Good Enough

This is one of those days when I can't think of anything that's worth
writing about. It's been a decent day. Sunrise yoga, field day, material
inspection, quarters, burgers for lunch, a lazy afternoon with a little bit
of watch thrown in while the JOs had their Town Hall with the CO and Command
Chief, dinner, rendezvous with a patrol boat to transfer migrants, evening
reports, and a quiet evening (hopefully). Yup, that sums up the day. No big
thoughts, no great insights. No huge successes or massive failures. 

I'll call today good enough.

LCDR Charlotte Mundy
Executive Officer
USCGC DILIGENCE (WMEC 616)
**UNDERWAY**

It's Been Slow

It's been slow here recently, which was fairly easily explained by the poor
weather up until Wednesday morning sometime when the wind eased off its
howling. But the weather has been good for a few days now -- or at least not
bad. Maybe the wind is out of the wrong direction? I don't know. We've been
speculating about why things are quiet. 

And quiet is not bad, not by a long stretch. It's just odd. We've been
keeping busy with lots of boat training and drills. 1 January starts a new
quarter, new semi-annual period, and a new annual period. All our drill and
certification calendars reset at the start of the new year, so we have a lot
of drills to get through. So the quiet time is coming in handy. 

It is a little unsettling, though, to plan a full day's worth of training
and know there's a dang good chance that we won't get to do any of it if we
get busy with operations -- because operations always come first. I know
when I was OPS, my XO and I had a running joke about how many times and how
thoroughly I blew up his POD. It's not so funny any more...

We're also getting through Town Hall meetings with the CO, Command Chief and
the various paygrades. I'm usually a tad nervous putting these on the POD
because a) I know they're really important, b) they usually take at least an
hour, and often times a lot longer, and c) they're really important. The
Town Halls are a chance for the crew to speak directly with the CO about
what's on their minds. They bring up great ideas for improvements, concerns
we as the command haven't thought about, and vents we haven't heard before.
They also offer the CO and Command Chief the opportunity to explain things
on a more individual level to the folks who are actually doing the work.
That's why they're really important.

So all in all, I'll take the slow days, even if I don't understand why we're
having them. OPS can blow up my POD tomorrow. Or better yet, the next day...

LCDR Charlotte Mundy
Executive Officer
USCGC DILIGENCE (WMEC 616)
**UNDERWAY**

Wednesday Underway

We pitched around a good deal last night, looking for an upswell - downswell 
ride. It wasn't too bad for me, but I have a sense that some of the guys up in 
Deck berthing may have caught a split second or two of air on some of the 
swells.

My alarm went off at 0615. I called the bridge to ask about relative winds, 
temperature and true winds. Relative winds were 240 at 18 knots which seemed a 
little high for Sunrise yoga, but the temperature of 77 degrees convinced me I 
didn't have any good excuse to be lazy. Once I figured out from the comparison 
of true wind to relative wind that we were going downswell, I committed to 
getting out on my mat. BM3 JR joined me for about 30 minutes of peaceful 
stretching as the sun struggled to shine through the clouds. We got sprinkled 
on somewhere about the third sun salutation. There's some irony there...

After breakfast and a French press full of decaf coffee, I trundled up to my 
stateroom to work for a bit while the Engineers conducted BECCEs (Basic 
Engineering Casualty Control Exercises). I got some good thought work done, 
planning meetings and events for the weeks ahead before it was time to go to 
the Integrated Training Team (ITT) brief.

At the ITT brief, EO, OPS and I ran through our plan for a drill that 
incorporated multiple training teams. The Navigation and Seamanship Training 
Team (NSTT) ran a man overboard, shipboard pick-up drill. About one minute 
after Oscar (our simulated man overboard) went over the rail, the Engineering 
Training Team (ETT) simulated a loud metallic noise in the port side (NR2) 
reduction gear, which means the Engineering Officer of the Watch (EOW) had to 
ask the Officer of the Deck (OOD) permission to shut down the NR2 main diesel 
engine (MDE) so there wouldn't be catastrophic damage to the reduction gear. 
The Conning Officer then had to drive to approach the man in the water (still 
Oscar) on one engine. ENS LR had the Conn and did a great job with the 
challenging approach -- but I'm getting ahead of myself...we're still just 
briefing the drill. Once Oscar was recovered, the Medical Training Team 
(MTT -- not sure why it's a Team because MTT is really only our corpsman, HS2 
TW) simulated that the individual who fell overboard (a real person now, not 
just Oscar) had suffered a compound fracture to his leg when he fell.

