Principles in Motion – Norfolk Naval Shipyard Focuses on Turning Values into Behaviors That Deliver Results

At Norfolk Naval Shipyard (NNSY), our mission is clear: repair, modernize, and inactivate the Navy’s warships and training platforms. But how we accomplish that mission matters just as much as what we accomplish. That is where our Strategic Framework comes in. The framework connects our mission, values, culture, principles, priorities, and vision. Its purpose is not to give us another set of words to memorize. It gives us a shared way to make decisions, solve problems, work across organizational boundaries, and deliver the results the Fleet depends on. At the foundation are our C.O.R.E. Values—Care, Ownership, Respect, and Excellence. They define what we stand for and guide the choices we make every day. Care means being present, transparent, and supporting one another as we grow together. Ownership means taking responsibility for our attitudes, decisions, and actions—and treating problems as opportunities to learn and teach. Respect means approaching each interaction with humanity and humility while listening to understand. Excellence means upholding our values while using teamwork and innovation to deliver the highest-quality results. But values only shape culture when they become visible in how we work. That is the role of our Command Guiding Principles.

NNSY’s Values in Motion

NNSY’s Command Guiding Principles help translate what we believe into how we behave. When NNSY originally developed these principles, we drew from the Shingo Model for Operational Excellence, a recognized approach used across industries to help organizations build cultures that consistently deliver strong results. The model emphasizes an important lesson learned from high-performing organizations: lasting excellence does not come simply from introducing another tool, program, or initiative. The idea is straightforward: the results an organization achieves are closely connected to the behaviors it consistently demonstrates. Principles help define and reinforce those behaviors. That is why we describe our Command Guiding Principles as our values in motion. They help move us from what we believe to how we work every day.

Win as a Team

Winning as a team begins with respecting every individual, leading with humility, and creating constancy of purpose. Every person at NNSY contributes to mission success. Respecting every individual means recognizing the expertise, experience, ideas, and perspective each teammate brings to work—especially those closest to “the work." Leading with humility means being willing to listen, learn, ask questions, acknowledge mistakes, and recognize that the best answer may come from someone else. Creating constancy of purpose means keeping our shared mission in view when priorities compete or decisions become difficult. It also means thinking beyond our individual shop, code, project, or department. We must understand how our work connects across the organization. What does this look like? Before making a change, ask the people closest to “the work." Before optimizing your piece of the process, understand the impact upstream and downstream.

Excellence in All We Do

Excellence is more than completing a task. It means doing the work safely, correctly, and with the customer in mind. This principle calls us to assure quality at the source, seek perfection, and create value for our customers. Quality at the source means taking responsibility for quality where the work occurs—not relying on someone downstream to discover and correct a problem. Seeking perfection does not mean waiting for perfect conditions or expecting people never to make mistakes. It means continually looking for a better way, learning when something does not go as planned, and refusing to normalize avoidable defects and rework. Creating value for the customer means understanding who depends on our work. Ultimately, that connection leads to the Sailors and Fleet who depend on us to deliver safe, reliable warships when promised.

To make that happen, when something does not look right, stop and address it. When rework occurs, learn from it. When considering a requirement or process step, ask: Does this create value, protect quality, or enable mission delivery?

Continuous Improvement

Continuous Improvement means we do not simply become better at working around recurring problems. We improve the process that creates them. This principle calls us to focus on process, embrace scientific thinking, and improve flow and pull. Focusing on process changes the first question from “Who made the mistake?” to “What in our process allowed this to happen?” Scientific thinking means we do not jump from problem to solution based only on assumptions. We understand the problem, go where the work happens, use facts and data, listen to those closest to the work, test solutions, measure the results, and adjust. Improving flow means looking across the entire process for the barriers that keep work from moving—whether that is material, information, tools, approvals, facilities, decisions, or another dependency.

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