Turn The Ship Around!

by L. David Marquet

We had been taking actions that pushed authority down the chain of command, that empowered the officers, chiefs, and crew, but the insight that came to me was that as authority is delegated, technical knowledge at all levels takes on a greater importance. There is an extra burden for technical competence.

We talked about this again. With the perspective of needing to increase technical competence in mind, we thought about the simple reality “we learn,” and that’s what we adopted. It was something that every member of the crew did every day. It seemed to be the basic element that unified all of our actions.

Therefore, our vision of our command is a learning and competence factory. The raw materials are the new personnel reporting aboard each week, new equipment, and tactics. The product is well-qualified, experienced sailors who, upon detaching from the command, carry their competence throughout the Navy. Each of you, then, is both a product of the factory (when you learn) and a machine in the factory (when you help others learn). What do you expect me to do? I expect you to learn to be a better submariner each day. I challenge you to look at each field day, maintenance action, drill, monitor watch, underway, and deployment as an opportunity to learn more, and by doing so, to grow as a person.

Afterward, we gathered for a debrief, during which I simply asked, “What happened? The chief briefed the procedure.” My flashlight was pointing at one of the planesmen, who hadn’t responded properly when we simulated a stuck depth gauge. “Captain, no one listens to those briefings.” “What do you mean?” “Well, you come on watch, sit in the chair, and when the chief starts reading from the book, you’re thinking, ‘I already know how to do this,’ so you don’t listen too hard.”

Mechanism: Don’t Brief, Certify That described a phenomenon I’d seen many times. A briefing is a passive activity for everyone except the briefer. Everyone else “is briefed.” There is no responsibility for preparation or study. It’s easy to just nod and say “ready” without full intellectual engagement. Furthermore, the sole responsibility in participating in a brief is to show up. Finally, a brief, as such, is not a decision point. The operation is going to happen and we are simply talking about it first.

Certifications shift the onus of preparation onto the participants. All participants are active. The change from passive briefs to active certification changed the crew’s behavior. We found that when people know they will be asked questions they study their responsibilities ahead of time. This increases the intellectual involvement of the crew significantly. People are thinking about what they will be required to do and independently study for it.

The issue I had the hardest time coming to grips with was how I didn’t know all this was happening. Technically, the XO signs the enlisted watch bill so, technically, I wasn’t responsible. Still, I was. I had been in the control room a hundred times during the previous week. I’d frequently seen Sled Dog standing there on watch. Sure, I had excuses. I was focused on other things, whereas managing the watch bill was the direct responsibility of others. No matter how I rationalized it, however, I felt responsible. Perhaps this sense of responsibility colored my actions and perhaps it could have come out badly. Had I carefully weighed the potential impact to me personally, I would never have gone in body to the enlisted barracks. I didn’t think like that, though. I was only worried about my sailor, who was off by himself and dealing with senior management that wasn’t trying to get him on board.

Mechanism: Specify Goals, Not Methods First, we attacked the motivation problem. We authorized the drill monitor at the scene to adapt the drill based on the crew’s response. If the crew applied a portable extinguisher in the first forty-five seconds, the fire was out. Done. If it took two minutes to get a pressurized hose to the scene, the fire was out. Done. These consequences modeled nature.

The transit out the channel went quickly, and we were soon submerged and heading west. I gathered the chiefs and officers and we discussed what we wanted to accomplish. “Look, we’re going to be gone for six months,” Lieutenant Commander Rick Panlilio advocated. “We should encourage each person in the crew to establish personal goals—take courses, read books, exercise, that kind of thing—in addition to the goals we have for Santa Fe.”

BUILDING TRUST AND TAKING CARE OF YOUR PEOPLE is a mechanism for CLARITY.

It’s hard to find a leadership book that doesn’t encourage us to “take care of our people.” What I learned is this: Taking care of your people does not mean protecting them from the consequences of their own behavior. That’s the path to irresponsibility. What it does mean is giving them every available tool and advantage to achieve their aims in life, beyond the specifics of the job. In some cases that meant further education; in other cases crewmen’s goals were incompatible with Navy life and they separated on good terms.