Whew -- it sounds like a lot. But our Training Teams are pretty good at this 
stuff, and once the briefings were all over, we moved into our respective 
positions, conducted safety walk-throughs and waited for the Training 
Environment pipe.

The drill went super smoothly. Seriously, ENS LR handled the ship like a 
seasoned pro, even with one engine, picked up Oscar, and then three life rings 
that crewmembers had thrown over so "Oscar" could grab one while he waited for 
us to pick him up with the ship. The guys on deck got some handy line handling 
training in, the engineers got some good casualty response training, the 
bridge team got some ship handling and emergency response training, and BDS 
(Battle Dressing Station) personnel got some good first responder training. 
"Secure from drill, stow all gear."

And it was time for the Training Team debriefs, and then the ITT debrief. We 
passed all three drills. And **finally** it was time for lunch!

I had some more quiet time after lunch while there was departmental and 
divisional work going on about the ship. CO and our Command Chief held a 
non-rated personnel town hall meeting to get the opinions and pulse of our 
junior enlisted members. I worked on some JO OERs until my eyes felt like they 
were going to pop out of my head. At that point, I went up to the bridge to 
stare at the horizon for a few minutes, and ended up talking to some of the 
watchstanders up there about various career progression issues.

In the meantime, OPS was working out plans to transfer a handful of migrants 
to another ship for potential repatriation. We met up with the other vessel 
who was doing small boat training, and used their small boat to transfer the 
people and their stuff over to the other ship. All done, well before dinner 
time. We're getting so we can be manned and ready for receiving or 
transferring off migrants in about 10 or 15 minutes. Not bad considering we 
hadn't done any significant migrant ops for more than two years before this 
patrol.

A little more computer work after the migrants were all transferred, and then 
dinner. Conversation around the dinner table was fun as usual. Gentle joshing 
about each others' foibles. And laughing about having to soften the butter 
pats in our pockets before being able to spread them on the rolls. And great 
delight about the strawberry-banana milkshakes on the messdeck, especially the 
pipe announcing them.

Then it was off to prep for evening reports and getting the plan of the day 
(POD) templated out before the OPS Brief. We had a new style of OPS brief --  
OS3 JS got fancy with his weather slides -- very impressive. And he even put a 
couple cartoon jokes on the last slide, which was a nice touch. Then Evening 
Reports, to make sure we're all still onboard, plan the day tomorrow, wrangle 
a bunch of details, and laugh some more. I left fairly early to get the POD 
published.

And now it's 9 pm, and I think I'm gonna read my book for a while. Just 
another day underway...

LCDR Charlotte Mundy
Executive Officer
USCGC DILIGENCE (WMEC 616)
**UNDERWAY**

Big Thoughts Continued

Going back to a post from a couple weeks ago...


I suspect the NE quadrant (good mission/good admin) is a combination of 
training and proficiency, hard work, attention to detail, high standards, and 
a good dose of luck. The SW quadrant (poor mission/poor admin) is laziness and 
lack of luck. The SE quadrant (good mission/poor admin) is pure  damn good 
luck with a small dose of proficiency mixed in. The NW quadrant (poor 
mission/good
admin) is where the heart of my quandary lies.

There's more to mission effectiveness than just being good at knowing the 
policy, being good technically with the tools, paying attention to the details 
and good comms/teamwork. Luck does play a huge part in finding the go-fast, or 
seeing the PIW (pee-eye-double you = person in the water). If you think you 
have all the things in the first list, but never actually have to put it into 
action during a real case, how do you know if you're just good at training in 
scenarios or can actually do it for realsies?

And maybe "luck" isn't the right word. It's more of being in the right place 
at the right time, or the right place at the wrong time -- because our 
operations are mostly about responding to people in crises. We are in the 
business of disaster response, whether it's traditional search and rescue or 
natural or manmade disaster response. The explosion of Deepwater Horizon, 
Superstorm Sandy, Hurricane Katrina, the earthquake in Haiti, the tsunami in 
Indonesia -- the Coast Guard is in the right place at a time when things are 
going extremely badly for everyone else. So I'm not sure I should call that 
good luck.

