Everybody says they want to be innovative. Everybody says they want to be part of a learning organization. And almost no one actually is. Learning War is a closely focused study of changes in the US Navy between the Spanish American War and the end of World War 2, using a complex adaptive system theoretical framework to explain eventual US dominance in the Pacific, as exemplified by the development and integration of the Combat Information Center.


USS Fletcher. Destroyers like this one were key to US Navy learning

The story actually starts a little bit earlier than 1898, and begins with personnel policy. The US Navy had expanded immensely during the Civil War, and then contracted as the nation focused on the western frontier. Promotion was based solely on seniority, which meant that senior ranks were clogged with Civil War 'old tars', who had a traditional Nelsonian conception of fighting ships. This was a major problem, both because ambitious young officers were stagnating, and naval technology was doing anything but, as steam engines, ironclad ships, and explosive shells would let modern armored cruisers literally sail circles around old ships of the line while smashing them with impunity.

The US won all the major naval battles of the Spanish-American war, but these victories revealed serious flaws in fleet organization and training. A group of insurgent officers, along with key political backers like Teddy Roosevelt instituted far-reaching changes, including professional training at the naval war college, the merging of line and engineering officer paths, and merit-based promotions. A permanent staff assisted the civilian Secretary of the Navy, creating some institution durability across administrations. The Navy gain its first permanent major unit in the Atlantic Fleet, allowing realistic training and experimentation to see what tactics worked.

A second set of changes was primarily technological. The power of guns had far outpaced traditional methods of aiming by eye and feel. Weapons capable of reaching out miles required precision aim that took into account the exact range, bearing, speed of the target, as well as local roll, weather conditions, and even the Coriolis effect. Range-keepers, mechanical devices that predicted the position of the enemy and fired guns by electrical circuit when they bore. The basic range keeper had what would later be called an open architecture, allowing new devices like the more sophisticated Ford fire control computer and radar to be integrated into the system as they were developed.

And finally, there was a culture of experimentation around how to best use these technologies. Gunnery practices were codified in fleet-wide competitions, with similar competitions for efficiency in other areas. Large scale fleet problems validated ideas developed in war games at the Naval War College, and could serve to boost or destroy careers.

When war finally came in 1941, the United States was ready, but also somewhat unprepared. While Midway was an unexpected victory after the defeats of the opening offensive, the naval battles around Guadalcanal revealed serious weaknesses in US Navy practices. Distinguishing friendly from enemy ships was a perennial problem in night battles. Japanese torpedoes were immensely superior to American equivalents, and US destroyer tactics emphasized guns over torpedoes anyway. Task groups thrown together from available units had trouble coordinating. And technological advantages in radar were negated because captains had trouble forming a coherent picture of the battle from incremental reports. What success did occur came at immense cost due to underlying principles of individual initiative and aggression from subordinates, as in the First Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, where the decimation of an outgunned US task force prevent the landing of significant reinforcement and supplies to Japanese troops on the island.

As the Solomon Islands campaign ground on, Admiral Nimitz directed that captain form a combat operations center (later CIC) on their ships, but left the exact nature and methods of the CIC up to individual captains. As ships rotated through battles, hard-learned lessons and best practices were exchanged in schools and conferences immediately behind the front lines. Within a year, formal doctrine manuals were published, explaining how best to organizing and fight a ship. The decisive battles of 1944 saw an end to American command confusion, with an efficient and effective use of airplanes, battleships, and light units to comprehensively destroy the Imperial Japanese Navy.

The US Navy won because it was a learning organization, and it is unfortunately no longer one in Hone's estimation. While the Navy is not institutionally complacent, there are worrying signs of problems in recent surface collisions and rising Chinese naval power.

My only caveat on this book is that I'm not sure what complex adaptive systems adds as theoretical framework, beyond jargon. The basic principles of innovation are clear. Start with good people, create standards of success, and reward successful experimentation. Telling people how to do something instead of what to do, or keeping a bunch of dead wood around, or not having clarity about what the goal actually is, will all handicap organizational learning.

Simple, right?