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Rickover's Lessons

"The status quo has no absolute sanctity"

Rickover spent an inordinate amount of time focused on interviewing personnel — he made the final hiring decision for every naval officer who applied to serve on a nuclear submarine until he retired. By enforcing tight lines of supervision over his officers, Rickover ensured that he maintained full visibility into each team, including the project facilities at Knolls, Bettis, and the shipyards, allowing him to catch problems early on. Rickover was not only an exceptional manager of people and deeply technical, but his 20-year naval career before Oak Ridge taught him how to wrangle government bureaucracy — and discern which rules mattered and which didn’t.

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