Posts Tagged ‘Coast Guard Cutter Venturous’
Leadership Lessons from Veterans November 11 2011 one response
Over the past couple of years, I’ve had the good fortune to spend time with members of our armed services in leadership training sessions and on board the aircraft carrier, The USS Harry S Truman and the United States Coast Guard Cutter Venturous. I’ve learned a lot from the service members I’ve talked to about the value of training, preparation and teamwork. If there’s one thing I’ve heard more than anything else as I’ve spent time with members of the armed forces, it’s been, “Take care of your team and they’ll take care of you.”
In a dinner with retired U.S. Army Colonel Steve Dwyer earlier this year, he shared a great story about how he learned this lesson as a young lieutenant. I’ve heard different versions of his story again and again over the past year. On this Veteran’s Day, I spent some time reading the Medal of Honor citations for the five warriors who have received them for meritorious service in Afghanistan. You can read them here and when you do, you’ll see what I saw. In every case, the Medal of Honor winner was protecting, saving or recovering his teammates from enemy fire. Each is a story of a leader, at either a junior or more senior grade, taking care of his team by putting their welfare and safety ahead of his own.
It’s such a simple idea. Take care of your team and they’ll take care of you. What difference would it make in the world if this leadership principle was consistently applied in domains beyond the battlefield?
Thank you veterans, active duty and retired, for your service and what you have to teach the rest of us.
Picking Up and Letting Go at Sea September 16 2011 3 responses
About a month ago today, I was a guest on the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Venturous leaving their station in St. Petersburg, Fla., and getting under way for a patrol in the Florida Straits. In this last of the videos from the trip that I’ll be posting on this blog, you can see what it looks like when a Cutter gets underway with a lot of new crew members that need training.
Most of the video is shot on the bridge and you’ll see that there are a lot of crew members up there as the ship gets underway. In normal circumstances there might be 5 or 6 people on the bridge. Because about a third of the crew was new to the Venturous on this patrol, there were about three times that many on the bridge on day one so that the experienced crew could teach and train the newcomers.
One of those experienced officers was the ship’s captain, Cmdr. Troy Hosmer. He’s a 39 year old career Coastie and the Venturous is his fifth ship. You can spot him in the video by looking for the guy with the scrambled eggs on the bill of his cap. When you see him, you’ll notice that he’s a pretty quiet presence on the bridge.He’s clearly the final authority onboard but he gives his crew plenty of room to teach each other and make decisions.
Cmdr. Hosmer is a great guy to talk with and I was fortunate to spend a fair amount of time in conversation with him. One of the things he shared with me that first day was that he would have loved nothing more than to drive the ship himself. It’s his passion. He understands, however, that that is no longer his job. There may be no one on the Venturous who’s a better ship driver than Cmdr. Hosmer. He’s an expert in that domain. As he’s taken on higher leadership roles within the Coast Guard, however, his technical skills have become less important and his leadership skills have become more important. He’s not the take charge, be the hero ship’s captain that you often see in the movies. He’s a quiet leader who knows when to let go and step back so his crew can pick up new skills and step up.
By approaching his job in that way, Cmdr. Hosmer creates the bandwidth to do the things that only he can do in his role as captain of the Venturous. The only way that he can rise up to fill his role is if his crew rises up with him by building their capacity to run the ship.
How does that same dynamic apply to you in your leadership role? What do you need to let go of and let others pick up so you can do the things that only you can do given the role that you’re in?
What It Takes to Be Ready September 9 2011 no responses
There are a lot of memories coming to the surface as the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks approaches. Of course, some of the most vivid memories are of the first responders who showed so much courage and skill in the minutes, hours and days after the attacks. Even though they had never dealt with such a situation at the World Trade Center and at the Pentagon, they were ready to respond and saved lives in the process.
Last month, I got to spend a weekend with a ship full of 80 people like that when I was onboard the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Venturous. In the past couple of weeks on this blog, I’ve shared What I Learned on a Coast Guard Cutter and 3 Things The Coast Guard Does to Prepare for Emergencies. Today, I want to focus in one member of the Venturous crew that I spent a lot of time with – Main Propulsion Assistant Jim O’Brien. Jim is from Boston and is a 28 year veteran of the Coast Guard. He knows every inch of his ship and spent a good bit of time showing me what goes on below decks.
When you hang out with Jim O’Brien, you see a guy who loves and takes a great deal of pride in what he does. As you watch the short video that comes with this post, you’ll see Jim searching every nook and cranny of the ship with his flashlight looking for water or other fluids that might be early indicators of trouble. You’ll see how easily he can explain every system and function on the ship. You’ll see how he teaches his crew to pay attention to the details in the way that he does. (By the way, you might want to wear some hearing protection for the first minute or so of the video. It’s pretty loud in the cutter’s engine room.)
