Navy enlistment questions

: Part of the problem is the Navy's culture of leadership, or lack
: thereof. As I understand it, other services begin training people in
: leadership at the E-3 level. In the Navy, leadership training barely
: starts at the E-4 level. Until a Sailor makes E-5, they get very
: little formal leadership training. Sailors are not taught to command
: or make decisions. They are taught to simply read the tech manual/PMS
: card/work package and obey it. Learning is by rote memorization of
: facts and figures. So now we have a whole generation of Sailors -
: people going up for the Chief's board - who don't even know how to
: make a simple decision without referring to documentation. Those who
: know how to make decisions are afraid to for fear of reprisals from
: above.

It seems that part of this stems from the very "specialness" of
the CPO itself, as viewed by the enlisted community. In my experience, a
PO was PO was PO. There were only really two types of enlisted people,
Chiefs, and everyone else. Thus, as pointed out, from E4 to E6 really
wasn't much more than a payraise. Indeed, going from seaman to PO was
really no more than a payraise plus a 2-day "petty officer indoctrination".
I would contrast this with, say the Marine Corps, where in my
experience the difference between an E4 and E5, let alone E6, could be
night and day. In terms of job responsibility, accountability, treatment,
etc. etc. In the navy, other than people looking to punch you on the
shoulder, getting a promotion often meant absolutely nothing to the command
nor how you were treated.
I'd also point out that this is a problem with the "professionaliztion"
path the CPO community took. The idea that Chiefs are 'managers' divorced
from "technical" detail has hurt. In my field, too many Chiefs wanted
administrative duties and did not keep up with --or even in touch with --
the changes in their fields. This was compounded by "zero detailing" where
background and NEC didn't matter. A lot of this, however, was a backhanded
effort to correct sea/shore imbalances and has hopefully been rationalized
over the last several years.
The same general theme seemed to extend to warrant officers. Most
navy warrant officers seemed to be strictly administrative types, very
few "techs" or operators. The Army, on the other hand, had a community of
warrant officers who were at that rank precisely because of their technical
expertise and operations skills ( helo pilots is another example ). As
a result, we navy types were usually trained by civilian, while our
army counterparts were often trained by warrants and SFCs.

Of course, I would argue that probably the biggest single effect
has been the "diamond" rank structure replacing the "pyramid" one. In
the modern US navy, recruits are often an oddity outside of bootcamp, and
even nonrates are in short supply. When most of your people are found in
paygrade E5 -- halfway up the rank structure -- it's little wonder that
they don't have experience leading. In effect, "middle management" has
taken over. I would suggest that a lot of this has been in an effort to
aid retention. Unable to get paygrade increases, the navy has responded
by simply promoting people faster into higher grades.

regards,
----------------------------------------------------------------