By CAPT Paul W. Nickell, USN, MA, MBA
The Sailor is the Navy. No Navy is better than its Sailors. An unstructured, disconnected leadership continuum is a disservice to our Sailors and our Navy. The ideal Navy starts with the ideal Sailor. Now is the time for a coherent, connected Sailors First leadership continuum.
Introduction
Admiral Caudle provided a systematic build-up to framing his vision (priorities) for how our Navy will fight: C-NOte #1 on Sailors and their Quality of Life to C-NOte #2 on the Foundry and envisioned infrastructure necessary to generate and sustain naval power to the Worldclass Fleet in C-NOte #3 described for the fight: Sailors First–Foundry Always–Worldclass Fleet.1
Now, in C-NOte #4, he outlines the vision for how that force will operate: a Golden Fleet capable of Enhanced Mission Command, delegated autonomy, and winning in a strategic environment (that is) fundamentally different from that of two decades ago. This is a fleet that is built in the foundry and forged to fight. We must assume a new foundry and a new forge – not old legacy ways and means.
Though the vision is sound, it faces a critical obstacle. While the Navy has issued Fighting Instructions in the past to address tactical application, we still lack a coherent philosophical doctrine for warfighting leadership.2,3 Instructions and notes alone are insufficient to achieve a timeless model for naval warfighting, as exemplified by the United States Marine Corps’ FMFM-1: Warfighting.4
Doctrine, Notes, Pamphlets aside, we must also win the mind and truly cultivate the cognitive edge of the command leader at sea – Education. Currently, the Navy’s mechanism for winning that mind – our Leadership Development Framework (Enterprise) – is fractured and requires a fresh look.
Unifying Navy’s Leadership Enterprise: A Strategic Imperative for Warfighting Excellence
The fundamental flaw in our current alignment of leader development is not merely bureaucratic; it is philosophical. This creates a strategic category error. By housing the Navy Leadership and Ethics Center (NLEC) and the Senior Enlisted Academy (SEA) within a training command, the Service imposes a mechanistic training framework on an adaptive human problem.4
To help the reader understand this distinction, we must look to the Navy’s own professional doctrine. The U.S. Naval War College’s primer on the Navy Profession explicitly differentiates between a bureaucracy and a profession. Training is the tool of the bureaucracy; it is skills-based, compliance-based, and focused on the efficiency of resource expenditure through checklists and standard operating procedures (SOPs). This approach is inherently mechanistic, designed for routine work and the known.
In contrast, education is the tool of the profession. It is expert-based, requiring life-long learning to develop the discretion and judgment necessary to achieve mission effectiveness in the face of the unknown.6 As Admiral P. Gardner Howe III observed, “a bureaucratic organization will never succeed in combat; only a professional organization can and will.”7
By relegating leadership development to a training command, we are effectively using checklists to solve for culture. The result is a force trained for compliance and ill-equipped for the ambiguity of command. This structure restricts our ability to develop leaders who can out-think the adversary because it prioritizes hardware and routines over the development of critical-thinking skills – the primary driver of innovation and adaptability.
To fix the output, Navy must fix the input structure. Reintegrating NLEC and SEA under the USNWC replaces a mechanistic training model with a dynamic educational framework, offering a coherent model from E-1 to O-10.8 This move leverages the War College’s research power for adult development (vertical growth) – expanding a leader’s capacity to think in more complex ways – rather than just horizontal learning (adding more technical facts).
Furthermore, this unification restores a massive, currently dormant strategic potential (from the 2013 Navy Leader Development Strategy). Prior to COVID, CNO directed that senior Flag Officers speak to every NLEC class, ensuring that the CNO’s message reached every Triad leader in the Navy. Today, this engagement has greatly diminished, often replaced by administrative or junior Flag representation. Unifying the enterprise under the USNWC would institutionalize the “leaders engaging leaders” model, ensuring that the warfighting goals of C-NOte #4 are forged into the minds of every front-line leader.9 This is the human capital solution required to achieve the cognitive overmatch our current strategic environment demands.
Education: The Framework for a Disciplined Mind
True education is what remains after one has forgotten everything they learned in school.10 It transcends memorizing transitory facts – specific dates, formulas, or administrative procedures – to cultivate lasting, under-the-hood professional skills: critical thinking, problem-solving, empathy, curiosity, and adaptability. While training minimizes variance to prepare us for the expected (the known), education expands our cognitive capacity to handle the unexpected (the unknown). We train for certainty; we must educate for uncertainty.