Mechanism: Use Guiding Principles for Decision Criteria Leaders like to hang a list of guiding principles on office walls for display, but often those principles don’t become part of the fabric of the organization. Not on Santa Fe. We did several things to reinforce these principles and make them real to the crew. For example, when we wrote awards or evaluations, we tried to couch behaviors in the language of these principles. “Petty Officer M exhibited Courage and Openness when reporting …” My own behavior frequently needed adjustment when it was tested against the guiding principles. For example, I might initially attempt to dismiss a sailor who had a suggestion for a new way of doing business without listening to his suggestion. I might be expecting openness from the sailors but at the same time responding to reports of mistakes with short-tempered irritation rather than reflective curiosity. When the guiding principles were helping me, they were likely helping others.

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER Do you have a recognition and rewards system in place that allows you to immediately applaud top performers? How can you create scoring systems that immediately reward employees for the behaviors you want? Have you seen evidence of “gamification” in your workplace? Perhaps it’s worth reading one of Gabe Zichermann’s blog posts and discussing it with your management team.

We had started a new practice. Now, I wanted to build on the success of that practice. I decided that one key supervisor a day, rotating among the XO, COB, Weps, Nav, Eng, and Suppo, would have an hour-long mentoring session with me. The rule for the mentoring meeting was that we could talk only about long-term issues, and primarily people issues. All business concerning a leaking valve or failed circuit card had to occur outside these meetings.

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...

The wardroom, where the officers eat, was set up like an operating room by Doc Hill. This was where he would deal with any injured SEALs. Now, here’s the thing: almost none of these preparations had happened because of my orders. They happened because someone on the crew thought, “Hey, those guys are going to be wet. They’re going to be cold. They’re going to be hungry. They might be injured. And we should get ready for them.” My crew didn’t wait for orders. They just did what needed to be done and informed the appropriate personnel. It was leader-leader all the way.

I sure wish some of them had had a questioning attitude. ENCOURAGE A QUESTIONING ATTITUDE OVER BLIND OBEDIENCE is a mechanism for CLARITY.

We had accomplished numerous other breakthroughs as well: Instead of focusing on intimate review of the work, I focused on intimate review of the people. Instead of requiring more reports and more inspection points, I required fewer. Instead of more “leadership” resulting in more “followership,” I practiced less leadership, resulting in more leadership at every level of the command.

After Dr. Covey’s visit, I thought long and hard about the mechanisms we had put in place and how they worked together. I was struck that it seemed in many cases we were doing the opposite of what traditional leadership would have had us do. Here are some examples: DON’T DO THIS! DO THIS! Leader-follower Leader-leader Take control Give control Give orders Avoid giving orders When you give orders, be confident, unambiguous, and resolute When you do give orders, leave room for questioning Brief Certify Have meetings Have conversations Have a mentor-mentee program Have a mentor-mentor program Focus on technology Focus on people Think short-term Think long-term Want to be missed after you depart Want not to be missed after you depart Have high-repetition, low-quality training Have low-repetition, high-quality training Limit communications to terse, succinct, formal orders Augment orders with rich, contextual, informal communications Be questioning Be curious Make inefficient processes efficient Eliminate entire steps and processes that don’t add value Increase monitoring and inspection points Reduce monitoring and inspection points Protect information Pass information

Instituting the Leader-Leader Model The core of the leader-leader model is giving employees control over what they work on and how they work. It means letting them make meaningful decisions. The two enabling pillars are competence and clarity. Here is a listing of the mechanisms outlined in this book: Control Find the genetic code for control and rewrite it. Act your way to new thinking. Short, early conversations make efficient work. Use “I intend to …” to turn passive followers into active leaders. Resist the urge to provide solutions. Eliminate top-down monitoring systems. Think out loud (both superiors and subordinates). Embrace the inspectors. Competence Take deliberate action. We learn (everywhere, all the time). Don’t brief, certify. Continually and consistently repeat the message. Specify goals, not methods. Clarity Achieve excellence, don’t just avoid errors. Build trust and take care of your people. Use your legacy for inspiration. Use guiding principles for decision criteria. Use immediate recognition to reinforce desired behaviors. Begin with the end in mind. Encourage a questioning attitude over blind obedience. It’s my hope that this organization of the mechanisms in this book will help you put these ideas into action as you adopt the leader-leader philosophy.

For more information on how your organization can benefit from the leader-leader structure, I encourage you to visit my Web site (www.leader-leader.com) or contact me directly at david@turntheshiparound.com. On the Web site, I offer several tools for building a leader-leader structure, including the seven-step process for effective self-assessment that we developed on board Santa Fe. Ultimately, the most important person to have control over is yourself—for it is that self-control that will allow you to “give control, create leaders.” 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.