“THE higher you get, most of us think we're perfect,” says Jim Shanley, a former Bank of America executive, as he hands out a form for assessing personality flaws. His scribbling students at the University of North Carolina's Kenan-Flagler Business school are not aspiring chief executives or MBAs, but three-star admirals. On this week-long programme, the first of its kind, they are learning a range of skills such as encouraging innovation, making better decisions about fleet finances and communicating more clearly.
A generation of executives cut its teeth on Sun Tzu's “ The Art of War”. America's navy has put the combat boot on the other foot, using civilian executive courses to burnish leadership. Admirals have long gone to Princeton or Harvard for foreign-policy refreshers. But Vern Clark, the Chief of Naval Operations from 2000 to 2005 and the first CNO with an MBA, made a point of sending admirals to business school. UNC now runs six courses a year for one-star admirals; last month's course was its first for three-stars. Air force officers took their first course at Kenan-Flagler last October.
How useful can this be? Commanding a submarine division, or even organising the navy's supply-chain, is very different from corporate life. Competition is not much of a factor, unless you count beating the army or air force for tax dollars. Building ships takes 17 years, and they need to last another 50—a time horizon that would confound most investors. And admirals switch jobs often. In the worst case, they may get a call on a Friday and be expected at a new desk on Monday—not at all like the corporate world (unless the boss gets the boot).
“The economics of what you learn in business school are not necessarily the most central thing” for officers who have to worry about war-fighting strategy or technology, argues Michael O'Hanlon, a defence analyst at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. “You can make the argument that people should be learning engineering or military history.” Moreover, he notes, the corporate style of Donald Rumsfeld, a former defence secretary who (like many top corporate leaders) thrived on risk-taking, “didn't work out so well.”
But some overlaps are clear. Naval officers dislike making tough personnel decisions, says Phil Quast, a retired vice-admiral who oversees executive education for the navy. And vice-admiral John Jay Donnelly grumbles about his e-mail overload as bitterly as the next branch manager. “Delegate”, he is advised.