Much has been written these past few\u00a0months about Capt. Brett Crozier\u2019s response to\u00a0<\/span>the coronavirus outbreak<\/span><\/a>\u00a0on board the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt. The general theme of most of the articles is that the Navy should have protected Crozier because he \u201c<\/span>loved<\/span><\/a>\u201d his crew and had their best interests at heart. As I have\u00a0<\/span>written previously<\/span><\/a>, the question as to whether he was actually effective had been lost in nearly all of the analysis. As the Navy\u2019s\u00a0<\/span>investigation<\/span><\/a>\u00a0has\u00a0<\/span>concluded<\/span><\/a>, it is clear from the report that Crozier\u2019s performance was\u00a0deficient.<\/span><\/p>\n Here are a few lessons for military leaders from the Crozier incident, written with full awareness of the Navy\u2019s investigation report. They don\u2019t merely derive from the 47-page report, but include learnings that emerge from the entire public\u00a0spectacle:<\/span><\/p>\n 1. An 80-percent solution delivered on time is almost always better than a 100-percent solution delivered too late. Captain Crozier was hyper-focused on a solution he believed would meet 100 percent of the CDC guidelines for protecting his crew. Unfortunately, that solution\u2014moving his crew into hotels in Guam\u2019s tourist district\u2014was not within the Navy\u2019s ability to implement without significant local government and business help, an effort which would take days to weeks. There were other, more immediate, solutions within Crozier\u2019s authority to direct, but he elected not to pursue them because they were not \u201cideal\u201d solutions. In so doing, the report concludes, Crozier put the crew\u2019s comfort ahead of their safety and actually delayed isolation efforts. Ask for outside help if you think you need it, but meanwhile focus on measures that are within your control.<\/span><\/p>\n 2. Just because you aren\u2019t an expert doesn\u2019t mean you can\u2019t evaluate the quality of data going into your decision. At the time Crozier was making his decisions, the probability data on transmissibility of the disease was fairly good, hence his team could fairly accurately predict the rate of infections. But what was not known at that time was how severe those infections would be. Yet Crozier\u2019s medical staff communicated as if they had high confidence in predicted fatality outcomes. Had the data on which they made these predictions been reliable, the frenetic nature of their actions, which included a threat to leak information to the press, might be easier to understand. But the data was based on a cruise ship event where the population demographic was very different that the Roosevelt\u2019s. In this case it would have been tempting to think, \u201cWell, I\u2019m not a medical officer, so I will simply hit the \u2018I believe button\u2019 on what the doctors are telling me.\u201d But leaders are required to evaluate data outside their area of expertise all the time. <\/span>You may not be a mechanical engineer, but you will be required to decide on whether the data suggests you should interrupt operations to repair that pump now. You may not be an intelligence officer, but you will be required to decide whether targeting data is sufficient to support the strike. And just because you are not a physician does not absolve you of the responsibility to determine whether certain medical data justifies your decision. You will be accountable for your decision, not \u201cthe experts.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n 3. Be careful when suggesting a course of action that could shift risk from a military population to a civilian one. Crozier\u2019s preferred course of action \u2014 moving his crew into town \u2014 could have introduced a large number of COVID infections into a community of Guam civilians who had little or no health insurance. Several of Guam\u2019s civilian leaders, understandably alarmed by this proposal, pushed back energetically. Crozier did not give this matter the attention it deserved, instead dismissing it as a \u201cpolitical\u201d problem. Hence he failed to pursue a course of action that considered holistic risk, factoring in risk to all U.S. citizens in Guam, and instead focused on just the risk to his crew.<\/span><\/p>\n 4. Military members should be more, not less, disciplined than average Americans. I made the point in my earlier articles that the now-famous farewell celebration for Crozier very likely increased the rate of infection among his crew. The Navy\u2019s study seems to back that assertion up, reporting that somewhere around 2,000 crew members assembled in close proximity for his <\/span>sendoff<\/span><\/a>. It also indicates that the Seventh Fleet staff knew that this event had \u201cjust made their job harder,\u201d and that perhaps hundreds of the COVID-19 cases that would emerge over the ensuing couple of weeks were caused by this love-fest. With most of America following guidance during this period of time by isolating at home, this lack of discipline among the crew was\u00a0inexcusable.<\/span><\/p>\n 5. How your crew behaves, even when you are not present, reflects on your leadership. Apologists have said that Crozier could not have been held responsible for the crew\u2019s behavior during his <\/span>farewell party<\/span><\/a>because he was no longer in command. That\u2019s a cop-out. If Crozier had been effective at teaching his crew the urgency of social distancing, if his leadership lessons had \u201cstuck\u201d for even one day beyond his captaincy, this celebration would never have happened and perhaps hundreds of transmissions would have been\u00a0avoided.<\/span><\/p>\n 6. Properly inform and properly engage your chain of command. The report indicates that Crozier limited certain information to aviation community leaders rather than fully involving his operational chain of command, failed to use proper methods to communicate the severity of his concern to operational leaders, was inconsistent in communicating the degree of his concern depending on who he was speaking to, and used unclassified email to make operational recommendations. Apologists have suggested Crozier did this as a matter of expedience, but the way he approached the problem did nothing to accelerate a response. In fact, it had quite the opposite effect.<\/span><\/p>\n