I think it's more luck in the sense of exposure to opportunity. You can't 
catch a drug running go-fast if there are none in the water within 500 miles 
of you. A particular, individual unit can't respond to a natural disaster if 
they're in drydock when the event happens. And so timing, and patrol 
schedules, and being in the right spot when something goes badly -- that's how 
units get involved in big cases. And if there are no big cases to respond to, 
how do we know if we know what we're doing? Because our admin is good?

Inspections, assessments and training team certifications can only tell you so 
much. No matter how good our training teams are, the training environment 
still relies very heavily on simulations. If real world experience weren't 
important, why would we still require boarding officers and boarding team 
members to get exposed to pepper spray before they're allowed to carry it?

I don't doubt that our crew is one of the best there is out there in the 
fleet. We communicate well; we know our tactics, techniques and procedures; 
we're proficient at working as a team; we know our jobs, trust our shipmates 
and take care of our equipment. Is there karmic backlash in hoping we get the 
opportunity to show it, when that means someone else has an insanely bad day?

LCDR Charlotte Mundy
Executive Officer
USCGC DILIGENCE (WMEC 616)
** UNDERWAY**

Long Day

So this is where being lazy early in the week really comes back to bite me
in the ass. I don't have anything to write about, I'm really tired, it's
been a crazy busy long day, and (not that I don't appreciate my blog
readers) the last thing I want to do is try to be coherent in the written
word.

We're on the first day of a brief stop. We were supposed to come in
yesterday, but gale force winds made us delay our arrival for a day. Much
easier to moor with 18 knot winds than 38 knot winds...go figure. But we
arrived in time to get folks out on liberty in time to watch the Playoffs.
About halfway through the Carolina v. Arizona game right now -- GO
Panthers!! I mean, we are homeported in North Carolina. 

But pulling in is always hectic and a little frantic. I'm really not sure
what happened between about 10 am this morning and 5 pm this afternoon. That
seven hours is a blur of Nav and Anchor Detail, Mooring Stations, getting
situated on the pier, getting trash offloaded and fuel onloaded, people
coming and going, Sweepers, Officers and Chiefs Call, Quarters, Liberty, van
runs, airport runs, supply runs, chasing 76 cats in 97 directions.

Here's to a well deserved break for the first time in 18 days!

LCDR Charlotte Mundy
Executive Officer
USCGC DILIGENCE (WMEC 616)
**UNDERWAY**

My Next Assignment

The Commander Assignment Panel met last week, before DC got snowed in. The 
list is out, so it's pretty official. My next assignment is in the Office of 
Cutter Forces (CG-751) at Coast Guard Headquarters in Washington, DC. I'll be 
working on policy development and budget justification for the major cutter 
fleet.

Now, despite the fact that this job was not one that I asked for (more on that 
in a sec), I am excited and thrilled to be going there. Don't let anyone tell 
you that HQ is boring or there's not good jobs there. A job is what you make 
of it -- and I have Plans. I have the opportunity to influence the lives and 
jobs of the people I'm closest to in this organization...boat people (more 
officially known as Cuttermen). If I don't do something good with this job, 
it's my own damn fault, not for lack of opportunity in the job.

One of the things that I think I'm going to have to remember on a daily basis, 
going to HQ directly from an operational unit, is that progress does move more 
slowly there. On the ship, I'm used to things happening fastfastfastfast. At 
HQ, I need to be prepared for them to move at what feels like a glacier's 
pace. But there are good reasons for that -- policy change can have unintended 
consequences, political ramifications, budget-based excuses, and/or just be 
plain bad ideas. The HQ review process is intended to protect us as an 
organization against those negative outcomes. And at least I know going in 
that things, even stupendously good ideas, can take a while. I know the 
building and how it works, and I'm looking forward to working with some great 
people I met while I was there last time around. I'll get the opportunity to 
refine one of my up-and-coming leadership pro dev topics: how to effectively 
run a meeting.

About getting a job that I didn't exactly ask for...my Assignment Officer was 
generous with his time and offered me the explanation below. He also called me 
a couple of weeks before and asked what my thoughts were on a couple of jobs 
that weren't on my e-resume, including the job I got. I told him a few things: 
first, I learned long ago not to ask for something I didn't really want; 
second, what I make of any job is up to me -- if I think it's a shitty job, 
I'll make it into a shitty job and if I think it's a great job, it has the 
potential to be the best job of my career; third, they're called "orders" for 
a reason -- I'll go where the Coast Guard needs me to go. But I did struggle 
with how to talk to the junior officers onboard about it. Not getting a job on 
my e-resume doesn't quite fit into the narrative I've built for them about 
"work hard, get great OERs, and that's the best way to get the jobs you want."

