The United States Navy is not exactly known as an incubator for free-thinking management strategies. But when Capt. D. Michael Abrashoff took over as commander of theU.S.S. Benfold, one of the most lethal warships in the fleet, he decided to make the Benfold decks a human behavior laboratory to encourage passion, commitment and peak performance.

        Mr. Abrashoff, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and former military assistant to former secretary of defense William J. Perry, is today the founder and chief executive of CEO Grassroots Leadership.

ON THE NET

About D. Michael Abrashoff     Former commander of the U.S.S. Benford, an 86-ton warship containing the most advanced arsenal of computerized missiles in the fleet.     During its 20-month tenure, the Benford had the highest gunnery score in the Pacific fleet. It completed the Navy's pre-deployment training cycle in record time, and 100 percent of Benfold's career sailors re-signed for another tour, compared with 54 percent who usually remain in the Navy.     Mr. Abrashoff, 41, is the founder of CEO Grassroots Leadership:    www.grassrootsleadership.com

        He will autograph copies of his book, It's Your Ship: Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy ($24.95; Warner Books) Wednesday at 7 p.m. at Joseph-Beth Booksellers, 2692 Madison Ave., Norwood. He was interviewed by Enquirer business reporter John Eckberg.

        This month, the book reached No. 6 on the Wall Street Journal business book best seller list, five days before its formal release date.

        Question: Congratulations on your book. Is this your first effort?

        Answer: Oh, thank you. It sure is.

        It was very gratifying writing the book, and what's funny is that as I was going through this journey on Benfold, some days, I had no idea what I was doing. You know: I think this is going to work. I'm not sure, but let's try it.

        What writing the book did for me was help me recreate everything we did, and that let me figure out why everything worked the way it did. I now have titles for books two and three on the drawing board. Number two will be Get Your Ship Together, and the next title is going to be Ship Happens.

        Q: You seem to be a fairly Gen-X kind of guy in terms of your approach to people, their efforts and ambitions; that is, you're not afraid to bend or break rules. Should that kind of approach be encouraged at companies where the bottom line has immutable implications — take care of the bottom line or go belly-up?

        A: If all we were to do is follow rules all the time, we'd need no midlevel managers. The CEO could write the regulation manual, and then you have the workers who could follow the manual. You need midlevel managers because not everything in the world is black and white.

        There are a lot of gray areas in business. That's why you need midlevel managers who are actively engaged and have the authority and empowerment to interpret the rules and regulations as guidelines to fit the situations they face.

        What we tried to do on Benfold was something to increase our bottom line.

        This was the only way I could figure out how to become a leader in our industry and at the end of the day, people became our competitive advantage in the relationships they created among themselves and our customers: U.S. taxpayers, the battle group commander, the admiral was my customer and he has missions that he needs to get done.

        I always wanted to be the provider of choice. When you look at the other ships in the battle group, we all had the same capabilities yet Benfold was the go-to-ship. It wasn't the technology. It wasn't the hardware. It was our people who were the competitive advantage.

        In business, a lot of companies offer the same product. The only way to get your customer to pay retail is to figure out your competitive advantage. I think it's how motivated and passionate your people are. You can feel that energy when you're dealing with workers who have that.

        Q: You write in the book If we stop pinning labels on people and stop treating them as if they were stupid, they would perform better. Why not instead assume that everyone is inherently talented and spur them to live up to those expectations.

        You don't really believe that, do you? How many times have you found that clerks could not care less about you as a customer. In many cases, it's a systemic malaise: People really don't care.

        A: Think about those few organizations where people do care. Take Southwest Airlines, that is not hype. It really is a great organization. It's not because they have different planes.

        At the end of the day, Southwest's competitive advantage is the people.

        It's statistically tougher to get a job at Southwest Airlines than it is to get into Harvard. There's one family where 11 of 13 members work at Southwest. That's the atmosphere that has been created by Herb Kelleher (co-founder).

        He took a genuine interest in his employees, and they repaid him by providing a great customer experience for the fliers, and that's why Wall Street assigns such a high value to that company.

        Q: How important is management-by-wandering-about?

        A: Critical! On the Benfold, it was the most important part of my day, getting out and walking around. But you know, technology has not improved our communications ability within organizations. People think that if they write an e-mail or leave a voice mail, they're communicating.

        We are so stressed out we are losing the ability to communicate with fellow workers and our employees. I could have sat there and sent e-mails all day long on the ship, but what I did was make myself available as a leadership tool to my department heads.

        If they had somebody who was working late on a project or somebody who did great work, in the morning when I met with my department heads, they would tell me hey, this person worked until midnight. When you see him, give him a pat on the back.

        It was immediate — within a day of their extra effort, they were hearing directly from me. I was looking them right in the eye and saying I sincerely appreciate the effort you put into this. Compare that to getting an e-mail. There's no comparison.

        Sure I had the advantage of having all 300 people within 505 feet of me. How do you do that when the sales force is spread out across the country or around the globe?

        That's the question I get asked that all the time. I have to admit it's a challenge.

        Why don't people do more of this? It's because we're all stressed out. We're trying to do more with less. We're rushing like maniacs.

        It's an easy thing to forget about, but that praise to me is the one thing that pays the most important dividends.

        You can't order up great performance. Sure, you can threaten people, but they're going to do just the bare minimum to get by and not do one bit extra.

        Everything we did in Benfold was done to be the best.

       E-mail jeckberg@enquirer.com.

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