communities.

College of Leadership and Ethics Offerings

Shaping the Future of the Navy

Our core offering is the Leadership in the Profession of Arms course, which provides in-resident students the opportunity to grow as future leaders. Students will focus on themselves as leaders, reflect on past performance, examine personal strengths and weaknesses, develop new competences, and strengthen their personal character, enhancing their ability to lead in a complex and dynamic environment.

• Professional Development

Broaden your understanding of leadership and ethics by pursuing courses for flag officers and their civilian senior executive service equivalents.

We offer support to the community for leadership development, ethical decision-making, critical thinking, moral reasoning, and cultural competence.

• Core Curriculum

Students will explore advance military and civilian leader's knowledge and develop skills that will help them to understand themselves and those they lead.

Incoming Students

Contact information, college of leadership & ethics, more information.

Next Steps Explore more on the core course and professional development—and excel as a leader

Upcoming Events

U.s. naval war college closed for the memorial day holiday, featured faculty.

Thomas E. Creely

Thomas Creely, Ph.D., is creator and director of the Ethics and Emerging Military Technology Graduate Certificate Program at the U.S. Naval War College, which conducts research on ethics of emerging disruptive technologies contributing to policy. He has ollaborated with Five Eyes The Technical Cooperation Project ELSEI, Special Competitive Studies Project, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DOD Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office, Defense Innovation Board, Cyber Solarium 2.0, and IEEE Society for Social Implications of Technology. He also serves as a subject matter expert in Women, Peace, and Security and serves on the WPS General Committee and Faculty Advisory Council.

Brandon L. Jenkins

Cmdr. Brandon Jenkins graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 2003. He holds an MBA from University of Florida, and an M.A. in National Security and Strategic Studies from the U.S. Naval War College. He served in HSL-48, HSM-40, and HSM-46, with deployments aboard USS Samuel B. Roberts, USS Leyte Gulf, USS Nimitz, and USS Farragut. Previously the Commanding Officer of HSM-46, he also served as an action officer at USSOCOM J-7. Cmdr. Jenkins's honors include Defense Meritorious Service and Meritorious Service Medals. He is currently serving as a military professor in the College of Leadership and Ethics.

Oops! Browser Problems!

Your browser does not allow javascript, please allow javascript to run in your browser in order to use this site..

Press Release

Maritime statecraft workshop vital to finding solutions to america's commercial shipping industry challenges.

Last week, the Secretary of the Navy and the U.S. Maritime Administration, or MARAD, organized a Maritime Statecraft Workshop, bringing together experts from the Navy, Coast Guard, Congress, federal agencies, industry, labor, and maritime think tanks. Held at CNA’s headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, the three-day workshop attracted more than 70 participants from 32 organizations.

“The group coalescing around this issue is growing,” said the group’s facilitator, Commander Bruce Kimbrell, Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Navy. “Our leaders see the need to do something about the crisis in the maritime domain: an ailing maritime industry and an aggressive and coercive strategic competitor.” Panels, speakers, and discussion groups covered a wide range of challenges to rebuilding U.S. maritime power, ranging from shipbuilding to shipping, growing the maritime workforce, and de-risking the maritime domain from our strategic competitors.

The workshop was a follow-on to the bipartisan National Maritime Strategy Workshop in November 2023, sponsored by Rep. Mike Waltz. This latest event was organized to delve into the Secretary of the Navy's vision for how the nation can implement national maritime strategy, and it focused on methods for employing maritime statecraft as a strategic tool to foster a more favorable global maritime environment.

Participants expressed confidence that bringing such a wide range of participants together is vital to finding solutions. “This is a full deck of players,” said Douglas McDonald, director of the Office of Policy and Plans at MARAD, “a convening of knowledgeable maritime stakeholders who understand the criticality of what the merchant marine means to economic and national security.”

Congress has tasked MARAD, the Department of Transportation agency responsible for America's waterborne transportation system, with developing a new National Maritime Strategy. CNA is providing analytical support to this effort. The director of the project, CNA Principal Research Scientist Dr. Jerry Meyerle, noted, “The breadth of expertise at this workshop is extraordinary.”

The person with arguably the longest and most wide-ranging experience at the workshop was Federal Maritime Commissioner Max Vekich, who noted that he began his career in the industry 50 years ago as a longshoreman. Last week’s event, he said, “has been one of the most informative workshops that I am ever going to take part in.”

