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eventual assignment to a joint staff, critical for a continued career. For me, it was a chance to learn how the Navy’s thought process and outlook on problems differed from the Army’s. From my perspective, the Army allowed as much initiative as necessary to accomplish a mission,
provided you adhered to its defined doctrine and guidance. In the Navy, however, you can take as much initiative as necessary by following one simple golden rule: if there is no prohibition against something, then you are allowed to do it until told to stop. That concept proved a great source of amusement during tactical and operational discussions in the course and I delighted in challenging my classmates to exercise that same degree of unfettered initiative.
    After Kansas came a set of orders to yet another dream assignment—as executive officer (XO) of an Aegis cruiser, USS Shiloh , home ported in San Diego, California. Since the ship was on deployment, I was unable to report aboard the day after graduating from the Executive Officer course, again in Newport; however, I did drive cross-country in four days, rested one day, then flew out a day early to meet the ship in Phuket, Thailand, in September 1994, as it returned from a six-month deployment to the Middle East.
    Over the next twenty months, I would learn what it meant to be part of the ship’s core leadership team, made up of the commanding officer, executive officer, and command master chief. Entrusted with the daily well-being, morale, and welfare of the crew, two very different but excellent commanding officers ran the ship, John Russack and Paul Schultz. To learn from their experiences and actions helped me understand how to succeed as a commanding officer myself.
    Supported by a broad depth of talent in the department heads of Shiloh , I truly learned how to judge the strengths and weaknesses of officers and chief petty officers and integrate them into a cooperative and effective combat fighting team. This experience was different from my previous Navy jobs, aimed at mastering a single specialty. As an XO, the best lesson one can learn is the art of how to truly lead and manage a crew.
    From USS Shiloh , it was off to company headquarters in the Pentagon, but even after I transferred off the ship I did not know the exact job I was going to next. In April 1996, the Bureau of Personnel recommended that I, along with several other officers, be interviewed for the position of aide-de-camp to the chief of naval operations. I was also interviewed
for a possible appointment as executive assistant to the chief of legislative affairs, but finally was selected instead by Secretary of the Navy John H. Dalton, to be his administrative aide, and reported to his office for duty in August 1996. Administrative aides are highly visible officers, and the role can make or break careers. The job requires interaction on a daily basis with admirals, generals, assistant secretaries of the Navy, and other high-ranking Department of Defense officials, with all the sensitivity that this demands, but it also requires confidence and competence in keeping on top of myriad files, military programs, and documents. For me, it was the opportunity of a lifetime to see the inner workings of the military and civilian top echelons of the Navy and observe how decisions made at that level trickled down to the ships on the waterfront and affected the daily lives of sailors.
    About one year after arriving in the office of the secretary of the Navy, I began to discuss my next assignment with the Bureau of Personnel. I had already screened for command at sea and now it was only a matter of actually being assigned to a ship. As with all my previous assignments, location did not matter as much as getting the best ship possible. For me, that meant an Arleigh Burke –class guided-missile destroyer.
    I detached from the office of the secretary of the Navy in early February 1999 to begin the pre-command battery of