Building Human Resilience For a 21st Century Navy

What does human resilience or Sailor “toughness” mean for a 21st century Navy? This was the question that forward-thinking Navy leaders of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet were asking.

As a key member of the Tactical Advancements for the Next Generation (TANG) team led by Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Akin embarked on a 2 year journey to uncover the foundational elements of “toughness” by exploring the Sailor experience and the challenges that may prevent them from thriving personally and professionally throughout their career.

The project culminated in a larger workshop of 40+ Sailors seeded with ideas generated with our subject matter experts. Sailors were tasked with designing tools and experiences that they believed would support individual grit and resilience, with the ultimate goal of fleet readiness and mission accomplishment. The concepts generated throughout the project focused on development of a human-centric Navy force to optimize the unique competitive advantages inherent in the diverse, dedicated, and innovative American Sailor.

The resulting Crucible and Crates have been deployed amongst Surface Navy Ships in both the Atlantic and Pacific Fleets in an ongoing effort to understand and build resilience through the on-boarding process. This new system has already proven, in its short deployment, to be a valuable component in building stronger identities for individuals and ship communities with greater success. Akin continues to custom team to seamlessly assimilate into existing client structures and behaviors maintaining coherent effort and manifesting change through the power of design.