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> if push comes to shove, having more experienced supervision on the bridge during a challenging transit is more important than getting in some more training t

by a3n 8y ago

> if push comes to shove, having more experienced supervision on the bridge during a challenging transit is more important than getting in some more training that day. Think of any bureaucracy. The training or lack is documented. Paperwork must be done, and the activities backing that paperwork must be done, because that's what gets measured, since the measurers can't be on board to watch. Sloppy procedures you might get away with, but lack of paperwork gets noticed immediately 100% of the time. And we all want to get promoted, officers especially in the military's "up or out" system. I read another article, probably here, about this same incident. One of the officers on duty in the CIC was doing her paperwork, in addition/instead of her function at the time. I'm certain this is the norm, because the bureaucracy will be served, and it always expands, never contracts. I would go so far to say that paperwork will increase even more, directly because of these specific incidents, "to make sure it never happens again." The incentives are pathologically perverse.

pdonis 8y ago
> The incentives are pathologically perverse. Yes, and that's a higher-up leadership problem. A military unit's primary purpose is to fight, not to do paperwork. The captain of a ship is supposed to understand that, so he can make the right tradeoffs when he has to, and the higher-up leaders over him are supposed to as well, so they can make sure they incentivize ship captains properly.
ufmace 8y ago
> I would go so far to say that paperwork will increase even more, directly because of these specific incidents, "to make sure it never happens again." This, I have a feeling that the real root causes of this problem will only get worse in response to the incidents. Based on reading this and a few other articles and posts and no experience at all in any Navy (but some with other bureaucracies), I judge those to be mainly ever-increasing demands on resources and nobody in the chain with the incentives to say "No, we just can't do that", and ever-increasing levels of paperwork, training, documentation, and other types of bureaucratic make-work to ensure that the last dozen Major Problems can't possibly happen again. It's also not very professional or conductive to keeping good people in when you clearly throw those at the bottom under the bus when they're involved in a screwup whose true root causes they had no power to fix.

by a3n 8y ago

pdonis 8y ago

> The incentives are pathologically perverse. Yes, and that's a higher-up leadership problem. A military unit's primary purpose is to fight, not to do paperwork. The captain of a ship is supposed to understand that, so he can make the right tradeoffs when he has to, and the higher-up leaders over him are supposed to as well, so they can make sure they incentivize ship captains properly.

ufmace 8y ago

> I would go so far to say that paperwork will increase even more, directly because of these specific incidents, "to make sure it never happens again." This, I have a feeling that the real root causes of this problem will only get worse in response to the incidents. Based on reading this and a few other articles and posts and no experience at all in any Navy (but some with other bureaucracies), I judge those to be mainly ever-increasing demands on resources and nobody in the chain with the incentives to say "No, we just can't do that", and ever-increasing levels of paperwork, training, documentation, and other types of bureaucratic make-work to ensure that the last dozen Major Problems can't possibly happen again. It's also not very professional or conductive to keeping good people in when you clearly throw those at the bottom under the bus when they're involved in a screwup whose true root causes they had no power to fix.