Turn The Ship Around!

by L. David Marquet

“You know, sure, maybe over time things would have improved, but who wants to gamble their career—no, their life energy—on the hope of a sea change at an established, ‘successful’ company. I went on to pursue my dreams, and I’ve done so.”

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. Our cognitive capacity as a race is fully engaged in solving the monumental problems that we face.

It didn’t matter how smart my plan was if the team couldn’t execute it!

What are you willing to personally risk? (Sometimes taking a step for the better requires caring/not caring. Caring deeply about the people and mission, but not caring about the bureaucratic consequences to your personal career.)

If you walk about your organization talking to people, I’d suggest that you be as curious as possible. As with a good dinner table conversationalist, one question should naturally lead to another. The time to be questioning or even critical is after trust has been established.

Focusing on avoiding mistakes takes our focus away from becoming truly exceptional.

“Don’t move information to authority, move authority to the information.”

When you’re trying to change employees’ behaviors, you have basically two approaches to choose from: change your own thinking and hope this leads to new behavior, or change your behavior and hope this leads to new thinking.

SHORT, EARLY CONVERSATIONS is a mechanism for CONTROL. It is a mechanism for control because the conversations did not consist of me telling them what to do. They were opportunities for the crew to get early feedback on how they were tackling problems. This allowed them to retain control of the solution. These early, quick discussions also provided clarity to the crew about what we wanted to accomplish. Many lasted only thirty seconds, but they saved hours of time.

Are you willing to let your staff see that your lack of certainty is strength and certainty is arrogance?

A certification is different from a brief in that during a certification, the person in charge of his team asks them questions.

CONTINUALLY AND CONSISTENTLY REPEAT THE MESSAGE is a mechanism for COMPETENCE.