Navy Admirals Look to UNC Kenan-Flagler for Business Training

The U.S. Navy sent 15 two-star admirals to UNC Kenan-Flagler in January to help them learn the management skills they will need to advance to even higher command positions.

It is only the latest program that UNC Kenan-Flagler's Executive Education has conducted for hundreds of Navy officers and civilian personnel since 2003.

“I think ‘astonishing’ is the perfect word” to describe the admirals’ current breadth of responsibilities, said Jim Dean, associate dean for executive education. “They have responsibilities like commander of the Pacific Fleet, commander of all Navy logistics. As citizens, we want and need for them to be successful.”

UNC Kenan-Flagler tailored the Navy En-Route Preparation Program to these top executives’ needs, Dean said, with concentrations in strategic and innovative thinking, trust and transparency, implementation of strategy through people, collaboration across organizations and strategic communication.

The U.S. military was one of the first mega-scale global organizations. Yet, like private enterprise, the military branches are finding that they must adapt ever more quickly to a changing operating environment with new strategic priorities – and do far more with far fewer resources than in the past.

“Obviously, any military organization deals with incredibly large amounts of resources, incredibly large amounts of money and people,” Dean said. “So while what people normally focus on is what they refer to as the war-fighting elements of the military, there are also tremendous resources and responsibility in the non-warfighting, or the business, part.”

So the admirals arrived hungry to hone their skills in business school disciplines like logistics and supply chain management and finance. Many have to make million- or billion-dollar decisions for the first time in their careers (lower-ranking officers are shielded from financial considerations so that they can make the best tactical decisions in the moment).

And perhaps even more important, these senior officers want to work on the collaboration skills that define a top-performing private sector executive, Dean says. They need to be able to pick up the phone, work with someone outside their own chain of command – and often outside the Navy – and negotiate arrangements both formal and informal to accomplish objectives.

“What the Navy is finding is that a lot of problems require solutions across organizations where there’s no defined chain of command – or as they would say, rules of engagement,” Dean said. The admirals talked about how to lead effectively in situations where they lack command authority. Both Navy commanders and former top business executives participated in panel discussions during the weeklong program which ended Jan. 12. Dean says UNC Kenan-Flagler faculty greeted the Navy visitors with enthusiasm, believing they have as much to teach the school as it has to teach them.

“I think one reason we at UNC have been able to work so successfully with the Navy is that we don’t come to them and say, ‘We are from business and we have all the answers,’” Dean said. “We say, ‘You have incredible experience and you are very smart, and let’s see what we can learn together.’”