What a teenager hunting submarines in North Atlantic can teach CEOs in San Diego.
The North Atlantic can be a lonely place at night. The ocean disappears into darkness beyond the ship’s lights, the wind cuts through layers of clothing, and the deck rises and falls beneath your feet as thousands of tons of steel push through the sea. Somewhere beyond the horizon, submarines may be operating. Above the water, helicopters launch into the darkness carrying crews who trust that everyone aboard the ship has done their job correctly.
During one of those deployments aboard the USS John L. Hall, I stood watch as Officer of the Deck. I was responsible for the safe operation of the ship and the lives of more than 300 sailors aboard her. What we were doing in practical terms was hunting Soviet submarines. Anti-submarine operations not only requires focus and patience, but massive coordination between other ships, land based aircraft as well as our own organic rotary assets. Multiple times a day–nearly round the clock–we were launching and recovering helicopters from a flight deck that looked impossibly small once the seas started building.
People sometimes imagine military leadership as a senior officer standing at the center of everything, personally directing every action. The reality is almost the opposite. The success of a warship depends on hundreds of people doing their jobs correctly, often without direct supervision, often under pressure, and often in situations where mistakes can have serious consequences.
One of the sailors on my watch team was about nineteen years old. He was not an officer, he was very junior (the rank of Seaman), and he was certainly not the person most civilians would imagine when they think of someone helping coordinate flight operations in the North Atlantic. Yet I trusted him completely because he had responsibility for running the flight operations checklist that determined whether we were ready to launch and recover helicopters.
That statement may not sound remarkable until you understand what the checklist actually represented. Most people hear the word checklist and imagine a simple reminder. Pilots have checklists, surgeons have checklists, and most of us have used some version of a checklist to make sure we do not forget something important. This was something different. This checklist was not a memory aid for one person. It was a readiness system for the entire ship.
Before flight operations could begin, dozens of conditions had to be verified. We needed accurate wind information. We needed key personnel on station. We needed a qualified flight operations officer in place and a RAST operator standing by. The RAST system, short for Recovery Assist, Secure and Traverse, used cables and machinery to help secure a helicopter to the deck while the ship rolled beneath it. We needed firefighting teams fully manned and equipped. We needed refueling teams ready. We needed safety observers in position. Announcements had to be made throughout the ship to keep sailors clear of hazardous areas.
Only after every requirement had been met could flight operations begin.
That young sailor was not simply reading a checklist. He was verifying the readiness of an entire organization. What made that possible was not luck, raw talent, or some unusually mature nineteen-year-old temperament. What made it possible was a system that had trained him, qualified him, taught him the standards, and held him accountable to them.
Long before that sailor ever stood beside me during flight operations, the Navy had begun preparing him. Like every sailor, he attended boot camp, where he learned the basics of military service, discipline, teamwork, communication, and accountability. From there, he attended technical training related to his specialty. When he arrived aboard ship, his education accelerated through divisional training, drills, on-the-job supervision, and the daily rhythm of shipboard life.
The Navy does not treat training as a one-time event. It treats training as part of the operating system. Aboard ship, we trained constantly. We conducted fire drills, damage control drills, engineering casualty drills, general quarters drills, flight operations drills, and weapons exercises. The tempo could be exhausting, but the purpose was clear. When something goes wrong at sea, people do not suddenly become capable because the situation is important. They fall back on what they have practiced.
This is one of the first major differences between the military and many businesses. In too many companies, training is treated as something that happens during onboarding, during an annual workshop, or when there is a problem. A new employee arrives, receives some orientation, shadows someone for a few days, sits through a few meetings, and is then expected to figure things out. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don’t. Either way, the inconsistency should not surprise anyone.
Training matters, but in the Navy, training alone is not enough. The next step is qualification. The Navy uses a system called Personal Qualification Standards, or PQS. Every significant responsibility aboard a ship has a qualification path attached to it. Sailors must learn the material, discuss it with qualified personnel, demonstrate proficiency, perform tasks under supervision, and eventually prove that they can execute consistently and safely.
For critical responsibilities, that process culminates in a qualification board. Many people assume the board exists to test technical knowledge, and of course technical knowledge matters. But the board exists for a deeper reason. It protects the system. The commanding officer wants to know whether this person truly understands the role, whether they want the responsibility that comes with it, and whether they have the capacity and judgment to perform under pressure.
In business language, the Navy is asking whether the person Gets It, Wants It, and has the Capacity to do it. The difference is that the Navy requires evidence.
A commanding officer does not qualify someone because they sound confident or have been around awhile. He wants to know what the person will do when the situation becomes unclear. Will they recognize when something is wrong? Will they ask for help? Will they notify someone quickly? Will they make the situation better or worse? On a ship, the most dangerous person is not the one who lacks experience. The most dangerous person is the one who lacks experience and hides it.
That is why qualification is not a bureaucratic exercise. It is a leadership safeguard. I have seen commanding officers decline to qualify people because they did not have confidence in their judgment. The issue was not punishment. The issue was readiness. If you are going to stand Officer of the Deck, Command Duty Officer, Engineering Officer of the Watch, or any other critical position, the system needs confidence that you can perform, communicate, and ask for help before a small problem becomes a major one.
That same principle applies in business more often than many CEOs realize. A salesperson who does not understand the product can damage trust with a customer. A project manager who does not raise a schedule problem early can create a crisis weeks later. An operations supervisor who does not understand the standards can allow inconsistency to become normal. A finance employee who skips a step can create consequences that are far larger than the original mistake.
