Blue & Gold Professional Library

With updates to every chapter, this new fourth edition serves as the premier guide to professional writing for the naval services. Authored by a naval officer who taught English at two service academies, the book is widely used by officers, enlisted men and women and civilians in both the Navy and Marine Corps. Shenk provides sound, practical advice on all common naval writing assignments across digital and print platforms. Fully revised, the book reflects the changing landscape of professional communication in general and changes in naval culture in the last decade across the fleet, making it an essential guide.

Fully revised, this third edition of Newly Commissioned Naval Officer's Guide continues to be an essential resource for all of those at the pivotal transition from midshipmen and officer candidates to newly commissioned naval officers from all service communities. Chapters address the principles of basic leadership, naval policy, service etiquette, and personal and professional administration. Including new insights from those who have recently made this transition, this book serves as a gateway to the many digital and print assets available to newly commissioned officers. It underscores continued preparation, repetition, action, leadership, accountability, and focus on the job at hand as lifelong career fundamentals. A brief history of the U.S. Navy is also included, as well as sample communications and helpful hints, making this volume an important source of advice and information for young leaders who, by their service, make a difference in the U.S. Navy, the nation, and the world.

Throughout the history of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, leading officers and strategists have advocated for formal colleges and schools for naval officers but have also made the case that true naval professionalism requires a career-long dedication to learning and to self-improvement. This was the impetus behind the very founding of the U.S. Naval Institute by officers who believed that the Navy's lack of support for their education meant they needed to create their own organization for self-study and cooperative learning. Naval luminaries like admirals William Sims and Ernest King continued to campaign for self-study and the personal pursuit of professional knowledge during the twentieth century, distributing lists of suggested books for officers to read and promoting their ideas widely through speeches and published works. While recommending that officers read broadly in pursuit of individual knowledge is an important part of creating a truly educated and professional Fleet and Fleet Marine Force, it is also important for leaders in the sea services to offer mentorship and create opportunities for discourse that encourages group learning. Developing the Naval Mind serves as a how-to manual and syllabus for leaders to create and lead wardroom, ready room, and work center discussion groups across the fleet to create a more educated and professionally engaged Navy and Marine Corps.

Continuing the tradition of Naval Institute Blue and Gold series classics such as “Command at Sea” and “The Watch Officer's Guide”, “The Navy Staff Officer's Guide” will equip naval leaders for success in the challenging professional environment of a Navy staff. Navy staffs build and equip the Navy, plan its future, and guide its current operations. During a staff tour, a savvy Navy leader can have positive reach beyond the lifelines of a single command, with impact across the fleet and years into the future. Staff duty emphasizes a different set of tools from those typically employed in sea duty billets. It has its own formal and informal expectations and its own opportunities, challenges, and pitfalls. This guide provides and explains those tools-and marks the shoals that can wreck the unaware-enabling both new and seasoned staff officers to be prepared for the unique requirements of staff duty. Through extensive use of historical examples and "sea stories," it introduces the reader to why staffs exist, how they impact the Navy, and how they can offer both professional development and meaningful accomplishment. Recognizing that Navy staffs vary in their purposes and organization, The Navy Staff Officer's Guide synthesizes those differences into meaningful guidance for all staff officers, civilians, and Sailors, whether assigned to a destroyer squadron staff operating from a DDG or to the OPNAV staff in the Pentagon. Effective coordination, clear communication, and an understanding of the commander and their mission are central to staff success and are clearly articulated. In twenty-three chapters covering the many aspects of Navy staff work-including "The Staff Command Triad," "Communicating as a Staff Officer," "Civilian Personnel," "Fleet Commands and the Maritime Operations Centers," and "TYCOMs and SYSCOMs"-Captain Rielage has "covered the waterfront" (in Sailor-speak) with this comprehensive and readable guide.? Staffs may not win the fight, but good staff work creates the conditions for victory before the first shot is fired. This guide is the key to ensuring the success of Navy staffs and all those who serve them.

In this third edition of the Chief Petty Officer's Guide, author Paul Kingsbury offers the same caliber of wisdom and advice that has helped Chief Petty Officers (CPOs) succeed for decades. Fully revised, this edition features updates to every chapter as well as a broader context, scope, and audience. With the addition of guidance for Navy and Coast Guard chiefs of all experience levels, aspiring petty officers seeking advancement to chief, and other leaders, this book is a vital tool for anyone who wants to understand how great chiefs think, manage, and lead. Those striving to improve as a chief, senior chief, or master chief will find this handbook an essential resource on how to lead and manage strong maintenance and operational teams. Kingsbury provides key perspectives on how chiefs can use power bases, influence tactics, and managerial skills to achieve mission success at all levels of Navy and Coast Guard leadership. Chapters feature tools for self-assessment, including explanations of the attributes, behaviors, and qualities that all petty officers (or any leader or manager) should strive for.

Fighting the Fleet recognizes that fleets conduct four distinct but interlocking tasks at the operational level of war-striking, screening, scouting, and basing-and that successful operational art is achieved when they are brought to bear in a cohesive, competitive scheme. In explaining these elements, and how they are conjoined for advantage, a central theme emerges: despite the utility and importance of jointness among the armed forces, the effective employment of naval power requires a specialized language and understanding of naval concepts that is often diluted or completely lost, when too much jointness is introduced. Woven into the fabric of the book are the fundamental principles of three of the most important naval theorists of the twentieth century: Rear Admiral Bradley Fiske, Rear Admiral J.C. Wylie, and Captain Wayne Hughes. While Cares and Cowden advocate the reinvigoration of combat theory and the appropriate use of operations research, they avoid over-theorizing and have produced a practical guide that empowers fleet planners to wield naval power appropriately and effectively in meeting today's operational and tactical challenges.

Saltwater Leadership, Second Edition is about leadership in the maritime environment. The unforgiving, dynamic, and unconquerable nature of the sea requires direct leadership, often with very little margin of error. The unique and common nature of professional life on the sea applies not only to junior naval leaders but also officer and enlisted leaders from the Marines, Coast Guard and Merchant Marines. Based on decades of leadership experiences, Saltwater Leadership covers a wide variety of topics, including basic junior officer leadership, taking care of people, providing forceful backup, leadership and culture, and professional competence.