It’s people with the experience, passion and dedication of Jim O’Brien who get our first responders ready to protect and help the rest of us. He’s a leader in every sense of the word. He knows his stuff. He shares what he knows. He’s dedicated. He cares about his people. He teaches his people. He gives a damn in every respect. Thank goodness we have leaders like Jim.
3 Things The Coast Guard Does to Prepare for Emergencies August 30 2011 3 responses
The turmoil and damage caused in the Northeast last weekend by Hurricane Irene is just the latest reminder of how much we rely on first responders like the U.S. Coast Guard in times of emergencies and natural disasters. There was some dramatic video released yesterday of a Coast Guard helicopter rescue of a boater in distress off the Rhode Island coast during the storm. Military.com provides a nice summary of the Coast Guard’s Hurricane Irene operations in this article.
There’s definitely a lot of courage displayed by first responders in emergencies but there’s also a lot of preparation and training on display as well. As I wrote here last week, I recently had the opportunity to spend the weekend at sea with the crew of the USCG Cutter Venturous. The patrol that I was on was the first time on board for about a third of the 80 person Venturous crew. The training started immediately upon departure. Once we were under way, a series of drills were executed to get the crew prepared for emergencies that might arise. First up was a man overboard drill. You can see some highlights from that in this video:
The first afternoon at sea ended with an abandon ship drill and the morning of day two started with a migrant onboarding drill. Members of the crew were given the opportunity to come up with a plan for rescuing migrants from a raft, bringing them on board, securing them, processing them and sheltering them. Here are some video highlights of the drill:
Not surprisingly, because it was the first time doing this for many of the crew, there were some kinks and bottlenecks in the process. It was a very fortunate thing, however, that the crew had the chance to run and debrief the drill. Twenty minutes after it ended the commanding officer announced that he had just gotten word that the ship would be bringing 15 Cuban migrants on board in about three hours. He wasn’t joking. A drill had quickly turned into the real thing.
Next week, I’ll share a video of the crew preparing to bring the migrants on board but, for now, here are three things I learned about how the Coast Guard prepares for emergencies:
What I Learned on a Coast Guard Cutter August 22 2011 2 responses
For the past few years, I’ve had the opportunity each Fall to talk leadership with the newly promoted admirals of the U.S. Coast Guard and their Senior Executive Service counterparts from the Department of Homeland Security. I’ll be joining the group again this October and will be bringing a new perspective to the conversation. That perspective comes from a once in a lifetime opportunity I had last weekend patrolling the Florida Straits with the captain and crew of the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Venturous.
Last year, I wrote a similar post to today’s titled What I Learned on an Aircraft Carrier. Some of the lessons from the Venturous are in the same ballpark, but there are a number of new ones. I attribute the dichotomies to the difference in scale (The USS Harry S Truman has 3,000 to 5,000 crew members and is 1,092 feet long. The USCGC Venturous has 80 crew members and is 220 feet long.) and mission. As they patrol the Straits of Florida and the Caribbean, the crew of the Venturous may be intercepting drug runners one day, rescuing boaters the next and picking up Cuban migrants the next. I was only with them two days and, by the end of the second day, the crew had picked up a raft full of Cubans. I was in email correspondence with the executive officer, LCDMR Blake Novak, a few days ago and he wrote that by the end of the week that started with my stay onboard the Venturous had picked up a total of 80 migrants. For Coasties, it’s all about being prepared and adapting to the current reality.
In today’s post, I’m sharing a few of my high level lessons learned and this overview video of my time with the crew of the Venturous.
In the days and weeks to come, I’ll post more videos of specific tasks (or, as the Coast Guard calls them, evolutions) and additional reflections on what I learned onboard. For now, here are the headlines on some of my leadership takeaways from Venturous Commanding Officer Troy Hosmer, XO Novak and their crew:
The Lost Art of Killing Time August 16 2011 4 responses
This past weekend, I had the great opportunity to spend a couple of days with the crew of the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Venturous on patrol in the Florida Straits. I’m organizing my thoughts, pictures and videos from the trip and will have more to share on that in the days and weeks to come.
Today, I’m writing about the end of the trip. For operational reasons, the Captain needed to drop me off in Key West early Sunday morning about 10 hours earlier than the original plan of late afternoon. I stowed my bags at the Coast Guard station and set out for the day with my wallet, my cell phone and absolutely no plan whatsoever.
By the end of the day, I had:
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