Turn The Ship Around!

by L. David Marquet

Here are some things you can do to “begin with the end in mind”: Hand out this chapter as reading material. Also consider Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, chapter 2, “Begin with the End in Mind.” Discuss the concepts and idea of “Begin with the end in mind.” With your leadership team, develop longer-term organizational goals for three to five years out. Go through the evaluations and look for statements that express achievement. In every case, ask “How would we know?” and ensure that you have measuring systems in place. Then have employees write their own evaluations one year, two years, or three years hence. The goals in the employees’ evaluations should cascade down from the organization’s goals; they needn’t necessarily be identical but they should be appropriate at an individual level. Have conversations with employees to make their desired achievements indisputable (How would I know?) and measurable. While the end-of-tour awards write-up exercise was beneficial because it forced each officer to get clear in his own mind what he wanted to achieve, it also opened the way to helpful dialogue. In my dialogues with each supervisor, I discussed what I was trying to accomplish on Santa Fe, and collectively they were able to translate that to what they needed to accomplish within their departments in order to support the higher-level goals. These discussions, during which we talked at length about the recursive goals and accomplishments, were very bene...