Chuck talks Business

OK, What?!?!?!

This is installment three of Business Lessons from the Submarine Force and it’s one of my favorites.

We had a standing order that an emergency startup of a generator was three minutes.  The technical manual said “approximately five minutes.”  The explanation of the difference was that three was nearly four, which is approximately five.

Believe me, this was something that you wanted running in a hurry, so the logic followed. Long story short without this generator, you were completely on battery power.  Nearly every piece of equipment would be off and the only thing that you could hear was the sound that the battery meter made.  It clicked each time a little battery power went away.  Usually this was four or five times a minute.  Without this generator is was more like five or six times a second.  You could literally hear a countdown to no power.

Submarine sailors have this ratio “For every one dive, we prefer to have one surface.”  It was better to be close and on the surface than perfect and not.

OK Chuck, but what does that have to do with my business?  It’s about velocity and not letting perfect be the enemy of good.

Are you putting something off because you are not 100% sure?  I attended a briefing from General Collin Powell once where he said “take in information until you are 40-70% sure, then switch to taking action.”

Are you waiting for the sign that your plan will succeed?  Or are you starting your plan with the expectation that you may have to modify it as you go?  It is not possible to steer a ship that is not moving.  Take some action on a new project today.

Three is nearly four, which is approximately five.

What actions are you going to take today?

Chuck Smith Submarine business lesson Submarine business lesson

Business Lesson from the Submarine Force Number 2.

Life is Simple,  … either you’re qualified or you’re Not!

I arrived on the boat and the first thing that I got was a stack of “qual cards.”  You don’t touch anything on a submarine if you are not qualified.  I mean anything, the first qual card that I had to do was phone talker.  Think about that, you can’t use a phone without being qualified!  I can think of a few places that I have phoned that could use a qual card.

That stack had 13 qual cards initially.  One of them was special, it was my submarine qualification card.  All submariners get one.  There were over 70 signatures (sig) needed.  In order to get a sig, you needed to show that you knew all of the text book stuff about the system and them things like locations, operations, what to do if something went wrong, etc.  This process was called a “check out.”

I once saw a non-qual attempt a check out without knowing what he was doing.  He promptly had a new necklace made from a spoon with a hole punched in the handle and some string.  He has soon going throughout the boat touching valves and saying “I know where this valve is, because I touched it with my spoon.”  Submarine sailors have a sense of humor.

Qualifying in submarines is not just some little nice to do exercise.  We were on a nuclear powered fast attack submarine.  As we covered in business lesson one, there were more than a few things that could do wrong.  In order to maximize our ability to survive, everyone pulls their weight, and everyone is qualified.  If you couldn’t cut it, we canned you.  Kthaxbai!

We had fairly simple rules for non-quals.  You didn’t get movie privileges, you got the worst assignments (cleaning dishes, etc.) and you were expected to be learning or learning.  Fairly straightforward choices right?  You will notice that sleep wasn’t in the choices of learning or learning.  One of the common phrases was “you can sleep when your dead.”

If you became DINQ (Delinquent in Quals) you got the privilege of spending extra organized learning time.  This often involved giving up your sleep and often the sleep of your qualified “sea dad.”  You can imagine how popular that made you in a place were three or four hours of sleep a day was the norm.  In submarine terms that is “motivation.”

The end of the qualification process involves a board.  Three senior members of the crew grill you on all of the ship’s systems.  Navigation, fire control, damage control, reactor operations, valves, switches, electrical distribution, etc.  I qualified and I sat on more than a few boards.  They are not things that submarine sailors take lightly.  We are not only saying that this person is safe, but that we TRUST them.

To this day, if I come across someone with “fish” (submarine qualified insignia), we know the rules.  There is trust and there is mutual respect.  It really is simple…You are either qualified or you are not!

Now for the business lesson(s).

1.  If you have employees or need to delegate things, are there processes in place that people can follow?  Are your employees qualified?

2.  Are you building a community that trusts?  Think about your clients and prospects as “Qualified” and your business as a non-qual.  Are you bragging before you’ve earned your “fish?”

3.  Do your clients trust you the way a qualified submariner trusts another qualified submariner?

Chuck Smith Submarine business lesson Submarine business lesson

It doesn’t take a competitor to kill your business.  First in a series.

Business Lessons from the US Submarine Force.

As some of you know, I spent about a decade in the Navy.  I ran nuclear power plants on fast attack submarines.  If you’re into seriously cool, I highly recommend it.  One does have to be get used to 18 hour days, on watch for 6 hours, work for six hours, sleep for six hours, if you’re lucky.  That’s a story for another day, you just learn to tell time by whether the cooks are serving breakfast or not.

This series is a bit of a personal challenge.  I have been yak shaving on writing these into a book, since before I heard the term.  A couple of my friends from the Navy finally said, just do it.

Lesson One:  It doesn’t take a competitor to kill your business.

It was my first day at sea, we had just finished the “maneuvering watch.”  That’s submarine for everybody in place for going into and out of port.  We were on the surface for the next few hours as we moved to our dive point.  This was the perfect time to “field day.”  That’s Navy for clean.  Marketing at it’s finest, the phrase for a day of sports outside in grade school becomes cleaning - perfect!

Our theme for this field day was small valves.  It gets better!  We have themes for cleaning!  Anyway, the Chief pairs me up with a more experienced Electrician in our division and says “Don’t let Smith turn any valves that will kill us!”  Whoa, what?!?!?!  Kill us!

I get a short explanation that the area we are cleaning houses our air conditioning plants.  Air conditioning refrigerant and your lungs do not co-exist well.  Who knew?  I got the intel on a number of other things in my new home.

Sea pressure is 44 lbs per square inch for every 100 feet below sea level you are, that doesn’t sound pleasant.  We knew too well about our shipmates on eternal patrol.

Fire spreads incredibly well in a closed environment that is essentially round.

We had atmosphere control equipment that reduced CO and CO2, if they don’t work it’s a bad day.

There is an Oxygen Generator.  Nicknamed “The bomb,” because it “does God things,” takes water and makes one thing that likes to burn and one thing that likes to explode.  See above for fire and explosions being bad.

Who needed enemy submarines to kill us?  There were a number of ways for us to end up in Davey Jones locker on our own!  That’s the lesson here.

What are the things in your business that are as risky as your competitors?

Do you have systems that can fall apart?  Is customer service up to par?

Are you prepared for a market downturn?  Still trying to sell buggy whips?

Do you only have one revenue stream that could be several, to mitigate a loss of one?

The thing about being on a submarine is that you drill and drill and drill for situations that can happen.  What if?  What if plan A fails?  What if plan B isn’t effective?  That’s why every person on a submarine goes through a qualification process that is heavily geared towards knowledge of “the boat” (our business) and if you didn’t qualify, we canned you. We had a saying “Life is Simple,  …either you’re qualified or you’re Not!” - but that is Lesson Two…

Chuck Smith Leadership, Submarine business lesson Submarine business lesson