CNA is a nonprofit research and analysis organization dedicated to the safety and security of the nation. It operates the Center for Naval Analyses—the federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) of the Department of the Navy—as well as the Institute for Public Research. CNA develops actionable solutions to complex problems of national importance. With nearly 700 scientists, analysts, and professional staff, CNA takes a real-world approach to gathering data. Its unique Field Program places analysts on aircraft carriers and military bases, in squad rooms and crisis centers, working side by side with operators and decision-makers around the world. CNA supports naval operations, fleet readiness, and strategic competition. Its non-defense research portfolio includes criminal justice, homeland security, and data management.

Note to writers and editors:  CNA is not an acronym and is correctly referenced as "CNA, a research organization in Arlington, VA."

Ready. Set. Scale. Shaping leaders for hypergrowth

Imagine two talented entrepreneurs developing a groundbreaking, solar-powered flying car to revolutionize sustainable mobility. Propelled mainly by entrepreneurial spirit, charisma, and business savvy, their start-up builds a following as quickly as their electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) prototype grabs headlines and dazzles consumers. Orders pour in from across the globe.

Now comes a critical inflection point. Can our hypothetical company scale from building a handful of bespoke eVTOL prototypes to establishing a global assembly line without losing the innovative edge at the heart of its appeal? The founders cannot afford to wait, but start-ups (companies whose funding stage is pre-Series B) face obvious challenges, including securing capital, maintaining differentiation in an emerging market, and contending with competition from more prominent players. A less obvious challenge—but no less essential to success—is bringing new leaders into the ranks (potentially including professional managers from larger companies) and undertaking rapid, effective leadership development to avoid the pitfalls that keep 80 percent of start-ups from succeeding. 1 Based on a sample of 3,164 companies with Series A funding in 2011 to 2013, assuming six to eight years to scale or exit, PitchBook data, April 2021.

Intentionally investing in leadership development can help hypergrowth companies 2 Based on McKinsey analysis, hypergrowth refers to a period of rapid expansion with a CAGR of 20 to 40 percent and three phases: build and launch (annualized return on revenue [ARR] of $0 to $10 million); grow (ARR between $10 million and $100 million); and scale (ARR greater than $100 million). counter the forces that may otherwise stand in their way, such as limited management skill sets, less experienced talent, and relative inexperience leading larger teams. Once start-ups manage to emerge from the early stages in which many fail, they need sustainable leadership capabilities to give the organization the flex and muscle required to adapt as growth continues.

To be sure, this leadership transition will present challenges, especially because leadership development should be what we call “at pace, on purpose”—that is, enabling rapid transformation while preserving the entrepreneurial spirit and the core tenets of the organization’s culture. That’s a tricky balance, whether the CEO founded the company or stepped in during the growth phase. But it’s worth the effort. By recognizing the importance of leadership in the hypergrowth process and investing intentionally in its development, startups can not only make the transition to “scale-ups” (companies whose funding stage is from Series B to IPO) but widen their competitive advantage.

Leadership development is not optional

There are some things in business which, if done suboptimally, will not necessarily impose significant liabilities. Leadership is not one of these things. Well-developed, high-quality leadership has a profound positive impact on an organization and its operating model. 3 Claudy Jules, Alok Kshirsagar, and Kate Lloyd George, “ Scaling up: How founder CEOs and teams can go beyond aspiration to ascent ,” McKinsey, November 9, 2022. McKinsey research shows that the EBITDA of organizations performing in the top quartile of leadership is almost double that of others, while organizations are 1.9 times more likely to have above-median financial performance when the leadership team has a shared, meaningful, and engaging vision.

Case study: Investing early in leadership development

When consumers expressed distrust in providers of housing finance in an Asian market, one multinational conglomerate decided to act. Leveraging its brand reputation, it set out to show the market how housing finance should be done: with honesty, integrity, and care.

The company had successfully built many businesses before, but this was its first financial institution. Its executive committee didn’t want to acquire an existing company that was part of the problem, so it chose to create a start-up and attract the best external real estate and financial talent. Looking at the market potential, the start-up CEO and his new team felt confident and planned for hypergrowth.

But the CEO was also concerned. He noticed that his new team had significant differences in leadership styles and cultural backgrounds that were already leading to friction. And looking at the steep curve in talent attraction plans, he feared inconsistent ways of working and a fuzzy culture would, over time, slow the company’s growth. He wanted to get it right before launch.

The CEO chose to take his 30-person leadership team beyond the technical plans for growth. In multiple workshops with external facilitators, he and the team jointly defined the identity of the company by including its higher purpose, desired culture, and aspirational leadership style. The process provided not only a point of reference for the existing team but also a clear set of criteria for hiring future talent. With significantly increased cohesion, clarity, and confidence, the company entered the market.

