Rick-rolled

As mentioned in a previous post, I plowed through Patrick Tyler's Running Critical. It took almost 2 weeks, which in the life of a parent of 2 young children is a scorching pace. Anyway, the book is probably only marginally interesting to those who neither work in engineering, submarines, the Navy, or other defense contractors. That's still a pretty narrow audience, but the corporate ethical lessons alone are important for college business majors to study. If, that is, they read. The focus of this nonfiction is the struggle between 3 men for domination of the lucrative submarine design and construction industrial base from 1970-1985. This struggle had obvious implications for the national defense and the men who manned those ships as well.

Hyman Rickover (get it? Rick-rolled!) was a technocrat who controlled (by title or force of will) the atomic energy commission and all aspects of nuclear power within the U.S. Navy. It can be hard to judge somebody from a different era using our own generational perspective, but this individual used his clout to manipulate levers far beyond his notional control. And that clout was considerable, as Rickover's agency oversaw the successful design, construction, and service of the USS Nautilus, the first atomic powered warship. His intuition for both the technical, political, and fiscal aspects of nuclear powerplants was amazing. However, he also picked up and discarded men at all levels of the command chain at his whim with no consideration for them. His expansion and consolidation of power actually consumed other men's careers, and rather than gain allies, Rickover's moves were always at the expense of gaining enemies.

Dave Lewis represented every corporate suit you've ever seen in the movies. He gained a lot of attention for himself at an aerospace firm (I think it was McDonnell Douglas), then leveraged that to gain presidency of General Dynamics. At the time, GD was the largest defense contractor in the nation, so this was no small deal. Lewis was always looking over his shoulder, worried about who was after his job or at least looking to undercut him to make themselves look better. This insecurity no doubt has some sound logic behind it, but tends to hinder leadership and forward vision. He also had a focus on one thing: the next upcoming annual financial report. Never once in the book was there an example of long-term decision making, but always the expedient fix that most effectively avoided short-term pain. Of course, when what you are doing is by most definitions "illegal", that philosophy tends to make more sense.

Takis Veliotis was an immigrant shipyard manager who understood his business phenomenally well. He brought Old Word autocracy to mix with New World capitalism. This ultimately resulted in his flight from the United States to avoid federal charges for taking kickbacks. Isn't that the sort of thing a king should be entitled to do? Having acknowledged that, he may have been the only man with the knowledge, strength, and manic devotion to save the Quncy and Groton shipyards from closure.

All 3 of these men abused power, crossed legal and ethical lines, then spent the rest of their otherwise accomplished careers trying to cover their errors in judgement. All 3 put themselves above the rules. They lived only for themselves and their reputations, with no focus other than their own glory. Even the salvation of Electric Boat was simply a feather in the cap for Veliotis, not something he did to help the workers or shareholders or community. In the end, Lewis was disgraced in front of congress, Veliotis was on the run, and Rickover lost his job. They were all extremely competent at what they did, they were all committed beyond reason to achievement, they each had a number of crossroads where they could have changed course, yet they could not defeat their own weaknesses in the end.

The biggest lessons I could pull from this: relying only on yourself (as the 3 subjects of this book) and focusing only on career achievement (as many of those crushed by the main characters) are both roads to personal downfall. There are too many outside factors beyond any one man's control, and two of those factors are his own greed and pride.

I will follow up shortly with another, briefer post on the more interesting doints (dork-points) I gained from the historical and technical aspects of this book.