Speech - Administering a Large Project

Administering A Large Military Development Project

Delivered by Rickover on March 16, 1954 to the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey CA.

Key Points:

• Involved large organizations must work together

• Goals are set by people and not by organizations

• Keep your superiors informed

• How to get authorization ("hunting license") for your project

• "The Navy is like a car with 6 individual brakes, the car cannot start until all six individual passengers release their brakes"

• "As a rule, the higher people are in an organization, the more receptive they are to new ideas, and the problem is how to get to them"

• People not organizations get things done.

• Work to recruit competent people is "the single most important responsibility of the administrator.

• Instill the idea of total responsibility in each individual

• Decisions must be made, and action taken, before all the facts are in.

• Day-to-day personal attention is the essence of training

• By working 24 hours a day, can multiply effort by at most 3x. To do more than that train others

• Follow the facts

• Free discussion requires an atmosphere free of suggestion of authority or even respect

• All men are conservative by nature, but conservatism in the military profession is a source of danger to the country.

• Success teaches us nothing; only failure teaches

• What is right today may be wrong tomorrow

• Optimism and stupidity are nearly synonymous

• Avoid over-coordination

• You must be technically competent in what you oversee

• Engineers and scientists need to work together