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DIGEST OF TIU'!: DIRECTOH 'S 

STAF'l•' CONFERENGE 

8 MARCH 1955 

TO: Chiefs of Offices and Staff Divisions 

FROM: Deputy Chief of Staff/Administration 

1. DCS/A 

Reported on the contributions received to date in the NSA 1955 

Red Cross Drive. Total money contributed: $10 ;122. This is $378 shr)rt 

of our e;oa.l; however, with fina.l returns yet to come in, it is felt t.ha.t 

we will exceed our goal by a substantial a.mount. 

2. COMMUNICATIONS 

Advised that additional telephone trunk lines to Fort Meade will 

be in operation by 15 March. With the installation of these new lines, 

the "busy" periods should be reduced substantially. 

3. SCHOOL 

Reported on the initiation of new language classes starting at 

the School. 

4. SECtmITY 

Advised that a new regulation will soon be published which revises 

our "Property Pass" system. Effective 1 April, all personnel working at or 

visiting the Agency will be required to have a "Property Pass" in his 

possession if he is desirous of removing anything.from the installations. 

5. SUPPORT GROUP 

Reported on the progress of preparations being made for the forthcoming Commanders' Conference. 

6. HqC 

Announced that the station parking program is to be revised. 

Applications for all space reserved and unreserved is mandatory. Starting 

9 March through 19 April, applications will be accepted in the Headquarters 

Commundant's office. It should be noted, however, that in the District 

and Vireinia, license tags Rre or will be on sale by 15 March. Personnel 

should hold applications until after they have secured their new tags, 

thus avoiding the necessity of re-issuing applications for parking 

stickers at a latE"r date. It is planned that 400 additional parking 

spaces will be m..~dc availnble about June. 

Declassified and approved for release by NSA on 05-27-2014 pursuantto E.O. 1352a 

SE€RET 
7. DIRECTOR 

a. "In connection with the Red Cross Drive, what has to be done 

can be done. I have said many times thnt how well you do a thing depends 

largely - all things being equal - on what is inside of you and how 

willing you a.re to do what you are told to do." 

b. "It bothers me that we have not made the best educated guess 

that we can make, assuming that conditionG are more or less the same two 

years from now, as to how many language people we need. We are in the 

business of languages and I think we are pretty casual about our business. 

No one is willing, I find, to stand up and be counted as to the number of 

language people we need. Your estimated requirements may differ from mine 

because there a.re a large number of our p~ople who think English answers 

all purposes. It just doesn't. I am convinced that the people who are 

working on Swahili ought to talk and think Swahili. I wish somebody had 

the courage of his convictions and come up and tell me how many language 

candidates we need. It would make it a lot mor~ practical for our 

TrRining, School, and Personnel Divisions in Gettine their jobs done. 

I would like to come to work the dny nfter tomorrow and find on my desk 

an authoritative statement as to how m~ny people we need. I know I won't 

e;et it, but we surely need it." 

c. "There is a tendency on every individual's part to do too 

much himself. When he finds he has too much to do, he gets a special 

assistant. The result now is confusion amone the staff, who, if they 

are doing their jobs, would be doing what the free-wheeler is doing. 

"I am a firm believer in a boss-n,·:i.:1 and 11n 'executive vicepresiclent' for that boss-m·:i.n, and then a very shnrp distinction and 

carefully designated distribution of duties. If they are staff duties, 

to the proper staff organization; and if they are operational duties, 

to the proper operationa.l ore;nnization; I am convinced that certainly 

within our opero.tinG off'ices and divisions, we don't need such a set up 

(succession of special assistants, assistant to this, and an assistant 

to that). You need a more rational set up. 

"If you Fl.?'e goine; to increase your staff, be sure that the 

fellow you pick is fully cognizant of his responsibilities. Look at 

your orGanizations to be sure that you 11I'c not writing some of your 

ore;nnizntionnl mo.nual paraBraphs thnt look OK on n chart but leave you 

with n lot of 'free-wheelers'. In effect, you e;et an assistant to an 

assistant. Look into your orcaniza.tion. 

"We ho.ve alwn.ys hri.d the problem or 'fairy talcs ' with the 

Civil Service Counnisoion nnd the mP.thod used to evaluate civilin.n jobs. 

Let me cli=nr up some misconccptionsthri.t mo.y have erron~ously been drawn 

from a Good m<J.ny r11ther hn.rsh stnte~nt::; that 1 ho.vc m'l.de a.bout these 

'rniry talcs'. 

2 

SE€RET 
.. . 

"Since we went to Schedule A, we evaluate and describe our 

own jobs and are our lord and master of our grade system. There is no 

excuse for 'fairy tales' per se. There is no excuse for writing a job 

analysis that obviously is not true. There is no excuse to compound that 

'assistant to the assistant' thing in these job analyses. Let's write 

exactly what a man does; be sure you encompass all of his duties, but 

don't 'build up' the job. Later on, you may have to defend yourself, and 

I don't want any violations of my general policy of prohibiting 'assistant 

to the assistant.' 

"I am a firm believer that if a guy is good enough to work 

for NSA, the guy is good enough to boss a fair number of people on an 

equality line. I am convinced that the horizontal type of organization 

is more efficient than the vertical type of organization. In the first 

place, it takes better people to run them. You gain just that much more 

efficiency from the fact that you have better people. 

"If your batting average was .352 or whatever Ted Williams 

ended up with last season, that's not a major league batting average in 

this organization. The major league average in this organization is somewhere on the order of .968. If it goes below, let's say .949, you'd 

better take a look at it. Each one of you look at your assignment; look 

at the way you have your job analyses run, and let's see whether we are 

keeping things to ourselves that should be assigned to some other 

designated staff section. 

"Three years ago in this room, I said the Number One job of 

any executive - and that applies to all levels -,is to train the guy 

immediately below him. The only way you can get your people to be major 

league batters is to train them. They need to be born with an aptitude 

which you don't have anything to do with, but you must train them how to 

use that aptitude. 

"I want you to take a good critical ii.oak at your organization, 

not just the top, but down through every level. You will find yom- troubles 

down in the office, division, and branch level. Let's not have any 'freewheelers' around here. Assign your functions to the proper staff section, 

select your people carefully for the job, then train them to do the job." 

.;e ~~t~~ ~r, U 

Ex/Asst to DIR 

3 

SE€RET