It's Your Ship: Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy

An essay on it’s your ship: management techniques from the best damn ship in the navy and criminal justice.
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It’s your ship: Management techniques from the best damn ship
General overview of book
The book ``it’s your ship: management techniques from the best damn ship`` has captured the attention of many within and without the navy. The author has used easy and insightful views of seeing the ship through the eyes of the crew. The book shows how the author reduced activities that did not have any value to the performance of the employees. Captain Abrashoff improved his own personal skills to be an example to the rest in fostering performance. When he was given the responsibility of controlling USS Benfold, a ship with all the modern technology but without good performance, he took it upon himself to transform the ship. Captain Abrashoff using his own acquired skills transfers the experience to his team. He initiated the motto ``it`s your ship`` that is “take the work as your own”. It did not take long before the strategy got attention from all over the navy. He communicated the strategy, and this improved the crews’ performance. He also created a discipline which was purpose driven. This improved the discipline of his team when they realized the importance of what they were doing.. The book shows us how good management brings desirable results. The book uses ideas and principles used by other authors on management. The book shows that it does not matter the locality, the concept works everywhere. He gave his team an opportunity to explore their potential to the fullest where restrictions were orders of the day and any error could lead to loss of lives.
This book is very inspiring and moves managers to learn some of the most general and successful skills they have studied, it encourages them to use such skills in their own environments, regardless of what one does or the place of doing it.
Discussion of Abrashoff's leadership approach
Captain Abrashoff Michael`s approach of leadership used the following strategies to serve as an example:
listening carefully
communicate purpose and significance
creating an environment of trust
Be results driven, not orders.
Take calculated risks
Generate unity and improve the quality of life of your team as much as possible.
Abrashoff believed that a leader could not achieve what he/she wanted to do through ordering, he recognized that those below him followed his lead and that he had a great influence on his team. The employees will always look up to their leader for ways on how to perform what the company expects of them. Abrashoff saw problems as part of himself and informed his workers how important they were to him and believed he was supposed to set the tone for the company. Leaders need to be accountable in their institutions. Abrashoff also displayed a very unique characteristic of a leader. Though one is responsible for enforcing policies, when there is an objection a leader is supposed to carry the order fully.
The first approach was listening carefully. Abrashoff vowed always to have meetings with members of his team. Though it wasn’t easy the passion and elegance of his crew team motivated him. He interviewed every member of the crew while listening carefully on how to improve the performance of the crew. He came up with a questionnaire to be filled by each crew and created a good relationship with his employees. Through listening he got suggestions on how to improve his performance of the ship. Through interviewing his crew, Abrashoff was able to match each crew with the task to be performed. Improvement began to appear as the crews learnt their jobs, he decided that Benfold would be the best ship and repeatedly spoke of this until the workers built confidence from such words from their leader. The other approach used encourages his crew to be result-oriented by thinking wide. He trained them to use their own ideas in doing many things. This puts workers in a position in which they start initiating ideas on their own. Instead of salutes, Abrashoff wanted results which meant getting war celerity. A few months after taking command, he started take lunch together with his crew to show them that he really cared for them. He removed the barriers that are usually there between workers and their officers. The captain also created a continual learning environment for his crew in the ship, which involved analysis of what worked and what didn’t work. He allowed the Benfold`s crew to make resolutions, and rectify errors to make them feel they were part of the excellent crew, towards this end he avoided blaming the crew for failures.
Discussion of motivational theories, which are reflected in Abrashoff's leadership style
There are a number of leadership strategies that are illustrated in this book which include the normal management strategies in various organizations. In this case, these includes: “confronting and correcting the negatives of cheap buying, handling inertia in an organization, training and learning, and organizational effectives and resource management” (Delaney 2004).
Abarshoff after taking the captains role, enlisted various practices in the ship, which he had gathered as he moved up the leadership stages. He had noticed increased loss of expatriates which forced the country to undergo massive losses on training new sailors. Training of sailors is very expensive and he aimed at reducing the job losses. As he took charge, the ship contained 310 sailors. As for the ship itself, it was repainted after every two months due to its steel metals instead of aluminum (Barr 2002). Steel easily rusts and this caused increased staining making the exercise very expensive. Inertia is another major theme contained in this book. He worked tirelessly to transform the crew members as well as the management team for efficiency in the operations. A number of long existing problems were able to be noticed and solved successfully in good time. These strategies were welcomed by the management and together they worked in making the ship to function to its best (Abrashoff 2005).
Abrashoff also communicated on the importance of training and learning as a sustainable organizational culture. This even led to his award due to his support for sustained training. Approximately two third of the 310 crew member underwent training in various specialized tasks. The group underwent the “Enlisted Surface Warfare Specialist” during his term. The staffs in the hospitality department were also subjected to training for improved performance ...