In the eyes of investors, leadership quality can affect a company’s market value by up to 30 percent. 4 Derek Matthews, “Why founders should focus more on people development to increase startup value,” Forbes, January 31, 2019. In addition, savvy general partners in private equity know that founders and their top teams have an outsize effect on the culture and operations of a start-up—and they have a keen interest in evaluating leadership potential as they make investment decisions. This is because effective founder-led companies have the potential to outperform peers. For instance, S&P 500 companies in which the founder is still the CEO generate 31 percent more patents than the rest. 5 Chris Zook, “Founder-led companies outperform the rest—here’s why,” Harvard Business Review, March 24, 2016.

Yet investors also know that leadership is not a static characteristic and that leaders must evolve for a company to grow. This is especially true for start-ups, in which the skill sets and approaches crucial to early success are often quite different from those required as an organization rapidly grows. Why? Because start-ups typically have less infrastructure and fewer processes, rapidly changing environments, a strong sense of culture, founder CEOs who are often also direct managers, and senior leaders who take on multiple roles. Start-ups can’t wait until the dust settles to acquire and develop the leadership capabilities they need. For hypergrowth companies and typical market disruptors, the dust does not settle, and founders may not want it to: the excitement of the start-up mentality is arguably part of the ride that appeals to visionary founders (see sidebar “Case study: Investing early in leadership development”).

Priorities in tension: Moving at pace while retaining purpose

Two vital elements are essential for building leadership capabilities in a growing, founder-led organization: pace and purpose. Understanding each in the context of leadership development and capability building is crucial, as is understanding their interplay.

Pace is important because rapid growth often leads to instability, along with sizable gaps in leaders’ experience, skills, and capabilities. When it comes to purpose, the challenge lies in transforming leadership mindsets and skills targeted to the scaling ambitions of the organization, together with its vision. This is difficult, because the target is inherently a moving one: leaders need the stability to function with the size and scope of their existing teams but must also embrace the dynamism and ongoing growth that will match the organization’s evolution. 6 Chris Zook, “Founder-led companies outperform the rest—here’s why,” Harvard Business Review, March 24, 2016. Moreover, CEOs must manage any tension created between leaders who have been there from the beginning and those who arrive during the growth stage—coming from different company cultures and with potentially different ideas for how to scale.

The trick is determining how to keep the ongoing transformation occurring at a tempo that maximizes performance and aligns disparate units of the fast-growing organization while staying true to the company’s purpose. This means leadership development has to be “at pace, on purpose” to enable rapid transformation while preserving the entrepreneurial spirit and the core tenets of the organization’s culture.

Four essential questions to guide leadership development

As the founders of our imaginary eVTOL start-up grapple with the challenges of growing their successful enterprise, they often ponder big questions that get to the heart of the company’s present and future:

• Who leads? Expand focus beyond the early few leaders to the top 40 to 50 critical roles and build capabilities early.
• How do we empower leaders? Give leaders authority as a way to expand their strengths and confidence.
• How do we keep the entrepreneurial spirit alive? Create a “founder mentality” throughout the organization and infuse the energy of the early days throughout all layers.
• What’s needed from us? Founders and top leaders need to shift priorities from building to managing relationships with shareholders and investors and preparing for a potential IPO or challenging times ahead.

1. Who leads?

As an organization expands beyond the start-up phase, it’s vital to understand what its leadership entails and demands. This requires a fundamental shift in how leadership is conceptualized: for example, from focusing on founders and a handful of senior leaders to a broader scope, shaping a few dozen critical top roles into one connected leadership team.

As leadership grows in structure and scope, the vital task becomes clarifying and articulating the company’s culture—the values and behaviors essential to the next generation of leaders. This is a delicate task involving some tension: founding teams must simultaneously embrace adaptation while doubling down on core values (see sidebar “Case study: The top-team leadership journey at an e-commerce platform”).

Case study: The top-team leadership journey at an e-commerce platform

A European e-commerce company experienced high growth during the COVID-19 pandemic, followed by a hard correction. To boost competitiveness and move faster, they sharpened their strategy, updated their operating model, and evolved their culture. The executive team realized that the key to improvement was changing the leadership behavior of the executive team and the surrounding top 50 roles. These leaders needed to work in different ways with each other and with the company. A project team was convened to create a nine-month leadership development journey comprising diagnostics, multiday workshops, and one-on-one coaching. The executive team aligned on priorities in the new strategy, drove decision making according to new roles, and mutually supported each other’s growth and development. The top-50 team shifted from a strict functional focus to a shared understanding of full company context, developed new behaviors around decision making and empowerment to speed up processes, and integrated new communication mechanisms to stay more connected.