I learned that lesson early in my Navy career. In my first division officer job, several electronics technicians destroyed the wrong cryptographic codes during a maintenance task. They had skipped a step in the procedure. As a result, we went an entire day without crypto for some of our radio equipment, which meant we could not receive certain encrypted messages because we no longer had the codes needed to decipher them. What might sound like a small procedural mistake had created a real operational problem.
The Navy took that seriously because small misses can become big failures. The sailors involved were disciplined and went to captain’s mast, which is a formal disciplinary proceeding before the commanding officer. To a civilian ear, that may sound harsh. But aboard a warship, procedures exist because experience has already taught the organization what can happen when people improvise around the standard.
This is where many companies struggle. They confuse procedures with bureaucracy and standards with rigidity. Then, when something goes wrong, they discover that the “bureaucracy” was actually institutional knowledge and the “rigidity” was there to protect the customer, the team, and the company. The lesson is not that every business should become military. The lesson is that if the work matters, the standards matter too.
Years later, when I began working with CEOs, I saw the same pattern in a different setting. A company hires a new salesperson and quickly turns them loose on customers. There may be some onboarding, some product training, and a few ride-alongs. But rarely is there a true qualification process. Rarely does someone have to demonstrate that they understand the company’s mission, vision, values, product knowledge, CRM process, customer conversation standards, and judgment before representing the business independently.
A Navy-style qualification system would look very different. A salesperson would first need to discuss the company’s mission, vision, and values so leaders know they understand the purpose of the organization. They would need to demonstrate product knowledge, especially around the products that drive most of the revenue. They would need to show that they can explain specifications, benefits, use cases, and limitations. They would need to demonstrate proficiency with the CRM system, not simply because the CRM matters, but because disciplined information flow matters. They would practice customer conversations under supervision before being trusted to conduct them alone.
Only then would they sit before the equivalent of a qualification board. The VP of Sales, COO, or CEO would not be asking whether they completed training. They would be asking whether the person is ready to represent the company without doing damage. That distinction is often missing in the civilian world. Too many organizations give people responsibility before they have earned autonomy.
The Navy taught me that delegation is not the act of handing off work and hoping for the best. Delegation is the outcome of preparation. When someone has been trained, qualified, tested against standards, and held accountable, a leader can trust them with meaningful responsibility. Without those things, delegation is often just abdication dressed up as empowerment.
One of the most counterintuitive leadership lessons I learned in the Navy is that senior leaders do not solve problems by stepping down into junior roles. The captain does not stand watch. The captain does not run the engineering plant. The captain does not take over someone else’s job because it is difficult or because the team is short-handed. The captain commands the ship.
If a department head told the commanding officer that he was personally standing watches every day because there were not enough qualified people, that would not be seen as heroic dedication. It would be seen as a failure of planning, foresight, and leadership. The captain would gather the executive officer, the department head, senior enlisted leaders, and other key people to solve the staffing and qualification problem. The question would not be, “How do we get the department head to work harder?” The question would be, “Why did we not build the pipeline?”
That is a hard lesson for many CEOs because the business world often celebrates the opposite behavior. The founder jumps into sales because the salesperson is not ready. The CEO handles the upset customer because no one else can. The owner approves every proposal, reviews every invoice, solves every operational issue, and becomes the answer to every important question. People call it dedication. The Navy would call it a system failure.
The job of a leader is not to become indispensable. The job of a leader is to build an organization capable of performing without constant intervention from the top.
One of the best commanding officers I served under was Captain Bruce McClure aboard the USS John L. Hall. He had high standards, but he also understood people. During our Mediterranean deployment, he noticed that sailors were staying out later in European ports and coming back tired for early watch turnover. Rather than ignore the reality in front of him, he adjusted the turnover time from 7:30 in the morning to 9:30. It was a small decision, but it revealed something important. He understood that culture, morale, and performance were connected.
Underway, Captain McClure had complete trust and confidence in me as Officer of the Deck. That made standing watch a joy because I knew he trusted me, and I also knew my responsibility was to provide him the information he needed. He did not hover. He did not yell. He was calm, engaged, and clear. He expected competence, but once competence had been demonstrated, he trusted the people who had earned that trust.
He also knew how to make the work feel meaningful. During underway replenishments, he liked to come up at full speed, which was not how other commanding officers drove thier ships. His line was that we were a greyhound and we were going to drive it like a sports car. People rallied around that. It gave the crew energy and pride. He was not just operating a ship. He was shaping a culture.
That may be the real lesson for CEOs. The Navy does not build ships that depend on heroes. It builds systems that develop qualified people, and the best leaders create the conditions where those people can perform with confidence. They train people, qualify them, set standards, enforce accountability, and then trust them to do the job.
That is how a nineteen-year-old sailor can help run helicopter operations in the North Atlantic. That is how a junior officer can stand watch with responsibility for hundreds of lives. That is how a commanding officer can focus on culture, readiness, judgment, and mission instead of constantly doing everyone else’s job.
Most CEOs do not need more heroic effort from themselves. They need more qualified people around them.
Training creates competence. Qualifications verify it. Systems make it repeatable. Standards make it consistent. Accountability protects it. Trust is what emerges when all five are present.
And trust is what allows an organization to scale beyond the person at the top.