PDF Summary:Turn the Ship Around, by L. David Marquet

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The leader-follower model is revered because it has worked. It’s responsible for successes ranging from the construction of the pyramids in ancient Egypt to the factories of the Industrial Revolution.

However, the leader-follower structure is designed to coordinate physical labor for various purposes, whether building pyramids and roads, or mining coal. In contrast, many of today’s employees are knowledge workers who work independently to develop and apply information. The leader-follower model doesn’t manage cognitive work effectively.

People who are treated as followers become passive. With scant decision-making ability, they have little motivation to contribute their ingenuity and energy.

Another factor limiting the leader-follower structure is that the organization’s success depends solely on the leader’s ability. This results in an overemphasis on the leader’s personality and on short-term results. When such a leader leaves an organization or company, performance often plummets because followers are dependent on the leader and can’t carry on without him.

The Leader-Leader Model

The leader-leader structure is based on a different assumption about...

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Rethinking Assumptions

While on the treaty inspection assignment, he studied leadership, psychology, and communication, and reflected on his experiences—the energy and motivation he felt on Sunfish and the frustration of his three years on Will Rogers.

He identified three problems with traditional leadership:

1) Empowerment—the idea of empowering someone or of being empowered by someone—seemed manipulative. He felt power should come from within. Action was our natural state as humans. After all, as a species, we took over the earth. If we hadn’t disempowered people, we wouldn’t need empowerment programs.

2) Micromanagement: He preferred getting specific goals from a manager, with the freedom to decide how to accomplish them. Checking off a list of tasks was mind-numbing and unfulfilling.

3) Dependence on a leader: Too often, the success of an organization was determined by its leader’s technical competence. Ships with a good commanding officer (CO) performed well; those with a bad CO performed poorly. Capability shouldn’t depend on one person, but should extend throughout the organization.

On Will Rogers, Marquet tried to layer an empowerment...

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On past assignments, he’d asked questions, to which he knew the answers, in order to test the crew. This time, he was asking out of curiosity and in order to learn. This unusual position also allowed him to focus on the people and interaction rather than the equipment.

In interviews, he asked the officers and chiefs questions such as:

• What should I not change?
• What do you hope I will change?
• What good things should we build on?
• What gets in the way of doing your job?

In reviewing what he’d heard, Marquet realized there were a lot of problems with how Santa Fe operated—for instance, delays; screw-ups; careless handling of evaluations, transfers, and requests for leave; and failure to review reports and records.

A Call to Action

Initially, Marquet spent his time walking around and talking to people. He attended a department heads meeting—everyone was late and the meeting started late because they waited for the CO. Marquet talked afterward to Lieutenant Dave Adams, the weapons officer, who was frustrated because he wanted to improve his department but his ideas were being shot down by superiors. The chiefs working for him weren’t eager to...

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• The crew wanted change.
• He had a supportive chain of command.
• His lack of technical knowledge about this submarine meant he had to rely on the crew’s knowledge and ability. This would keep him from succumbing to the leader-follower mentality.
• His task was clear: Radically shift the crew’s focus from doing the minimum and avoiding errors to striving for and achieving excellence.

When the outgoing CO had finished his speech, Marquet stood and with the traditional response, “I relieve you,” he became the commander of Santa Fe.

Focus on Excellence, Not on Avoiding Errors

The Navy’s submarine force was obsessed with reporting, tracking, and analyzing errors, which created a strong incentive to focus exclusively on avoiding them. When Marquet took command of Santa Fe, the crew focused on rotely following myriad procedures intended to minimize errors.

While this might have prevented some problems, it was paralyzing and left no room for achieving excellence, which Marquet defined as “exceptional operational effectiveness.” While understanding and minimizing mistakes is valuable, it should be primarily a side benefit of excellence.

Marquet...

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• Get people to “think out loud” about what they intend to do to clarify the rationale for decisions.
• Welcome inspectors as experts who can help the organization improve.