For a Naval leader, education is how learning transforms the mind to handle life-and-death challenges in complex, high-stakes environments. To achieve this, the Navy must move away from its current bifurcated structure and toward a single, unified enterprise that manages the leadership journey from “Day One” to Flag rank.
The Strategic Advantage of a Single Entity
Currently, leadership development is split: NLEC (E1–O6) and SEA (E7-E9) fall under the Naval Education and Training Command (NETC), while the USNWC College of Leadership and Ethics (CLE) handles Flag Officers (O7–O10). Reintegrating NLEC and SEA under the USNWC offers three decisive advantages:
Unified Command of the Continuum: A single entity ensures the Warrior Ethos – a mindset marked by honor, integrity, and resilience – is consistently developed across every career milestone. When the NLEC was established as an Echelon III under the Naval War College in 2014, the intent was to create a single “Home of Thought” for leader development from E1 to O10.11 Returning to this structure resolves the current philosophical disconnect. Furthermore, bringing NLEC and SEA back under one roof mirrors the reality of the Fleet. The CO and CMC do not lead in silos; they lead together as a Triad under a unified vision. Their development should reflect that partnership, rather than separating their educational foundations into disparate training and education
Research-Driven Excellence: The USNWC is a research powerhouse that outshines the bureaucratic focus inherent to NETC’s Street to Fleet mission. In the Service’s own professional doctrine, training is defined as “skills-based” and focused on “efficiency of resource expenditure” within a bureaucracy.12 While NETC excels at this training – horizontal learning that is designed for technical competence in finite systems – leadership is an infinite human activity that requires vertical development to foster judgment of the unknown.
By keeping NLEC and SEA under a training command, the Navy commits a strategic category error: attempting to apply mechanistic solutions (checklists and administrative procedures) to organic, adaptive problems like culture and trust. Bureaucracies exist to support professions, not the other way around. Housing an educational powerhouse like USNWC under a training command would be a “category error” of the highest order, as it would subject discretionary professional judgment to procedural compliance. As RDML P. Gardner Howe III observed, “a bureaucratic organization will never succeed in combat; only a professional organization can and will.”13
Unifying these bodies under the USNWC allows for the expert application of specialized knowledge through the discretion and judgment of the individual leader. NETC’s mission is to efficiently expend resources for routine training. The USNWC’s mission, as tasked by the CNO, is to educate and develop leaders capable of out-thinking the adversary. These missions are complementary but must remain distinct, with the professional educational authority (USNWC) setting the standard for the leadership continuum.
Bridging the Flag Officer Gap: There is currently a significant visibility gap between Flag leadership and the foundational leadership schoolhouse, limiting understanding of NLEC’s role in Navy leadership development. While Flag Officers are intimately aware of the benefits of the USNWC CLE team’s Flag and Executive (FLEX) courses, their understanding of NLEC’s current evolution is often limited to their own past participation in legacy courses.
This gap is evidenced by the decline of the Leaders Engaging Leaders model. Prior to NLEC’s move to a training command, the CNO mandated that senior Four-Star Admirals engage with every NLEC class, ensuring that the CNO’s strategic vision was institutionalized directly into the minds of every Triad leader in the Navy (Howe, 2015).14 Today, this top-level engagement has largely been replaced by administrative or junior Flag representation.
Reintegration leverages the established trust Flag Officers have in the War College Brand as the Home of Thought to restore this critical engagement. By placing NLEC and SEA back under the NWC, the Navy ensures that senior leaders remain the primary drivers of professional identity for the commanders they lead, restoring the prestige, credibility, and visibility of command-level leadership development across the Navy.
The Cost of a Disjointed Continuum: Lessons from the Press
A fragmented leadership model – where “reins” are split – creates a disconnect between theoretical wisdom and practical application. This disjointed continuum often leads to systemic failures that result in negative press and eroded public trust:
Institutionalizing CNO Goals: The Untapped Potential
Prior to COVID, the CNO directed each of the Navy’s Four-star Admirals to speak to every NLEC class (14 classes annually). This ensured that both the CNO’s message reached every “Triad” leader in the Navy within a 2-3-year span and that the wisdom and vision of our most senior flag officers across the fleet were shared with our front-line command leaders. Today, that engagement has diminished, with the occasional Four-star engagement largely in the shadows of predominantly administrative and junior Flag representation replacing Fleet leadership – Senior Fleet leaders are not engaging in this dedicated and precious time for thinking with Command (Combat) leaders.
