Book - Turn the Ship Around

Turn the Ship Around by L. David Marquet

Turn the Ship Around! tells the story of how Captain David Marquet successfully transformed the USS Santa Fe in less than a year, from the worst-performing submarine in its fleet to the best. It presents a different approach to leadership, using a leader-leader model instead of a leader-follower model. This approach can be applied to any organization to unlock the energy and potential of people at all levels.

David Marquet, an experienced naval officer, had an idea to turn his ship around. He shares the story of how, by challenging the navy’s traditional leader-follower approach, he propelled his ship, within one year, from worst to first in the fleet. How? He rejected leader-follower as their model.

The idea came to him when he gave an impossible order to his crew (of more than 100 sailors aboard the USS Santa Fe, a nuclear-powered submarine) and they blindly followed him because he told them to. What if, instead, they were each empowered to challenge and to lead?

Turn the Ship Around! is the story of Marquet’s journey with his crew. He shares the phases of struggle from his frustration, questioning, and ultimate rejection of the leader-follower model, to the trials and tribulations adopting the new model, to the ultimate overwhelming success with the leader-leader model. As he says, the steps are evolutionary while the result is revolutionary.

His book is a call to action for all those frustrated workers and bosses for whom the leader-follower model just doesn’t cut it! You will find answers in these pages and those answers will lead you to greater success.

Why This Book Matters:

Turn the Ship Around tells the story of how a mediocre Navy submarine crew became a highly respected crew by the works of a new navy captain.

I imagine a world where we all find satisfaction in our work. It is a world where every human being is intellectually engaged, motivated and self-inspired. - Turn the Ship Around!

Thinking Anew

At its core is the belief that we can all be leaders and in fact, it’s best when we all are leaders. - Turn the Ship Around! page xxvii

Leadership in the navy, and perhaps in your organization, is typically about controlling people. It divides your team into two groups: leaders and followers. This model worked well in the physically demanding factories of the Industrial Revolution. But today’s work is less physical and more cognitive. Should we still be using a model developed for physical labor for our intellectual work? David Marquet doesn’t think so.

He proposes the leader-leader model is far superior to the leader-follower model. Why? It achieves greater improvements in effectiveness and morale and makes the organization stronger. These improvements endure beyond the tenure of the current leader. They are independent of the leader’s personality or presence. They are resilient and don’t require the leader to always be right.

As Stephen Covey says in the forward

Our world’s bright future will be built by people who have discovered that leadership is the enabling art (xxi).

Getting started

Within a year of taking over command of Santa Fe, he had turned the ship around with a marked improvement in performance, a huge jump in enlistments and retention and crew members were visibly advancing in their careers. To incorporate the 3 sets of mechanisms into your organization:

I believe that rejecting the impulse to take control and attract followers will be your greatest challenge and, in time, your most powerful and enduring success - Turn the Ship Around! page 216

Marquet provides a description of the three-step exercise he uses to help organizations achieve leader-leader outcomes.

1. Identify where excellence is created in your company (what internal and external interfaces generate excellence). Examine your internal processes to identify key sources of excellence, e.g. specific interfaces with customers.
2. Determine what decisions the people responsible for those interfaces need to make to achieve excellence. Figure out the types of decisions that’d affect your organization’s ability to achieve excellence in those areas.
3. Understand what it would take to enable those people to make the decisions that lead to the excellence. Break down what’s required to help your employees to make those decisions (e.g. technical knowledge, goal-clarity, decision-making authority and accountability) and make it happen.

Leader-Leader approach:

Most people unconsciously divide the world into leaders vs followers, and make assumptions about what each group can/can’t do. Such assumptions influence our thoughts and actions to impact the performance of individual employees and the organization.

It’s not uncommon for enthusiastic employees to suggest new ideas, only to be told that won’t work or it’s not your job. People feel frustrated and eventually stop trying or leave the organization altogether. Bosses also feel frustrated when their staff would rather do the bare minimum rather than to innovate or take responsibility.

The leader-leader model recognizes that everyone has the ability and potential to lead. It taps on individual potential at all levels, reduces dependency on a single leader and delivers sustained performance. This model can be applied to any organization and leadership level—it allows senior leaders to unlock the energy and potential of their people, and helps junior/middle leaders to step up in a way that encourages their bosses to let go.

Implementing the leader-leader model

Three keys to leader-leader

The core of the leader-leader model is giving employees control over what they work on and how they work. - Turn the Ship Around, page 206

To implement the leader-leader approach, you need 3 key components: Control, Competence and Clarity. Decentralized control is at the core of this model, but it can only work if it’s supported by competence and clarity. Without those 2 pillars, decentralizing control will only bring chaos. When all 3 components are properly installed, they’ll reinforce one another in a positive spiral.