January 8, 1999

Submarine Base, Pearl Harbor (172 Days to Deployment)

Although there was an axiom that “the chiefs run the Navy,” they lacked true authority. A top-down leader-follower system was heavily embedded in the Navy and particularly in the submarine force. It started with the Navy’s emphasis on the total accountability of the ship’s commanding officer, which meant that not much happened without getting the CO’s permission.

With followers heavily dependent on the leader, a submarine’s performance hinged on the technical ability and personality of the CO. As a result, performance over time was inconsistent—a ship might do well under one commander, then poorly under the next.

Marquet wanted Santa Fe’s chiefs to go against the grain of the leader-follower tradition and training. Many of them were skeptical, but they agreed that they truly wanted to run the submarine, and they began to talk about what this would mean.

Mechanism: Change the Rules for Control

The chiefs...

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Marquet believed that feeling victimized rather than taking responsibility had contributed to the low morale. For instance—the crew felt deadlines couldn’t be met, parts would always arrive too late, they wouldn’t get jobs they requested, and so on. Practicing the three-name rule helped to break that cycle and introduce new thinking.

Changing behavior is a mechanism for decentralizing control.

Questions for Leaders

• What do you do when your employees don’t want to change the way they’ve always done things?
• What are the costs and benefits of doing things differently in your company and industry?
• Which do you do first: change behavior or change thinking?

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Having brief, early conversations is a mechanism for decentralizing control. The key for Marquet was making them useful without disempowering people. He was careful not to tell people what to do, but to just give feedback on what they were doing. The solution was still up to them. However, Marquet gave them clarity on the overall objective, or what they needed to accomplish. A conversation of a few minutes could save hours.

Questions for Leaders

• What can you do to implement quick checks in your organization?
• How often does your staff waste time and money going in an unproductive direction?
• What inefficiencies or misunderstandings have you uncovered by checking in with staff while they are working on something?

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Marquet further extended this concept. He’d found that instead of just saying “very well,” he had a tendency to revert to top-down management by asking a lot of questions. So to counter this, he asked officers and crew to elaborate on their reasoning when stating their intent, so he wouldn’t need to ask questions, just concur.

Requiring a fuller explanation had the added benefit of pushing them to think at a higher level. This was, in effect, a leadership development program. The “I intend to” procedure was a significant factor contributing to an unusually large number of promotions among Santa Fe officers and crew over a decade.

Rather than one person handing down orders to 134 followers, Santa Fe had 135 motivated and engaged crew members thinking about what to do and how to do it. Followers became leaders.

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Instead of issuing orders this time, Marquet waited for his team to decide what to do. They realized that when they fired the torpedo, they’d have to report it by radio, and they could download the messages at the same time. They fired and the exercise was a success.

Mechanism: Resist the Urge to Provide Solutions

Emergency situations can require instant decisions—however, in the vast majority of situations, there’s time to let the team decide what to do. Resisting the urge to provide solutions is a mechanism for decentralizing control.

Here’s how to get your team members thinking on their own:

• If you have to make an urgent decision, have your managers discuss it after the fact. Or, time permitting, ask for input and then make the decision.
• If you can delay the decision, seek input but don’t push for consensus—this stifles dissent, which you need and should value. You don’t need people who always think like you do.

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When organizations are process-focused, they can get into an unproductive cycle. First, following processes takes precedence over achieving the objective the process is supposed to ensure. Then the goal becomes avoiding process errors. When errors happen, companies add supervisors, whose presence does nothing to achieve the original objective. All they do is point to process errors after the fact.

In the book Out of Crisis, W. Edward Deming presented leadership principles for Total Quality Leadership. He explained there’s a difference between improving and monitoring: improving processes makes an organization more efficient, while monitoring processes makes it less efficient. Having leaders constantly checking up on people undermines their responsibility and initiative.