Here's the response I got back:
___________________________________________________________________________
This is a great example of where service need can
often times trump the desires of even the highest performers.  I do the very
best I can to accommodate cuttermen competing for a variety of assignments -
especially those outside of the afloat community in special assignments,
OCONUS and joint positions.  These are great opportunities for each member
and are great for the afloat community at large.  That said, I also need to
ensure cutter support/staff assignments at the headquarters and area level
are filled with well qualified officers as well.  Generally speaking, most
cuttermen due for staff are not always seeking this assignments.  I lose
many senior cuttermen for opportunities like Senior Service School, special
assignments, assignments in officer's secondary specialties where they are
needed when not afloat, etc.  Working alongside the commands on the cutter
forces staff positions, I make a concerted effort to ensure those officers
who continue to perform well in these staff positions are rewarded for their
performance and are able to continue their afloat careers in command or
other command cadre positions.  While this assignment may not be what you
were looking for, I have no doubt it will keep you on track for your long
term goal you mention in your e-resume comments of striving for command
afloat.  I would argue there is no better assignment than the division chief
positions at CG-751 where the service can leverage your most recent
experience as an XO...

In addition to service need like I mention above,  it's based on many other
things like seniority, where you currently are in your career and the next
logistical progression in the career path you've chosen (ie. Being due for
staff or operational assignment).  This was not at all the case with you,
but I see many times where an officer's sense of what is realistic for their
next assignment is not necessarily in alignment with the career path(s) they
have chosen.  That's where early and routine comms with your AO is critical
to make sure you are on the same page and considering the right/realistic
jobs for your next assignment.
_________________________________________________________________________

I truly appreciate the detailed explanation. In the middle of an insanely busy 
week, he took the time to provide me thoughtful feedback, and thoroughly 
answered my request for help.

Am I a little disappointed I didn't get to go play in Europe or sunny SoCal? 
Sure, but if I overlook the opportunities in this next job -- that's ALL on 
me. Now...bring me that horizon!

LCDR Charlotte Mundy
Executive Officer
USCGC DILIGENCE (WMEC 616)
**UNDERWAY**

Leadership Professional Development

I'm totally cheating with this post, plagiarizing an email I sent to a
friend who is starting her XO ride this summer. It's been a long day. 

She asked me for a list of the topics I use for JO pro dev a bit ago, which
is below with some notes on each topic. I also may ask the JOs for
suggestions for our early summer patrol. I think the 1st year ENSs may have
enough sense by then of what they don't know to have some good ideas for
topics.

Pro dev is Sunday afternoons underway, after Divine Services; I try not to
go for longer than an hour, but some of the discussions get carried away.
I'm also going to change it to "Leadership Pro Dev," away from just JO Pro
Dev, to encourage the participation of Chiefs and maybe 1st Class POs for
particular topics. Still mandatory for officers, but more encouraged for
Chiefs. JO watchstanders know they have to find a stand-by if they're
scheduled for watch. We wait for everybody to get there before we start.

Officer specific topics:
-- OERs: usually 2x/year because it's that important. I use a "Writing OER
Input" doc that I drafted a while ago and make the COMDT's Guide to Boards
and Panels mandatory reading prior to the discussion.
-- Officer workforce management -- usually in late spring/early summer after
the Officer Corps Management Plan (OCMP, on CG-12A's portal page; mandatory
reading prior to discussion) comes out. It's also helpful to have the latest
Active Duty Promotion List (ADPL) selection message (for any rank, really)
to use as an example as well. The stats at the bottom of the message are
great to talk about above zone selection and in zone reordering. This is the
enterprise-wide view (selection size, OOS, time in grade, etc), but usually
devolves into what this means for "my e-resume."
-- Officer career management -- usually in late summer/early fall prior to
submission of e-resumes. Good to review OPM-4's career management guides
prior.