The potential of a unified enterprise is incredible:
Figure: Enterprise Alignment of Leadership Education
Conclusion: A Warfighting Imperative
Reintegrating NLEC under the U.S. Naval War College is not merely a structural change; it is a strategic and cognitive realignment of how the Navy forges the mind of the warfighter. For too long, the Service has treated leader development as a bureaucratic checklist of skills to be trained rather than a professional capacity to be forged. By unifying the organizational reins, the Navy will achieve a philosophical unity – A Service of Thought – that ensures the Warrior Ethos and the CNO’s warfighting priorities are messaged with one voice from the deckplates to the Pentagon.
As Admiral Caudle reminds us, the Fleet must be built in the foundry. A true foundry does not merely assemble parts; it applies heat and pressure to change the fundamental properties of the material. This is the essence of our new approach: moving beyond the horizontal, skills-based learning of technical facts (better left to the Type Command (TYCOM) schoolhouses) to the vertical development of the mind. This is the work of education, and it requires a unified foundry – one standard, one discipline, and one leader development continuum from the deckplates to the Pentagon.
To build this foundry, the Navy must act with the same decisiveness it expects of its commanders. We must stop fragmenting the development of our most decisive asymmetric advantage – our people. By aligning development under the U.S. Naval War College, we move from a mechanistic model of compliance to a dynamic model of professional excellence. We ensure that every Naval leader is trained for the weapon station and educated for the command.
We build the Leader(ship) not just to float, but to fight and win in the most complex and unpredictable waters ahead – Forged to fight, Tempered in the Fleet.
Captain Paul Nickell recently completed his tour as a Military Professor at the College of Leadership and Ethics within the Naval War College, and before that as an Instructor at the Navy Leadership and Ethics Command, where he facilitated learning of Major Commanders and Commanding Officers, and developed tomorrow’s Joint Force Leaders. Flying the P-3C, P-3SPA, and the P-8A, he has commanded a P-8A squadron and was the Battle Director for CENTCOM Air Operations. He is currently the Prospective Major Commander for Naval Air Station Corpus Christi, Texas. He holds advanced degrees from both the Naval War College and the Naval Postgraduate School, where his thesis explored “How the Navy Can Become A Learning Organization,” and his subsequent research at the Naval War College has focused on learning as it applies to leadership development.
References
1 “Chief of Naval Operations,” January 2026, https://www.navy.mil/Leadership/Chief-of-Naval-Operations/.
2 Paul Nickell, To Win the Fight, We Must First Win the Mind: Create NDP-1.1 Naval Warfighting | Center for International Maritime Security, September 30, 2025, https://cimsec.org/to-win-the-fight-we-must-first-win-the-mind-create-ndp-1-1-naval-warfighting/.
3 Paul Nickell & Arthur Valeri, “How the Navy Can Become a Learning Organization, Again.” 2024. https://hdl.handle.net/10945/73501
4 Sailors First and the Ideal Navy: Inside the Pentagon with the New CNO, directed by Fed Gov Today, 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKaV0iiQ_c0.
5 Martin L. Cook et al., “The Navy Profession,” U.S. Naval War College, April 2, 2016.
6 Cook et al., “The Navy Profession.”
7 P. Gardner Howe, Professionalism, Leader Development Key to Future, May 19, 2015, https://usnwc.edu/News-and-Events/News/Rear-Adm-Howe-Professionalism-leader-development-key-to-future.
8 Walter E. Carter Jr., “President’s Forum,” Article 2, Naval War College Review 67, no. 1 (2014); James Kelly, “Strengthening Our Naval Profession through a Culture of Leader Development,” Article 3, Naval War College Review 67, no. 1 (2014).
9 Howe, Professionalism, Leader Development Key to Future; Daryl Caudle, “Chief of Naval Operations,” https://www.navy.mil/Leadership/Chief-of-Naval-Operations/.
10 Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, 3rd ed (Crown/Archetype, 2010).
11 Carter Jr., “President’s Forum.”
12 Cook et al., “The Navy Profession.”
13 Howe, Professionalism, Leader Development Key to Future.
14 Howe, Professionalism, Leader Development Key to Future; “CNO’s Navy Leader Development Strategy Advances at Naval War College,” United States Navy, https://www.navy.mil/Press-Office/News-Stories/display-news/Article/2265556/cnos-navy-leader-development-strategy-advances-at-naval-war-college/.
Featured Image: The Naval War College, RI. (U.S. Navy photo)
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