The mechanisms outlined in this book to turn passive followers into active leaders can be summarized into three C’s:

Control

Control refers to the freedom and authority to make decisions about why, what and how you’re going to work. The goal is to delegate decision-making control as far as possible in the organization. In the book and full book summary, you can learn various mechanisms on how to decentralize control, such as rewriting your control policies, changing mindsets using behaviors, thinking aloud, using regular check-ins to align and educate people etc.

1. Resist the urge to provide solutions
2. Eliminate top-down monitoring systems
3. Think out loud (both superiors and subordinates)
4. Use I intend to….
5. Short, early conversations make efficient work

Competence

For decentralized control to work, people at every level must be technically competent to make the right decisions. If you give people additional responsibility without equipping them with the required knowledge and resources, things will fall apart. In the book, Marquet covers various tools/techniques you can use to improve technical competence at all levels, including: inculcating deliberate action, adopting continuous learning, using certifications (instead of briefings), defining goals (not methods), etc. You can get a detailed overview of these mechanisms in our complete 13-page summary.

1. Don’t brief people, rather certify them
2. Learn (everywhere, all the time)
3. Continually and consistently repeat the message
4. Specify goals, not methods

Clarity

For people at all levels to make effective decisions, they must be fully aligned with the organization’s purpose, and thoroughly understand the organization’s goals and decision-making criteria. In the book / complete book summary, we cover a range of mechanisms to develop clarity, build trust, inspire people and develop clear guiding principles at all levels.

1. Build trust and take care of your people
2. Achieve excellence, don’t just avoid errors
3. Encourage a questioning attitude over blind obedience
4. Use immediate recognition to reinforce desired behaviors

Insights from the book about this model

Marquet also includes ideas to start to achieve the above. For example, to work on Control, ask people to complete this sentence Our company would be more effective if [level] management could make decisions about [subject]. Then ask them what, technically, do the people at this level of management need to know in order to make that decision?

To achieve Clarity, have people write their end-of-tour awards (3 years into the future) or at a minimum, their performance evaluation for the next year.

To identify the specific changes needed to achieve the broader cultural shift, he suggests that people complete the following sentence: I’d know we achieved [this cultural change] if I saw employees [what specifically]. I work with pharmaceutical teams to help them achieve a more patient-focused culture, and this question helps them clarify what exactly this patient-focused mindset means to them and what they do each day.

He also offers ideas to help measure the above. For example, to measure Competence, ask people how many minutes a week they spend learning on their own. Typically, it’s a small number. An organizational measure of improving health would be to increase that number. Isn’t it true, when you look around, the people and teams who are self-directed learners are the most successful?

Mind shifts

To achieve leader-leader instead of leader-follower think ‘partner’ not ‘control.’ Here are the top ten mind shifts. Which ones do you need to work on?

Don’t do this	Instead do this!
Take control	Give control
Give orders	Avoid giving orders
Brief (tell)	Certify (train)
Have meetings	Engage in conversations
Focus on technology/products	Focus on people
Think short term	Think long term
Want to be missed after you depart	Want not to be missed after you depart
Protect information	Pass information
Increase monitoring / inspection	Reduce monitoring / inspection
Have a mentor-mentee program	Have a mentor-mentor program

Are you ready to take the first steps toward an empowered and engaged team? Are you ready to embrace the changes that will unleash the intellectual and creative power of your team members? Do you have the stamina for long-term thinking?

No matter your business or position in that business, you can apply Marquet’s ideas. Your reward? A team of leaders where everyone takes responsibility. They will not only be more effective at their work, they will be more engaged, happy and healthy. For most of our organizations, that’s a ship turned around!

The Big Takeaways

1. The United States is looking at a leadership problem, creating a bad image for doing business.

   To encourage and motivate workers, we must restructure how we view leadership.

2. Give everyone a chance to pitch ideas. This is how businesses succeed.

   The decision-making power is evenly disbursed throughout the management system, which allows people to use new information.

3. Motivate your employees to be more productive by allowing them to have more responsibility.

   Asking for permission using the phrase I intend to gives more power to the employees because they are the ones that made the decision, not the leader.

4. Do not give employees responsibilities they cannot handle.

   Identify unprepared individuals or teams by asking questions and delegate tasks accordingly.

5. Businesses must have clear goals so they can accomplish using the leader-leader strategy.

   Give employees external incentives to decrease employee-employee competition.