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Mechanism: Think Out Loud

Thinking out loud is a mechanism for decentralizing controlbecause when Marquet knew what his officers were thinking, it was easier for him to keep quiet and let them do their jobs.

Thinking out loud goes against Navy training and culture, which says that when reporting something up the chain of command, you should say as little as possible. But thinking out loud is critical to making the leader-leader model work.

Thinking out loud also is a mechanism for creating organizational clarity. If leaders just issue orders, people don’t need to understand your objectives. But in complicated environments like those in which submarines operate, it’s critical for leaders to share their experience and background information.

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In contrast, most organizations aim to reveal as little as possible to outsiders or auditors, especially when there are problems.

Santa Fe’s crew members approached inspections with questions and curiosity. They acknowledged problems and asked for help solving them, an attitude that inspectors found surprising. As a result, Santa Fe typically got high grades and crew members became exceptionally skilled at their jobs.

Questions for Leaders

• How do you use outsiders—for instance, social media commenters and auditors—to improve your organization?
• How do the costs of being transparent compare to the benefits?
• How can you encourage your team to view inspectors as resources?

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Maquet thanked him for his candor and sent him away without a reprimand. He felt the petty officer’s honesty, despite expecting punishment, should earn a reprieve. The bigger issue was how to prevent it from happening again.

Mechanism: Take ‘Deliberate Action’

They discussed refresher training, but they decided it wouldn’t help since there hadn’t been a lack of knowledge about what to do. They considered adding a layer of supervision, but there was substantial supervision already and it hadn’t stopped the error.

Someone argued that sometimes mistakes just happened. Others said the problem was a lack of attention to detail—but telling people to pay closer attention doesn’t work. The key to coming up with a solution was realizing that the petty officer had been operating on autopilot without engaging his brain.

They came up with a mechanism aimed at getting people to act thoughtfully and deliberately—they called it “take deliberate action.” The way it would work was:

Before taking any operational action, a crew member would pause, verbally state what he intended to do, and gesture toward the controls. The purpose was to engage the operator’s mind and eliminate...

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• Learning and training increased competence.
• Greater competence allowed officers to delegate more decision-making.
• Increased decision-making led to greater employee engagement and initiative.
• Productivity, morale, and effectiveness grew.

Learning constantly is a mechanism for creating competence. Inspection teams often commented on the Santa Fe crew’s eagerness to learn.

Questions for Leaders

• What areas of your business are prone to mistakes because employees don’t have the competence to make good decisions?
• How would you create a learning mentality among your staff?

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Certifying, or demonstrating readiness, is a mechanism for achieving competence. It’s also a checkpoint—the task will either proceed if people are ready, or it won’t if they reveal they aren’t ready because of something they don’t know. Anything less is just a briefing.

Questions for Leaders

• How can you make team members responsible for knowing their job?
• How much do your employees prepare before an event or task?
• Describe your last briefing on a project—how did listeners react?
• How could you certify that your project teams know their responsibilities and the goals of an operation?
• How can you take more responsibility as a leader to ensure teams are ready?

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When you launch a new initiative, some people will “get it” immediately; others will be skeptical or need more time to absorb it. The key to breaking through is repeating the message day after day. Repeating the message is a mechanism for building competence.Even people who are on board emotionally with a change can fall into old habits.

Questions for Leaders

• What messages do you need to keep repeating to make sure your managers take care of their teams?
• Have you ever thought that people understood what you were talking about only to find out later that they didn’t get it?

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Specifying goals, not methods, is a mechanism for creating competence. The crew was given a clear goal—put the fire out as quickly as possible. During a drill or crisis, it was up to the crew members to devise the most effective method.

Ready for Deployment

When Sania Fe picked up the inspectors at San Diego, Marquet felt confident the crew was ready—and he was right. Their performance was outstanding, and Commodore Kenny certified the ship as ready for deployment.

