Fapac remarks 23sep16 Purpose
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OPENING Good Afternoon! [Extemporaneous Greetings] What a great pleasure it is to be at this inaugural event for the first ever Coast Guard Chapter of FAPAC! LTJG Frank Lim (Chapter President) and LT Hermie Mendoza (Chapter VP) are responsible for getting this chapter started and coordinating this great event! Talk about punching above your weight class… Congratulations and thank you for a job really well done. I absolutely value the time I spend with affinity groups like this one. In the past few months, I’ve talked to NNOA and ANSO. Just last week I went to Portland State University a Minority Serving Institution that we are looking to partner with. I do this because building a more diverse and inclusive workforce is front and center for me for the remainder of my tenure. It is the only way our service will continue to thrive well into the future. So, thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to you today. And please know that I am personally so grateful for all the work that our affinity groups are doing. And what a great theme you’ve established for this event: “Socializing Leadership: Leaders in the Age of Social Media.” I sometimes joke that young folks that come into the service today are issued an iPhone and a Twitter account. …When I joined, I was issued a slide rule. There is no question; today is an age of technology. Social media is a tool leaders can use to communicate, both internally and externally. And if we don’t get onboard we’ll miss the boat – and that is simply not an option. DWH CASE STUDY: EXTERNAL COMMS Let me start with a story. 6 years ago last spring, I faced what I consider to be one of my greatest leadership challenges. Anyone remember what was happening in the spring and summer of 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico? I think there is a Mark Wahlberg movie coming out next week about it… Our Nation was facing the worst oil spill in history –Deepwater Horizon. Approximately 3.2 million barrels of oil gushed into the Gulf and devastated the region. I was the Federal On-Scene Coordinator. In that role, pretty much my number one responsibility was to regain public trust. But right from the get-go there were issues. The public wanted to know how we could let such a massive oil spill happen in the first place? On top of that, and with the “help” of some prodding by a few local Parish Presidents, the Federal Response was heavily criticized by the 24-hour news cycle and in social media. And it was blue-suiters like you and I that were the face of the response. So what was the problem? We are the Coast Guard, right?! If anyone was able to manage this massive challenge, it was us. But how could be build back the public’s trust? There are a few things: First, let’s talk about information management. In the past, if there was a major contingency event, the leaders of the response would hold a press conference, probably about daily, and that would work. In today’s 24-hour news cycle, that just won’t cut it and it wasn’t going to cut it in 2010. The National Incident Commander for DWH, Admiral Allen, put it best, “there will never again be a major event in this country that won’t involve public participation. And the public participation will happen whether it’s managed or not.” So, lesson #1, we needed to own the story rather than let it own us. Like I said, a daily press release wasn’t enough. So, we started to take reporters up in the helicopters, right to the scene. We helped them frame the story. Our story. We gave them accurate information so they weren’t filling voids with speculation. Slowly, we used that 24-hour news cycle to regain the public’s trust. We also embedded liaisons with each Parish President. That parish now had a direct federal point of contact so they stopped conversing with us through the media. We rebuilt that trust and built a network of stakeholders. As you can guess, social media was another important tool in our information management. And as we all know, the reach of social media is just enormous. Here’s the thing, even back in 2010, social media users were already a sophisticated group of information seekers and sharers. Key point there, and lesson #2, sharers. To be most effective, we need to understand that social media is not just about pushing out information. It’s a venue the public is going to use to question, interpret, synthesize, redistribute. It’s really more like a conversation. A conversation that is going to grow far beyond your “friends.” Importantly, social media, from an agency perspective, takes real management. It doesn’t run itself; it’s hard work. But, again, it’s what the public demands. During our response, apparently there was a twitter account set up but it went unused and unmonitored. Knowing what I know now, I think of that as a tool that we could have been using, but weren’t quite mature enough to leverage. We are much more sophisticated with our social media today. For example, the Marine Board of Investigation hearings for the El Faro case have all been broadcast with live chatting. As an agency, we’ve been able to address non-investigation sensitive information in real time – adeptly managing the public’s expectation for information and transparency. Again, building and preserving that public trust. Remember, public participation will happen whether it’s managed or not... I have no delusions about controlling the conversation; but we must be a part of it, and the more transparent we are, the more trust and public confidence we will earn. DWH CASE STUDY: DIVERSITY So that’s using your tools to tell the story. To engage in that conversation… But the next thing you have to ask, “what image are we portraying?” And is it an image that will build back the public’s trust? Or could it break it down even further? So, the third lesson I took away from DWH is that you need to manage the event, not just the incident. Here’s the scene. To respond to this massive event, BP (the responsible party), brought in out-of-area contractors to do much of the clean-up work. One thing was clear, these responders didn’t reflect the communities where they were responding. And, at least until I embedded liaisons at the local Parishes, these local communities were almost completely left out of a response that they had the biggest stake in! I met with the NAACP. We worked with BP and they started hiring locals who were familiar with the area and the culture. We engaged the local communities