The top leveI of Navy leadership is its admiraIs. There are 238 of them. They have responsibility for more than 390,000 members of the Navy and control an annual budget of more than $130 billion. They are the equivalent of a corporate C-suite. Of the more than 3,000 captains who serve in the Navy, roughly 38--barely 1%--make the cut to admiraI each year.

In 2001 the chief of naval operations--the Navy' s CEO--asked retired Vice AdmiraI Phil Quast, who had spent 38 years in the Navy, to establish the program that became the Executive Learning Office. "Of 238 admiraI positions, fewer than 40 are concerned with actual war fighting," Quast notes. "The vast majority is doing jobs analogous to that of a CEO, CTO, CFO, COO or other functional business areas. Our job is to help them develop the business acumen they need to run the business of the Navy as excellent stewards of the public's money and its trust."

(Adapted from http://www.forbes.com)