Specific roles may change even as the founders and top team are charged with stewardship of the company and its culture. While leaders may wear multiple hats in the early stages, organizational growth will likely call for more structure and clearer roles. Moreover, the small circle of early leaders must acknowledge that the expanding enterprise will demand leadership and people skills that may be outside of their current knowledge and experience. As the company expands, it becomes crucial to enhance the matching of roles and profiles within the organization. This requires a thoughtful evaluation to “match the A players to the A jobs.” It may require hiring new people with different skills or investing in upskilling current employees to ensure the right individuals are in the right roles.

2. How do we empower leaders?

As start-ups grow exponentially, new hires are rapidly brought on, mostly for expertise. This often results in a wide range of leadership experience and leaders facing an ever-changing and expanding scope.

Case study: How tailoring leadership development built capabilities at a new joint venture

Leadership development should support both the business and cultural growth. A Philippines-based telecom company created a leadership development program that began with these objectives in mind, tying business skills and capabilities to the company’s vision and values. After carefully examining where things stood, it envisioned and built solutions, implemented them, and then—crucially—sought to ensure the changes and benefits could be maintained. Ultimately, leaders were able to draw clearer links between business objectives and their individual and collective roles. They were also equipped to cascade core skills and capabilities to the rest of the enterprise.

Maximizing leadership growth across a growing company hinges on creating highly customized programs that focus on the development of specific leadership skills and enabling leaders to understand their roles within the company’s big picture. Leaders at every level need to see how they contribute to the strategic evolution of the organization and have a shared understanding of the full company context in order to act as enterprise leaders beyond their functional scope. To do so, they need the opportunity and support to rise above daily firefighting. This is particularly relevant for younger talent with less experience leading others. A fast-growing consumer tech and media company implemented this by sharing internal data, such as subscription evolutions, with all employees to ensure organizational focus went in the right direction.

In addition, it’s common for leaders to feel overwhelmed or even burned out due to the execution pace. Companies can get ahead of this by building resilience through nuanced exposure to high-stress situations with the opportunity for reflection and debriefs (see sidebar “Case study: How tailoring leadership development built capabilities at a new joint venture”).

3. How do we keep the entrepreneurial spirit alive?

To ensure the continuity of a start-up’s original energy and spirit throughout its growth, it is vital to infuse the core “founder mentality” across all layers of the organization. This can be especially crucial at the stage when the company has grown such that core leaders feel more removed from employees. That’s when it can be particularly powerful to ensure all individuals—regardless of level or function—feel empowered to take ownership of the company’s culture, while also embracing the dynamism and agility that fuel growth (see sidebar “Case study: How a hypergrowth tech company cascaded its culture”).

Case study: How a hypergrowth tech company cascaded its culture

A rapidly growing Singapore-based tech company needed to ensure that its core business culture evolved from tacit to intentional as it entered its next phase of growth and prepared for an upcoming IPO.

The company invited about 100 functional and business leaders to participate in an 18-month program to build leadership skills that reinforced its values and future direction. This approach enabled participating leaders to test and pass along what they learned, generating an amplifying effect that allowed more than 2,000 colleagues to benefit from the program.

As companies expand, senior leaders can recognize their essential roles as coaches, mentors, and champions of the company empowering the next cohort of leaders. From a leadership development standpoint, it is valuable to work with individuals who excel at handling challenges and help shape them into purposeful leaders who grasp the bigger picture. In our experience, founders who adhere to proper delegation also tend to see empowered employees in response.

As organizations become more complex, there is merit to functions implementing their own objectives and key results (OKRs) to imbue structure and accountability in a more scaled environment. However, there is a risk of functions becoming overly focused on those OKRs, which is where leaders can benefit from fostering a “one organization” mindset and identifying early on what sets the company apart. 7 Blair Epstein, Caitlin Hewes, and Scott Keller, “ Capturing the value of ‘one firm,’ ” McKinsey Quarterly , May 9, 2023.

Embracing creative disruption is critical in maintaining the entrepreneurial spirit. But the founding company culture itself must change so that the company may scale. Gone are the days when growth was the only metric that mattered; investors want returns, which can incite companies to take actions that go against the founding culture, such as eliminating perks and cutting the workforce. A healthy culture can keep company spirit alive while also adapting to new realities.

