Run a Tight Ship: What a Former Navy Captain Taught BLC

Former U.S. Navy Captain Michael Abrashoff comes to NSCA’s Business & Leadership Conference, inspires attendees to be better leaders of their own ships back home.

Tim Albright

The second morning of a number of conferences are typically slow starters. The show organizers understand you spent the previous evening networking into the wee hours of the night.

This was not the case this year at the 2015 NSCA Business & Leadership Conference. The morning session was a keynote address entitled “Achieving Breakthrough Performance” by Mike Abrashoff, former Navy captain and author of It’s Your Ship.

Abrashoff began the session with the notion that we were all successful entrepreneurs and business leaders; otherwise “we wouldn’t be [at the NSCA BLC].” He set his expectation for who his audience was right away and repeated the assertion throughout his presentation.

Being the author of a book called It’s Your Ship as well as a former Navy captain he also made the parallel between running a ship and running your own business. He did that quite well.

The one stark contrast between Abrashoff and the majority of the other speakers was his lack of a visual presentation. He was engaging, humorous, and poignant without the need of a PowerPoint.

BLC attendees took to Twitter to rave about Abrashoff and capture as many insights as possible.

Beginning with the statement “we’re all captains of our own ship,” Mike begins to tell the story of his two year tour as the captain of the worst ship in the Navy and how he turned it, and the sailors aboard, around.

As with a few of the other speakers on leadership and getting the most out of your team, Abrashoff pointed to the leaders themselves as the starting point of change. It is up to the leader to create an environment where your employees want to come to work with you.

It is also your job to make certain you articulate the mission you want them to accomplish, give them the proper training for it, and give them the time to achieve the desired results.

Training and preparation were two of Abrashoff’s key philosophies. He spent countless hours interviewing the crew of his ship to find out what it was they were interested in, what they wanted to do in the Navy, and where their aptitudes lie. He even went so far as to have the SAT test administered onboard the ship with one sailor getting a near-perfect score.

As with most organizations, you are going to have those who simply do not want to buy into the system. These are the people who will drag down your team. Abrashoff referred to them as “Cave Dwellers,” standing for Citizens Against Virtually Everything.

As much as you may not want to do something about these kinds of employees, according to him, you need to.

“You have an obligation to our good performers not to tolerate mediocrity from a few”, he said.

You could receive the literary version of Abrashoff’s talk in his book It’s Your Ship with all his key points. He did a good job of equating running a ship with running a company and made the attendees of the NSCA BLC 2015 sit up and take notes on a Saturday morning.

Read more NSCA BLC coverage.

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