Tell me and I forget,teach me and I remember,
involve me and I learn.
Quote often attributed to Benjamin Franklin, although no substantive evidence that Benjamin Franklin crafted this expression. The earliest partial match known to QI occurred in the writings of Xunzi (Xun Kuang), a Confucian philosopher who lived in the third century B.C.E.
Quote Investigator. "Tell Me and I Forget; Teach Me and I May Remember; Involve Me and I Learn". Accessed on July 5, 2023.
Once a year, all Navy ships undergo a thorough assessment, in which outside inspectors validate the ship's readiness. The ship as a whole and the crew's abilities and proficiencies are rated in twenty-four categories, on a scale ranging from basic Level One to advanced Level Four.
The purpose is to determine who much additional training the crew needs to be ready for combat. But if you assume that the higher a ship's level, the less time it would spend training at sea, you would be wrong. In fact, regardless of its readiness rating, every ship spends the next six months training at sea.
Thus there was no incentive to reach Level Four, and in fact, no ship ever did. Level One was the required minimum, and that was usually considered good enough.
Then Benfold came along.
Originally, my goal was to reach an overall rating of Level Two, but when I recognized the enormous potential of my crew, I raised the bar to Level Three, much to the chagrin of those who saw it as a quantum leap in their labor and my hubris.
I must also admit that, in addition to my noble motive of making the ship as good as it could be, I wanted to blow my archrival out of the water. Their assessment was scheduled to begin the basic Level One. The CO had no idea that we were laying the groundwork to shake things up a little. In fact, we were about to rock his world.
Our first challenge was finding enough senior people to supervise the twenty-four areas of testing. My combat systems officer hit me with the unexpected news that we had only twenty qualified people who were not involved in other critical operations.
Thinking fast, I said, "Fine - pick supervisors from the next group down. You don't always need a senior person in charge. It could be a young, third-class petty officer."
"That's never been done before," he said.
"See what they can do," I said. "The alternative is to do nothing, right? Let's assign senior people to the most demanding areas and work our way down to the junior ones. If we don't get Level Three in some categories, so what? We will get Level One or Two. We have nothing to lose."
As it turns out, the third- and second-class petty officers were so honored to be chosen that they worked hard enough for several of their teams to outshine those supervised by senior people. The search-and-seizure team was particularly impressive. We assigned it to one of the ship's most junior sailors because we suspected he had the ability to honcho it. The outside inspectors protested, saying they could not validate the work of an important team that wasn't headed by a commissioned officer. But I insisted, and the young sailor did such a fantastic job that the inspectors ate their words and placed us at Level Four in that category.
Breaking out of our stratified systems to trust the people who work for us, especially those at or near the low end of the hierarchy, was a useful, progressive change. It let us unleash people with talent and let them rise to levels that no one had expected, simply by challenging them: Make Benfold the readiest ship afloat. In that context, how could we not have done well?
It's Your Ship: Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy by D. Michael Abrashoff. Grand Central Publishing. 2007. p.146-148
And I wanted him to come and observe. And in the moment he said, “No, I don’t think I will.” What I sensed was, not that Dick Winters wasn’t interested - Lord knows he was - but he trusted me, as a subordinate, as a fellow officer - he trusted me to do it right. And to me that was the world’s greatest compliment. That he would say, “ No I don’t want to come out and monitor what you’re doing. I trust you to do it. You are a young company commander. I’m the old battalion commander. I was fired up because nothing inspires a leader more than being given a basic mission and no further guidance. “This is what I want you to do. It is up to you as a professional to get it done.” And that’s what Dick Winters did with me.
Band of Brothers Podcast, Episode 3 "Carentan" with Capt. Dale Dye & Matthew Settle. hosted by Roger Bennett.
Desire represents the willingness to support and engage in a change. Desire is ultimately about personal choice, influenced by the nature of the change, by an individual's personal situation, as well as intrinsic motivators that are unique to each person.
Knowledge represents the information, training and education necessary to know how to change. Knowledge includes information about behaviors, processes, tools, systems, skills, job roles and techniques that are needed to implement a change.
Ability represents the realization or execution of the change. Ability is turning knowledge into action. Ability is achieved when a person or group has demonstrated capability to implement the change at the required performance levels.
Reinforcement represents those internal and external factors that sustain a change. External reinforcements could include recognition, rewards and celebrations that are tied to the realization of the change. Internal reinforcements could be a person's internal satisfaction with his or her achievement or other benefits derived from the change on a personal level.
ADKAR: A Model for Change in Business, Government and our Community. 2006. Prosci Research. p.2,3
If you want to overcome the pull of the past - those powerful restraining forces of habit, custom, and culture - to bring about desired change, count the costs and rally the necessary resources. In the space program, we see that tremendous thrust is needed to clear the powerful pull of the earth's gravity. So it is with breaking old habits.
Breaking deeply embedded habits - such as procrastinating, criticizing, overeating, or oversleeping - involves more than a little wishing and willpower. Often our own resolve is not enough. We need reinforcing relationships - people and programs that hold us accountable and responsible.
Remember: Response-ability is the ability to choose our response to any circumstance or condition. When we are response-able, our commitment becomes more powerful than our moods or circumstances, and we keep the promises and resolutions we make.
Principle-Centered Leadership. 2009/ RosettaBooks.
"As officers, at a minimum, the boys are going to mimic your behavior. In our line of work, based on our personalities, they're probably going to amplify your behavior, and athletes are the exact same way. As leaders, as captains, as officers, if you keep your head, they'll keep their head. If you keep it together, they'll keep it together. And if you lose it, they'll lose it.
So I'm going to share with you the best thing I learned as a master chief when I was a new guy from a master chief in Vietnam: Calm is contagious."
