Fisher asked Why? and Why not? Jellicoe asked How? and How much?

From Castles of Steel by Robert K. Massie. Page 57.

Jellicoe’s professional experience and powers of concentration and organization were exceptional. He brought to his command an almost unparalleled technical knowledge and a lifelong, deeply ingrained confidence in himself. Beyond this, Jellicoe possessed something else rare among the hundreds of conventional officers on the Navy List: he had an original mind. It was not the mind of a dreamer and genius like Fisher, whose ideas ranged across the whole spectrum of naval affairs. Jellicoe’s was the practical, realistic mind of an engineer. Fisher asked Why? and Why not? Jellicoe asked How? and How much? When he found the answers, he understood, better than anyone else in the British navy, the difficulties the navy faced. He was aware of the technical achievements and rapid progress of the German navy. He knew that German ships were superior in armor protection and that German shells, torpedoes, and mines were more reliable than British. He was familiar with German skill in gunnery, in which he was himself an expert. As he warned Churchill on the eve of war, it was highly dangerous to assume, as Churchill did, that British ships were superior to German as fighting machines.

Jellicoe was not without weaknesses. Sometimes, loyalty to old friends blinded him to their limitations and made him slow to relieve them of command. A more serious flaw was his tendency to do everything for himself—his difficulty in delegating responsibility. Because of his own immense capacity for work and extensive grasp of technical detail, he often dealt with matters that might have been left to subordinates. During his rise to the top, one of his superiors noted that he “really does too much. He must learn to work his captains and staff more and himself less. At present he puts himself in the position of, say, a glorified gunnery lieutenant. This will not do when he gets with a big fleet. He must trust his staff and captains and if they don’t fit, he must kick them out!”

This advice did not change Jellicoe’s nature. As he rose higher and his responsibilities grew greater, his reluctance to delegate never left him.