4. What is needed from us?

All CEOs overseeing a growing organization—regardless of whether they founded it—are not leading the same organization in the scaling-growth stage as they were at the start-up stage. This may sound obvious, but, in practice, it is no small feat for founders and early-stage CEOs to acknowledge they need to grow and adapt to the same extent as their organizations—let alone take action to do so.

Complexity multiplies as companies grow. This necessitates, of course, increased delegation so leaders and top teams can prioritize what will become their most important role: the management of relationships with key stakeholders, including shareholders and investors (especially in turbulent times or in preparation for an IPO). If this results in a compounding number of granular daily tasks and decisions flowing to top leadership for vetting, it spells trouble: the speed of decisions will no longer match the organization’s speed.

Case study: Scaling a food pioneer in North America

A fast-growing food company found its broad ambitions challenged by the limits of its operating model. The CEO was the sole owner of enterprise finances, making accountability unclear across functions and geographies. Resources weren’t allocated for strategic effectiveness and efficiency, and SG&A expenses were spiraling as a result. Talent shortages in critical roles were hampering growth, and the enterprise lacked a performance culture. The company acted, starting with a comprehensive diagnostic followed by the design of a blueprint for how it should evolve. A talent “win room” accelerated hiring for key roles and helped build out the performance management ecosystem. Early results indicate that the company’s operating model is now more intentional, with appropriate profit and loss accountability and resource allocation as well as tighter control over SG&A spending. And the right people are in the right positions, with employees across the enterprise understanding their roles and being held accountable for their performance.

CEOs of growing firms must discern what is needed from them as the company evolves. How do they want to show up? Instead of trying to do everything—as they may have during the early days—leaders need to ascertain what they can and should do, delegating the rest to a top-quality team. But they also need to marry this distance from everyday tasks with keeping the needs of customers at the forefront of their minds. Managing this simultaneous awareness and delegation is at the core of how founders can drive business value as the company grows (see sidebar “Case study: Scaling a food pioneer in North America”).

Engage the questions to drive growth

While every company is unique, all must adapt as they grow. We recommend leaders take these four questions to heart, reflect on them, and discuss them in depth within the organization. It’s worth investing time and space to dig in because leaders who discern and articulate meaningful answers to all four may derive tremendous value for their organizations. This simple checklist provides founders with an effective way to assess their own leadership health, as well as that of their top teams:

• What have we done to focus closely on our top 15–20 critical roles that drive strategic value, understanding what they are and what they do?
• Beyond existing leadership skills, which additional skills are needed to scale to the next level?
• Which efforts help us define the values and behavioral characteristics of a shaper-leader?
• What crucial learning experiences have we developed with ongoing development pushes and apprenticeship opportunities?
• What highly customized programs, including comprehensive class options for different topics, do we have for learners?
• What pilot projects are creating resilience to prepare leaders in advance?
• How are we developing purposeful leaders with a strong understanding of why they are leaders?
• How have we developed a unified organization with a culture of “whatever it takes” for customer impact?
• How do we continually ask how we can make it better, disrupt, and create “business insurgency”?

4. What is needed from founders?

• How effectively am I delegating, spending less time with day-to-day operations and more time on big moves to drive enterprise strategy, such as M&A or product expansion?
• What can we let go of so we can stop trying to do everything and work on things we care about instead?
• How are we staying in touch with customers to ensure we maintain a deep “frontline obsession”?

Like our imaginary sustainable-mobility founders who hit on something revolutionary, today’s hyperscalers often have the potential to disrupt life as we know it with new ideas and the energy, discipline, teamwork, and persistence it takes to turn those ideas into reality. That opportunity is a compelling call to leadership. But achieving it requires a steadfast growth mindset, a tremendous dose of self-awareness, a commitment to ongoing adaptation, and a clear understanding that in the ranks of the world’s best organizations, leadership development is never finished.

Arne Gast is a senior partner in McKinsey’s Amsterdam office, where Fleur Tonies is an associate partner; Claudy Jules is a partner in the Washington, DC, office; and Alok Kshirsagar is a senior partner in the Mumbai office.

The authors wish to thank Cornelius Chang, Kate Lloyd George, Michael Park, Karolina Rosa, and Joachim Talloen for their contributions to this article.

Explore a career with us

Related articles.

New leadership for a new era of thriving organizations

The State of Organizations 2023: Ten shifts transforming organizations

Scaling up: How founder CEOs and teams can go beyond aspiration to ascent