General leadership:
-- Time management/organization: I try to offer different ways of managing
their time and organizing their stuff. This one is tough since each person
has to find what works for them, usually through trial and error.
-- Effective writing: Chapter 10 of the Correspondence Manual is the
required read-ahead. Also helpful to have a writing example to evaluate on
whether it is effective or not.
-- Leadership philosophy development: I know they get a ton of this at the
Academy, but it's interesting to see how their perspective changes very
quickly when their in an operational
environment.
-- Effective counseling: I ask the CPO Mess to lead this one; it's a good
way for Chiefs to work into that "JO mentor" role. It's good to link this
one to the Enlisted Employee Review (EER) session described further down.
-- External engagement: this has a homework assignment for officers to meet
with/invite stakeholders to ship, which takes some work on the XO/CO's part
to come up with good/reasonably accessible local stakeholders for the JOs to
reach out to (definitely lucky in Wilmington for that, with so many good
partners). Examples include: river pilots, local business coalitions, VFWs
or other military related orgs, local JROTC programs, fire dept (EO), police
dept (OPS), local volunteer/support groups (Red Cross, etc.). We start with
a discussion about "unity of effort" and the importance of working with
partners, with supporting documentation from COMDT's Guide to Boards and
Panels.
-- Flag management/service etiquette: this was a JO-requested topic; it may
morph more to general etiquette, so we can talk about nautical and service
traditions. The flag aspect can be good if you have someone in the
leadership team who has Aide experience or has worked closely with a number
of flag officers 

Enlisted workforce specific topics:
-- Enlisted workforce management -- usually early summer after Enlisted
Training and Accession Plan (from CG-12A portal site) comes out in early
May. Discussion about workforce pyramids, how the SWE process works,
ERATS/advancements, Rating Force Master Chiefs, A schools, etc. Once we get
talking about it, the questions become pretty broad reaching. One topic that
*should/must* be covered is the "Recommended/Not Recommended" question --
also should cover that in the next topic. Definitely helps to have a couple
Chiefs in the room for this one.
-- Enlisted Employee Evaluation Reports (EERs) -- New topic for this
upcoming patrol. Different roles for Supervisors, Marking Official,
Approving Official. I think we'll talk mostly about member's input, and how
the gets worked up the chain of command, but I may spend a few minutes on
the Direct Access process we use onboard to route the marks.

General CG knowledge
-- Appropriations structure: usually in late winter after the President's
Budget comes out (1st Mon in Feb). Very basic approps structure, and general
numbers associated with it. Gets to
"color of money" or "buckets of money" so when they hear AFC-45 v. AFC-56
it's not a foreign language. Dreadfully boring for most of them, but hugely
critical, IMHO.
-- Headquarters structure: early winter after Flag/SES assignment message is
released. I showed slides of CG-81's Org Charts for the upper levels and
their eyes all bled. Getting them to understand the difference between even
DCO and DCMS is a start.
-- DCO/Area/District/Sector/cutter interactions: General discussion about
the different operational levels; similar to HQ structure discussion, but
closer to home because we're talking about things the JOs tend to have heard
of/done. Also good to get into a small discussion of how logistical support
fits in there...though can lead to bigger discussion of operations v.
maintenance.
-- Mishaps/risk analysis: Use a couple case studies and relate to some
recent operational decision which helps to widen their aperture on risk
analysis/mitigation. I use a shipmate's mishap report from when he
intentionally grounded his CB-M when he was on the 87; he did a great job of
explaining risk v. gain. We reviewed these then talked about why we made the
decision to cut our patrol short after one of our SSDGs catastrophically
failed even though JIATF-S had an op pending they wanted to use us for.
-- Strategic document discussion: Not sure how I'm going to do this one --
there's so many docs to chose from. Maybe an overview of the major ones (CCG
Strategic Intent, Western Hemisphere Strategy, Cyber Strategy, Pub 1, Artic
Strategy, and Cooperative Strategy), and then chose one to get more in depth
with...though that means I'll have to actually read all the strategy 
docs...yeek.
-- CG Intel: Our new CO has an intel background so he gave a presentation on
our intel partners, CG intel structure and some of the types of intel we
work with. Need the right person for this one.

Other topics that have been suggested that I haven't worked in yet:
-- Award writing, especially just prior to awards season
-- Engineering principles, which I think could reasonably include a
discussion of the CG's maintenance structure/philosophy
-- Shiphandling principles in a classroom setting (though our debriefs are
pretty thorough)
-- Personal financial planning
-- Benefits discussion: could be combo'd with personal financial planning;
someone was asking specifically about the VA housing loan guarantee
-- Working with civilians
-- Where to look for "extra" money, i.e., backlog, security funds, POP Board
self-help funds -- could be a practical dovetail into the approps structure
discussion.

LCDR Charlotte Mundy
Executive Officer
USCGC DILIGENCE (WMEC 616)
Quarterdeck: 910-815-4528
Cell: 910-367-3328