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One of the things that limits our learning is our belief that we already know something.
It didn’t matter how smart my plan was if the team couldn’t execute it! It was a lesson that would serve me well.
After having them tell me about their people, I asked them a loosely structured set of questions like these: What are the things you are hoping I don’t change? What are the things you secretly hope I do change? What are the good things about Santa Fe we should build on? If you were me what would you do first? Why isn’t the ship doing better? What are your personal goals for your tour here on Santa Fe? What impediments do you have to doing your job? What will be our biggest challenge to getting Santa Fe ready for deployment? What are your biggest frustrations about how Santa Fe is currently
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I was uneasy not being the technical expert on each and every piece of equipment on board. The impact of this focus on people was that I was going to have to rely on the crew to provide me with the technical details about how the submarine worked.
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.
I got myself a super Maglite that took four D-cell batteries. Its light was as bright as the sun. I carried that flashlight around with me everywhere. Soon, others started carrying flashlights that actually worked as well.
Is your organization spending more energy trying to avoid errors than achieving excellence?
Focusing on avoiding mistakes takes our focus away from becoming truly exceptional.
Our goal would be excellence instead of error reduction. We would focus on exceptional operational effectiveness for the submarine. We would achieve great things. Part of achieving excellence would be acquiring an intimate understanding of errors, that is, what caused them and what we needed to do to eliminate them.
Connecting our day-to-day activities to something larger was a strong motivator for the crew. The connection was there but it had been lost.
“Don’t move information to authority, move authority to the information.”
Fundamentally, tactical operations of the submarine are different from reactor plant operations. Tactical operations are against an intelligent enemy who thinks, plots, and deliberately exploits weaknesses. The complexity is significantly higher. Strictly following procedures won’t get us there.
Identify in the organization’s policy documents where decision-making authority is specified. (You can do this ahead of time if you want.) Identify decisions that are candidates for being pushed to the next lower level in the organization.
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.
(The book to read on this subject is Edward Tufte’s The Visual Display of Quantitative Information.)
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.
Here is a short list of “empowered phrases” that active doers use: I intend to … I plan on … I will … We will …
Thereafter, the goal for the officers would be to give me a sufficiently complete report so that all I had to say was a simple approval. Initially, they would provide some information, but not all. Most of the time, however, they had the answers; they just hadn’t vocalized them. Eventually, the officers outlined their complete thought processes and rationale for what they were about to do.
RESIST THE URGE TO PROVIDE SOLUTIONS is a mechanism for CONTROL. When you follow the leader-leader model, you must take time to let others react to the situation as well. You have to create a space for open decision by the entire team, even if that space is only a few minutes, or a few seconds, long.
If the decision needs to be made urgently, make it, then have the team “red-team” the decision and evaluate it. If the decision needs to be made reasonably soon, ask for team input, even briefly, then make the decision. If the decision can be delayed, then force the team to provide inputs.
What was incredibly powerful was the idea that everyone was responsible for their own performance and the performance of their departments;
efforts to improve the process made the organization more efficient, while efforts to monitor the process made the organization less efficient.
10 percent of the crew who practiced the three-name rule were enough to create a major change in impression.
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.
Initiative Initiative means we take action without direction from above to improve our knowledge as submariners, prepare the command for its mission, and come up with solutions to problems.
Intimate Technical Knowledge Modern submarines are extremely complex. Intimate technical knowledge means that each of us is responsible for learning our area of responsibility.
Courage Courage means we choose to do the right thing, even if it may be uncomfortable.
Continuous Improvement Continuous improvement is how we get better.
Integrity Integrity means we tell the truth to each other and to ourselves.
Teamwork Submariners have traditionally worked as a team because a mistake by one person can mean disaster for all. We work as a team, not undercutting each other.
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 …”
Are your guiding principles referenced in evaluations and performance awards? Are your guiding principles useful to employees as decision-making criteria?
Mechanism: Use Immediate Recognition to Reinforce Desired Behaviors
consider Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, chapter 2, “Begin with the End in Mind.”
As you work with individuals in your organization to develop their vision for the future, it is crucial that you establish specific, measurable goals. These goals will help the individuals realize their ambitions. In addition, you as a mentor have to establish that you are sincerely interested in the problems of the person you are mentoring. By taking action to support the individual, you will prove that you are indeed working in their best interest and always keeping the end in mind.
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,
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