The Great Naval Officer Exodus

People are most important. It is a rule I believe in, a fact. The importance of people is the undeniable truth any successful organization understands well. The United States Navy is such an organization.

Tim Kane has an outstanding article in the Atlantic titled Why Our Best Officers Are Leaving - it is a fantastic, thought provoking and important article. It is also very Army centric.

It is my intention to create a Navy version of this discussion. Over the next several days active duty unrestricted line officers from different communities will be contributing articles to the blog on this subject. I have not asked anything of my readers at any time since I began writing this blog, but in this case I will make an appeal to the readership first here, to be followed up to a more targeted audience via email.

I ask every single active duty officer who visits, and additionally the professionals who read and never comment among the hundreds of visits I get daily from the K-Street community - to participate, add comments, thoughts, and challenge the ideas of the articles written by the officers. Pass the articles around in email, but try to insure the feedback makes it to the comments.

This is an important yet difficult topic, I don't believe anyone would disagree with that, but it is also an appropriate topic for this forum. I believe that with the participation of the professional but silent readership of this blog, an open discussion on this forum can be very productive towards the issue - more productive perhaps than any other format for the discussion. However, without the participation of the blogs often silent professional readership, it won't happen.

If necessary, use a disclaimer or remain anonymous. The posts will be over several days, with the first to begin shortly. Those wishing to add content to the discussion can do so by contacting me with an article, but you must either be active duty or credentialed to my satisfaction.