and parishes for input and volunteers. All said and done, we had about 47,000 responders at DWH. Most of those were volunteers. That means they could have walked off at any point, but they didn’t. Here’s why. At DWH, during this major catastrophe, we didn’t forget about the value of diversity and inclusion. In the end, our responders reflected the population of the communities they were supporting. And these individuals brought with them unique perspectives. Innovative solutions that would have otherwise been overlooked. In fact, one particularly valuable group we tapped into was a community of Vietnamese Fisherman. There were about 24,000 naturalized U.S. Citizens from Vietnam living in Louisiana. Over 80% were working in the seafood industry before DWH and some had over 40 years of experience on the Gulf waters. You couldn’t find a group of people more vested in the outcome of the cleanup and they desperately wanted to help. Through the use of interpreters hired by BP, we were able to tap into their expertise and grow our fleet of responders significantly! Lesson #3 is about building public trust, but, maybe even more, it’s about an effective response. Simply put, we were more effective when we became more inclusive! At the end of the day, we can say DWH was a job well done… but if we’d remained blind…and exclusive, we could have disenfranchised an entire segment of our society. And we could have missed out on all those innovative solutions to seemingly impossible problems. One thing is abundantly clear, if you’re a leader that lacks diversity of thought in your ranks, you’re going to make sub-optimal decisions – and you’ll lose the public’s trust in the process. 21st CENTURY WORKFORCE Just as we needed a diverse response in DWH, day in and day out, the Coast Guard needs a diverse workforce. An organization that lacks diversity falls short. Short on innovation. Ideas. Effectiveness. Without a doubt, an organization that doesn’t value diversity and inclusion will fail to keep pace in today’s world. And while we strive to grow a diverse and inclusive workforce in the Coast Guard, I’m ever mindful of the road blocks we face – discrimination and bias exist in our world. But they have no place in our Service! Not too long ago, I read the article See No Bias and, also, the book The Hidden Brain, both written by Shankar Vedantam. Mr. Vedantam focuses much of his work on the way unconscious biases influence people. Everything from who we vote for to how we invest can be influenced by this “hidden,” or unconscious part of our brain. See No Bias cites studies that highlight the unconscious biases of some of the most determined civil rights advocates. Despite the fact that they fight daily against bias and discrimination, tests show that even they have racial biases. Interestingly, some even tested to have biases within their own “group.” For example, women would indicate bias against women. So, knowing these unconscious…and conscious… biases exist, we have to do all we can to address them head on – to systematically eliminate their effects. I urge you to keep an eye on the great initiatives our Service has underway to bolster our diversity and inclusion and to keep participating everywhere you can.
These and many other initiatives are helping us build the workforce we need in order to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow! RECRUITING & RETENTION On the recruiting front, the competition for top talent is on the rise. I saw this first-hand when I visited Silicon Valley. Just like us, Facebook and Google are seeking out the best and the brightest. And you better believe they are using social media to draw in and retain the very top talent. So, let me be clear. The Coast Guard is hiring! And everyone is a recruiter! That’s another reason the topic you’ve chosen for today’s event is so great! There is no doubt, the young talented people we are looking to recruit today are on social media – facebook, twitter, instagram, blogs… And we need to utilize these tools in our recruiting efforts. When I became Commandant, I went from being an operator to “marketing and sales.” And social media is a tool I use! LT Stephanie Young, here today… She is my social media guru. Remember how I said managing social media takes work? Well, Stephanie, there, keeps me on track! But my reach is only so broad. Imagine the reach of everyone in this room when added together… The good news is this: both our junior officer and enlisted workforces today are the most diverse in our history. At the Coast Guard Academy, the classes of 2018 and 2019 are nearly 33 % minority and 38 % women - the highest level of racial and gender diversity in its 150-year history! Likewise, our Coast Guard enlisted and warrant workforces have solid foundations at 27% minority members and 21% women. But, we need to keep these positive trends going. And I envision social media being an important tool in the effort! While we enjoy successes in bringing diversity into our accession points – getting this talent into the service is just the first step. It’s all for naught if we aren’t focused on developing and keeping today’s best and brightest. The POAM I referenced earlier addresses retention and there are a number of initiatives underway. For instance, our Diversity and Inclusion Staff is working with the Personnel Service Center and other stakeholders to analyze our policies to determine impacts on retention. The new “blended retirement” plan, for example, is an area of uncertainty that will likely impact retention. The staff is also working to formalize exit interviews. Understanding why it is that people choose to leave is vital to improving retention. But in the end, we must continue to embrace a culture that values the power of diversity. All of our people, from any background and any walk of life, should feel welcome, respected, and valued in our Coast Guard. CONCLUSION I’ll conclude by saying that developing a diverse and inclusive workforce is center stage for me for the duration of my term. And I’m looking for innovative ways to keep our positive momentum going. I challenge you to think about how we can better use any and all tools, including social media, in this effort! Thank you again for your leadership and participation. I’m proud of your work to establish this FAPAC chapter, and I look forward to seeing great things from this group. Now, I’d like to open up for questions… Page of Download 36.74 Kb. Share with your friends:
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