They needed only to return to Pearl Harbor for final preparations and be underway for deployment on June 18—two weeks early.

Questions for Leaders

• Are your people focused on process rather than results?
• When you set goals for your organization, do you also specify the methods for achieving them, or do you leave the methods up to staff?
• How can you refocus your staff on results?

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• Efficiency: While the crew gained more control, they would strive for greater efficiency in everything they did, ranging from more effective drills to better meal service.
• Tactical excellence: Santa Fewould pursue tactical excellence, including battle group support, effective missile strikes, and special operations.

Mechanism: Take Care of Your Team

In the most recent round of advancement exams, Santa Fe crew members hadn’t done well. While Marquet and the officers focused on preparing the submarine for deployment, they hadn’t helped the crew prepare for the exams—exam scores were a major factor in promotions. Marquet felt they’d let the crew down.

Besides increasing training in areas of the test where the crew had done poorly, they decided to create a practice exam for petty officers. They asked petty officers to write multiple choice questions as they studied to encourage active learning. Senior staff incorporated the questions into the practice exam as well as into ongoing training.

The efforts to improve exam performance paid off months later. One of the petty officers advanced, as did 40 percent of the enlisted crew (48 men). Results were even...

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Highlighting their legacy created organizational clarity by reminding sailors of Santa Fe’s larger purpose. Being inspired by your legacy is a mechanism for clarity.

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Guiding principles are a mechanism for clarity. It’s important that your guiding principles represent the real, not idealized principles of the organization. Since the principles are to be used for decision-making, they need to be aligned with the organization’s real goals.

Questions for Leaders

• What are your organization's guiding principles?
• How do you communicate them? Are they cited in evaluations and awards?
• Are they useful to employees as decision-making criteria? Are they used as such?

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Mechanism: Immediately Recognize Top Performance

Typically, the Navy is slow to provide recognition and awards, letting administrative processes get in the way. Yet immediate recognition is a powerful motivator and reinforcer of desired behaviors. Immediately recognizing top performance is a mechanism for clarity.

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• With your senior leadership, read and discuss chapter 2 of Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. (Shortform note: Read our summary of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.)
• Develop three- to five-year goals for your organization.
• In evaluations, use statements that quantify achievements, using measurements previously agreed on.
• Have employees write their own evaluations for several years out—their goals should align with organizational goals and be quantifiable.

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Mechanism: Encourage Questions, Not Blind Obedience

Encouraging questions, not unthinking obedience is a mechanism for clarity. A culture that encourages questioning builds organizational resilience, or ability to resist errors. The crew had clarity on the mission and therefore the confidence to question the commander—and a mistake was averted.

Questions for Leaders

• Does your organization have a culture that encourages questioning over blind obedience?
• How can you create a resilient organization where errors are stopped?
• Would your managers or employees unquestioningly follow a wrong order?

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In addition:

• Santa Fe was awarded the Arleigh Burke Fleet Trophy for the submarine, ship or aircraft squadron that improved in battle efficiency the most in a year.
• In 2001, Santa Fe received a record-high grade on its reactor operations exam.

A Different Kind of Leadership

Marquet deviated from the traditional leadership model by:

• Reviewing people rather than reviewing the work.
• Requiring fewer reports and checkpoints.
• Giving fewer orders and making fewer decisions than a traditional leader would, thus developing leadership at all levels.

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It’s necessary to empower people under the leader-leader model because people have been disempowered in the past. But empowerment alone isn’t enough to change the way things work because it’s a variant of the top-down approach (someone does the empowering).

Along with empowering employees, leaders need to release or free them to apply their talents, energy, and creativity, by getting out of the way. Teams are emancipated when they have decision-making authority supported by competence and clarity. You no longer need to empower them, nor can you, because their sense of power comes from within.

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The leader-leader model is the only one that can produce top performance and long-term excellence. If the model can turn the Navy’s worst-performing submarine into its best, it can work in any organization.