Fortiani» (Obstruer
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October 20. 2010
ARMED FORCES
S jj
e c i a J
E d i t i o n
Bolstering Diversity
continued
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after his first year at the U.S. Naval
A cadem y, he saw the W atts section
o f Los A ngeles aflam e w ith race
riots.
"I'm 15 m iles from W atts, and it is
burning dow n," he said.
The 1960s and 1970s put a glaring
light on race and civil rights issues
in A m erica and the A m erican m ili
tary. A s a young m ilitary officer,
M ullen said, he learned early to fo
cus on people's individual cap ab ili
ties.
"E ven back then, from m y p er
spective, w hat I w as trying to do
w as put the best talent together to
get the jo b done," M ullen said.
W hen he becam e c h ie f o f N aval
O perations in 2005, M ullen said, he
m ade d iversity a priority.
"W hen you're taking on a very,
very difficult challenge like this and
trying to change y o u r institution,
you can't go fast enough," he said.
M ullen said he focused his d i
versity goals for the N avy on two
areas: m inorities and w om en.
"T hat's w here the leadership was
really critical, and we w ere not doing
very w ell," he said.
N ow , M ullen said, the N avy has
a nu m b er o ffem a le one-star officers
w ho are com petitive for the future.
"W e know how to m ake [general
o fficers]," he said. "W e've been
doing it a long tim e, and it's actually
pretty sim ple. Y ou put them in the
right jo b s, and if they do w ell, they
get prom oted. A nd a really interest
ing dynam ic that w as going on in
the N avy in 2005, M ullen said, was:
"W ho is putting people in jo b s?"
W hen he looked into it, M ullen
said he found that the people m ak
ing officer assignm ents for the "hot"
career p aths w ere w hite m ales.
"T here certainly w asn't m uch o f
a path for those that couldn't break
through. A lm o st overnight, once I
knew that, and w e started to diver-
A diverse group o f students at the Naval Air Station in Meridan, Miss.
sify o u r assig n m en t o ffic e rs ... all o f
a sudden, records that w ere ju s t as
good as any o th er records started
surfacing," he said.
H is senior leaders regularly re
ported to him on th eir p rogress in
increasing diversity, M ullen said.
"W e m easu red ourselves on that
... and if there w ere sen io r officers
that w eren 't do in g this, they w ere
leaving," he said. M ullen said he
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now keeps a m ag azin e on his desk
w ith a co v er ph o to o f three N avy
th ree-star adm irals, all black, so that
ev ery o n e w ho visits his office can
see it.
"T hree o r four years ago, you
didn't see that [senior-level d iv er
sity] in the N avy," M ullen said.
T o d ay 's m inority role
m odels, he said, p ro
v id e im p o r ta n t e x
am ples o f success to
you n g m ilitary o ffic
ers.
W ithout such role
m odels "you're not g o
ing to m ake it, no m a t
ter w h at p rogram s w e
have o r how m uch w e
talk ab o u t it," the a d
m iral said.
T he drive for d iv er
sity in the m ilitary is
talent-driven, M ullen Navy Adm.
said. S hortly after he
becam e c h ie f o f N aval O perations,
he recalled addressing a diversity
conference co m prised p rim arily o f
you n g officers. M ullen th o u g h t he
had a strong m essag e for them , but
his m essage cam e back at him d ur
ing the q u estio n -an d -an sw er p e
riod.
"T his young C o ast G uard en
sign asked m e, 'W hat about that all
w h ite-m ale s ta ff you ju s t w alked in
h erew ith ?"' M ullen said. T w o years
after hearing that en sig n 's q u es
tion, the adm iral said he gathered
his personal staff.
"I sto o d b ack from th a t and
looked ... and I think I w as th e only
w hite guy in the room ," M ullen said.
"It w as all w om en and m inorities.
A nd w h at really struck m e that day
w as how d isap p o in ted I w as in
m y se lf that it took m e so long. B e
cause this w as the best talent, the
m ost talent, I'd ev er seen in a room
... person by person."
D iversity is all ab o u t o p p o rtu
nity, M ullen said.
"T his is not ab o u t bias o r any
thing like that. T his is: 'H ere's the
jo b , here's y o u r o p p o rtu n ity — sink
or sw im ,"' he said. "T here w as w ay
too m uch not g e ttin g jh e o p p o rtu n i
ties, for w h atev er reason: institu
tional, system atic, how w e w ere
assig n in g people, you nam e it. It
ju s t w asn 't go in g on. A nd again, w e
know how to do this, because w e
know, w hat it takes to get prom oted
in o u r system ."
T he m ilitary services and the of
ficer ranks cannot re
m ain effective if they
veer aw ay from the
nation's dem ographic
m akeup, M ullen said.
By 2040 o r 2050, he
said, w hite m ales will
become a minority seg
m ent o f the U.S. popu
lation. But the service
academ ies, w hich last
y e a r g ra d u a te d the
flag-officer class o f
2040,donotreflectthat
reality in their current
Mike Mullen c la s s e n ro llm e n ts ,
w hich are less than 50
percent - and in som e cases less than
25 percent - m inorities and wom en.
"The leadership has got to think
about it, from m y perspective, along
those lines," M ullen said. "A nd then
be very hard on ourselves: A re w e
m aking progress?"
Increasing diversity w ithin the
D efense D epartm ent's m ilitary and
c iv ilia n w o rk fo rce s isn 't m agic,
M ullen said.
"It's a lot o f hard w ork," he said,
noting increasing diversity requires
co m m itm en t by the leadership.
"A nd, m ore im portantly," he con
tinued, "the opp o rtu n ity for us as a
m ilitary to ju s t grow stronger and
stronger and stronger, w hich w e
m ust do o v er the course o f the next
1 0 ,2 0 ,3 0 years."
The American military, like Ameri
can industry, has to w ork harder to
in crease d iv ersity , the chairm an
said.
"T here are a lot o f things w e can
learn in term s o f those w ho have
done this before," M ullen said. "In
the end, for us, I think it's going to
co m e do w n to som e v ery basic
th in g s."
Karen Parris writes fo r the
American Forces Press Service.