He elaborated, “For years, the rule was ‘Leadership by Excel Spreadsheet.’ If you had a particular problem, you looked in a column and the student got rolled back. But if he already had a roll, then he got dropped. But there was something about that process that stuck out as not being right.
“What jumped out at our staff was that if you were a good athlete and could pick up land navigation then you were graduating – even though you may not have all of the NSW Ethos attributes,” he said. “So we called that a ‘selection error’ and said we needed to fix it.”
“Up until three classes ago, every BUD/S ‘Hell Week’ log was a standard Navy issue green logbook,” Hennessey acknowledged. “We would write things like start times and water temps and in the back of it, we would cut out pieces of paper with water tables that we would tape into the logbook. We looked at it and said, ‘It’s 2014. Are we really cutting things out and taping them in?’ But that’s where we were.”
Along with selection error, Hennessey said that another part of the problem involved what he dubbed “blind spots,” or student performance data that did not always follow a student between different training phases.
“Then it got fun,” he continued. “We would say to a SEAL or SWCC instructor, ‘Think about the best three guys in your last platoon.’ Then we’d ask them what their 4-mile run times were. They had no idea. Then we asked their obstacle course times. Again, they had no idea. Well, that’s the only sort of thing we had been measuring in training.”
The community also worked with an outside contractor, Horizon Performance, to develop a supporting “peer-evaluation” scheme optimized for NSW.
Leaders at the NSW “Schoolhouse,” Basic Training Command, are continuously looking for ways to select and qualify the right candidates. Mentoring, clearly defining expectations, and discussing ethics and the characteristics – beyond physical performance – that make for strong and successful teammates are part o the orientation SEAL and SWCC candidates receive when they arrive for training in Coronado, Calif. Trust involves more than cash register honesty. Which students are dependable, trustworthy? Which show up on time with the right gear? Which are team players and which ones have motives rooted in self? The matrix helps illustrate the perspective instructors have and students should develop in assessing who will rise above and make the cut.
As a result of this process, Hennessey said that Basic Training Command is currently “redoing the instruction program, which is still in draft. And we are going to execute what we discovered. All of these things we had been measuring, that had accounted for 100 percent of making it through training, will now get you halfway there. The other half of the way comes from the other attributes and will be based on cadre assessment of the individual.”
The cadre assessment process will rely in large part on “baseball card” data that will now follow an individual through all phases of NSW training.
“Up until three classes ago, every BUD/S ‘Hell Week’ log was a standard Navy issue green logbook,” Hennessey acknowledged. “We would write things like start times and water temps and in the back of it, we would cut out pieces of paper with water tables that we would tape into the logbook. We looked at it and said, ‘It’s 2014. Are we really cutting things out and taping them in?’ But that’s where we were.”
Recent changes are replacing the green logs with tablet computers. And individual performance data is now automatically populated to those tablets and resulting in baseball cards through the introduction of technologies such as digital “chip timers” like those used in triathlons.
“The magic is in providing the feedback to the student. That’s what they crave. They want to know where they are and how they are doing.”
Hennessey admitted that the dynamic process is still evolving, explaining, “This started a year ago with Excel spreadsheets and paper. We’re onto tablets and netbooks now. So it’s an improving process. But I’ll be honest with you: It briefs better than it is being executed right now. And that’s OK, because as we brief it and continue to push out the vision, it gets clearer in everyone’s mind as to where we’re going with this.”
Summarizing implementation progress to date, he said, “We started with Class 297 and Class 300 is going to graduate SQT in April [2014], but with each class the process is going to be tweaked a little bit more. Class 302 is the first class that has been all electronic. We have actual ‘baseball cards’ on all of them.
“But the magic isn’t the computers,” he said. “The magic is in providing the feedback to the student. That’s what they crave. They want to know where they are and how they are doing.” Ultimately the goal, he explained, is that each graduate has received feedback from his peers and instructors seven times throughout the pipeline, telling that trainee how he can be a better teammate.
Force and Family
While emphasis on recruitment and training is critical, the broader community focus continues to be on life in NSW after BUD/S and SWCC CQT. That long-term holistic emphasis on life after initial training is epitomized by the embrace of the tenets supporting SOF’s Preservation of the Force and Family (POTFF). NSW’s implementation and support of POTFF goes far beyond rhetoric. Rather, it is a key aspect of life within the community.
According to Steve Gilmore, Family Support director and lead for the POTFF program at Naval Special Warfare Command, NSW may be a little further ahead with POTFF implementation than some other USSOCOM components. However, he quickly added that the different communities are all working together to share best practices and communicate both positive and negative lessons learned.